Children of the Uprising Read online

  They pulled their car up beside Christopher’s. Their car was dark, with tinted windows. Christopher couldn’t see inside. Then they suddenly rammed their car into the side of Christopher’s, and he almost lost control. As long as he was on the road, he was outmatched. Christopher knew it. He had to get off the road. It was his only chance. If he could just stay on the road a few more miles, he could get to the woods close to his house, the woods he’d virtually grown up in. If he could make it that far, he knew he’d have a chance of surviving.

  The dark car bumped Christopher again, sustaining the contact this time, trying to push his car off the road and into the trees. They were going over sixty miles per hour now. Christopher clutched the steering wheel, trying to hold on, trying to keep his car from veering off into oblivion. He could feel his pulse in his hands. He could feel his tires skid sideways. Then the road bent suddenly. Christopher cut his steering wheel as the road curved. When he did, the cars separated. He heard tires screeching again, but they weren’t his this time. The dark car skidded, trying to stay on the road as it almost missed the turn. Christopher stomped on the accelerator. His foot touched the floor. He only needed to make it another two miles or so. In seconds, the other car was back alongside him again, moving in to try to ram him off the road. This time Christopher had a plan. As the passenger-side door of the dark car was about to ram Christopher’s door, Christopher slammed on the brakes. The dark car flew by him, going at least fifty yards in front of him before it pulled to a stop. The dark car skidded sideways as it stopped, blocking the entire road. The car was lit up by Christopher’s headlights like it was being shown in a spotlight. Christopher waited, wanting to see what the people inside the car would do. He half hoped that another car would come speeding from the other direction and slam into them, but he knew that this was unlikely. People didn’t often drive this road at night. He watched the car. He felt like he was watching an animal, a predator. He felt like he could see the car breathing. Then the car’s passenger-side window, the window facing Christopher, began to go down. Christopher didn’t wait to see what horrors the descending window would reveal. Instead, as soon as the window began to go down, he floored it again.

  Christopher knew that he would have to go off the road to get around them. His wheels screeched before they caught, and then he launched his car onto the dirt on the side of the road behind the dark car. He prayed that he wouldn’t hit a hole in the ground or a tree before he was able to get past the dark car. His car rattled over the unpaved ground, but it made it past the other car. When he could, Christopher turned back onto the road, without taking his foot off the accelerator. Then he heard the screeching of tires as his pursuers started up the chase again. The dark car was only seconds behind him, but seconds were all that Christopher needed. He knew where he was now. He watched the trees as he zipped past them. The other car was gaining on him again, coming right up to his rear bumper. He spotted the landmark he’d been looking for, an old felled tree, its roots sticking up into the air like the tentacles of a giant sea monster. Christopher counted the seconds. One. Two. The car behind him was about to ram him again. On three, Christopher cut the wheel hard to the left, launching himself into the darkness of the woods. He felt the wheels of his car leave the ground as he catapulted off the paved road into the wilderness. As he flew, he turned off his headlights and then he felt himself plummeting into darkness.

  Christopher’s car hit the ground hard and kept moving forward. He slammed on the brakes again. The car skidded, unable to gain traction on the dirt and leaves on the forest floor. The brakes couldn’t stop the car; they could only slow it down. Still, the car slowed down enough that by the time Christopher sideswiped the tree, he felt little more than a jolt.

  The tree that Christopher hit pinned the driver’s-side door shut, so Christopher leapt over the middle console and opened the passenger-side door. On his way out, he grabbed the David Ortiz autographed baseball bat. He got to his feet outside his car at the same moment that the headlights from the car chasing him shot through the darkness at him. Christopher held the bat halfway up its barrel and ran from the light. Even as he crested the hill in front of him and found his way back into the darkness, he knew that he wasn’t going to be running for very long. He hadn’t spent the majority of his youth training to run. He’d spent it training to fight. He heard the dark car’s doors slam behind him as he raced deeper into the forest. Bang. Bang. Christopher hoped that the two bangs meant that there were only two of them.

  The two men assigned to kill Christopher this time should have watched him disappear into the darkness of the forest and gone to his home. They knew where he lived. They knew that he couldn’t get very far now that his car was wrecked. They easily could have waited him out. They didn’t need to chase him blindly into the woods. They could have killed him tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. It was only their pride that made them chase him. He was just an untrained, unarmed kid, a nuisance by reputation only. Forget karate and tae kwon do and all that other shit Christopher had done. He still wasn’t trained the way that everyone in the War was trained. He still wasn’t trained to hate. So they chased Christopher into the woods because they were more afraid of telling people that the kid got away than they were afraid of the kid. They should have known better. They both knew Christopher’s story. They knew that he’d witnessed the killing of two of his fathers before he turned a year old. They knew that he’d been ripped from the arms of two different mothers. Even if he didn’t remember those things, they stick with you. Sometimes, anger is as good as hate. It may be less directed, less targeted, more blunt, but it will do the job. Besides, they also knew what type of blood ran in Christopher’s veins. They knew that his father had been a gifted killer and that his mother, at the age of nineteen, had been the only person in the history of the War to break in to an Intelligence Cell and make it out alive. They knew that the blood that pumped through the kid’s veins was dangerous blood. They chased him anyway.

  Christopher stood behind a tree, his chest silently rising and falling as he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. He could feel his heart racing. This was it. The woods were dark, only slivers of moonlight breaking in through the forest canopy. Christopher waited. There was space between the trees. He’d have space enough to take a full swing. He listened, holding the bat close to his chest with two hands. He could hear their footsteps rustling over the leaves. He hadn’t run very far. He wasn’t trying to get away. The two men chasing him didn’t split up, but they weren’t walking next to each other either. They were walking about twenty feet apart, canvassing the forest, trying to make sure that they didn’t walk past the kid while he was hiding in a hole or behind a tree. They knew that they would have heard him if he had kept running. They knew that he was close. Their mistake was their failure to realize that he was actually waiting for them.

  The two men began shouting as they walked, trying to flush Christopher out of his hiding space. Their voices echoed back and forth between the trees, making it sound like they were a whole army of men even though there were only two of them. “Come on out, kid!” the first man shouted. Christopher could hear him fumbling through the darkness, trying not to walk into a branch or trip over a rock. “We just want to talk to you,” the other man yelled, his voice higher than the first man’s and closer. “There’s no reason to be afraid,” the first man yelled and, almost before he finished, Christopher could hear the other man begin to laugh under his breath. They were moving slowly, but they were close now. Christopher twisted his hands on the handle of the bat to make sure that he had a solid grip. It was about timing and accuracy. He remembered the batting lessons his dad had given him as a kid. Christopher silently rolled his shoulders, loosening up his muscles.

  “Here kiddie, kiddie,” the man with the higher-pitched voice shouted into the night. The man was on the other side of the tree Christopher was hiding behind. The man with the deeper voice was st
ill only about twenty feet away, but they were twenty feet of comforting darkness.

  “Where the fuck are you?” the man with the deeper voice yelled, anger seeping into his voice.

  “Maybe he ain’t here,” the closer of the two men said to his partner. Christopher took advantage of the fact that the man had turned away from him. He slipped out from behind the tree. “Maybe we should just wait,” the closer man started to say. He never finished the thought. Christopher swung the bat hard. He took the first swing with everything he had, every ounce of torque he could generate. It was dark, but Christopher could see enough. He plowed the bat into the front of the closer man’s knees. He could feel one of the man’s knees give way and start bending in the wrong direction as he followed through with his swing. The man shouted, a primal scream of pain echoing through the night. Then he fell to the ground on his now useless knees. Christopher looked at the man’s hands. He was carrying what looked like a nightstick in his right hand. Christopher lifted the bat and swung it down hard on the man’s right shoulder, determined to disarm the man no matter how many swings it took. It took only two bone-crunching swings before the man dropped his weapon, his right arm now as useless as his knees.

  Christopher heard the footsteps behind him. The other man was coming for him. Instead of immediately turning to fight, Christopher ran. He ran deeper into the dark forest. He knew where to plant his feet. He knew when to jump and where the holes he needed to avoid were. In only about twenty steps, Christopher was hidden again, ducking behind another tree. Christopher listened. He could hear the injured man moaning in the darkness. He didn’t care about that. He only cared about the other man. Christopher was ready for anything. If the man came after him, he was ready to fight. If the man ran, Christopher was ready to chase him, to hunt him down through the darkness. In between the moans of the first man, Christopher heard a twig snap off to his right. He was holding the bat in front of him now, more like a sword than a bat. He wondered what type of weapon this guy had. What if he had a gun? Christopher heard another twig snap, this time even closer to him. Christopher spun, swinging the bat out in front of him, leaping out from behind the tree. Not as sure where his target was this time, he simply swung at the level of a man’s chest. He swung hard, but the man was standing perpendicular to him, so the blow merely landed on the side of the man’s arm. The man grunted when the bat hit him, but he didn’t buckle. He didn’t fall. Instead, he turned toward Christopher and swung at him with the bright silver hatchet that he held in his right hand. Christopher stepped to the side, barely avoiding the hatchet’s sharp blade. Then the man threw a punch with his left hand and Christopher felt cold metal strike his cheekbone. The man had a hatchet in one hand and brass knuckles on the other. The punch was listless, the man’s left arm weakened by the swing from Christopher’s bat. If the man hadn’t already been hurt, Christopher’s cheekbone would have been smashed to pieces and Christopher would be on the ground being hacked to death by this psychopath.

  Christopher was trying to regain his vision after taking the metal punch to the jaw when he heard a whizzing sound coming toward him through the air. Without thinking, he grabbed the bat with both his hands and lifted it up. As soon as he got the bat in front of his face, he felt the hatchet bury itself deep into the wood. Still slightly dazed, Christopher could feel the man trying to wrench the hatchet out of the baseball bat. One pull. Two pulls. Before the man could pull again, Christopher yanked the bat toward his chest, drawing the man in close to him. When the man was only an inch or two from him, Christopher lifted his knee and jammed it as hard as he could into the man’s groin. He heard all of the air go out of the man’s lungs. Then Christopher pushed the bat away from himself, creating distance between himself and the man, and he turned on the ball of his left foot and kicked the man hard in the chest. It was instinct mixed with training. The man flew away from him, toppling to the ground, the hatchet still buried in the bat that Christopher was holding in his hands. Christopher was in no mood for games, in no mood to gamble. He already had the informer he needed in the kneeless man still moaning into the darkness. He stepped forward as the first man tried to get to his feet. Christopher swung the bat again, this time with the hatchet still stuck in it. The bat connected solidly with the side of the man’s head. It was the crunching sound even more than the feel of the skull giving way that made Christopher sure that he wasn’t going to have to swing the bat again.

  The man fell motionless to the ground. His body didn’t even twitch. Christopher stood over the body for a second, looking down at it. His chest was heaving. His fingers were still wrapped tightly around the handle of the bat. He reached up with one hand and, with two hard tugs, pulled the hatchet out of the barrel of the bat. He could still hear the other man moaning alone and he knew he needed to move. He needed to get to the moaning man before the coyotes did. Christopher looked down at the body at his feet one more time. The head wasn’t a normal shape anymore. Christopher wasn’t going to have to worry about being followed through the darkness. With the bat in one hand and the hatchet in the other, he made his way back toward the kneeless man, following the sounds of pain.

  The kneeless man had struggled, pulling himself up against a tree so that his back was leaning against it, his legs splayed out unnaturally in front of him, his right shoulder hanging loosely from his body. He saw Christopher coming at him through the darkness. Even through that darkness, Christopher could see the fear register on the man’s face when he realized that it was Christopher coming back to him and not his partner. Christopher rested the bat on his own shoulder and stepped carefully toward the injured man. He knew that even an injured man could be dangerous. He looked at the injured man’s hands to make sure that he was unarmed. Pitifully, he was.

  When he got to within ten feet of the man, Christopher pointed the bat at him. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” the man answered, shaking his head, speaking through the pain. “It’s just a game,” he lied. The man knew that Christopher didn’t know anything. He also knew that he wouldn’t be able to explain anything to him, at least not in a way that would make Christopher spare his life.

  “You’ve been watching me for ten years as part of a game?” Christopher asked, stepping closer to the man, almost brushing the man’s nose with the tip of the bat.

  “We weren’t watching you,” the man said, not lying. They weren’t the ones who’d been watching him. Others were.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Christopher shouted into the night air, yelling more loudly than he could ever remember yelling before. Out here in the woods, the yelling didn’t matter. Then Christopher swung the bat, knocking the injured man’s head hard enough for him to feel but not hard enough to do any lasting damage. The man flinched before the bat hit him.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you that will make you understand,” the man said.

  “Try me,” Christopher answered.

  The man swallowed hard and bit down on his lip. “Your father was a member of a War that you know nothing about. Your mother was a child when she gave birth to you.” The man took a moment to catch his breath. “They didn’t follow the rules, so now you’re being punished.”

  “So you came here to punish me?” For the time being, that was the only thing that registered, the only thing that Christopher could make any sense of. He could understand being punished for his sins, even if he didn’t know what they were.

  The man shook his head. His head and his left arm were the only parts of his body he could still move. “We came here to kill you,” he said with a touch of ironic relish in his voice.

  “And now that you failed?” Christopher asked, his voice trembling as if he already knew the answer.

  “There will be others,” the man said. Christopher looked down at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. His parents would begin to miss him soon. They would call. His phone was back in his car. If they didn’t r
each Christopher, they’d call Evan. Then they’d start looking for him. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let them find him like this.

  Christopher walked up to the injured man. He tossed the hatchet on the ground about ten feet from them. He kneeled down and grabbed the man’s one good hand by the wrist and held it tightly. Then he reached down and patted the man’s pockets. “What are you doing?” the man asked. Christopher felt the bulge in the man’s right pocket. He reached inside and pulled out a cell phone. He turned it on to see when the last phone call was placed, making sure that the injured man hadn’t already called someone to tell them that he’d lost. The last call, sent or received, was hours ago.

  Christopher stepped back, away from the man. “What are you doing?” the man asked again. Christopher threw the phone into the air and swung the bat at it, shattering it into countless tiny pieces. Then he began to walk away. “What are you doing?” the man asked one more time, nearly shouting this time. “What? You don’t even have the guts to finish the job?” the injured man yelled.