So it isn’t hope that makes me slip the sidearm back into its holster. It isn’t faith and it sure isn’t love.
It’s rage.
Rage, and the fact that I have a dead recruit’s implant still lodged between my cheek and gums.
10
I LIFT HER UP. Her head falls against my shoulder. We take off through the trees. A Black Hawk thunders overhead. The other two choppers have split off, one to the east, one to the west, cutting off any escape. The high, thin branches bend. Snow whips sideways into my face. Teacup weighs nothing; I could be carrying a wad of discarded clothes.
We come out of the trees as a Black Hawk roars in from the north. The blast of air whips my hair with cyclonic fury. The chopper hovers above us and now we are motionless, standing in the middle of the road. No more running. No more.
I lower Teacup to the blacktop. The helicopter is so close, I can see the black visor of the pilot and the open door to the hold and the cluster of bodies inside, and I know I’m in the middle of a half dozen sights, me and the little girl at my feet. And every second that passes means I’ve survived that second and, with each second, the increased probability I’ll survive the next. It might not be too late, not for me, not for her, not yet.
I do not glow in their eyepieces. I am one of them. I must be, right?
I sling the rifle from my shoulder and slip my finger through the trigger guard.
11
FROM THE TIME I could barely walk, my father would ask me, Cassie, do you want to fly? And my arms would shoot over my head. Are you kidding me, old man? Damn straight I want to fly!
And he would grab my waist and toss me into the air. My head would snap back and I would hurtle like a rocket toward the sky. For an instant that lasted a thousand years, it felt as if I’d keep flying until I reached the stars. I would scream with joy, that fierce roller-coaster-ride fear, my fingers clutching at clouds.
Fly, Cassie, fly!
My brother knew that feeling, too. Better than me, because the memory was fresher. Even after the Arrival, Dad was launching him into orbit. I saw him do it at Camp Ashpit a few days before Vosch showed up and murdered him in the dirt.
Sam, m’boy, do you want to fly? Lowering his voice from baritone to bass like an old-time carny hustler, though the ride he was selling was free—and priceless. Dad the launching pad. Dad the landing zone. Dad the tether that kept Sams—and me—from hurtling into the nullity of deep space, a nullity himself now.
I waited for Sam to ask. That’s the easiest way to break horrible news. Also the lowest. He didn’t ask, though. He told me.
“Daddy’s dead.”
A tiny lump beneath a mound of covers, brown eyes big and round and blank like the teddy bear’s pressed against his cheek. Teddy bears are for babies, he told me the first night at Hotel Hell. I’m a soldier now.
Burrowed in the bed next to his, another solemn, pint-sized soldier staring at me, the seven-year-old they call Teacup. The one with the adorable baby-doll face and haunted eyes who doesn’t share a bed with a stuffed animal; she sleeps with a rifle.
Welcome to the post-human age.
“Oh, Sam.” I left my post by the window and sat beside the cocoon of covers swaddling him. “Sammy, I didn’t know how—”
He slugged me in the cheek with a balled-up, apple-sized fist. I never saw it coming, in both meanings of the phrase. Bright stars exploded in my vision. For a second I was afraid he’d detached my retina.
Okay. Rubbing my cheek. I deserved that.
“Why did you let him die?” he demanded. He didn’t cry or scream. His voice was low and fierce, simmering with rage. “You were supposed to take care of him.”
“I didn’t let him die, Sams.”
My father bleeding, crawling in the dirt—Where are you going, Dad?—and Vosch standing over him, watching my father crawl the way a sadistic kid might a fly that he’s dewinged, grimly satisfied.
Teacup from her bed: “Hit her again.”
Sam snarled at her, “You shut up.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered, my arm wrapped around the bear.
“He was soft,” Teacup said. “That’s what happens when you go—”
Sam was on her in two seconds. Then it was all fists and knees and feet and dust flying from the blankets and Dear God, there’s a rifle in that bed! and I shoved Teacup away, scooped Sam into my arms, and held him tightly against my chest while he swung his arms and kicked his legs, spitting and gnashing his teeth, and Teacup was shouting obscenities at him and promising she’d put him down like a dog if he ever touched her again. The door flew open and Ben burst into the room wearing that ridiculous yellow hoodie.
“It’s cool!” I shouted over the screaming. “I’ve got this!”
“Cup! Nugget! Stand down!”
Like a switch being flipped, the minute Ben barked the order, both kids fell silent. Sam went limp. Teacup flopped against the headboard and folded her arms over her chest.
“She started it.” Sam pouted.
“I was just thinking of painting a big red X on the roof,” Ben said. He holstered his pistol. “Thanks, guys, for saving me the trouble.” He grinned at me. “Maybe Teacup should bunk in my room until Ringer gets back.”
“Good!” Teacup said. She jumped out of bed, marched to the door, turned on her heel, went back to the bed, grabbed the rifle, and yanked on Ben’s wrist. “Let’s go, Zombie.”
“In a minute,” he said gently. “Dumbo’s on the watch. Take his bed.”
“My bed now.” She couldn’t resist a parting shot: “A-holes.”
“You’re the a-hole!” Sammy shouted after her. The door slammed in that quick, violent way of hotel doors. “A-hole.”
Ben looked at me, right eyebrow cocked. “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
“I hit her,” Sammy said.
“You hit her?”
“For letting my daddy die.”
Now Sam lost it. As in tears, not fists, and the next thing I knew, Ben was kneeling and my baby brother was crying in his arms, and Ben was saying, “Hey, it’s okay, soldier. It’s going to be okay.” Stroking the crew cut I was still getting used to—Sammy just didn’t seem like Sammy without the mop of hair—saying that dumb-ass camp name over and over. Nugget, Nugget. I knew it shouldn’t, but it bothered me that everyone had a nom de guerre but me. I liked Defiance.
Ben picked him up and deposited him in the bed. Then he found Bear lying on the floor and placed him on the pillow. Sam knocked him away. Ben picked him up again.
“You really want to decommission Teddy?” he asked.
“His name isn’t Teddy.”
“Private Bear,” Ben tried.
“Just Bear, and I never want to see him again!” Sam yanked the covers over his head. “Now go away! Everybody. Just. Go. Away!”
I took a step toward him. Ben tsked at me and jerked his head toward the door. I followed him out of the room. A large shadow hulked by the window down the hall: the big, silent kid named Poundcake, whose silence did not fall into the creepy category, more like the profound stillness of a mountain lake variety. Ben leaned against the wall, hugging Bear to his chest, mouth slightly open, sweating despite the freezing temperature. Exhausted after a tussle with a couple of kids, Ben was in trouble, which meant we all were.
“He didn’t know your dad was dead,” he said.
I shook my head. “He did and he didn’t. One of those things.”
“Yeah.” Ben sighed. “Those things.”
A lead ball of silence the size of Newark dropped between us. Ben was absently stroking Bear’s head like an old man strokes a cat while reading the newspaper.
“I should go back to him,” I said.
Ben sidestepped to the door, blocking my way. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t poke your nose into—”
“Not the first person in his life to die. He’ll deal.”
“Wow. That was harsh.” We’re talking about the guy who was my father, too, Zombie boy.
“You know what I meant.”
“Why do people always say that after they say something totally cruel?” Then I said it, because I may have certain issues with self-editing: “I happen to know what it’s like to ‘deal’ with death all by yourself. Just you and nothing else but the big empty of where everything used to be. It would have been nice, really, really nice, to have had someone there with me . . .”
“Hey,” Ben said softly. “Hey, Cassie, I didn’t—”
“No, you didn’t. You really didn’t.” Zombie. Because he didn’t have feelings, dead inside like a zombie? There were people at Ashpit like that. Shufflers, I called them, human-shaped sackfuls of dust. Something irreplaceable had crumbled inside. Too much loss. Too much pain. Shuffling, blank-eyed, slack-jawed mutterers. Was that Ben? Was he a shuffler? Then why did he risk everything to rescue Sam?
“Wherever you were,” Ben said slowly, “we were there, too.”
The words stung. Because they were true and because someone else said practically the same thing to me: You’re not the only one who’s lost everything. That someone else suffered the ultimate loss. All for my sake, the cretin who must be reminded, again, that she’s not the only one. Life is full of little ironies, but it’s also pockmarked with some the size of that big rock in Australia.
Time to change the subject. “Did Ringer leave?”
Ben nodded. Stroke, stroke. The bear was bugging me. I tugged it from his arms.
“I tried to send Poundcake with her,” he said. He laughed softly. “Ringer.” I wondered if he was aware of how he said her name. Quietly, like a prayer.
“You know we have no backup plan if she doesn’t come back.”
“She’ll come back,” he said firmly.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because we have no backup plan.” Now an all-out, full smile, and it’s disorienting, seeing the old smile that lit up classrooms and hallways and yellow school buses overlaid on his new face, reshaped by disease and bullets and hunger. Like turning a corner in a strange city and running into someone you know.
“That’s a circular argument,” I pointed out.
“You know, some guys might feel threatened being surrounded by people smarter than they are. But it just makes me more confident.”
He squeezed my arm and limped across the hall to his room. Then it’s the bear and the big kid down the hall and the closed door and me in front of the closed door. I took a deep breath and stepped inside the room. Sat beside the lump of covers. I didn’t see him but knew he was there. He didn’t see me but knew I was there.
“How did he die?” Muffled voice buried.
“He was shot.”
“Did you see?”
“Yes.”
Our father crawling, hands clawing the dirt.
“Who shot him?”
“Vosch.” I closed my eyes. Bad idea. The dark snapped the scene into sharp focus.
“Where were you when he shot him?”
“Hiding.”
I reached to pull down the covers. Then I couldn’t. Wherever you were. In the woods somewhere off an empty highway, a girl zipped herself up in a sleeping bag and watched her father die again and again. Hiding then, hiding now, watching him die again and again.
“Did he fight?”
“Yes, Sam. He fought very hard. He saved my life.”
“But you hid.”
“Yes.” Crushing Bear against my stomach.
“Like a big fat chicken.”
“Not like that,” I whispered. “It wasn’t like that.”
He slung the blankets aside and bolted upright. I didn’t recognize him. I’d never seen this kid before. Face ugly and twisted by rage and hate.
“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to shoot him in the head!”
I smiled. Or tried to, anyway. “Sorry, Sams. I have dibs.”
We looked at each other and time folded in on itself, the time we had lost in blood and the time we had purchased in blood, the time when I was just the bossy big sister and he was the annoying little brother, the time when I was the thing worth living for and he was the thing worth dying for, and then he crumpled into my arms, the bear smushed between us the way we were trapped between the before-time and the after-time.
I lay down next to him and together we said his prayer: If I should die before I wake . . . And then I told him the story of how Dad died. How he stole a gun from one of the bad guys and single-handedly took out twelve Silencers. How he stood up to Vosch, telling him, You can crush our bodies but never our spirit. How he sacrificed himself so I could escape to rescue Sam from the evil galactic horde. So one day Sam could gather the ragtag remnants of humanity and save the world. So his memories of his father’s last moments aren’t of a broken, bleeding man crawling in the dirt.
After he fell asleep, I slipped out of bed and returned to my post by the window. A strip of parking lot, a decrepit diner (“All You Can Eat Wednesdays!”), and a stretch of gray highway fading into black. The Earth dark and quiet, the way it was before we showed up to fill it with noise and light. Something ends. Something new begins. This was the in-between time. The pause.
On the highway, beside an SUV that had run into the median strip, starlight glinted off the unmistakable shape of a rifle barrel, and for a second my heart stopped. The shadow toting the gun darted into the trees and I saw the shimmer of jet-black hair, glossy and perfectly, annoyingly straight, and I knew the shadow was Ringer.
Ringer and I didn’t start off on the right foot, and the relationship just went downhill from there. She treated everything I said with a kind of icy contempt, like I was lying or stupid or just crazy. Especially when Evan Walker came up. Are you sure? That doesn’t make any sense. How could he be both human and alien? The hotter I got, the colder she got, until we canceled each other out like either side of a chemical equation. Like E=MC2, the kind of chemical equation that makes massive explosions possible.
Our parting words were a perfect example.
“You know, Dumbo I get,” I told her. “The big ears. And Nugget, because Sam is so small. Teacup, too. Zombie I don’t get so much—Ben won’t say—and I’m guessing Poundcake has something to do with his roly-poly-ness. But why Ringer?”
Her answer was an icy stare.
“It makes me feel a little left out. You know, the only gang member without a street name.”
“Nom de guerre,” she said.
I looked at her for a minute. “Let me guess, National Merit Scholar, chess club, math team, top of your class? And you play an instrument, maybe a violin or cello, something with strings. Your dad worked in Silicon Valley and your mom was a college professor, I’m thinking physics or chemistry.”
She didn’t say anything for a couple thousand years. Then she said, “Anything else?”
I knew I should stop. But I was in now, and when I go in, I go all the way in. That’s the Sullivan way. “You’re the oldest—no, an only child. Your dad is a Buddhist, but your mom is an atheist. You were walking at ten months. Your grandmother raised you because your parents worked all the time. She taught you tai chi. You never played with dolls. You speak three languages. One of them is French. You were on the Olympic development team. Gymnastics. You brought home a B once and your parents took away your chemistry set and locked you in your room for a week, during which time you read the complete works of William Shakespeare.” She was shaking her head. “Okay, not the comedies. You just couldn’t get the humor.”
“Perfect,” she said. “That’s amazing.” Her voice was as flat and thin as a piece of aluminum foil fresh from the roller. “Can I try you?” r />
I stiffened up a little, bracing myself. “You can try.”
“You’ve always been self-conscious about your looks, especially your hair. The freckles are a close second. You’re socially awkward, so you read a lot and you’ve kept a journal since middle school. You had only one close friend and your relationship was codependent, which means every time you fought with her, you slid into a deep depression. You’re a daddy’s girl, never that close to your mother, who always made you feel like no matter what you did, it wasn’t good enough. It didn’t help that she was prettier than you. When she died, you felt guilty for secretly hating her and for being secretly relieved that she was gone. You’re stubborn and impulsive and a little hyper, so your parents enrolled you in something to help with your coordination and concentration, like ballet or karate, probably karate. You want me to go on?”
Well, what was I going to do? I saw only two options: laugh or punch her in the face. Okay, three: laugh, punch her in the face, or give back one of her own stoic stares. I opted for number three.
Bad idea.
“Okay,” Ringer said. “You’re not a tomboy and you’re not a girly girl. You’re in that gray area in between. Being an in-between meant you always secretly envied the ones who weren’t, but you saved most of your resentment for the pretty girls. You’ve had crushes but never a boyfriend. You pretend you hate boys you like and like boys you hate. Whenever you’re around someone who’s prettier or smarter or better than you in any way, you get angry and sarcastic, because they remind you of how ordinary you feel inside. Go on?”
And tiny-voiced me: “Sure. Whatever.”
“Until Evan Walker came along, you had never even held a boy’s hand, except on elementary school field trips. Evan was kind and undemanding and, as an added bonus, almost too beautiful to look at. He made himself an empty canvas you could paint with your longing for a perfect relationship with the perfect guy who would ease your fear by never hurting you. He gave you all those things you imagined the pretty girls had that you never did, so being with him—or the idea of him—was mostly about revenge.”