The Last Star (8 page)

I stop him. “That’s a terrible idea, Private. A really, really terrible idea.”

He isn’t listening. “That way, at least one of us makes it.”

“Stow that shit. We’re both gonna make it.”

Shaking his head. His voice breaks. “I don’t think so, Sarge.”

He rips off his eyepiece and stares at me for one very long, very
uncomfortable moment. He looks startled, as if he’s seen a ghost. Then Dumbo lunges at me, rising to his feet and coming straight at me with hands outstretched like he’s going to grab me by the throat and choke the life out of me.

I raise my own hands instinctively to block the attack.
Oh Christ, oh Christ, the big-eared sonofabitch was right, it woke up,
the thing woke up in him.

My fingers catch hold of his jacket. Dumbo’s head snaps back. His body stiffens, then goes limp.

I hear the report of the sniper rifle a second later, the kind of rifle with a laser-guided scope, which fired the bullet that a second before was coming straight at my head.

The bullet that Dumbo took for me, accepted without hesitation, because I’m the man, the CO, the thick-headed moron that the enemy in all his infinite wisdom put in charge of keeping our asses alive.

15

I GRAB HIM
by the shoulders and drag him behind the counter. Out of the line of fire but also cornered; I don’t have much time. I put him on his stomach, yank up the jacket and the two shirts underneath to expose the wound. A quarter-sized hole right in the middle of his back. The bullet has to be inside him—otherwise I’d be hit, too. His chest moves. He’s breathing. I lean down and whisper in his ear, “Tell me what to do, Dumbo. Tell me.” He doesn’t say anything. Probably needs all his energy just to breathe.

Zombie, you can’t stay here.
That calm, Ringerish voice again.
Cut him loose.

Sure. Cut him loose. That’s my thing. That’s how I roll. I cut my sister loose, I cut Poundcake loose. They go down and I keep going.

Fuck that.

I crawl around to the front of the counter, grab Dumbo’s bag, and go back to him. He’s curled into a ball, knees pressed against his chest, and his eyelids flutter like someone having a bad dream. I tear through his med kit, looking for the gauze. I have to pack the wound. I remember that much from my one and only course in battlefield injuries at Camp Haven. If I don’t pack it and pack it fast, he could bleed out in less than three minutes.

The other thing I remember from that course: It hurts like hell. Hurts so goddamned bad, the first thing you’re supposed to do is take away the patient’s weapons.

So I pull his sidearm from the holster and tuck it behind my back.

There should be a thin metal rod in the kit—you use it to push the gauze into the wound—but I can’t find it.

Bug out, Zombie. You’re outta time.

I push the gauze into the hole in his back with my finger. Dumbo bows up. He screams. Then he instinctively tries to escape, clawing at the base of the counter for a handhold, and I wrap the fingers of my free hand around his neck to keep him still.

“It’s good, Bo. It’s all good . . .” Whispering in his ear as my finger sinks inside him, pushing the wad of gauze ahead of it.
More gauze. Gotta pack it tight. If that bullet sliced an artery . . .

I pull my finger out. He lets loose another banshee howl, and I cup his chin, forcing his mouth closed. I don’t move slow. I don’t go gentle. I ram another wad into the wound. Dumbo is jerking
against me, sobbing helplessly. I lie on my side behind him and throw my leg over his waist to keep him still. “One more time, Bo,” I whisper. “Almost there . . .”

Then it’s done. The gauze pokes out of the wound; I can’t push any more inside. I tear open a bandage with my teeth and slap it over my handiwork. I roll onto my back, pulling hard for air. Probably too little, too late. Beside me, Dumbo continues to cry, the sobs dwindling to whimpers. His body shudders against mine; he’s going into shock.

Back to the bag to find something for the pain. He’s on his way out, he’s dying, I’m pretty sure of that, but at least I can help him go easy. I tear open a morphine syrette and jab the needle into his exposed hip. The effect is almost immediate. His muscles relax, his mouth goes slack, his breathing slows.

“See? Not so bad,” I tell him, like I’m settling an argument.

“I’m coming back for you, Bo. I’m finding the bastard and then I’m coming back.”

Oh boy, Zombie, you’ve done it now.
The promise feels like a death sentence, a cell door slamming shut, a stone around my neck that’s destined to carry me down.

16

BACK AROUND THE COUNTER
to fetch my rifle. Rifle, sidearm, knife, a couple of flash grenades. And one more thing, the most essential weapon in my arsenal: a heart full of rage. I’m blowing the bastard who shot him back to Dumbo’s favorite town.

Scooting on my hands and knees down the hallway to the emergency exit door (W
ARNING!
A
LARM
WILL SOUND!
). Onto the side street, beneath the cold starlight. I’m alone for the first time since my family’s murder—not running away this time, though. No more of that.

I head east. At the next block, I turn north again, paralleling Main Street. I’ll cut back after a couple more blocks, cross Main to the next street, then come at the shooter from the rear. Assuming he hasn’t already crossed the street to finish the job.

Might not be the Silencer. Could be a civilian who’s learned the first lesson of the last war.

Not that it makes any difference.

Back at the safe house, Cassie told me about finding a soldier inside a convenience store while she was foraging for supplies. She killed him. Thought he was pulling a weapon that turned out to be a crucifix. It tore her up. She couldn’t get it out of her head. He must have thought he was the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth. Separated from his unit, badly wounded, unable to do anything but wait for a rescue that would probably never come, and then out of nowhere this random girl shows up; he was saved. Then the random girl opened up with her rifle and turned his body into a pincushion.

“Not your fault, Sullivan,” I told her. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped at me. She tended to snap at me a lot. Well, not just me. The girl’s a snapper. “That’s the lie they want us to believe, Parish.”

Back on Main. Easing up to the corner, I peek around the edge of the building toward the coffee shop. Directly across from it is
a three-story, windows boarded up on the bottom floor, fractured on the top two. Nothing glows in the windows or on the roof; no green balls of light through the eyepiece. I hold for a few seconds, watching the front. I know the drill. That building has to be cleared. We practiced it a thousand times in camp, only we had seven guys to do it. Flint, Oompa, Ringer, Teacup, Poundcake, Dumbo—down to just one now. Down to me.

Hunched over, I trot across Main Street, every inch of my body tingling, expecting the punch of the sniper’s bullet. Whose bright idea was it to cut straight through Urbana? Who put
that
guy in charge?

Keep moving, stay focused, check those windows up there, those doors over there. The street is choked with trash and broken glass, slick with the residue from ruptured sewer lines and water mains, puddles of oily water glimmering in the starlight. One block over, then cutting back south. The building is straight ahead at the end of the block, and I force myself to slow down. You’re taught to stay in the moment, but the moment I’m in is the one that happens after I’ve neutralized the shooter. Do I abort the mission to find Ringer and Teacup? Get Dumbo back to the safe house? Or leave him here and pick him up later on my way back from the caverns?

I’ve reached the end of the block. Time to make the call. Once I penetrate the building, I’m all in, there’s no going back.

I step through a broken plate-glass window and into the lobby of a bank. A carpet of paper covers the floor: deposit slips and brochures and old magazines and the remnants of a banner (O
UR
L
OWEST
R
ATES
E
VER!
) and bills in every denomination—I can see hundreds among the fives and tens.

The damp, rotting carpet squishes beneath my boots. I sweep the room in less than thirty seconds.
Clear.

I find the stairway door opposite the elevator and ease it open. I’m down to zero visibility, but I’m not risking light; I might as well scream out my name or yell
Hey, bud, here I am!
In the stairwell, the door clicks shut behind me, sealing me inside absolute darkness. One step up, pause, straining my ears, another step, pause. Faintly, the building groans around me like an old house settling. The harsh winter, the broken pipes within the walls, water worming its way into the mortar, freezing, expanding, breaking apart the bones and sinews that hold the structure together. If the Others weren’t dropping the bombs in four days, Urbana would crumble on its own. In a thousand years, you could hold the entirety of the city in the palm of your hand.

First landing, second floor. I keep moving up, one hand on the metal railing, step, pause, step. I’ll start on the roof and work my way down. I don’t think he’s nesting up there; Dumbo and I were hunkered by the back counter, and the trajectory from the rooftop into the coffee shop is too sharp. More likely the sniper’s set up on the second floor, but I’m going to be methodical about this. Think through every move before I make it.

I smell it halfway to the second floor, on the landing where the stairs turn: the unmistakable stink of death. I step on something small and soft. Probably a dead rat. In the tight, closed-in space, the stench is overwhelming. My eyes pour water, my stomach rises into my throat. Another good reason to blow up the cities: It’s the fastest way to get rid of the smell.

Above me, a razor-thin bar of golden light shines beneath the door. Holy crap and WTF, he’s a brazen bastard.

I press my ear against the door. Silence. Though it might seem obvious, I’m not sure what to do. The door could be booby-trapped. Or the light could be a ruse—bait to lure me into an ambush. At the very least, the door’s gotta be rigged to make a sound if it’s opened. You don’t have to be a Silencer to take that precaution.

I drop my hand onto the cold metal door handle. I fiddle with the eyepiece, stalling.
You don’t ease in, Parish—you
bust
through.

The worst part isn’t the busting through, though. The worst part is the second before you do.

I throw open the door, whip sharply to my left, then step into the hall and turn back hard to the right. No bell jingled, no stack of empty cans clattered to the floor. The door swings closed silently behind me on well-oiled hinges. My finger twitches on the trigger as a shadow races across the wall, a shadow that’s attached to a small, orange, furry creature with a striped tail.

A cat.

The animal darts through an open doorway halfway down the corridor, out of which pours the golden light that I saw in the stairwell. As I ease toward the light, the smell of decay is overcome by two very different smells: hot soup, maybe beef stew, warring with the unmistakable odor of a dirty litter box. I can hear a high-pitched voice warbling softly:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander

And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees . . .

I’ve heard this song before. Many times. I even remember the refrain:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:

How great thou art! How great thou art!

Her voice reminds me of another, thin and scratchy from age, slightly out of tune, singing with fierce determination and the self-assurance that comes with unshakable faith. How many Sundays did I stand beside my grandmother while she sang this hymn? Bored out of my adolescent mind, silently bitching about my itchy collar and uncomfortable shoes, daydreaming about my latest crush and sacrilegiously changing (in my head) the last line to
How great thy ass! How great thy ass!

Hearing that song opens a floodgate through which the memories pour, unstoppable. Grandma’s perfume. Her thick legs encased in white stockings and her square-toed black shoes. The way the powder caked in the deep crevices of her face, at the corners of her mouth and her dark, kind eyes. The knobbiness of her arthritic knuckles and how she held the steering wheel of that ancient Mercury like a desperate swimmer clutching a lifesaver. Chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven and apple pies cooling on racks and her voice in the other room rising in excitement as the latest bombshells were delivered by a lady in her prayer circle.

Stopping just short of the doorway, I pull out one of the stun grenades. I slip my finger into the pin. My hands are shaking. A dribble of sweat courses down the middle of my back. This is how they get you, this is how they crush the spirit right out of you. Out of the blue the past is rammed down your throat, a gut punch of memories of all the things you took for granted, the things that you lost in the blink of an eye, the stupid, trivial, forgettable things you didn’t know could crush you, things like an
old woman’s quivery voice, high-pitched and far away, calling you inside for a plate of warm cookies and a glass of ice-cold milk.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee!

I pull the pin and toss the grenade through the open door. A blinding flash, the terrified chorus of cats screeching, and a human being crying out in pain.

I swing into the doorway, sighting the crumpled figure in the far corner of the room, her face hidden behind the swirl of green fire created by my eyepiece.
Take her, Zombie. One shot and done.

But I don’t pull the trigger. I’m not sure what stops me. Maybe it’s the cats, dozens of them leaping and diving over and under furniture. Maybe it’s her singing, how she reminded me of my grandmother and all the uncountable lost things. Maybe it’s Sullivan’s story, her Crucifix Soldier cowering in a corner, defenseless and doomed. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that the light from kerosene lamps placed around the room show me that she isn’t armed. Instead of a sniper’s rifle, she’s clutching a wooden spoon.

“Please, God, don’t kill me!” the old lady shrieks, curling herself into a tight little ball and throwing her hands over her face. I sweep the room quickly. Corners clear, no way in or out except the way I just came. The window facing Main Street is hidden behind heavy black drapes. I step over to it and push the material aside with the muzzle of my rifle. The window’s been boarded up. No wonder I didn’t see the light from the street. The barrier also tells me this isn’t any sniper’s nest.

“Please don’t,” she whimpers. “Please don’t hurt me.”

The green fire surrounding her head is bugging me; I yank off the eyepiece. Next to the window is a small table on which a pot of stew burbles over a can of Sterno. There’s a Bible next to it, open to the Twenty-Third Psalm. There’s a sofa piled with
blankets and pillows. A couple of chairs. A desk. A potted plastic tree. Listing towers of magazines and newspapers. It’s not the sniper kind, but it’s definitely a nest.

She’s probably been holed up here since the 3rd Wave rolled through town. And that raises an important question: How’d she make it this long without the resident Silencer finding her?

“Where is he?” I ask. My voice sounds weak and too young to my own ears, like I’ve fallen backward through time. “Where’s the shooter?”

“Shooter?” she echoes. Her gray hair is stuffed into a knit cap, but a few wispy strands have escaped and fall on either side of her pale face. She’s wearing black sweatpants, her upper half encased in several layers of sweaters. I step toward her, and she shrinks farther into the corner, clutching the spoon to her chest. Cat hair flits and dances in the smoky, golden light, and I sneeze.

“Bless you,” she says automatically.

“You had to hear it,” I tell her, meaning the shot that took down Dumbo. “You have to know he’s here.”

“There’s no one here,” she squeaks. “Just me and my babies. Please don’t hurt my babies!”

It takes me a second to understand she’s talking about the cats. I move around the room, along the narrow paths that wind through the stacks of old magazines, one eye on her, the other looking for weapons. There’re a hundred places to hide a gun in this clutter. I poke through the mound of blankets on the sofa. I check under the desk, pulling open a couple of drawers, then behind the plastic plant. A cat dashes between my legs, hissing. I weave my way over to her corner and order her to stand up.

“Are you going to kill me?” she whispers.

I should. I know I should. The risk is in letting her live. The
shot that Dumbo took for me came from somewhere in this building. I sling the rifle over my shoulder, draw my sidearm, and order her up again. It’s a struggle for both of us—her physical battle to get her legs beneath her, my psychological one to resist the instinct to help her. Upright, she sways, hands to her chest, worrying with that damn spoon.