85

ZOMBIE

THE FIRST PERSON I SEE is Dumbo.

That’s how I know I’m dead.

I go where you go, Sarge.

Well, Bo, this time it looks like I’ve gone where you went.

I watch through a shimmering fog as he pulls a cold pack from his med kit and breaks the seal to mix the chemicals. The familiar serious look on his face—the mask of worry—like the welfare of the entire world rests on his shoulders, I’ve missed that.

“A cold pack?” I ask him. “What the hell kind of heaven is this, anyway?”

He gives me his shut-up-I’m-working look. Then he presses the pack into my hand and tells me to hold it against the back of my head. His ears look smaller in the shimmering fog. Maybe that’s his heavenly reward: smaller ears.

“I shouldn’t have left you, Bo,” I confess. “I’m sorry.”

He fades into the fog. I wonder who I’ll see next. Teacup? Poundcake? Maybe Flintstone or Tank. I hope it isn’t my old tentmate, Chris. My parents? My sister? Thinking of seeing her again makes my stomach tighten. Dear God, we have stomachs in heaven? I wonder what the food is like.

The face that swims into view isn’t one I know. It’s a black girl around my age, with model-perfect cheekbones and beautiful eyes, though there’s no warmth in them. They shine hard as polished marble. She’s wearing fatigues with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves.

Damn. So far the afterlife is depressingly like my forelife.

“Where is she?” the girl asks.

She squats in front of me and rests her forearms on her thighs. Lean body, like a runner’s. Long, graceful fingers, nicely trimmed nails.

“I’m gonna make you a promise,” she says. “I won’t bullshit you if you don’t bullshit me. Where is she?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” The cold pack feels deliciously good against my throbbing head, and that’s about the only thing that does. It’s starting to dawn on me that I might not be so dead after all.

She reaches into her breast pocket, pulls out a crinkled piece of paper, and tosses it into my lap. Dear God, there’s Ringer lying in a hospital bed with tubes running everywhere, some kind of screenshot from a video camera. Must have been taken around the time Vosch loaded her up with the 12th System.

I look up at the sergeant and say, “I’ve never seen this person before in my life.”

She sighs, then picks up the photo and stuffs it back into her pocket. She stares across the brown fields shimmering in the blaze of starlight. The fog lifts a little. A broken wooden railing, the faded white wall of a farmhouse, and the silhouette of a silo over her shoulder. I’m guessing we’re on the front porch.

“Where was she going?” the girl asks. “And what was she going to do when she got there?”

“Judging from that picture, she’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

The kids. What have you done with Megan and Nugget? I press my lips together to hold the question inside. They have Megan, no doubt about that—she was with me when Mount Rushmore fell on my head. Maybe not Nugget, though. Maybe he’s still hiding in the pit.

“Your name is Benjamin Thomas Parish,” she informs me. “Aka Zombie, former recruit and current sergeant of Squad 53, which went Dorothy last fall and has been on the run ever since the operation you led that took out Camp Haven. Your former squad is dead or MIA, with the exception of the private whose picture I just showed you. Marika Kimura, aka Ringer, who has commandeered one of our choppers and is now on a heading due north of this position. We think we know where she’s going, but we would like to know why and what she intends to do once she gets there.”

She waits. I’m thinking the pause has been offered for me to fill in the silence. Ringer’s full name is Marika Kimura. Why did I have to learn her first and last name from total strangers?

The silence drags out. She’s giving off the vibe that she could wait forever, even though we both know she doesn’t have that long.

“I’m not Dorothy,” I finally say. “One of us is, but it isn’t me.”

She shakes her head. “Dude, you’re so far off the reservation, I can’t see you with a frickin’ telescope.” She grabs my chin with those long fingers and squeezes. Hard. “I don’t have the patience for this shit and you don’t have the time. What’s the plan, Sergeant Zombie? What’s Ringer’s game?”

Damn, she’s strong. I have some trouble opening my mouth to talk. “Chess.”

She holds on to my chin for another second, then lets go with a disgusted snort. She motions toward the front door of the farmhouse and two figures emerge, one tall, the other short—Nugget-sized short.

The sergeant stands up and pulls Nugget in front of her, two strong hands gripping his shoulders.

“Talk,” she says.

Nugget’s eyes staring into mine.

“Say something,” she orders.

She unholsters her sidearm and presses the muzzle against the side of his head. Nugget doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t whimper or cry out. His body is as still as his eyes, and his eyes are saying, No, Zombie. No.

“Do it and see what you get,” I tell her.

“I’ll do them both,” she promises me. “First him, then the girl.” She moves the gun to the back of Nugget’s head. I don’t understand at first, then I wish I didn’t. When she pulls the trigger, I’ll get a faceful of Nugget’s brains.

“Okay,” I say, keeping my voice level—or as level as possible. “Then you can do me. Then we’re all dead and you can explain that inconvenient fact to your CO.”

And then I do something that totally throws her off guard, which is the purpose, the genius behind the design that’s worked since I was twelve years old: I smile. The full-on Parish Special.

“What was it before all this shit went down?” I ask her. “Sprinter, right? Or was it long-distance? Me, it was football. Wide receiver. Not much speed but I had hands.” I nod. “I had hands.” I look over Nugget’s head into her eyes. I can see starlight glinting in them, sparking like silver fire. “What happened to us, Sergeant Sprinter? What have they done to us? A year ago, could you imagine blowing out the brains of a little kid? I don’t know you, but somehow I don’t think so. Call me Dorothy, but I don’t think there were ten out of seven billion people who could. Now we stuff bombs down their throats and put guns to their heads like it’s the most natural thing on Earth, like putting on clothes or brushing our teeth. You wonder what’s next. I mean, after you reach that point, can you go any lower?”

“This is what I need,” she says, baring her teeth to mock the Parish Special. “You workin’ your Dorothy shit.”

“Marika’s going back to the place where that picture was taken,” I tell her, turning off the smile. Nugget’s eyes grow wide: Zombie! No! “Once she gets there, she’s going to find the asshole who fucked us over—her, you, me, and everybody else in this hemisphere—and when she finds him, she will kill him. Then she’s probably going to kill every brainwashed recruit on that base. And when you go back—if you make it back before that big green motherfucker up there starts shitting green bricks of death—she’ll kill you, too.”

I switch the smile back on. Dazzling. Brilliant. Irresistible. Well, at least that’s what people told me back in the day. “Now put down that gun, Sergeant Sprinter, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”