Hell and Gone

hang around campus and drink and fuck and give each other presents and basically avoid real life. She goes home, Bobby’s in bed, already asleep. Well, the next morning she gets up and…no Bobby. She has this dim memory of him kissing her on the forehead or something, but boom, splitsville. That’s when it dawns on Julie that wow, maybe he really is pissed. After a day of waiting, she knows it’s true. He’s super pissed. Which makes Julie super pissed. Since she assumes he went home to his parents’ house, she goes home to her family and does all kinds of stupid shit. Halfway through the holiday, though, she really starts feeling bad and missing him and vows to make it all right again when they’re back on campus. She gets in early and waits in his dorm room for him. Sunday, all day, waiting. Then comes the news. Twenty-four students, dead. She gets hold of a list of victims, and sure enough, her boy Bobby’s on the list. She’s like, Whaaaaaaat the fuck? Bobby didn’t have money to fly, Bobby was afraid to fly, where the hell would Bobby fly to, anyway, spur of the freakin’ moment? It made no sense to her. She refused to accept it. The more she looked into it, the more walls she hit. Finally she hired me—her parents are loaded. Well, the more I looked into it…the stranger the whole thing was. That was my first introduction to the world beneath the real world. A world I think you’re very familiar with, Charlie.”

Static. A few pops and crackles on the line.

“Charlie, you there?”

Static.

“Come on, tell me your story.”

Static.

“Tres uncool, Charlie. Leave a girl hanging like that.”

Static.

Nothing.

Barely a minute later Horsehead started going off in Italian. He must have heard the others’ stories and decided to jump in on the act. Which wasn’t all bad, because you could follow the emotion in his words. The sadness. The fury. The disgust. The loathing. The self-incrimination. Again, fury. All-consuming fury. A reckoning. A final, lingering sadness.

After that, no one spoke for a long, long time.

Still, a few shifts later, Eve tried again.

“Hey, Charlie.”

Nothing.

“Come on, Charlie. Say something. Even a little ‘fuck you.’ Our little communication system won’t last forever. They probably turn it on and off to screw with us, but so what? Doesn’t mean you can’t say hi or something. Let me know you’re still breathing.”

After a long pause.

(A long,

long

pause…)

“Fuck you.”

Eve exclaimed, “Hallelujah! There we go! At last. He’s alive, ladies and gentlemen. So go on. Tell us your story.”

Tell us your story.

Right.

Eve persisted.

“Hey, you know our deal. Tell us yours.”

Hardie hesitated, then figured, What harm would it do, even if the guards were listening? It would be nice to know if he could still form words.

“I was a house sitter. I tried to protect some people, but I screwed it up. They sent me here.”

“They?”

“The Accident People.”

“Is that what you call them? The Accident People?”

“What do you call them?”

“They’re just one group in a field of many. There’s a Secret America, Hardie. Beneath the one you know. Beneath everything. Run by the people who really call the shots. They’re the ones who make things happen. The ones who never sleep. I’ve spent the past few years studying how they conceive and execute their goals. They run secret hospitals. Secret prisons. Secret airports. Secret factories. Anything you can think of in the aboveground world, there’s an equivalent in the shadow world. This is the real America, the shadow structure under the structure we think is real. And here’s the really weird thing, Charlie—the thing that’s going to drive you right out of your mind. The more I dug, the more I learned, the more I started piecing things together, the more the truth became clear: this isn’t a nefarious global plot. They espouse no particular ideology. They have no viewpoints or goals. They’re so massive, so vast, they’re like this big benign thug. They merely work for whoever signs the biggest check. Like Frank Zappa said—they’re only in it for the money.”

Static.

“Are you listening to me, Charlie?”

Yeah, Charlie Hardie was listening.

And thinking about the images they showed him inside the mask.

Hearing the prisoners’ stories made Hardie realize:

This “Secret America” would never, ever leave his family alone.

Unless he forced them to stop.

22

You’re stripped down to the bare essentials of what you are, and who you are as a man.

—Eddie Bunker

HARDIE STARTED WITH something small: push-ups.

One-armed, one-half push-ups, to be exact.

His old man’s favorite exercise. The only exercise a man needed, he always said. And the old man’s favorite punishment was a half push-up. That’s when you started a traditional push-up, then stopped halfway through, with your arms nearly fully extended, back straight, knees locked, muscles working. And you stay that way for as long as you can take, or until the old man tells you to drop. Mouth off? Half push-up time. Forget to take out the trash? Half push-up time.

Get your dumb ass thrown in a secret prison, causing you to have a complete mental breakdown and a resultant moment of clarity?

Half push-up time.

His body hated it at first. Absolutely hated it, because it had been softened by years of watching rich people’s homes and eating whatever and drinking whatever and reclining on whatever, confident that his years of strength training would still be there when he needed them. His body, of course, was full of shit. His body was weak and lazy and broken. But his head was in charge, and it ordered the body to do the half push-up. And there was nothing the body could do about it, because the head was safely ensconced in its cozy metal mask.

You can’t make me do this.

Watch me.

You can’t.

You will.

I won’t.

You have no choice.

And the body, in fact, had no choice.

(Hardie was aware that bifurcating himself like this would probably lead to mental problems down the road,