She shrugs. “Then we’re screwed.”
So bright and cheerful. Such a ray of sunshine. I wake Sam and Megan and make them eat while Ben and Ringer prep for the assault outside. Something’s up between those two. Something they’re keeping from me. Kind of makes me wish I had Evan’s old mind-mining abilities. I’d plunge into Ben Parish’s head and hack my way to the truth. I thought I busted Ringer with that part of her Silencers-are-ordinary-people-like-us-only-more-so theory. How did Evan’s spirit enter and mix with mine if he’s human? Her answer required advanced degrees in robotics, bionics, and electromagnetic physics to understand. The CPU attached to his brain interpreting my physiological biofeedback, creating an informational loop in which my data commingled with his, blah, blah, blah. Really, science is wonderful, but why does it tend to suck all the joyous mystery from the world? Love may be nothing more than a complex interaction of hormones, conditioned behavior, and positive reinforcement, but try writing a poem or song about that.
Preparations. Details.
I brief Sam and Megs on the plan. Sam’s all in. Although infiltrating the base would be his top choice, at least he’ll have some quality time with his beloved Zombie. Megan doesn’t say a word and I’m worried she might balk at the critical moment. Can’t blame her, though. The last time she trusted grown-ups, they stuffed a bomb down her throat.
I hand Bear to Sam for safekeeping, Sam’s as much as the bear’s. He hands it over to Megan. Oh Jesus. Too big for Bear now; they grow up so fast.
Blankets, I tell them. Everybody except Ringer gets a blanket.
Then there’s nothing left to do but climb the stairs one last time.
I take Sammy’s hand, Sammy takes Megan’s, Megan takes Bear’s, and together we rise toward the surface. The stairs jiggle and moan. They may collapse.
We won’t.
52
ZOMBIE
I WATCH AS Ringer carries the last two bodies into the bay of the old garage, one under each arm. I understand how that’s possible; still, it’s a little freaky to watch. I wait by the empty grave for her to come out. It doesn’t happen. Oh, boy. Now what?
Inside the garage the smell of gasoline and grease brings home the past. Before there was Zombie, there was this kid named Ben Parish who worked on cars with his old man on Saturday afternoons, the last being a cherry-red ’69 Corvette, his seventeenth birthday present from his dad, a guy who really couldn’t afford it and pretended it was for his only son, but they both knew the truth. Ben’s birthday was an excuse to buy the car, and the car was an excuse to spend time with his son as the clock wound down to graduation and then college and then grandkids and then the retirement home and then the grave. The grave leapt unexpectedly to the front of the line, not before the car, though; at least for a few Saturday afternoons, they had that car.
She’d laid her victims side by side in the center of the bay, crossing each one’s arms across their chest. Ringer herself is nowhere in sight. For a second, I panic. Every time I expect a zig, there’s a zag. I shift my weight to my good leg and drop the rifle from my shoulder into my hands.
From the deep shadows in the back, a low-pitched whine punctuated by a snuffling. I limp past rows of toolboxes and a cluster of oil drums, behind which I find her, sitting against the cinder-block wall, hugging her knees to her chest.
I can’t stay upright; the pain’s too much. I sit beside her. She wipes her cheeks. It’s the first time I’ve seen Ringer cry. I’ve never seen her smile and probably never will, but now I’ve seen her cry. That’s messed up.
“You didn’t have a choice,” I tell her. Digging up those bodies must have gotten to her. “And, anyway, they don’t know the difference, right?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, Zombie.”
“It isn’t too late, Ringer. We can call it off. Sullivan can’t do this without you.”
“She’d have nothing to do if you hadn’t stepped in front of Walker like that.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have if you’d trusted me with the truth.”
“The truth,” she echoes.
“The important word here is trusted.”
“I trust you, Zombie.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
She shakes her head. That dumb Zombie, wrong again. “I know you won’t tell.”
She stretches out her legs, and a plastic container flops from her chest onto her thighs. The bright green liquid inside it sloshes. It’s a jug of antifreeze.
“A capful should be enough,” she says, so softly I don’t think the words are directed at me. “The 12th System—it’ll protect me. Protect me . . .”
I grab the jug from her lap. “Goddamn it, Ringer, you didn’t already drink this, did you?”
“Give that back, Zombie.”
I let out my breath. I’ll take that as a no. “You told me what happened but you didn’t tell me how.”
“Well. You know.” She twirls a hand in the air. “The usual way.”
Okay. I deserved that.
“His name was Razor.” She frowns. “No. His name was Alex.”
“The recruit who shot Teacup.”
“For me. So I could escape.”
“The one who helped Vosch set you up.”
“Yes.”
“And then Vosch kind of set the two of you up.”
She gives me the patented impassive Ringer stare. “What does that mean?”
“Vosch left him with you that night. He must have known Razor had . . . that leaving the two of you alone might lead to . . .”
“That’s crazy, Zombie. If Vosch thought that for a second, he never would have left Alex to guard me.”
“How come?”
“Because love is the most dangerous weapon in the world. It’s more unstable than uranium.”
I swallow. My throat is dry. “Love.”
“Yes, love. Can I have that back now?”
“No.”
“I could take it from you.” She’s staring at me across a space no thicker than a fist with eyes only slightly lighter than the dark around them.
“I know you could.”
I tense. I have a feeling she could knock me out with a flick of her little finger.
“You want to know if I loved him. You want to ask me that,” she says.
“It’s none of my business.”
“I don’t love anyone, Zombie.”
“Well, that’s okay. You’re still young.”
“Stop that. Stop trying to make me smile. It’s cruel.”
There’s a knife twisting in my gut. The pain makes the bullet wound feel like a mosquito bite. For whatever reason, whenever I’m around this girl, pain follows, and not just the physical variety. Being intimately acquainted with both kinds, I’d rather be shot a dozen times than have my heart torn in half.
“You’re a prick,” she informs me. She pulls the jug from my hands. “I always thought so.” She unscrews the cap and fills it halfway to the lip. The liquid shimmers a neon green. Their color.
“This is what they’ve done, Zombie. This is the world they’ve made, where giving life is crueler than taking it. I am being kind. I am being wise.”
She raises the cup toward her lips. Her hand shakes; the bright green fluid sloshes over the edge and runs over her fingers. And in her eyes the same darkness that floods my core.
She doesn’t pull away when I wrap my fingers around her wrist. She doesn’t unleash her enhancement upon me and tear my head off my shoulders. She offers hardly any resistance when I force her hand down.
“I’m lost, Zombie.”
“I’ll find you.”
“I can’t move.”
“I’ll carry you.”
She topples sideways into me. I wrap my arms around her. I cup her face; I run my fingers through her hair.
The
darkness slips; it cannot hold.
53
WE’RE HEADING BACK to the hole when Cassie and the kids emerge from the basement of the demolished safe house, loaded down with blankets.
“Zombie,” Nugget calls out. He races over, the stack of blankets in his arms bopping up and down as he runs. He pulls up when he gets a close look at Ringer’s face. Right away he knows something’s wrong; only dogs read faces better than little kids.
“What is it, Private?” I ask.
“Cassie won’t let me have a gun.”
“I’m working on that.”
His face screws up. He’s dubious.
I poke him in the arm with a loose fist and add, “Lemme bury Ringer first. Then we’ll talk about weapons.”
Cassie comes up, half leading, half dragging Megan by the wrist. I hope she hangs on tight. I have a feeling if she lets go, that girl’s taking off. Ringer jerks her head toward the garage, in there, and says, “Ten minutes till the chopper.”
“How do you know?” Sullivan asks.
“I can hear it.”
Cassie shoots me a look accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Get that? She says she can hear it. While all anyone else can hear is the wind driving over the barren fields.
“What’s the hose for?” she asks me.
“So I don’t black out or suffocate,” Ringer answers.
“I thought you were—what did you call it?—enhanced.”
“I am. But I still need oxygen.”
“Like a shark,” Cassie says.
Ringer nods. “Like that.”
Sullivan leads the kids into the garage. Ringer drops into the hole and lies flat on her back in the dirt. I pick up the rifle where she dropped it and lower it toward her. She shakes her head. “Leave it up there.”
“You sure?”
She nods. Her face is bathed in starlight. I catch my breath.
“What?” she asks.
I look away. “Nothing.”
“Zombie.”
I clear my throat. “It’s not important. I just thought—for a minute there—flashed across my mind . . .”
“Zombie.”
“Okay. You’re beautiful. That’s all. I mean—you wanted to know . . .”
“You get sentimental at the weirdest times. Hose.”
I drop one end down. She closes her mouth over the opening and gives me the thumbs-up.
I can hear the chopper now, faint but growing louder. I shovel the dirt over her, sweeping it into the hole with my right hand while I hang on to the hose with my left. She doesn’t need to say the words; I can read them in her eyes. Hurry, Zombie.
The sickening sound of the dirt hitting her body. I decide not to look. I watch the sky as I bury her, gripping the end of the hose so hard, my knuckles turn white. The nearly endless number of ways this can go wrong races through my mind. What if there’s a full squad on board that chopper? What if it isn’t just one Black Hawk but two? Or three, or four? What if, what if, what if, what if, whatever.
I’m not going to make it back to the garage in time. Ringer is completely covered now, but I’m out in the open with a shot-up leg and a hundred yards to cross before the chopper—which I can see silhouetted against the backdrop of stars, a black naught against the glittering white—is in range. Never tried to run with a bullet in my leg. Never had to. Guess there’s a first time for everything.
I don’t make it very far. Maybe forty-five, fifty yards. I pitch forward, landing face-first in the dirt. Why the hell didn’t Cassie bury Ringer? Would make more sense for me to hunker down with the kids, and besides, Sullivan would probably leap at the chance.
I heave myself upright. I’m vertical maybe five seconds, and then I’m down again. It’s too late. I have to be within range of their infrared by now.
A pair of boots pounds toward me. A pair of hands haul me up. Cassie throws my arm around her neck and pulls me forward as I swing my bad leg around, hop with my good one, swing the bad one, but she bears most of the load. Who needs a 12th System when you have a heart like Cassie Sullivan’s?
We fall into the bay of the garage and Cassie hurls a blanket at me. The kids are already covered, and I shout “Not yet!” Their body heat will gather beneath the material, defeating the purpose.
“Wait for my go,” I tell them. Then, to Cassie: “You’ve got this.”
Incredibly, she smiles at me and nods. “I know.”
54
CASSIE
“NOW!” BEN SHOUTS, probably too late: The chopper thunders over us. We dive under the blankets, and I begin the countdown.
How will I know when it’s time? I asked Ringer.
After two minutes.
Why two?
If we can’t do it in two minutes, it can’t be done.
What did that mean? I didn’t ask, but now I suspect that two is just a random number she pulled out of her ass.
I count it out anyway.
. . . 58 one thousand, 59 one thousand, 60 one thousand . . .
The old blanket stinks of mildew and rat piss. I can’t see a damn thing. What I hear—all I hear—is the helicopter, which sounds like it’s two feet away. Has it landed? Has the recovery team been deployed to check out the mysterious mound of dirt that looks suspiciously like a grave? The questions roll across the landscape of my mind like a slow-crawling fog; it’s hard to think when you’re counting—maybe that’s why it’s a recommended sleeping aid.
. . . 92 one thousand, 93 one thousand, 94 one thousand . . .
I’m having trouble breathing. This may have something to do with the fact that I’m slowly suffocating.
Somewhere around 75 one thousand, the chopper’s engines had revved down. Not stopped, just the pitch and volume dipped. Landed? At 95 one thousand, the engines pick up again. Do I stay here until Ringer’s arbitrary two minutes are up or do I listen to that wise little voice screeching in my ear, Go, go, go, go now!
At 97 one thousand, I go.
And damn does the world seem blindingly bright after bursting from my woolen cocoon.
Clear the bay doors, sharp right, then fields, trees, stars, road, and chopper, six feet off the ground.
And rising.
Crap.
Beside the Ringer-hole, a whirling shadow by the broken earth and another shadow that moves so slow in comparison, it seems as if it isn’t moving at all. Ringer’s sprung her trap on the search party. Sayonara, search party!
I’m running full out toward the Black Hawk, and the supplies in my uniform make me feel like I’m weighed down with bricks, the rifle bouncing against my back, and, shit, it’s too far away and rising too fast, pull up, Cassie, pull up, you’re not going to make it, time for Plan B only we don’t have a Plan B, and two minutes, what was that, Ringer? If you’re the tactical genius in this operation, then we’re so totally screwed, and the space shrinks between me and the chopper while its nose dips slightly, and how good’s your vertical, Sullivan?
I leap. Time stops. The chopper hangs suspended like a mobile above my fully extended body—even my toes are pointed—and there is no sound anymore or draft from the blades lifting the Black Hawk up or pushing my body down.
There was this little girl—she’s gone now—with skinny little arms and bony little legs and a head topped with bouncy red curls and a (very straight) nose with a special talent only she and her daddy knew about.
She could fly.
My outstretched fingers banged on the edge of the open cargo doorway. I caught hold of something cold and metallic, and I locked down on it with both hands as the chopper soared straight up and the ground sped away from my kicking feet. Fifty feet up, a hundred, and I sway back and forth, trying to swing my foot onto the platform. Two hundred feet, two-fifty, and my right hand slips, I’m hanging on with just the left now, and the noise is deafening, so I can’
t hear myself scream. Looking down, I see the garage and the house across the street from the garage and down the road the black smudge of where Grace’s house once stood. Starlight-bathed fields and woods shining silver-gray and the road stretching from horizon to horizon.
I’m going to fall.
At least it will be quick. Splat, like a bug against a windshield.
My left hand slips; thumb, pinky, and ring fingers thrum empty air; I’m attached to the chopper by two fingers now.
Then those fingers slide off, too.
55
I’VE LEARNED it is possible to hear yourself scream over the jet engines of a Black Hawk helicopter after all.
Also, it isn’t true that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. The only things that flash before mine are Bear’s eyes, unblinking plastic, bottomless, soullessly soulful.
There’s several hundred feet to fall. I fall less than one, jerking to a stop so hard, my shoulder’s nearly ripped from its socket. I caught nothing to abort the plunge; someone caught me, and now that someone is hauling me on board.
I’m slung facedown onto the floor of the chopper’s hold. First it’s like, I’m alive! Then it’s all, I’m going to die! Because whoever rescued me is yanking me upright, and I have basically three choices, four if you include the false choice of the gun, because firing a gun within the metallic cocoon of a helicopter is a very bad idea.
I’ve got my fists, the pepper spray contained in one of the twenty-nine million pockets of my new uniform, or the hardest, most terrifying weapon in all of Cassie Sullivan’s formidable arsenal: her head.
I whip around and smash my forehead into the center of the face, crunch!, breaking a nose, and then there is blood. As in a lot of blood, practically a geyser, but the blow has no other effect. She doesn’t move an inch. She doesn’t even blink. She’s been—what word did she use to describe the incredibly creepy and scary thing Vosch did to her?—enhanced.
“Easy there, Sullivan,” Ringer says, turning her head to spit out a golf-ball-sized wad of blood.