“What’s your number?” he barks.
My number? I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. “Tee-sixty-two, sir!”
He gives me a puzzled look. “Tee-sixty-two? Are you sure?”
“Yes sir, sir!” Sir, sir? Oh God, Cassie.
“Why aren’t you with your unit?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, and good thing, because nothing is really coming to mind. He steps forward and looks me up and down, and clearly I’m not in regulation. Officer Alien does not like what he sees.
“Where’s your name tag, soldier? And what are you doing with a suppressor on your weapon? And what is this?”
He pulls on the bulging leather satchel holding Bear.
I pull back. The satchel pops open and I’m busted. “It’s a teddy bear, sir.”
“A what?”
He stares down at my upturned face and something crosses over his as the lightbulb comes on and he realizes who he’s looking at. His right hand flies toward his sidearm, but that’s a really dumb move when all he had to do was lay his fist upside my teddy-bear-toting head. I swing the silencer in a slicing arc, stopping it an inch from his boyish good looks, and pull the trigger.
Now you’ve done it, Cassie. Blown the one chance you had, and you were so close.
I can’t just leave Officer Alien where he fell. They might miss all the blood in the hurly-burly of battle, and it’s nearly invisible anyway in the spinning red light, but not the body. What am I going to do with the body?
I’m close, so close, and I’m not going to let some dead guy keep me from Sammy. I grab him by the ankles and drag him back down the corridor, into another passageway, around another corner, and then drop him. He’s heavier than he looks. I take a moment to stretch out the kink in my lower back before hurrying away. Now if someone stops me before I can reach the safe room, my plan is to say whatever is necessary to avoid killing again. Unless I’m given no choice. And then I will kill again.
Evan was right: It does get a little easier each time.
The room is packed with kids. Hundreds of kids. Dressed in identical white jumpsuits. Sitting in big groups spread over an area about the size of a high school gymnasium. They’ve quieted down some. Maybe I should just shout out Sam’s name or borrow Major Bob’s bullhorn. I pick my way through the room, lifting my boots high to avoid stepping on any little fingers or toes.
So many faces. They begin to blur together. The room expands, explodes past the walls, extending to infinity, filled with billions of little upturned faces, and oh those bastards, those bastards, what have they done? In my tent I cried for myself and the silly, stupid life that had been taken from me. Now I beg forgiveness from the infinite sea of upturned faces.
I’m still stumbling around like a zombie when I hear a little voice calling my name. Coming from a group I had just passed, and it’s funny he recognized me and not the other way around. I go still. I do not turn. I close my eyes, but can’t bring myself to turn around.
“Cassie?”
I lower my head. There is a lump the size of Texas caught in my throat. And then I turn and he’s staring at me with something like fear, like this might be the last straw, seeing a dead ringer for his sister tiptoeing around dressed up like a soldier. Like he’s reached the outer limits of the Others’ cruelty.
I kneel in front of my brother. He doesn’t rush into my arms. He stares at my tear-streaked face and brings his fingers to my wet cheek. Across my nose, forehead, chin, over my fluttering eyelids.
“Cassie?”
Is it okay now? Can he believe? If the world breaks a million and one promises, can you trust the million and second?
“Hey, Sams.”
He cocks his head slightly. I must sound funny to him with the bloated tongue. I fumble with the clasp of the leather satchel.
“I, um, I thought you might want this back.”
I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn’t reach for it, and I feel like he’s punched me in the gut.
Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy’s, my brother’s.
81
THE GREEN EYE looked at me and I looked back at it, and I don’t remember what snatched me back from the edge between the blinking eye and what came next.
My first clear memory? Running.
Lobby. Stairwell. Basement level. First landing. Second landing.
When I hit the third landing, the concussion of the blast slams into my back like a wrecking ball, hurling me down the stairs and into the door that opens to the bomb shelter.
Above me, the hospital screams as it’s torn apart. That’s what it sounds like: a living thing screaming as it’s being ripped to pieces. The thunderous crack of mortar and stone shattering. The screech of nails snapping and the shriek of two hundred windows exploding. The floor buckles, splits open. I dive headfirst into the hallway of reinforced concrete as the building above me disintegrates.
The lights flicker once, and then the corridor plunges into darkness. I’ve never been to this part of the complex, but I don’t need the luminescent arrows on the walls to show me the way to the safe room. All I have to do is follow the terrified screams of the children.
But first it would be helpful to stand.
The fall has completely torn open the sutures; I’m bleeding heavily now, from both wounds: where Ringer’s bullet went in and where it came out. I try to stand up. I give it my best shot, but my legs won’t hold me up. I get halfway up and then down again I go, head spinning, gasping for air.
A second explosion knocks me flat out on the floor. I manage to crawl a few inches before a third blast knocks me down again. Damn it, what are you doing up there, Vosch?
If it is too late, we’ll have no choice but to execute the option of last resort.
Well, guess that particular mystery is solved. Vosch is blowing up his own base. Destroying the village in order to save it. But save it from what? Unless it isn’t Vosch. Maybe Ringer and I are totally wrong. Maybe I’m risking my life and Nugget’s for nothing. Camp Haven is what Vosch says it is and that means Ringer walked into a camp of infesteds with her guard down. Ringer is dead. Ringer and Dumbo and Poundcake and little Teacup. Christ, have I done it again? Run when I should have stayed? Turned my back when I should have fought?
The next explosion is the worst. It hits directly overhead. I cover my head with both arms as chunks of concrete as big as my fist rain down. The concussions from the bombs, the drug lingering in my system, the loss of blood, the darkness…all of it conspires to pin me down. From a distance, I can hear someone screaming—and then I realize that it’s me.
You have to get up. You have to get up. You have to keep your promise to Sissy…
No. Not Sissy. Sissy’s dead. You left her behind, you stinking bag of regurgitated puke.
Damn, it hurts. The pain of the wounds that bleed and the pain of the old wound that will not heal.
Sissy, with me in the dark.
I can see her hand reaching for me in the dark.
I’m here, Sissy. Take my hand.
Reaching for her in the dark.
82
SISSY PULLS AWAY, and I’m alone again.
When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face—the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up—when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can’t get up and you can’t give up, either, here’s what you do:
Crawl.
Sliding forward on my stomach, I reach the intersection of the main corridor that runs the length of the complex. Have to rest. Two minutes, no more. The emergency lights flicker on. I know where I am now. Left to the air shaft, right to the central command hub and the safe room.
Tick-tock. My two-minute break is over. I push myself to my feet using the wall for support, and I nearly black out from the pain. Even if I grab Nugget without getting grabbed myself, how will I get him out of here in this condition?
Plus I sincerely doubt there are any buses left. Or any Camp Haven, for that matter. Once I grab him—if I grab him—where the hell are we going to go?
I shuffle down the corridor, keeping one hand on the wall to steady myself. Ahead, I can hear someone shouting at the kids in the safe room, telling them to stay calm and stay seated, everything was going to be okay and they were perfectly safe.
Tick-tock. Right before the final turn, I glance to my left and see something crumpled against the wall: a human body.
A dead human body.
Still warm. Wearing a lieutenant’s uniform. Half its face blasted away by a high-caliber bullet fired at close range.
Not a recruit. One of them. Has someone else figured out the truth here? Maybe.
Or maybe the dead guy was shot by a trigger-happy, jacked-up recruit, mistaking him for a Ted.
No more wishful thinking, Parish.
I pull the sidearm from the dead man’s holster and slip it into the pocket of the lab coat. Then I pull the surgical mask over my face.
Dr. Zombie, you’re wanted in the safe room, stat!
And there it is, straight ahead. A few more yards and I’m there.
I made it, Nugget. I’m here. Now you be here.
And it’s like he heard me, because there he is walking toward me, carrying—believe it or not—a teddy bear.
Only he isn’t alone. There’s someone with him, a recruit around Dumbo’s age in a baggy uniform and a cap pulled down low, the brim resting just above his eyes, carrying an M16 with some kind of metal pipe attached to its barrel.
No time to think it through. Because faking my way through this one will take too much time and rely too much on luck, and it isn’t about luck anymore. It’s about being hardcore.
Because this is the last war, and only the hardcore will survive it.
Because of the step in the plan I skipped over. Because of Kistner.
I drop my hand into the coat pocket. I close the gap. Not yet, not yet. My wound throws off my stride. I have to take him down with the first shot.
Yes, he’s a kid.
Yes, he’s innocent.
And, yes, he’s toast.
83
I WANT TO DRINK IN his sweet Sammy smell forever, but I can’t. The place is crawling with armed soldiers, some of them Silencers—or anyway, not teens, so I have to assume they’re Silencers. I lead Sammy over to a wall, putting a group of kids between us and the nearest guard. I scrunch down as low as possible and whisper, “Are you okay?”
He nods. “I knew you’d come, Cassie.”
“I promised, right?”
He’s wearing a heart-shaped locket around his neck. What the heck? I touch it, and he pulls back a little.
“Why are you dressed like that?” he asks.
“I’ll explain later.”
“You’re a soldier now, aren’t you? What squad are you in?”
Squad? “No squad,” I tell him. “I’m my own squad.”
He frowns. “You can’t be your own squad, Cassie.”
This isn’t really the time to get into the whole ridiculous squad thing. I glance around the room. “Sam, we’re getting out of here.”