44

SQUAD ONE-NINE

FROM THEIR POSITION three hundred yards to the north, the five-member strike team from Squad 19 watch the chopper fire two missiles, then it’s bye-bye, house, blasted down to its concrete foundation in an orgasm of fire and smoke.

In Milk’s earpiece, the pilot’s voice: “Hold your position, One-nine. Repeat: Hold position.”

Milk raises his fist to signal his team: We hold.

The chopper makes a wide arc to circle back over the target. Crouched beside Milk, Pixie sighs loudly, fussing with his eyepiece. The strap’s too big for his little head, and he can’t keep it snug. Swizz whispers for him to shut up and Pix instructs him to kiss his ass. Milk tells them both to shut up.

The team huddles beneath a faded Havoline sign beside an old brick building that had been a body shop before the world went FUBAR. Stacks of used tires and piles of rims, discarded engine parts and tools, all scattered around the lot like wind-driven leaves; the cars and trucks and SUVs and minivans are coated in dust and grime, with shattered windows and mildewed upholstery, relics of the irrelevant past. The generation that followed Squad 19—if there was a generation to follow—would not recognize the strange symbols attached to the trunks and grills of these rusting hulks. In a hundred years, no one would be able to read the sign over their heads or even understand that the letters symbolized sounds.

Like it matters anymore. Like anyone cares. Better not to remember. Better not to know. You can’t mourn what you never had.

The chopper hovers over the wreckage, and the downdraft from its blades flattens the smoke and pushes the flames sideways. They squint through their eyepieces, Milk and Pix to the south toward the chopper, Swizz and Snicks to the west, Gummy to the north, scanning the terrain for the green glow of an alien-infested enemy. They will wait for the Black Hawk to pull out, then move south down the highway, clearing the area as they go—if there’s any damn thing to clear. Unless the Teds took off when they heard the chopper’s approach, anything caught in that house was toast.

Pix saw it first: a tiny neon-green spark that bobbed about in the flames like a firefly in the summer dusk. He poked Milk in the leg and pointed. Milk nodded with a grim smile. Oh yeah. They’ve drilled for this, dear Jesus, they can’t remember how often, but this is the first time in a real combat situation. A living, breathing, honest-to-God, in-the-flesh infested.

Six months, two weeks, and three days since the buses brought them together, the girls and boys of Squad 19. One hundred and ninety-nine days. Four thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six hours. Two hundred eighty-six thousand, five hundred and sixty minutes since Pix was Ryan, cowering in a drainage ditch, covered in scabs and sores and lice, with a bloated stomach and stick-thin arms and bulging, buggy eyes, brought onto the bus sobbing tearlessly because his body was starved for water. And Milk was called Kyle then, rescued from a camp a couple miles from the Canadian border, a big kid, sullen and angry and itching for payback, hard to control, difficult to break, but in the end they broke him.

They broke all of them.

Jeremy to Swizz, Luis to Gummy, Emily to Snickers. A bunch of candy-assed names for a bunch of candy-assed recruits.

The ones they could not break, the ones Wonderland told them were unfit, and the ones whose minds or bodies gave way in basic disappeared into incinerators or into secret holding rooms to retrofit their bodies into bombs. It was easy. It was absurdly easy. Empty the vessel of hope and faith and trust and you can fill it with anything you like. They could have told the kids in Squad 19 that two plus two equals five and they would have believed it. No, not just believed it; they would have killed anyone who claimed otherwise.

A tall figure topped in green fire emerges from the smoke and flame—arms up, hands empty, crossing the blackened rubble onto the road—and the chopper dips its nose and begins descending.

What the hell? Why don’t they waste him?

Pix, you dumbass, he’s gotta be the frigging target. Sonofabitch made it.

The chopper sets down and now Milk can see Hersh and Reese hop from the hold. He can’t hear them, but he knows what they’re screaming at the Ted over the cacophony of the engine: Down, down, down! Hands on your head! The figure drops to its knees; its hands are swallowed by the green fire dancing around its face. They drag the prisoner over to the bird and haul him inside.

The pilot’s voice squawks in Milk’s ear: “Returning target to base. See you on the back side, soldiers.”

The Hawk roars directly over them, northbound. The Havoline sign quivers at its passing. Gummy watches the chopper shrink toward the horizon, and the world goes quiet fast, leaving only the wind and fire and his own heavy breath. This will be quick, he tells himself. Absently, he presses his hand against his shoulder, still tender from the night before, the wounds still fresh: VQP.

It was Milk’s idea. Milk had seen Razor’s body with his own eyes, and it was Milk who figured out what the letters stood for. Vincit qui patitur. He conquers who endures. They carved the same letters into their own arms—VQP—in honor of the fallen.

Milk gives the signal and they move out. Milk on the point, Pix right behind, Swizz and Snick the flankers, and Gummy bringing up the rear. Mark those windows across the street there, Snick. Check those cars, Swizz.

They’ve drilled this a thousand times, house to house, room to room, basement to roof. You clear the block, then move to the next one. Don’t rush. Watch your back. Watch your buddy’s back. If you have the shot, take the shot. Simple. Easy. So easy a child could do it, which is one of the chief reasons they picked children to do it.

Six months, two weeks, and three days after the school bus rolled to a stop and a voice called out, Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now, perfectly safe, Gummy hears something other than the wind and the fire and his own breath: a high-pitched whine like the squealing of that bus’s brakes. That’s the last sound he hears before the twenty-inch steel rim smashes into the back of his head, snapping his spinal cord. He’s dead before he hits the ground.

One hundred and eighty-four days after rolling into camp, Snicks is next. She and Swizz drop to the ground when Gummy falls, that’s the training, that’s the memory their muscles hold, and their adversary knows it. She anticipated it.

Lying on his belly, Swizz looks to his right. Snicks is making a strangled gurgling sound, her rifle abandoned on the road next to her, both hands clutching the handle of the twenty-five-inch screwdriver embedded in her neck. Her jugular has been severed. She will be dead in less than a minute.

Four thousand, four hundred and sixteen hours after he saw the lights of the bus’s headlamps stabbing through the woods in which he hid, Swizz scrambles on his hands and knees to the roadside—and sees the green light through his eyepiece for a split second before it vanishes behind the old garage: the pale fire of an infested. Got you now, you sonofabitch. Swizz doesn’t know what happened to Milk and Pix, and he doesn’t turn around to find out. He’s running on instinct and adrenaline and a rage that cannot be measured or exhausted. He heaves himself to his feet and takes off for the garage. She’s already on the roof by the time he reaches the southeast corner of the building, waiting for him, ready to leap.

At least it’ll be quick.

Milk and Pix hear his rifle’s report from their hiding place behind the overturned Tahoe that straddles the shoulder of the road. Three short, staccato bursts: tat-tat-tat!

Then silence.

With a soft, disgusted cry, Pix rips off the eyepiece, screw this, fucker won’t stay up, and Milk calmly orders him to put it back on while he scans their surroundings. Pix ignores him. Broad daylight, he can see fine, and who cares whether they’re human or infested anymore?

Wind and fire and their own breath. Don’t get pinned. Don’t go down any dead ends. Don’t split up. Lying on his side, his shoulder pressing against the comforting steel of the SUV, Pix looks up into Milk’s face. Milk’s the sarge. Milk won’t let him down. VQP. Hell yes. VQP.

The girl’s bullet travels across the road, shatters the driver’s window, passes through the interior and exits on the other side, ripping through Pix’s jacket and burrowing into his back until it reaches his spine. There the bullet stops.

Two hundred sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and sixty-three minutes from his rescue to this moment, and Milk scoots toward the front bumper, dragging Pix’s body with him. The upper half jerks in his hands; the lower half is paralyzed, dead already, and what the fuck were they thinking, carving those stupid letters into their arms? Pix’s small fingers clawing at Milk’s face as the light drains from his eyes. Protect me, cover me, keep the bastards off me, Sarge.

That’s right, that’s right, Pix. VQP. V Q fucking P.

He’s still whispering to him when she steps around the hood of the car. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t even hear her.

Fifteen million, eight hundred ninety-seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two ticks of the clock, and Milk follows the rest of Squad 19 down.