I gently push Bear back into his chest. “And you need to keep him. I know you’ve outgrown him. I know you’re a soldier or commando or whatever now. But one day, maybe there’ll be a little kid who really needs Bear. Because . . . well, just because.”
I kneel at his feet. “So hang on to him, understand? You take care of him and protect him and don’t let anybody hurt him. Bear is very important to the grand scheme of things. He’s like gravity. Without him, the universe would fall apart.”
He stares at his big sister’s face for a long, silent moment. Memorize it, Sams. Study every bruised, scratched-up, scarred, crooked inch of it. So you don’t forget. So you never forget. Remember my face no matter what. No. Matter. What.
“That’s crazy, Cassie,” he says, and for an instant—and only an instant—the little boy is back, and I see in his now-face his then-face, hysterical with wonder and laughter, chasing rainbows.
60
RINGER
I HOP DOWN from the chopper. Zombie watches me sling the rucksack over my shoulder and says, “All done?”
“Done.”
“How many you got left?” Nodding at the bag.
“Five.”
He frowns. “Think it’ll be enough?”
“It’ll have to be. So, yes.”
“Time to go, then,” he says.
“Time to go.”
Our eyes meet. He knows what I’m thinking. “I won’t make that promise,” he says.
“You can’t come after me, Zombie.”
“I won’t make that promise,” he says again.
“And you can’t stay here. After the mothership drops the bombs, head south. Use the trackers I gave you. They won’t mask you from IR or hide you from Silencers, but—”
“Ringer.”
“I’m not finished.”
“I know what to do.”
“Remember Dumbo. Remember what coming after me cost. Some things you have to let go, Zombie. Some things—”
He grabs my face in both his hands and kisses me hard on the mouth.
“One smile,” he whispers. “One smile and I’ll let you go.”
My face in his hands and my hands on his hips. His forehead touching mine and the stars turning over us and the Earth beneath us, and time slipping, slipping.
“It wouldn’t be real,” I tell him.
“At this point, I don’t care.”
I push him away. Gently. “I still do.”
61
THE BOMBS HAVE BEEN LOADED. Time to load Bob.
“You think I’m not ready to die?” he asks me as I escort him to his seat.
“I know you’re not.”
I strap him in. Through the open hatch, I can see Sullivan with Zombie, and she’s trying very hard to stay composed. Cassie Sullivan is sentimental and immature and self-absorbed beyond belief, but even she knows we’re crossing a threshold that we can’t come back from.
“No plan,” she whispers to Zombie. She doesn’t want me to hear her and I don’t really want to. Vosch’s gift is a curse, too. “Nothing fated.”
“No meant-to-be,” Zombie says.
No plan. Nothing fated. No meant-to-be. Like a catechism or an affirmation of faith—or faith’s opposite.
She rises on her toes and kisses his cheek. “You know what I’m gonna say now.”
Zombie smiles. “He’ll be fine, Cassie.” He grabs her hand and squeezes hard. “With my life.”
Her response is immediate and fierce. “Not with your life, Parish. With your death.”
She notices me over his shoulder and pulls her hand away.
I nod. It’s time. I turn to our one-eyed pilot. “Boot her up, Bob.”
62
THE GROUND RECEDES. Zombie dwindles, becomes a black dot against gray earth. The road swivels to the right like the second hand of the terrestrial clock, marking the time that’s lost, the time that cannot be taken back. Turning north, climbing, the explosion of countless stars, and the burning center of the galaxy a backdrop for the mothership glowing phosphorescent green, its belly full of the bombs that will erase the last remaining footprint of civilization. How many cities in the world? Five thousand? Ten? I don’t know, but they do. In less than three hours, in the utter silence of the void, the bay doors will slide open and thousands of guided missiles carrying warheads no larger than a loaf of bread will vomit forth. A single orbit around the planet. After ten centuries, all we had built will be gone in a day.
The debris will settle. Rains will bathe the scorched and barren ground. Rivers will revert to their natural course. Forests and meadows and marsh and grasslands will reclaim what was cut and razed, filled and leveled and buried beneath tons of asphalt and concrete. Animal populations will explode. Wolves will return from the north and herds of bison, thirty million strong, will again darken the plains. It will be as if we never were, paradise reborn, and there is something ancient inside me, buried deep in the memory of my genes, that rejoices.