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Zombie, Cassie, and I mulled over what to do in the hallway. Zombie ordered everybody else to go hide in the diner across the street until he gave them the all-clear-- or until the hotel blew up.
Sam refused to go. Zombie got stern (the whole 'I'm sergeant and you'll do what I say' thing). Sam pouted and almost cried (the whole 'Megan was my friend and I'm a tough soldier' thing). Zombie reminded him that he was a soldier and a good soldier follows orders. Besides, if Sam stayed, who was going to protect Poundcake and Dumbo?
Dumbo looks at Zombie before he leaves. "I'm the medic." He'd figured out what the plan was. "I should do it, Sarge."
Zombie shook his head, not having it. "Get out of here."
Just like with Teacup back in Dayton, I tell Dumbo to make sure Sam gets to the diner. He nods. "I got this, Ghost."
And he's gone, leaving Cassie, Zombie, and I alone. We didn't really have a game plan. We could try and keep Megan alive, but might blow up doing so. Or we might kill her and blow up doing that. Either way, we're probably going to blow up.
Zombie looks at Cassie. "Well, I guess the big riddle's been answered, huh? What I don't get is why they didn't just waste us with a couple of Hellfire missiles. They know we're here."
"Not their style," she says.
"Style?" He asks.
"Hasn't it ever struck you how personal it's been—from the beginning? There's something about killing us that gets them off."
I snort. She's not wrong. She's thinking the exact same thing I have been. They have the power and technology to wipe us out without a second glance, but choose to make it slow and painful. It's like they enjoy it.
Zombie looks at Cassie. "Yeah. Well. I can see why you'd want to date one of them." Something flashes in Cassie's eyes and Zombie backtracks. "Who're we kidding, guys? There's nothing really to decide, except who's going to do it. Maybe we should flip a coin."
"Maybe it should be Dumbo. Didn't you tell me he trained in field surgery at the camp?"
Zombie and I glance at each other, frowning. "Surgery?" He asks. "You're kidding, right?"
"Well, how else are we . . . ?" Then she understood. I'm not sure she could accept it, but she understood. And she seemed insanely worried about how okay we were with this. But she doesn't understand how not okay we really are.
Zombie saw the look on her face and his chin dropped toward his chest. His face was red, out of anger and not so much the infection anymore.
"No, Ben. We can't do that."
He lifts his head. His hands are shaking. "I can."
I scoff. "No you can't."
Cassie glances at me, looks back at him. Zombie is swirling and maybe I am, too, but I'm the least of her worries right now. "No, you can't," she repeats, because obviously my words are not affecting him the way they should be.
"I didn't ask for this," he says. "I didn't ask for any of this!"
"Neither did she, Ben."
He leaned in close to her and I watched the burning intensity in his eyes. "I'm not worried about her. An hour ago, she didn't exist. Understand? She was nothing, literally nothing. I had you, and I had your little brother, and I had Ghost and Poundcake and Dumbo. She was theirs. She belongs to them. I didn't take her. I didn't trick her into getting on a bus and tell her she was perfectly safe and then stuff a bomb down her throat. This isn't my fault. It isn't my responsibility. My job is to keep my ass and both of your asses alive for as long as possible, and if that means somebody else who is nothing to me dies, then I guess that's what it means."
I turned away from him. It was getting hard to listen. This is Zombie, the guy who couldn't tell tiny Nugget his sister was dead, who wouldn't let me think that I wasn't worth the fight it took to have me, the stupid pretty boy with the pretty brown eyes that makes me want to cry when I see the not-so-well hidden torment in his eyes.
Cassie started crying again.
"That's it," he says. "Cry, Cassie. Cry for her. Cry for all the children. They can't hear you and they can't see you and they can't feel how really bad you feel, but cry for them. A tear for each of them, fill up the fucking ocean, cry.
"You know I'm right. You know I don't have a choice. And you know Ringer was right. It's about the risk. It's always been about the risk. And if one little girl has to die so six people can live, then that's the price. That's the price." He pushed past us and limped down the hall to the broken door, and we didn't move. We didn't speak.
There was a pleading look in Cassie's eyes, a wasted look that showed her morals breaking and her heart hardening into stone cold cement like my own. I can't let her go down that road. Cassie, the irritating blonde that killed that Crucifix Soldier and fell in love with a Silencer sent to kill her. Cassie, the one who knows when to take risks and when to stop taking them.
"He won't do it," I whisper, a sad attempt at easing her conscious. She's sitting on the ground, back pressed against the wall, knees pulled up tight against her chest, sad eyes looking up at me, wondering how I'm keeping so calm. "He won't, Cassie. He can't."
Cassie sniffles. "Didn't you hear him? He has to. The risk, Ghost. It's all about the risk."
"Well," I say, crossing my arms to keep myself in control. "He's never been good at taking risks, anyways."
"He took a risk to save my brother."
I look at her. A tear slips down my face before I can stop it. "He won't do it," I say again. "Trust me, Cassie. He won't. Not Zombie. Not him."
Before she can ask how I know that, Zombie comes out. He sat against the wall ten doors down. Cassie and I went to him after a long and silent minute. I start to wonder if he actually did it-- if he actually took a pillow and placed it over a child's head and smothered her. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did take the risk.
I sat on one side of him and Cassie sat on the other. He didn't look up. He rested his forearms on his upraised knees and bowed his head. My stomach swirled with nerves and my heart squeezed in my chest. Did he picture Sissy's face as he did it? Or maybe he pictured Teacup's, poor little Teacup and wherever the hell she ran off to.
Cassie looked at me and said to Zombie: "You're wrong." He twirled his hand: whatever. "She did belong to us. They all belong to us."
His head fell back against the wall. "Hear them? Those mother-effing rats."
"You and your mother-effing rats," I say, not making eye contact. I can't see how broken he must look. What he did. . .
"Ben, I think you need to go. Now. Don't wait till morning. Take Dumbo and Poundcake and Ghost and get to the caverns as fast as you can."
Zombie laughed, but this one seemed genuine. He looked at me for a very long time, a concerningly long time. Then he looked at Cassie. "I'm kind of busted up right now. Broke. I'm broke, Sullivan. And Walker is in no shape to do it."
"No shape to do what?"
"Cut the damn thing out. You're the only one here who has half a chance."
"You didn't . . . ?"
"I couldn't." He laughed again. His head broke the surface and he took a deep, life-giving breath. "I couldn't."
