The Last Star (29 page)

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. Doesn’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.”