Don’t promise, don’t promise, don’t promise! Don’t promise anything ever, ever, ever!
“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?
I’m going to tell him the truth.
“It was Ringer,” I tell him. You bastard. You son of a bitch. For months I saw him as my savior—as humanity’s savior, even. His promises gave me the cruelest gift: hope.
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?”
You can’t tell him the truth.
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.”
Are you sure about this, Zombie? Why do you need to shoot him in the head?
They can’t know he’s been zapped. Maybe if I do enough damage, it’ll destroy the evidence. Stand back, Ringer. You know I don’t have the best aim in the world.
“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. What are you? I wonder. Are you human? Are you a Ted? Or are you…something else? What the hell are you?
“They’ve vanished, you know,” he finally says. Then waits for my answer. Luckily, I’ve thought of one. Or Ringer did. Credit where credit is due.
“They cut out their trackers.”
“Yours too,” he points out. And waits. Over his shoulder, I see orderlies in their green scrubs moving along the row of beds and hear the squeak of their shoes along the linoleum floor. Just another day in the hospital of the damned.
I’m ready for his question. “I was playing along. Waiting for an opening. Dumbo did Ringer next, after me, and that’s when I made my move.”
“Shooting Flintstone…”
“And then Ringer shot me.”
“And then…” Arms crossed over his chest now. Chin lowered. Studying me with hooded eyes. The way a bird of prey might its supper.
“And then I ran. Sir.”
So I’m able to take Reznik down in the dark in the middle of a snowstorm, but I can’t pop you from two feet away? He won’t buy it, Zombie.
I don’t need him to buy it. Just rent it for a few hours.
He clears his throat. Scratches beneath his chin. Studies the ceiling tiles for a little while before looking back at me. “How fortunate for you, Ben, that you made it to the evac point before bleeding to death.”
Oh, you bet, you whatever-you-are. Fortunate as hell.
A silence slams down. Blue eyes. Tight mouth. Folded arms.
“You haven’t told me everything.”
“Sir?”
“You’re leaving something out.”
I slowly shake my head. The room sways like a ship in a storm. How much painkiller did they give me?
“Your former drill sergeant. Someone in your unit must have searched him. And found one of these in his possession.” Holding up a silver device identical to Reznik’s. “At which point someone—I would think you, being the ranking officer—would wonder what Reznik was doing with a mechanism capable of terminating your lives with a touch of a button.”
I’m nodding. Ringer and I figured he’d go there, and I’m ready with an answer. Whether he buys it or not, that’s the question.
“There’s only one explanation that makes any sense, sir. It was our first mission, our first real combat. We needed to be monitored. And you needed a fail-safe in case any of us went Dorothy—turned on the others…”
I trail off, out of breath and glad that I am, because I don’t trust myself on the dope. My thinking isn’t crystal clear. I’m walking through a minefield in some very dense fog. Ringer anticipated this. She made me practice this part over and over as we waited in the park for the chopper to return, right before she pressed her sidearm against my stomach and pulled the trigger.
The chair scrapes against the floor, and suddenly Vosch’s lean, hard face fills my vision.
“It really is extraordinary, Ben. For you to resist the group dynamics of combat, the enormous pressure to follow the herd. It’s almost—well, inhuman, for lack of a better word.”
“I’m human,” I whisper, heart beating in my chest so hard, for a second I’m sure he can see it beating through my thin gown.
“Are you? Because that’s the crux of it, isn’t it, Ben? That’s the whole ballgame! Who is human—and who is not. Have we not eyes, Ben? Hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
The hard angle of the jaw. The severity of the blue eyes. The thin lips pale against the flushed face.
“Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice. Spoken by a member of a despised and persecuted race. Like our race, Ben. The human race.”
“I don’t think they hate us, sir.” Trying to keep my cool in this strange and unexpected turn in the minefield. My head is spinning. Gut-shot, doped up, discussing Shakespeare with the commandant of one of the most efficient death camps in the history of the world.
“They have a strange way of showing their affection.”
“They don’t love or hate us. We’re just in the way. Maybe to them, we’re the infestation.”
“Periplaneta americana to their Homo sapiens? In that contest, I’ll take the cockroach. Very difficult to eradicate.”
He pats me on the shoulder. Gets very serious. We’ve come to the real meat of it, do or die time, pass or fail; I can feel it. He’s turning the sleek silver device over and over in his hand.
Your plan sucks, Zombie. You know that.
Okay. Let’s hear yours.
We stay together. Take our chances with whoever’s holed up in the courthouse.
And Nugget?
They won’t hurt him. Why are you so worried about Nugget? God, Zombie, there are hundreds of kids—
Yeah, there are. But I made a promise to one.
“This is a very grave development, Ben. Very grave. Ringer’s delusion will drive her to seek shelter with the very things she was tasked to destroy. She will share with them everything she knows about our operations. We’ve dispatched three more squads to preempt her, but I’m afraid it may be too late. If it is too late, we’ll have no choice but to execute the option of last resort.”
His eyes burn with their own pale blue fire. I actually shiver when he turns away, cold all of a sudden, and very, very scared.
What is the option of last resort?
He may not have bought it, but he did rent it. I’m still alive. And as long as I’m alive, Nugget has a chance.
He turns back as if he’s just remembered something.
Crap. Here it comes.
“Oh, one more thing. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we’re pulling you off the pain meds so we can run a full debriefing on you.”
“Debriefing, sir?”
“Combat is a funny thing, Ben. It plays tricks on your memory. And we’ve found that the meds interfere with the program. It should take about six hours for your system to be clear.”