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.