semiautomatic rifle that the ones from the glowing green eye gave him, crouching by the statue of a real soldier who fought and died with clear mind and clean heart, uncorrupted by the lies of an enemy who knows how he thinks, who twists everything good in him to evil, who uses his hope and trust to turn him into a weapon against his own kind. The kid who didn’t go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn’t. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over—not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart.
Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.
In the park by the river in the snow spinning down.
I feel the chopper before I hear it. A change in pressure, a thrumming against my exposed skin. Then the rhythmic percussion of the blades, and I rise unsteadily, pressing my hand into the bullet wound in my side.
“Where should I shoot you?” Ringer asked.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be the legs or the arms.”
And Dumbo, who had plenty of experience with human anatomy from processing duty: “Shoot him in the side. Close range. And angled this way, or you’ll puncture his intestines.”
And Ringer: “What do we do if I puncture your intestines?”
“Bury me, because I’ll be dead.”
A smile? No. Damn.
And afterward, as Dumbo examined the wound, she asked, “How long do we wait for you?”
“No more than a day.”
“A day?”
“Okay. Two days. If we aren’t back in forty-eight hours, we aren’t coming back.”
She didn’t argue with me. But she said, “If you aren’t back in forty-eight hours, I’m coming back for you.”
“Dumb move, chess player.”
“This isn’t chess.”
Black shadow roaring over the bare branches of the trees ringing the park, and the heavy pulsing beat of the rotors like an enormous racing heart, and the icy wind blasting down, pressing on my shoulders as I hoof it toward the open hatch.
The pilot whips his head around as I dive inside. “Where’s your unit?”
Falling into the empty seat. “Go! Go!”
And the pilot: “Soldier, where’s your unit?”
From the trees my unit answers, opening up a barrage of continuous fire, and the rounds slam and pop into the reinforced hull of the Black Hawk, and I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, “Go, go, go!” Which costs me: With every “Go!” blood is forced through the wound and dribbles through my fingers.
The pilot lifts off, shoots forward, then banks hard to the left. I close my eyes.
The Black Hawk lays down strafing fire, pulverizing the trees, and the pilot is shouting something at the copilot, and the chopper is over the trees now, but Ringer and my crew should be long gone, down on the walking trail that borders the dark banks of the river. We circle the trees several times, firing until the trees are shattered stubs of their former selves. The pilot glances into the hold, sees me lying across two seats, holding my bloody side. He pulls up and hits the gas. The chopper shoots toward the clouds; the park is swallowed up by the white nothing of the snow.
I’m losing consciousness. Too much blood. Too much. There’s Ringer’s face, and damn if she isn’t just smiling, she’s laughing, and good for me, good for me that I made her laugh.
And there’s Nugget, and he definitely isn’t smiling.
“I’m coming. I promise.”
64
I WAKE UP where it began, in a hospital bed, bandaged up and floating on a sea of painkillers, circle complete.
It takes me several minutes to realize I’m not alone. There’s someone sitting in the chair on the other side of the IV drip. I turn my head and see his boots first, black, shined to a mirror finish. The faultless uniform, starched and pressed. The chiseled face, the piercing blue eyes that bore down to the bottom of me.
“And so here you are,” Vosch says softly. “Safe if not entirely sound. The doctors tell me you’re extraordinarily lucky to have survived. No major damage; the bullet passed clean through. Amazing, really, given that you were shot at such close range.”
What are you going to tell him?
“It was Ringer,” I tell him.
He cocks his head to one side, reminding me of some bright-eyed bird eyeing a tasty morsel.
“And why did Private Ringer shoot you, Ben?”
Okay. Screw the truth. I’ll give him facts instead.
“Because of Reznik.”
“Reznik?”
“Sir, Private Ringer shot me because I defended Reznik’s being there.”
“And why would you need to defend Reznik’s being there, Sergeant?” Crossing his legs and cupping his upraised knee with his hands. It’s hard to maintain eye contact with him for more than three or four seconds at a time.
“They turned on us, sir. Well, not all of them. Flintstone and Ringer—and Teacup, but only because Ringer did. They said Reznik’s being there proved that this was all a lie, and that you—”
He holds up a hand. “‘This’?”
“The camp, the infesteds. That we weren’t being trained to kill the aliens. The aliens were training us to kill one another.”
He doesn’t say anything at first. I almost wish he would laugh or smile or shake his head. If he did anything like that, I might have some doubt; I might rethink the whole this-is-an-alien-head-fake thing and conclude I am suffering from paranoia and battle-induced hysteria.
Instead he just stares back at me with no expression, with those bird-bright eyes.
“And you wanted no part of their little conspiracy theory?”
I nod. A good, strong, confident nod—I hope. “They went Dorothy on me, sir. Turned the whole squad against me.” I smile. A grim, tough, soldiery grin—I hope. “But not before I took care of Flint.”
“We recovered his body,” Vosch tells me. “Like you, he was shot at very close range. Unlike you, the target was a little higher up in the anatomy.”
“I would have wasted the rest of them, but I was outnumbered, sir. I decided the best thing to do was get my ass back to base and report.”
Again he doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just stares.
“They’ve vanished, you know,” he finally says. Then waits for my answer. Luckily, I’ve thought of one. Or
