Reznik didn’t move. “Private Zombie, who is your squad leader?”
“Sir, the private’s squad leader is Private Flintstone, sir!”
“Private Flintstone, front and center!” Reznik barked. Flint took one step forward and snapped off a salute. His unibrow jiggled with tension. “Private Flintstone, you’re fired. Private Zombie is now squad leader. Private Zombie is ignorant and ugly, but he is not soft.” I could feel Reznik’s eyes boring into my face. “Private Zombie, what happened to your baby sister?”
I blinked. Twice. Trying not to show anything. My voice cracked a little when I answered, though. “Sir, the private’s sister is dead, sir!”
“Because you ran like a chickenshit!”
“Sir, the private ran like a chickenshit, sir!”
“But you’re not running now, are you, Private Zombie? Are you?”
“Sir, no, sir!”
He stepped back. Something flashed across his face. An expression I’d never seen before. It couldn’t be, of course, but it looked a lot like respect.
“Private Nugget, front and center!”
The newbie didn’t move until Poundcake gave him a poke in the back. He was crying. He didn’t want to, he was trying to choke it back, but dear Jesus, what little kid wouldn’t be crying by that point? Your old life barfs you out and this is where you land?
“Private Nugget, Private Zombie is your squad leader, and you will bunk with him. You will learn from him. He will teach you how to walk. He will teach you how to talk. He will teach you how to think. He will be the big brother you never had. Do you read me, Private Nugget?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” The tiny voice shrill and squeaky, but he got the rules down, and quickly.
And that’s how it began.
44
HERE’S A TYPICAL day in the atypical new reality of Camp Haven.
5:00 A.M.: Reveille and wash up. Dress and prep bunks for inspection.
5:10 A.M.: Fall in. Reznik inspects our billets. Finds a wrinkle in someone’s sheet. Screams for twenty minutes. Then picks another recruit at random and screams for another twenty for no real reason. Then three laps around the yard freezing our asses off, me urging Oompa and Nugget to keep up or I get to run another lap as the last man to finish. The frozen ground beneath our boots. Our breaths frosting in the air. The twin columns of black smoke from the power plant rising beyond the airfield and the rumble of buses pulling out of the main gate.
6:30 A.M.: Chow in the crowded mess hall that smells faintly like soured milk, reminding me of the plague and the fact that once upon a time I thought about just three things—cars, football, and girls, in that order. I help Nugget with his tray, urging him to eat because, if he doesn’t eat, boot camp will kill him. Those are my exact words: Boot camp will kill you. Tank and Flintstone laugh at me mothering Nugget. Already calling me Nugget’s Nanna. Screw them. After chow we check out the leaderboard. Every morning the scores from the previous day are posted on a big board outside the mess hall. Points for marksmanship. Points for best times on the obstacle course, the air raid drills, the two-mile runs. The top four squads will graduate at the end of November, and the competition is fierce. Our squad’s been stuck in tenth place for weeks. Tenth isn’t bad, but it’s not good enough.
7:30 A.M.: Training. Weapons. Hand-to-hand. Basic wilderness survival. Basic urban survival. Recon. Communications. My favorite is survival training. That memorable session where we had to drink our own urine.
12:00 P.M.: Noon chow. Some mystery meat between hard crusts of bread. Dumbo, whose jokes are as tasteless as his ears are big, cracks that we’re not incinerating the infested bodies but grinding them up to feed the troops. I have to pull Teacup off him before she smacks his head with a tray. Nugget stares at his burger like it might jump off his plate and bite his face. Thanks, Dumbo. The kid’s skinny enough as it is.
1:00 P.M.: More training. Mostly on the firing range. Nugget is issued a stick for a rifle and fires pretend rounds while we fire real ones into life-size plywood cutouts. The crack of the M16s. The screech of plywood being shredded. Poundcake earns a perfect score; I’m the worst shot in the squad. I pretend the cutout is Reznik, hoping that will improve my aim. It doesn’t.
5:00 P.M.: Evening chow. Canned meat, canned peas, canned fruit. Nugget pushes his food around and then bursts into tears. The squad glares at me. Nugget is my responsibility. If Reznik comes down on us for conduct unbefitting, there’s hell to pay, and I’m picking up the tab. Extra push-ups, reduced rations—he could even deduct some points. Nothing matters but getting through basic with enough points to graduate, get out into the field, rid ourselves of Reznik. Across the table, Flintstone is glowering at me from beneath the unibrow. He’s pissed at Nugget, but more pissed at me for taking his job. Not that I asked for squad leader. He came at me after that day and growled, “I don’t care what you are now, I’m gonna make sergeant when we graduate.” And I’m like, “More power to you, Flint.” The idea of my leading a unit into combat is ludicrous. Meanwhile, nothing I say calms Nugget down. He keeps going on about his sister. About how she promised to come for him. I wonder why the commander would stick a little kid who can’t even lift a rifle into our squad. If Wonderland winnowed out the best fighters, what sort of profile did this little guy produce?
6:00 P.M.: Drill instructor Q&A in the barracks, my favorite part of the day, where I get to spend some quality time with my favorite person in the whole wide world. After informing us what worthless piles of desiccated rat feces we are, Reznik opens the floor for questions and concerns.
Most of our questions have to do with the competition. Rules, procedures in case of a tie, rumors about this or that squad cheating. Making the grade is all we can think about. Graduation means active duty, real fighting—a chance to show the ones who died that we had not survived in vain.
Other topics: the status of the rescue and winnowing operation (code name Li’l Bo Peep; I’m not kidding). What news from the outside? When will we hunker full-time in the underground bunker, because obviously the enemy can see what we’re doing down here and it’s only a matter of time before they vaporize us. For that we get the standard-issue reply: Commander Vosch knows what he’s doing. Our job isn’t to worry about strategy and logistics. Our job is to kill the enemy.
8:30 P.M.: Personal time. Free of Reznik at last. We wash our jumpsuits, shine our boots, scrub the barracks floor and the latrine, clean our rifles, pass around dirty magazines, and swap other contraband like candy and chewing gum. We play cards and bust each other’s nuts and complain about Reznik. We share the day’s rumors and tell bad jokes and push back against the silence inside our own heads, the place where the never-ending voiceless scream rises like the superheated air above a lava flow. Inevitably an argument erupts and stops just short of a fistfight. It’s tearing away at us. We know too much. We don’t know enough. Why is our regiment composed entirely of kids like us, no one over the age of eighteen? What happened to all the adults? Are they being taken somewhere else and, if they are, where and why? Are the Teds the final wave, or is there another one coming, a fifth wave that will make the first four pale in comparison? Thinking about a fifth wave shuts down the conversation.
9:30 P.M.: Lights-out. Time to lie awake and think of a wholly new and creative way to waste Sergeant Reznik. After a while I get tired of that and think about the girls I’ve dated, shuffling them around in various orders. Hottest. Smartest. Funniest. Blondes. Brunettes. Which base I got to. They start to blend together into one girl, the Girl Who Is No More, and in her eyes Ben Parish, high school hallway god, lives again. From its hiding place under my bunk, I pull out Sissy’s locket and press it against my heart. No more guilt. No more grief. I will trade my self-pity for hate. My guilt for cunning. My grief for the spirit of vengeance.
“Zombie?” It’s Nugget in the bunk next to me.
“No talking after lights-out,” I whisper back.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Close your eyes and think of something nice.”
“Can we pray? Is that against the rules?”
“Sure you can pray. Just not out loud.”
I can hear him breathing, the creak of the metal frame as he flips and flops around on the bunk.
“Cassie always said my prayer with me,” he confesses.
“Who’s Cassie?”
“I told you.”
“I forgot.”
“Cassie’s my sister. She’s coming for me.”
“Oh, sure.” I don’t tell him that if she hasn’t shown up by now, she’s probably dead. It isn’t up to me to break his heart; that’s time’s job.
“She’s promised. Promised.”
A tiny hiccup of a sob. Great. Nobody knows for sure, but we accept it as fact that the barracks are bugged, that every second Reznik is spying on us, waiting for us to break one of the rules so he can bring the hammer down. Violating the no-talking rule at lights-out will earn all of us a week of kitchen patrol.
“Hey, it’s all right, Nugget…”
Reaching my hand out to comfort him, finding the top of his freshly shaved head, running my fingertips over his scalp. Sissy liked for me to rub her head when she felt bad—maybe Nugget likes it, too.