I finish the bar and crumple the wrapper in my fist. It just doesn’t feel right to throw it down on the floor.
I lean back against the bulkhead and close my eyes. This would be an excellent time to pray, if I could think of a prayer, but my mind, so stuffed that my thoughts have to line up like crowds at Disney, can’t think of anything to say to God.
Not sure I want to talk to him anyway, the enigmatic bastard. Like he’s crossed his arms and turned his back, and I wonder if this is how Noah felt on the boat. Okay, really appreciative about me, Lord, but what about them? And God says, Oh, don’t ask so many questions, Noah. Look! I made you a rainbow!
The only thing that bobs up is Sammy’s bedtime prayer, so, a little desperate, I go with it.
Now I lay me down to sleep . . .
Well, not really.
When in the morning light I wake . . .
Well, probably won’t happen, either.
Teach me the path of love to take.
Yes! Okay, that’s good! Please, God. This one thing and don’t fall down on the job.
Teach me.
72
ZOMBIE
KEEPING WATCH at the caves’ entrance, admiring the night sky—except that one small green spot hovering above the horizon—when one of the stars breaks off from the field and descends toward us. Fast. Very fast. Nugget touches my sleeve and says, “Look, Zombie! A falling star!”
I push off the old, rickety handrail I’ve been leaning against. “That’s no star, kid.”
“Is it a bomb?” His eyes are wide with fear.
For one gut-rolling second, I think it could be. They’ve stepped up the schedule for some reason, and the obliteration of the cities has begun.
“Come on, back downstairs, double time.”
I don’t have to tell him twice. He’s already yards ahead of me when I hit the first chamber. I scoop Megan from the floor. She drops the teddy bear. Nugget picks it up. I carry her deeper into the caves, balancing her on the hip of my good leg, but each step sends a jolt of pain that makes the top of my head feel as if it’s going to come off. There’s a ledge down here, a three-foot-high, five-foot-deep gash in the rock cut out by an ancient river. I lift Megan into it and she crawls toward the back until the shadows engulf her. Shit. Nearly forgot. I motion for her to come back.
I pull one of the dead recruit’s trackers from my pocket. Ringer’s idea and a damn good one.
“Put this in your mouth,” I tell Megan.
She is thunderstruck. The look in her eyes, like I asked her to chop off her head. I’ve broached a touchy subject.
“Look, Nugget’ll do it.” I press the tracker into his empty hand. “Right here, Private,” I say, pulling back my lip and pointing to a spot between my cheek and gums. Then I turn back to Megan. “See?” But Megan has faded back into the shadows. Damn it. I give Nugget another tracker. “Make sure she does it, okay? She listens to you.”
“Oh, no, Zombie,” Nugget says very seriously. “Megan doesn’t listen to anybody.”
He shoves Bear into the space and calls softly to her, “Megan! Take Bear. He’ll keep you safe, like gravity.” After that piece of logic only a child could understand, he hitches up his pants, balls his fists, thrusts out his little chin, and says, “They’re coming, aren’t they?”
We both hear it then, like the answer to his question: the sound of a chopper’s engines, doubling in volume with each of our rapid breaths. Toward the entrance the brilliant white of its searchlight slices through the dark.
“Go, Nugget. Get up there with Megan.”
“But I’m fighting with you, Zombie.”
He sure is. And at the worst possible time. Over his shoulder, I can see lamplight flickering in the weapons chamber. Double damn it.
“Here’s what you can do—kill that light down there. Then meet me back here. If we’re lucky, they won’t even land.”
“Lucky?” I get the feeling he wants them to land.
“Don’t forget, Nugget, we’re all on the same side.”
He frowns. “How can we be on the same side if they want to kill us, Zombie?”
“Because they don’t know we’re on the same side. Go. Shut off that damn light—go!”
He scampers up the path. The chopper’s light fades, but not so much its engines. Must be executing a sweep. We should be far enough underground to foil the IR, but there’s no guarantees.
The lamp goes out and the caves plunge into darkness. I can’t see an inch in front of my nose. After a few seconds, someone small bumps into me. I’m fairly confident it’s him. Only fairly, though, because I whisper, “Nugget?”
“It’s okay, Zombie,” he informs me, all business. “I grabbed a gun.”
73
THERE’S SOMETHING I’m forgetting. What is it?
“Here, Zombie, you forgot these.” He pushes a gas mask into my chest. God bless Nugget. And God bless Silencers like Grace and Father Death, who knew how to stockpile for the end of the world.
Nugget’s practiced; he’s already got his strapped on. “You’ve got Megan’s?” Dumb. Of course he’d grab one for her. “Okay, pal, up you go.”
“Zombie, listen . . .”
“That’s a direct order, Private.”
“No, Zombie! Listen.”
I listen. Nothing except my own breath hissing and huffing in the mask.
“They left,” Nugget says.
“Shhh.”
Tink-tink-tink. The sound of metal striking stone.
Damn you, Ringer, being right all the time is incredibly annoying.
They’ve tossed in the gas.
74
Assuming you don’t draw them off, how will they come? I asked Ringer while we were barricading the back entrance.
You never paid attention in class.
Do we always have to make it about me? Trying to tease a smile from her has segued from a hobby to a borderline obsession.
Gas first.
You think? I’d go with a few sticks of C-4 to seal off the exits, then finish us off with a couple of bunker-busters.
That’s probably second.
Behind us, toward the main entrance, the tear gas detonates with four loud pops. I grab Nugget around the waist and heave him into the cleft with Megan. “Get that mask on her now!” I shout, then I’m hobbling up the path, thinking, Thank God he remembered! That kid deserves a promotion.
One thing’s for certain, Ringer said. They won’t be settling in for a siege. If they attempt a dynamic CQC, they’ll probably hit the main entrance, which will give you a slight advantage: It’s narrow like a cow chute—they’ll funnel right to you.
I’m running blind. Well, calling it running would be generous. I’ve got massive amounts of painkiller in me at least, so the leg’s not giving me much trouble. Adrenaline helps, too. Check the bolt catch on the rifle. Check the straps on the mask. In absolute dark. In absolute uncertainty.
If they bust through the back entrance in a kind of pincer maneuver, we’re screwed. If they hit with overwhelming force up front, we’re screwed. If I freeze up or screw up at the critical moment, we’re screwed.
Freeze up like in Dayton. Screw up like in Urbana. I keep circling back to the same spot, and that spot is where I lost my baby sister, where I should have fought but ran instead. The chain that broke from her neck, lost now, still binds me. Oompa. Dumbo. Poundcake. Even Teacup, her, too: She’d still be alive if I’d done my job.
Now the chain dropping like a noose around Nugget and Megan, and now the noose tightens, the circle comes round.
Not this time, Parish, you zombie son of a bitch. This time you break the chain, you cut the noose. You save those kids no matter what.
I will kill them as they funnel down the chute. I’ll kill them all. Doesn’t matter that they’re no different from me. D
oesn’t matter they’re trapped in the same goddamned game, bound like me to play a part they did not choose. I will kill them one by one.
Absolute dark. Absolute certainty.
The explosion knocks me off my feet. I fly backward; my head crashes against stone; the universe spins like a top. The air boils with the sound of rock smashing against rock as the entrance collapses.
The mask got knocked sideways when I hit, and I take a huge breath of noxious gas. A knife plunges into my lungs, fire fills my mouth. I roll to my side, gagging and coughing.
I lost the rifle in my fall. I sweep the area around me, can’t find it, never mind, doesn’t matter, know what matters, hauling myself to my feet, yanking the mask back into place and tasting pulverized rock on my tongue, limping back the way I came, one hand searching the darkness, the other gripping my sidearm, knowing what’s coming next because I called it and Ringer knew I called it, that’s probably second, and I’m screaming through the mask, “Don’t move, Nugget! Don’t move!” but I don’t think anybody can hear my voice but me.
The second explosion hits at the back entrance, and I stay on my feet though the floor ripples and stalactites break loose and smash down, a big one missing my head by a couple of inches. I can hear Nugget faintly calling my name. I lock in on the sound and follow it back to the crevice. I pull him out.
“They’ve sealed us in,” I gasp. My throat burns. I’ve swallowed fire. “Where’s Megan?”
“She’s okay.” I can feel him shaking. “She’s got Bear.”
I call to her. A tiny voice muffled by a gas mask comes back. Nugget’s clutching my jacket with both hands like the dark might snatch me away if he lets go.
“We shouldn’t have stayed here,” Nugget cries.
Out of the mouths of babes, but there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. We rolled the dice that Bob’s chopper would draw them off, and we lost. The bomber’s gotta be on its way with a payload that will turn this 250,000-year-old cave into a swimming pool two miles long and a hundred feet deep.
We’ve got minutes.
I take Nugget by the shoulders. Squeeze hard. “Two things, Private,” I tell him. “We need light and we need explosives.”
“But Ringer took all the bombs with her!”
“So we’ll make another one, real quick.”
We shuffle toward the weapons chamber, Nugget leading the way, my hands still on his shoulders. I steady him, he steadies me, the chain that binds us, the chain that sets us free.
75
SOMETHING I’M FORGETTING. What is it?
Nugget bends low over his task. The chamber’s choked with smoke and dust; it’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle in heavy fog, not unlike this whole freaking invasion. The familiar blasted into a million pieces, an impossible jumble where no piece seems to fit with another. The enemy is within us. The enemy is not. They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us. And the shattered truth forever receding from your grasp, the only certainty is uncertainty, and Vosch reminding me of the one truth worth hanging on to: You’re going to die. You’re going to die, and there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do to stop it. That was true before they came and it’s still true: The only certainty is uncertainty, except your own death, that’s damn certain.
His fingers are shaking. His breath is loud and fast inside the mask. One wrong move and he blows us both up. My life is now in the hands of a kindergartner.
Screwing on the blasting cap. Attaching the fuse. Sullivan might be upset he’s forgotten his ABCs, but at least the little SOB knows how to make a bomb.
“Got it?” I ask.
“Got it!” He holds up the device triumphantly. I take it from him. Oh Jesus, I hope so.
Something I’m forgetting. Something important. What could it be?
76
NOW ON TO the next impossible dilemma: bust through the back door or the front?
One bomb. One chance. I leave Nugget with Megan and check the rear entrance first. A wall of rock maybe six feet thick, if I’m remembering my landmarks right. Then returning the length of the cave to the front entrance. Moving too damn slow. Taking too damn long. Finally there, I find exactly what I expected to find: another rock wall, who knows how thick, and no way of telling if this is the better way out.
Oh, screw it.
I jam the PVC pipe into the deepest, highest crack I can reach. The fuse seems too short; I might not have time to reach a safe distance.
The certainty of uncertainty.
I light the fuse and book back up the path, dragging my bad leg behind me like a reluctant kid on the first day of school. The bang of the explosion seems muted, a pitiful echo of the two that trapped us down here.
Ten minutes later, I’ve got Nugget by one hand and Megan by the other. It wasn’t easy for Nugget to talk her out. She felt safe in that cozy little niche and the chain of command wasn’t worth a hill of beans to her. The person in charge of Megan is Megan.
The hole at the top of the fall isn’t very big and doesn’t look very stable, but fresh air whistles through it and I can see a pinprick of light. Nugget says, “Maybe we should just stay here, Zombie.” He’s probably thinking the same thing: Seal the entry points, station sharpshooters at both ends, and then it’s just a waiting game. Nobody makes bunker-busting bombs anymore. Why waste precious munitions needed for the real war on a couple little kids and a gimpy recruit? They’ll come out. They have to come out. The risk of staying is unacceptable.
“Don’t have a choice, Nugget.” Also no choice in who goes first. I grab his sleeve and pull him away from Megan. I don’t want her to hear this. “You wait for my signal, understand?” He nods. “What do you do if I don’t come back?”
He shakes his head. The light’s too weak and the lenses on the mask are too clouded for me to see his eyes, but his voice quivers in pre-cry mode. “But you are coming back.”
“If I’ve got a heartbeat, you bet your ass I’m coming back. But in case I don’t.”
Up comes the chin. Out goes the chest. “I’ll shoot ’em all in the head!”
I heave myself into the hole. My back smacks against the top, the sides squeeze against my shoulders: It’s gonna be a tight fit. Halfway through, I decide to take off the mask. I can’t take the feeling of being slowly smothered anymore. Fresh, cold air bathes my face. Christ, it feels good.
The opening to the outside isn’t big enough for one of cat lady’s dinners to wiggle through. I punch out the loose rocks with my bare hands. A smidgen of night sky, a swath of grass, and the one-lane access road slicing them down the middle. No sound but the wind. Let’s go.
I crawl into the open. I reach for the rifle slung over my shoulder, only there is no rifle slung over my shoulder: I forgot to pick it up on my way back to the entrance. So that’s what I was forgetting. That was it, my rifle. Right?
Squatting beside the hole, holding my sidearm between my legs, listening, looking, Don’t rush this; be sure. Escaping the trap is fine and wonderful, but where to now? Dawn isn’t far off and then the mothership begins her appointed rounds. I can see her balanced on the horizon, green like a traffic light signaling Go.
I stand. A challenging maneuver given my leg’s stiffened up and putting weight on it hurts like hell.
Here I am, boys. Take your best shot.
Nothing to see but the road and grass and the sky. Nothing to hear but the wind.
I whistle into the hole for Nugget. Two short toots, one long. After a hundred years his round little head pokes out, then his shoulders. I pull him the rest of the way. He rips off the gas mask and inhales the fresh air, then yanks the gun from the back of his pants. He swivels left to right, knees slightly bent, gun thrust forward, like countless boys before him with plastic guns and water pistols.
/> I whistle again for Megan. No answer, so I call down, “Megan, let’s go, girl!” Beside me, Nugget sighs deeply.
“She’s so annoying.”
And he sounds so much like his sister that I actually laugh. He gives me a curious look, head tilted slightly to one side.
“Hey, Zombie? There’s a red dot on the side of your head.”
77
DUMBO DIDN’T THINK TWICE in Urbana. I don’t now.
I dive into Nugget’s chest, hurling him to the ground. The round slams into the rockfall behind us. A second later I hear the report of the sharpshooter’s rifle. The shot came from the right, in the direction of the copse of trees by the main road.
Nugget starts to get up. I grab his ankle and yank him back down.
“Low crawl,” I whisper in his ear. “Like they taught us in camp, remember?”
He starts to rotate a one-eighty—back toward the hole and the false security of the cave with its provisions and weapons. I don’t blame him; it’s my first instinct, too. Going back, though, only puts off the inevitable. If smoking us out and picking us off fails, they’ll just call in the bunker-busters.
“Follow me, Nugget.” I scuttle toward the welcome center. The roof is a perfect vantage point for a sharpshooter, but our best option is to head away from the shooter we know about.
“Megan . . . ,” he gasps. “What about Megan?”
What about Megan?
“She won’t come out,” I whisper. Please don’t come out, kid. “She’ll wait.”
“Wait for what?”