He wrapped her in a clean sheet and carried her body into the backyard. He doused the body with his father’s charcoal lighter fluid and set it on fire. He burned his mother’s body and all the bedding, too. He waited another week for his baby brother to come home, but he never did. He searched for him—and for food. He found food, but not his brother. He stopped calling for him. He stopped talking altogether. He shut up.
Six weeks later, he was walking down a highway dotted with stalled-out cars and wrecks of cars and trucks and motorcycles when he saw black smoke in the distance and, after a few minutes, the source of the smoke, a yellow school bus full of children. There were soldiers on the bus and the soldiers asked his name and where he was from and how old he was, and later he remembered nervously stuffing his hands in his pockets and finding the old piece of cake, still in its wrapper.
Pig lard. Live till winter on your belly fat.
What’s the matter, kid? Can’t you talk?
His drill sergeant heard the story of how he came to camp with nothing but the clothes on his back and a piece of cake in his pocket. Before he heard the story, the drill sergeant called him Fatboy. After he heard the story, the drill sergeant renamed him Poundcake.
I like you, Poundcake. I like the fact that you’re a born shooter. I bet you popped out of your momma with a gun in one hand and a doughnut in the other. I like the fact that you got the looks of Elmer Fudd and the goddamned heart of Mufasa. And I especially like the fact that you don’t talk. Nobody knows where you’re from, where you’ve been, what you think, how you feel. Hell, I don’t know and I don’t give a shit, and you shouldn’t, either. You’re a mute-assed, stone-cold killer from the heart of darkness with a heart to match, aren’t you, Private Poundcake?
He wasn’t.
Not yet.
31
THE FIRST THING I planned to do when he woke up was kill him.
If he woke up.
Dumbo wasn’t sure that would happen. “He’s messed up bad,” he told me after we stripped him down and Dumbo got a good look at the damage. Stabbed in one leg, shot in the other, covered in burns, bones broken, shaking with a high fever—though we piled covers on him, Evan still shook so violently that it looked like the bed was vibrating.
“Sepsis,” Dumbo muttered. He noticed me staring dumbly at him and added, “When the infection gets into your bloodstream.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Antibiotics.”
“Which we don’t have.”
I sat on the other bed. Sam scooted to the foot, clutching the empty pistol. He refused to give it up. Ben was leaning on the wall, cradling his rifle and eyeing Evan warily, like he was sure any second Evan would bolt out of bed and make another attempt to take us out.
“He didn’t have a choice,” I told Ben. “How could he just stroll up in the dark without somebody shooting him?”
“I want to know where Poundcake and Teacup are,” Ben said through gritted teeth.
Dumbo told him to get off his feet. He’d repacked the bandages, but Ben had lost a lot of blood. Ben waved him away. He pushed himself from the wall, limped to Evan’s bedside, and whacked him across the cheek with the back of his hand.
“Wake up!” Whack. “Wake up, you son of a bitch!”
I shot from the bed and grabbed Ben’s wrist before he could pop Evan again.
“Ben, this won’t—”
“Fine.” He yanked his arm away and lurched toward the door. “I’ll find them myself.”
“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.
32
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.”