Desperate Times Three - Revolution (7 page)

Jimmy continued, reliving the last-minute shopping spree that nearly cost them their lives. Laughing, he retold the story of Patty’s overwhelming generosity as she invited what seemed to Ken as “half the town” along to escape with them to their northern retreat. He recalled their little caravan and the nearly festive mood as they began to bond together as a group. Jimmy described the scene at the rest area and the bloody battle that followed. Throwing caution to the wind, Jimmy even talked about his own part in the battle and how he had taken a life in self-defense.

He spoke of Jon, the hairdresser, and how without him the group likely never would have survived. He talked about how Jon had trained them to fight and how the two of them had rescued Doc Benson from his ransacked hospital in the town of Ely. The story continued to spill out from there. Jimmy battled through the tears as he recalled the night that Jon had saved his life and had lost his own in the process.

“I’m so sorry,” Katie said, offering Jimmy a tissue. “He sounds like he was someone special.”

“He was,” said Jimmy, dabbing at his eyes. “He really was. He just wanted to be treated like anyone else. That’s all.”

“And he died saving you and the girls. That’s so sad.”

Jimmy nodded and after a second, he plowed ahead. He told the story of how they had been captured by the radical followers of the insane Sister Margaret, and how they had come seconds away from certain death. Jimmy explained how Bill had saved them all by electrocuting the crazy woman just before she roasted them all inside a wire cage.

“I don’t understand,” Katie said, placing her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Why did those people continue to follow her?”

“Because,” said Jimmy, “people will believe anything when it looks like the world is about to end. She used their faith against them, and I hope she’s still burning in hell.”

Jimmy spoke of Burt Sharpen, the Minneapolis cop, who had befriended their group and had fallen madly in love with the woman from the pacifist compound known as Venus. And sadly, he spoke of how they had both been gunned down by one of the leaders of the pacifist group, a man known as Mars.

“That wouldn’t be possible today,” Katie said, interrupting Jimmy. “Guns are illegal.”

Jimmy laughed at that. “Oh, that’s just great,” he said. “How are people supposed to defend themselves?”

“I’m not saying I agree with the new laws. I’m just stating the claims made by the politicians who passed them.”

“What do they know about living in the real world?” Jimmy asked. “Look, those laws need to be unwritten. They’re going to get a lot of innocent people killed. I know, I’ve seen it.”

Jimmy summed up their last days at the lake home. He spoke about how Patty had continued to go downhill and how Doc suspected she was having strokes. He then retold the tale of how Paula had smitten Doc and how she had caused him to do the unthinkable. He told their whole story, not wanting to leave anything out in case he never had the chance to tell it again. When he was finished, Katie smiled and shook her head. “Thank you, Jimmy,” she said. “I want you to know that from where I’m standing, you and your friends are true American heroes. You stood up on your own and fought for what you believed was right. I’m sad to say that it’s a lot more than most people did.”

Suddenly, there was a loud commotion in the hallway outside Jimmy’s room, and Katie turned to face the door. A moment later, the door flew open and police dressed in full riot gear stormed inside. “
Down! Down! Down!”
the first group of them shouted. They rushed inside with guns and batons drawn, as if they expected to find a heavily armed resistance. Jimmy watched in stunned silence as two of the storm-troopers stood and hovered over his bed, each holding a black baton at the ready. Katie and her film crew were on the floor, but in the small confines of the room they were unable to fully comply with the orders. They sat on their knees with their hands covering their heads.

A moment later, they were hauled to their feet and taken away without their video equipment, which was quickly confiscated, and soon Jimmy’s room was quiet and without a trace that Katie had ever been there.

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." ~ John Lennon

Still somewhat groggy, Jimmy fell asleep and early that same afternoon, he was visited by a well-dressed man with a briefcase. Jimmy immediately recognized him as a lawyer. He was tall and thin, with dark hair that was just beginning to gray at the temples and appeared to be somewhere in his forties. Jimmy thought he had a shark smile and was immediately wary of the man. Dr. Dan introduced him, but seemed to do so reluctantly, as if he had no choice.

“Jimmy, this is Mr. Collins,” Dr. Dan said. “He has some papers for you to look at.”

The man simply nodded at Jimmy. “Thank you,” he said to Dr. Dan in a thin, reedy voice. “I’ll come find you when we’re through.”

Dr. Dan stood there for a moment, and Jimmy could see that he obviously didn’t want to leave the room. Finally, Dr. Dan frowned and walked to the door. “Jimmy, the call button is there by your left hand,” he said, pointing to Jimmy’s bed. “I’ll be just down the hall.”

“He’ll be fine,” Collins wheezed. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”

Dr. Dan left the room without acknowledging Collins, and Jimmy felt his senses shift into high alert. Collins set his briefcase down on a steel cabinet and opened it. Through the disinfectant, Jimmy could smell cologne and the unmistakable odor of a man’s sweat. Collins removed a folder and with unsteady hands began to riffle through the papers and laid them out on the foot of Jimmy’s bed. He made three piles, counted them, and then returned his attention to Jimmy.

“You are a lucky man, Mr. Logan. I wonder if you know how truly fortunate you really are?”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy. “I suppose those goons could’ve killed me.”

“Can I call you Jimmy?”

“No.”

Collins smiled and pointed two long fingers at Jimmy, as if the two of them had just shared a secret joke. “Very well,
Mr. Logan,
I’ve got good news for you. We’ve decided to drop all charges against you and your friends. You and Ken are free to leave here just as soon as you’ve healed up from your bumps and bruises. How does that sound?”

The announcement took Jimmy’s breath away. He had drifted off to sleep imagining a long trial and a lengthy sentence. He suddenly began to reevaluate his opinion of the odorous attorney. “What’s the catch,” Jimmy asked, narrowing his eyes.

“The catch?” Collins asked, looking up at the ceiling and shaking his head as if he were speaking to an idiot. “The catch is that you get to walk out of here a free man after taking part in one of the largest killing sprees this country has ever known. The catch,
Mr. Logan,
is that President Richter would like this ugly little incident to go away. The American people have enough on their plates. You sign a few waivers and do another interview, and you are free to go on with your life.”

“What do you mean,
another
interview?” Jimmy asked. “I just did one. I don’t have anything to add to that.”

“You will do another interview, Mr. Logan, or you’ll be charged with capital murder, and you can take your chances in a court of law. The choice is up to you.”

Jimmy stared at Collins for a moment and forced a smile. “So, when do we do this interview?”

“Soon,” Collins wheezed. “Within the hour.”

A short while later, Jimmy was dressed in a loose-fitting running suit, painfully lifted from his bed and transferred into a wheelchair. A large woman with jet-black hair and sky-blue eye shadow appeared in his room and introduced herself as Naomi. Without further ado, she began combing Jimmy’s hair, and he received his first professional haircut in nearly two years. Jimmy tried to make small talk, but Naomi was full of one-word answers. While she remained polite, she was all business. Satisfied with the haircut, she began to lightly apply makeup to Jimmy’s face. The entire operation lasted under half an hour, and without fanfare Naomi wheeled Jimmy out of his room and down the hall.

After a silent elevator ride, Naomi rolled Jimmy into an oak-paneled conference room. The room was a flurry of activity, and hardly anyone seemed to notice him, except for Ken Dahlgren.

He got up from his chair at the conference table and waited for Jimmy to be rolled over to join him. “Jimmy,” he said, smiling. “You look like shit.”

This caught Jimmy off balance, and he began to chuckle. Laughing hurt his bruised ribs, and he clutched his middle, but the chuckles continued. “You look pretty shitty yourself,” Jimmy replied. “I love what they’ve done to your nose.”

Ken continued to smile as his fingertips traced the new ridge at the bridge of his nose. “I like it, too. I think it adds character to my face.”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Naomi said, nodding her head. “You look like a matched set.”

“Thank you,” said Jimmy, watching the big woman trundle off to a chair on the opposite side of the room.

Ken returned to his seat and offered Jimmy a plate of hospital cookies. “They ain’t bad,” he said. “Can you eat?”

“We’ll see,” Jimmy said, choosing one of the sugar cookies. “Man, it’s been a long time,” he added before taking a small bite. He chewed slowly and found that everything inside his mouth still worked. He also found that he was ravenously hungry.

“What have they told you?” Ken whispered. “Have you heard anything about Patty? Listen, don’t say anything to screw this up, okay? We’ve got to get out of this dump and find the others. All they’ve told me is that they were taken to the Monroe Institute. Did they tell you that?”

Jimmy nodded and reached for a second cookie. “Yeah, have you ever heard of it?”

Ken shook his head. “No, but they tell me that it’s just outside of Minneapolis. We’ll find it.”

“How are we going to get there?”

“We’ll be taking my goddamn Mack,” growled Ken, staring at Jimmy with fire in his eyes. “We’ll have to come back for the Tahoe. I’m going to have to get her into a shop.”

Jimmy nodded, wondering if any body shops were even back in business. He also wondered what had happened to the Mack. He and Ken had been transported to a hospital in Duluth, which was nearly seventy miles from where they had been arrested. There was also the question if Patty was even still alive. The mere possibility caught Jimmy like a sucker punch.

Ken saw the doubt in Jimmy’s eyes and pointed a finger at Jimmy. “Don’t even think it. She’s going to be fine, and we’ll figure out what to do after we round up our people. We’ll walk to Minneapolis if we have to. I’m sure Julie is worried sick about you, and poor Patty has to be going out of her mind by now.”

Jimmy nodded again. He could see fear in Ken’s eyes, and it was something completely foreign to him. Jimmy looked away as Ken brushed away a stray tear. The room was buzzing with activity. This interview would be much different that their earlier one. From the looks of it, they were pulling out all of the bells and whistles here. The chairs of the rectangular oak table had been removed, except for the one that Ken sat in and one directly across from him. Jimmy assumed this was where their host would sit.

A moment later, Jimmy’s jaw dropped when the door opened and a dark-haired, stocky man strode into the room as if he owned it. He looked vaguely familiar to Jimmy, but he couldn’t place the man’s face. The man was well dressed and wore gold jewelry, which Jimmy assumed was the real thing. Fiftyish and average looking, he wore slicked-back hair that had receded well above his forehead. He stood and stared at Jimmy and Ken as if they were cockroaches.

“I can’t believe it,” Ken whispered. “It’s
Thrill
Melbow
.”

Jimmy nodded his head. Ken had been a big fan of the conservative radio talk-show host, as had many of the men who had worked at Dahlgren Industries. Jimmy had started out as a fan of the show, but over the years the man’s slanted message had worn thin on him. A small throng had gathered around Melbow, and it was clear he was unhappy about something. “He looks like a jerk,” whispered Jimmy.

Ken’s eyes narrowed. “Listen, just follow my lead and don’t say anything liberal, do you understand me? We’ve got to get out of here just as fast as we can. Don’t screw this up, kid.”

Jimmy nodded and sat back in his wheelchair. Ken’s words had struck a nerve inside of him, and he didn’t trust himself to respond. Jimmy was suddenly suspicious of the spectacle that was about to take place and thought about that for a moment. Again, Melbow glared back at Jimmy from across the room with an irritated expression. Jimmy was suddenly certain that Melbow was here to do damage control and that he would spin whatever Ken and he said to fit his purposes. Collins now stood next to the talk show host and held a sheet of paper out for the both of them to read; they seemed to be going over a battle plan.

This angered Jimmy and he could feel adrenaline flowing into his aching muscles.
They’ve got no right to spin our story,
he thought to himself. There was something wrong here, terribly wrong, and Jimmy wanted nothing to do with it. He watched as Naomi powdered Thrill Melbow’s puffy cheeks as he continued to talk to the vulture, Collins.

“Don’t even think about it,” hissed Ken, leaning over and blocking Jimmy’s view of Thrill and his entourage. “Do not go against the grain, do you hear me? He’ll chew you up and spit you out like a cheap steak. He’s the best, kid. That’s why he’s here. That ought to make you feel good. They thought enough of us to send out the best in the business.”

Jimmy forced a smile and nodded his head. He thought about what was about to happen and about what was really important. Ken was right—they needed to get this over as quickly as possible and get moving to Minneapolis. They were over a hundred miles away from the ones they loved, and God only knew how they were.