I remembered now. I had been in a local jail for about a week. Then they’d put me on a bus to transfer me somewhere else. Here. They were going to send me here, to Abingdon.
Reality seemed to flicker on and off. The past-that rainy night, the shuddering bus-seemed to flicker in and out of being around me.
“Yes,” I whispered to myself. “Yes, I remember now…”
I started to sit up on the cot.
But then I doubled over in pain as the full memory attack struck me.
CHAPTER FOUR
BroadsideIt was so real. It wasn’t like a memory at all. It was just as if I was there, on the bus, in the night, in the storm.
I was the only passenger on the long gray-green vehicle. The only other people there were the guard and the driver. The guard sat in a cage up front, cradling a shotgun on his lap. The driver was almost out of sight, just the top of his head showing over the big seat before the wheel.
We were on a small road, a rough road. The bus rocked and bounced as it went over potholes. I was jostled back and forth, my shoulder hitting the window. For some reason, I couldn’t brace myself properly. I looked down to find out why. I was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit- and I was in shackles, my hands cuffed, my feet chained. My body was flung from side to side, striking the window grate just as lightning forked through the black sky, illuminating the slashing downpour for one trembling second.
I noticed something else now too: My heart was beating hard. I was nervous, excited, afraid. Something was about to happen. I didn’t know exactly what it was and I didn’t know exactly when it would begin, but I sensed it would be soon.