He flings the rifle away. It sails a hundred yards, arching over the road into the field beyond. He seizes me by the throat and hauls me into the air. My toes leave the ground. His head turns: the curious crow, the alert owl.
Against the next attack there is no defense. His consciousness lances into me, a savage thrust that rips into my mind with such force that my autonomic system shuts down. I am plunged into darkness absolute. No sound, no sight, no sensation. His mind chews through mine, and what I feel in him is a hatred wider than the universe, pure rage and utter disgust and, weird as it sounds, envy.
“Ahhhh,” he sighs. “Who do you seek? Not the ones who were lost. A little girl, a sad, soulful boy. They died that you might live. Yes? Yes. Oh, how lonely you are. How empty!”
I’m holding Teacup against me in the old hotel, fighting to keep her warm. Razor is holding me in the bowels of the base, fighting to keep me alive. It’s a circle, Zombie, bound by fear.
“But there is another,” the priest murmurs. “Hmmm. Do you know? Have you discovered it yet?”
His soft chuckle is cut short. I know why. There’s no guessing: We are one. He’s dredged up Constance and that stupid, vapid soccer-mom smile.
He flings me away like he flung the rifle—disdainfully, a useless piece of human-made garbage. The hub prepares my body for impact. There’s plenty of time for that while I sail through the air.
I smash into the rotten porch railing of the white farmhouse. The wood explodes with a loud wallop as the old boards crack beneath me. I lie still. The world spins.
Worse than the physical beating, though, was the pummeling of my mind. I can’t think. Fragmented, disconnected images explode into being, fade, bloom again. Zombie’s smile. Razor’s eyes. Teacup’s scowl. Then Vosch’s face, cut from stone, massive as a mountain, and the eyes that pierce to the very bottom, that see everything, that know me.
I roll onto my side. My stomach heaves. I throw up on the porch steps until there’s nothing left in my stomach, and then I throw up some more.
You have to get up, Ringer. If you don’t get up, Zombie’s lost.
I try to stand. I fall.
I try to sit up. I keel over.
The Silencer priest felt them inside me—I thought they were gone, I thought I had lost them, but you never lose those who love you, because love is a constant; love endures.
Someone’s arms are lifting me up: Razor’s.
Someone’s hands steady me: Teacup’s.
Someone’s smile is giving me hope: Zombie’s.
I should have told him when I had the chance how much I love the way he smiles.
I rise.
Razor lifting, Teacup steadying, Zombie smiling.
You know what you do when you can’t stand up and march, soldier? Vosch asks. You crawl.
26
ZOMBIE
NORTH OF URBANA, the old highway cuts through farm country, the fallow fields on either side glowing silver-gray in the brilliant starlight, the burned-out shells of the farmhouses black freckles against the sheen. The caverns lie nine miles as the crow flies to the northeast, but I’m no crow; I’m not leaving this highway and risking getting lost. If I keep up the pace without stopping to rest, I should reach the target before dawn.
That’ll be the easy part.
Superhuman assassins who can look like anyone—for example, a sweet, hymn-singing senior citizen. Little kids who wander near encampments and hideouts with bombs embedded in their throats. Doesn’t exactly encourage hospitality to strangers.
There’ll be sentries, hidden bunkers, snipers’ nests, maybe a vicious German shepherd or a Doberman or two, trip wires, booby traps. The enemy has blown apart the fundamental glue that binds us together, turning every outsider into the intolerable other. That’s funny, the sick type of funny: After the aliens arrived, we became aliens.
Which means the odds of them shooting me on sight are pretty high. Like in the 99.9 percent neighborhood.
Oh, well. YOLO, right?
I’ve looked at the little map printed on the back of the brochure so many times, it’s burned into my memory like an afterimage. US 68 north to SR 507. SR 507 east to SR 245. Then a half mile north and you’re there. Easy-peasy, no problemo. Three to four hours quick-stepping on an empty stomach with no rest or sleep and sunrise coming.
I’ll need time to reconnoiter. I have no time. I’ll need a game plan of how to approach a hostile sentry. I have no plan. I’ll need the right words to convince them I’m one of the good guys. I have no words. All I’ve got is my winning personality and a killer smile.