“Zombie!” Sam called out. He popped up and ran to his side. “I’ll come, too!”
“Cut it out, both of you,” I snapped. “Nobody’s going anywhere until we—”
“What, Cassie?” Ben yelled. “Until we what?”
My mouth opened and no words came out. Sam was tugging on his arm: Come on, Zombie! My five-year-old brother waving around an empty gun; there’s a metaphor for you.
“Ben, listen to me. Are you listening to me? You go out there now—”
“I am going out there now—”
“—and we might lose you, too!” Shouting over him. “You don’t know what happened out there—Evan probably knocked them out like he did you and Dumbo. But maybe he didn’t—maybe they’re on the way back right now, and going out there is a stupid risk—”
“Don’t lecture me about stupid risks. I know all about—”
Ben swayed. The color drained from his face and he went down to one knee, Sam grabbing futilely on his sleeve. Dumbo and I pulled him up and got him to the empty bed, where he fell back, cussing us and cussing Evan Walker and cussing the whole fucked-up situation in general. Dumbo was giving me a deer-in-headlights look, like You got the answers, right? You know what to do, right?
Wrong.
I PICKED UP Dumbo’s rifle and pushed it into the kid’s chest.
“We’re blind,” I told him. “Stairway, both hall windows, east-side rooms, west-side rooms, keep moving and keep your eyes open. I’ll stay here with the alpha males and try to keep them from killing each other.”
Dumbo was nodding like he understood, but he wasn’t moving. I put my hands on his shoulders and focused on his jiggly eyes. “Step up, Dumbo. Understand? Step up.”
He jerked his head up and down, a human PEZ dispenser, and slumped out of the room. Leaving was the last thing he wanted to do, but we’d been at that point for a long time now, the point of doing the last thing we wanted to do.
Behind me, Ben growled, “Why didn’t you shoot him in the head? Why the knee?”
“Poetic justice,” I muttered. I sat next to Evan. I could see his eyes quivering behind the lids. He had been dead. I’d said good-bye. Now he was alive and I might not be able to say hello. We’re only about four miles from Camp Haven, Evan. What took you so long?
“We can’t stay here,” Ben announced. “It was a bad call sending Ringer ahead. I knew we shouldn’t’ve split up. We’re bugging out of here in the morning.”
“How are we going to do that?” I asked. “You’re hurt. Evan is—”
“This isn’t about him,” Ben said. “Well, I guess it is to you—”
“He’s the reason you’re alive right now to bitch, Parish.”
“I’m not bitching.”
“Yes, you are. You’re bitching like a junior miss beauty queen.”
Sammy laughed. I don’t think I’d heard my brother laugh since our mother died. It startled me, like finding a lake in the middle of a desert.
“Cassie called you a bitch,” Sam informed Ben, in case he missed it.
Ben ignored him. “We waited here for him and now we’re trapped here because of him. Do what you want, Sullivan. In the morning, I’m out of here.”
“Me too!” Sams said.
Ben got up, leaned on the side of the bed for a minute to catch his breath, then hobbled to the door. Sam trailed after him, and I didn’t try to stop either one of them. What would be the point? Ben cracked the door and called softly to Dumbo not to shoot him—he was coming out to help. Then Evan and I were alone.
I sat on the bed Ben had just abandoned. It was still warm from his body. I grabbed Sammy’s bear and pulled it into my lap.
“Can you hear me?” I asked—Evan, not the bear. “Guess we’re even now, huh? You shoot me in the knee; I shoot you in the knee. You see me butt naked; I see you butt naked. You pray over me; I—”
The room swam out of focus. I took Bear and popped Evan in the chest with it.
“And what was with that ridiculous jacket you were wearing? The Pinheads, that’s about right. That nails it.” I hit him again. “Pinhead.” Again. “Pinhead.” Again. “And now you’re going to check out on me? Now?”
His lips moved and a word leaked out slowly, like air escaping from a tire.
“Mayfly.”
HIS EYES OPENED. When I recalled writing about their warm, melted chocolateness, something in me went gah. Why did he have this knees-to-jelly effect on me? That wasn’t me. Why did I let him kiss and cuddle and generally mope around after me like a forlorn little lost alien puppy? Who was this guy? From what warped version of reality did he transport into my own personal warped version of reality? None of it fit. None of it made sense. Falling in love with me might be like me falling in love with a cockroach, but what do you call my reaction to him? What’s that called?
“If you weren’t dying and all, I’d tell you to go to hell.”
“I’m not dying, Cassie.” Fluttery lids. Sweaty face. Shaky voice.
“Okay, then go to hell. You left me, Evan. In the dark, just like that, and then you blew up the ground beneath me. You could have killed all of us. You abandoned me right when—”
“I came back.”
He reached out his hand. “Don’t touch me.” None of your creepy Vulcan mind-meld tricks.
“I kept my promise,” he whispered.
Well, what snarky comeback did I have for that? A promise was what brought me to him in the beginning. Again I was struck by how really weird it was that he was where I had been and I was where he had been. His promise for mine. My bullet for his. Down to stripping each other naked because there’s no choice; clinging to modesty in the age of the Others is like sacrificing a goat to make it rain.
“You almost got shot in the head, moron,” I told him. “It didn’t occur to you to just shout up the stairs, ‘Hey, it’s me! Hold your fire!’?”
He shook his head. “Too risky.”
“Oh, right. Much more risky than chancing your head getting blown off. Where’s Teacup? Where’s Poundcake?”
He shook his head again. Who?
“The little girl who took off down the highway. The big kid who chased after her. You must have seen them.”
Now he nodded. “North.”
“Well, I know which direction they went . . .”
“Don’t go after them.”
That brought me up short. “What do you mean?”
“It isn’t safe.”
“Nowhere is safe, Evan.”
His eyes were rolling back in his head. He was passing out. “There’s Grace.”
“What did you say? Grace? As in ‘Amazing Grace’ or what? What’s that mean, ‘There’s grace’?”
“Grace,” he murmured, and then he slipped away.
I STAYED WITH HIM till dawn. Sitting with him like he sat with me in the old farmhouse. He brought me to that place against my will and then my will brought him to this place, and maybe that meant we sort of owned each other. Or owed each other. Anyway, no debt is ever fully repaid, not really, not the ones that really matter. You saved me, he said, and back then I didn’t understand what I had saved him from. That was before he told me the truth about who he was, and afterward I thought he meant I had saved him from that whole human genocide, mass-murderer thing. Now I was thinking he didn’t mean I saved him from anything, but for something. The tricky part, the unanswerable part, the part that scared the crap out of me, was what that something might be.