“Plough told you he could fly helicopters so you wouldn’t keep hurting him. The first-grade teacher told you the photo was faked to make you stop. People will tell you anything if you hurt them badly enough. You’re having some kind of break with reality, Anshaw. You don’t know what’s true anymore.”
“You would say that. You’re part of it. Part of the plan to make me crazy, make me kill myself. I thought the thumbprints would startle you into getting in contact with your handler, and they did. You went straight to the hills to send him a signal. To let him know I was close. But where’s your backup now?”
“I don’t have backup. I don’t have a handler.”
“We were friends, Mal. You got me through the worst parts of being over there, when I thought I was going crazy. I hate that I have to do this to you. But I need to know who you were signaling. And you’re going to tell. Who did you signal, Mal?”
“No one,” she said, trying to squirm away from him on her belly.
He grabbed her hair and wrapped it around his fist, to keep her from going anywhere. She felt a tearing along her scalp. He pinned her with a knee in her back. She went still, head turned, right cheek mashed against the nubbly rug on the floor.
“I didn’t know you were married. I didn’t notice the ring until just tonight. Is he coming home? Is he part of it? Tell me.” Tapping the ring on her finger with the blade of the shears.
Mal’s face was turned so she was staring under the bed at the case with her M4 and bayonet in it. She had left the clasps undone.
Anshaw clubbed her in the back of the head, at the base of the skull, with the handles of the shears. The world snapped out of focus, went to a soft blur, and then slowly her vision cleared and details regained their sharpness, until at last she was seeing the case under the bed again, not a foot away from her, the silver clasps hanging loose.
“Tell me, Mal. Tell me the truth now.”
In Iraq the Fedayeen had escaped the handcuffs after his thumbs were broken. Cuffs wouldn’t hold a person whose thumb could move in any direction… or someone who didn’t have a thumb at all.
Mal felt herself growing calm. Her panic was like static on a radio, and she had just found the volume, was slowly dialing it down. He would not begin with the shears, of course, but would work his way up to them. He meant to beat her first. At least. She drew a long, surprisingly steady breath. Mal felt almost as if she were back on Hatchet Hill, climbing with all the will and strength she had in her, for the cold, open blue of the sky.
“I’m not married,” she said. “I stole this wedding ring off a drunk. I was just wearing it because I like it.”
He laughed: a bitter, ugly sound. “That isn’t even a good lie.”
And another breath, filling her chest with air, expanding her lungs to their limit. He was about to start hurting her. He would force her to talk, to give him information, to tell him what he wanted to hear. She was ready. She was not afraid of being pushed to the edge of what could be endured. She had a high tolerance for pain, and her bayonet was in arm’s reach, if only she had an arm to reach.
“It’s the truth,” she said, and with that, PFC Mallory Grennan began her confession.
About the Author
Joe Hill is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Horns and Heart-Shaped Box, and the prizewinning story collection 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award — winning writer of an ongoing comic book series, Locke & Key. His new novel, NOS4A2, will be published in May 2013.