The Infinite Sea, Page 3

  The fiery green light is coming closer. Maybe he knows I’ve spotted him. It doesn’t matter. I caress the smooth metal of the trigger and watch the blob of light expand through the eyepiece. Maybe he thinks he’s out of range or is positioning himself for a better shot.

  Doesn’t matter.

  It might not be one of Sullivan’s silent assassins. It might be just some poor lost survivor hoping for rescue.

  Doesn’t matter. Only one thing matters anymore.

  The risk.

  5

  AT THE HOTEL, Sullivan told me a story about shooting a soldier behind some beer coolers and how bad she felt afterward.

  “It wasn’t a gun,” she tried to explain. “It was a crucifix.”

  “Why is that important?” I asked. “It could have been a Raggedy Ann doll or a bag of M&Ms. What choice did you have?”

  “I didn’t. That’s my point.”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody’s fault. You just want to feel bad so you’ll feel better.”

  “Bad so I feel better?” With a deep blush of anger spreading beneath her freckles. “That makes absolutely no friggin’ sense.”

  “‘I killed an innocent guy, but look how guilty I feel about it,’” I explained. “Guy’s still dead.”

  She stared at me for a long time. “Well. I see why Vosch wanted you for the team.”

  • • •

  The green blob of his head advances toward me, weaving through the trees, and now I can see the glint of a rifle through the languid snow. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a crucifix.

  Cradling my rifle, leaning my head against the tree as if I’m dozing or looking at the flakes float between the glistening bare branches, lioness in the tall grass.

  Fifty yards away. The muzzle velocity of a M16 is 3,100 feet per second. Three feet in a yard, which means he has two-thirds of a second left on Earth.

  Hope he spends it wisely.

  I swing the rifle around, square my shoulders, and let loose the bullet that completes the circle.

  The murder of crows rockets from the trees, a riot of black wings and hoarse, scolding cries. The green ball of light drops and doesn’t rise.

  I wait. Better to wait and see what happens next. Five minutes. Ten. No motion. No sound. Nothing but the thunderous silence of snow. The woods feel very empty without the company of the birds. With my back pressed against the tree, I slide up and hold still another couple of minutes. Now I can see the green glow again, on the ground, not moving. I step over the body of the dead recruit. Frozen leaves crackle beneath my boots.

  Each footstep measures out the time winding down. Halfway to the body, I realize what I’ve done.

  Teacup lies curled into a tight ball beside a fallen tree, her face covered in the crumbs of last year’s leaves.

  Behind a row of empty beer coolers, a dying man hugged a bloody crucifix to his chest. His killer didn’t have a choice. They gave her no choice. Because of the risk. To her. To them.

  I kneel beside her. Her eyes are wide with pain. She reaches for me with hands dark crimson in the gray light.

  “Teacup,” I whisper. “Teacup, what are you doing here? Where’s Zombie?”

  I scan the woods but don’t hear or see him or anyone else. Her chest heaves and frothy blood boils over her lips. She’s choking. I gently push her face toward the ground to clear her mouth.

  She must have heard me cursing. That’s how she found me, by my own voice.

  Teacup screams. The sound knifes through the stillness, bounces and ricochets off the trees. Unacceptable. I press my hand down hard over her bloody lips and tell her to hush. I don’t know who shot the kid I found, but whoever did it can’t be far. If the sound of my rifle doesn’t bring him back to investigate, her screaming will.

  Damn it, shut up. Shut up. What the hell are you doing out here, sneaking up on me like that, you little shit? Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Teeth scrape frantically against my palm. Tiny fingers seek my face. My cheeks painted with her blood. With my free hand, I tug open her jacket. I’ve got to compress the wound or she’ll bleed out.

  I grab the collar of her shirt and rip downward, exposing her torso. I wad up the remnant and press it just below her rib cage, against the bullet hole weeping blood. She jerks at my touch with a strangled sob.

  “What did I tell you about that, soldier?” I whisper. “What’s the first priority?”

  Slick lips slide over my palm. No words come out.

  “No bad thoughts,” I tell her. “No bad thoughts. No bad thoughts. Because bad thoughts make us go soft. They make us soft. Soft. Soft. And we can’t go soft. We can’t. What happens when we go soft?”

  The woods brim with menacing shadows. Deep in the trees, there’s a snapping sound. A boot crunching on the frozen ground? Or an ice-encrusted branch, splintering? We could be surrounded by a hundred enemies. Or zero.

  I race through our options. There aren’t many. And they all suck.

  First option: We stay. The problem is stay for what. The dead recruit’s unit is unaccounted for. Whoever killed the kid is also unaccounted for. And Teacup has no chance of surviving without medical attention. She has minutes, not hours.

  Second option: We run. The problem is where. The hotel? Teacup would bleed to death before we make it back, plus she may have taken off for a good reason. The caverns? Can’t risk going through Urbana, which means adding miles of open fields and many hours to a journey that ends at a place that probably isn’t safe, either.

  There’s a third option. The unthinkable one. And the only one that makes sense.

  The snow falls heavier, the gray deepens. I cup her face with one hand and press the other into the wound, but I know it’s hopeless. My bullet tore through her gut; the injury is catastrophic.

  Teacup is going to die.

  I should leave her. Now.

  But I don’t. I can’t. Like I told Zombie on the night Camp Haven blew, the minute we decide one person doesn’t matter, they’ve won, and now my words are the chain that binds me to her.

  I hold her in my arms in the awful dead stillness of the woods in snow.

  6

  I EASE HER DOWN onto the forest floor. Drained of all color, her face is only slighter darker than the snow. Her mouth hangs open, her eyelids flutter. She’s slipped into unconsciousness. I don’t think she’ll wake again.

  My hands are shaking. I’m struggling to keep it together. I’m pissed as hell at her, at myself, at the seven billion impossible dilemmas their arrival brought, at the lies and the maddening inconsistencies and all the ridiculous, hopeless, stupid unspoken promises that have been broken since they came.

  Don’t go soft. Think about what matters, right here, right now; you’re good at that.

  I decide to wait. It can’t be much longer. Maybe after she’s dead, the softness inside me will pass and I’ll be able to think clearly. Every uneventful minute means I still have time.

  But the world is a clock winding down, and there are no such things as uneventful minutes anymore.

  A heartbeat after I decide to stay with her, the percussive thrum of rotors shatters the silence. The sound of the choppers snaps the spell. Knowing what matters: besides shooting, the thing I’m best at.

  I can’t let them take Teacup alive.

  If they take her, they may be able to save her. And if they save her, they’ll run her through Wonderland. There’s the tiniest chance that Zombie’s still safe at the hotel. A chance that Teacup wasn’t running from anything, just snuck off to find me. One trip by either of us down the rabbit hole and everybody’s doomed.

  I pull my sidearm from the holster.

  The minute we decide . . . I wish I had a minute. I wish I had thirty seconds. Thirty seconds would be a lifetime. A minute would b
e an eternity.

  I level the gun at her head and lift up my face to the gray. Snow settles on my skin, where it quivers for a moment before melting.

  Sullivan had her Crucifix Soldier and now I have mine.

  No. I am the soldier. Teacup is the cross.

  7

  I FEEL HIM THEN, the one standing deep in the trees, motionless, watching me. I look, and then I see him, a lighter human-shaped shadow between the dark trunks. For a moment, neither of us moves. I know, without understanding how, that he is the one who shot the kid and the other members of his squad. And I know the shooter can’t be a recruit. His head does not glow in my eyepiece.

  The snow spins, the cold squeezes. I blink, and the shadow is gone. If the shadow was ever there.

  I’m losing my grip. Too many variables. Too much risk. Shaking uncontrollably, I wonder if they’ve finally broken me; after surviving the tsunami that took my home, the plague that took my family, the death camp that took my hope, the innocent little girl who took my bullet, I am terminal, done, finished, and was it ever in question, never if but always when?

  The choppers bear down. I have to finish what I started with Teacup or I’ll join her where she lies.

  I sight along the barrel of my pistol into the pale, angelic face at my feet, my victim, my cross.

  And the roar of the Black Hawks’ approach makes my thoughts seem like the tiny squeaking whimpers of a dying rodent.

  It’s like the rats, isn’t it, Cup? Just like the rats.

  8

  THE OLD HOTEL swarmed with vermin. The cold had killed off the cockroaches, but other pests survived, especially bedbugs and carpet beetles. And they were hungry. Within a day, all of us were covered with bites. The basement belonged to the flies, where corpses had been brought during the plague. By the time we checked in, most of the flies had died off. So many dead flies that their black husks crunched beneath our feet when we went down there the first day. That was also the last day we went into the basement.

  The entire building reeked of rot, and I told Zombie that opening the windows would help dissipate the smell and kill off some of the bugs. He said he’d rather get bit and gag than freeze to death. As he smiled to drench you in his irresistible charm. Relax, Ringer. It’s just another day in the alien wild.

  The bugs and the smell didn’t bother Teacup. It was the rats that drove her crazy. They had chewed their way into the walls, and at night their gnawing and scratching kept her (and therefore me) awake. She tossed and turned, whined and bitched and generally obsessed, because practically any other thoughts about our situation ended up in a bad place. In a vain attempt to distract her, I began teaching her chess, using a towel for a board and coins for the pieces.

  “Chess is a stupid game for stupid people,” she informed me.

  “No, it’s very democratic,” I said. “Smart people play, too.”

  Teacup rolled her eyes. “You want to play just so you can beat me.”

  “No, I want to because I miss playing it.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “That’s what you miss?”

  I spread the towel on the bed and positioned the coins. “Don’t decide how you feel about something before you try it.” I was around her age when I began. The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father’s study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

  “Pennies are pawns,” I told her. “Nickels are rooks, dimes are knights and bishops, quarters are kings and queens.”

  She shook her head. Ringer is an idiot. “How can dimes and quarters be both?”

  “Heads: knights and kings. Tails: bishops and queens.”

  The coolness of the ivory. The way the felt-covered bases slid over the polished wood, like whispered thunder crashing. My father’s face bent over the board, lean and unshaven, red-eyed and purse-lipped, encrusted with shadows. The sickly sweet smell of alcohol and fingers that thrummed like hummingbirds’ wings.

  It’s called the game of kings, Marika. Would you like to learn how to play?

  “It’s the game of kings,” I said to Teacup.

  “Well, I’m not a king.” She crossed her arms. So over me. “I like checkers.”

  “Then you’ll love chess. Chess is checkers on steroids.”

  My father tapping his chipped nails on the tabletop. The rats scratching inside the walls.

  “Here’s how the bishop moves, Teacup.”

  This is how the knight moves, Marika.

  She jammed a stale piece of gum into her mouth and chewed angrily as the dry shards crumbled. Minty breath. Whiskey breath. Scratch, scratch, tap, tap.

  “Give it a chance,” I begged her. “You’ll love it. I promise.”

  She grabbed the corner of the towel. “Here’s what I feel.” I saw it coming, but still flinched when she flung the towel and the coins exploded into the air. A nickel popped her in the forehead and she didn’t even blink.

  “Ha!” Teacup shouted. “I guess that’s checkmate, bitch!”

  Reacting without thinking, I slapped her. “Don’t ever call me that. Ever.”

  The cold made the slap more painful. Her bottom lip poked out, her eyes welled up, but she didn’t cry.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “No, I hate you, Ringer. I hate your fucking guts.”

  “Cussing doesn’t make you grown-up, you know.”

  “Then I guess I’m a baby. Shit, shit, shit! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She started to touch her cheek. She stopped herself. “I don’t have to listen to you. You aren’t my mother or my sister or anybody.”

  “Then why have you been latched on to me like a pilot fish since we left camp?”

  Now a tear did fall, a single drop that trailed down her scarlet cheek. She was so pale and thin, her skin as luminescent as one of my father’s chess pieces. I was surprised the slap hadn’t shattered her into a thousand bits. I didn’t know what to say or how to unsay what had been said, so I said nothing. Instead, I laid a hand on her knee. She pushed my hand away.

  “I want my gun back,” she said.

  “Why do you want your gun back?”

  “So I can shoot you.”

  “Then you’re definitely not getting your gun back.”

  “Can I have it back to shoot all the rats?”

  I sighed. “We don’t have enough bullets.”

  “Then we poison them.”

  “With what?”

  She threw up her hands. “Okay, so we set the hotel on fire and burn them all up!”

  “That’s a great idea, only we happen to be living here, too.”

  “Then they’re gonna win. Against us. A bunch of rats.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t follow her. “Win—how?”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief. Ringer the moron. “Listen to them! They’re eating it. And pretty soon we won’t be living here because there won’t be any here to live in!”

  “That’s not winning,” I pointed out. “They wouldn’t have a home, either.”

  “They’re rats, Ringer. They can’t think that far ahead.”

  Not just the rats, I thought that night after she finally fell asleep next to me. I listened to them inside the walls, chewing, scratching, screeching. Eventually, with the help of weather, insects, and time, the old hotel would collapse. In another hundred years, only the foundation would remain. In a thousand, nothing at all. Here or anywhere. It would be as if we had never existed. Who needs the kind of bombs used at Camp Haven when they can turn the elements themselves against us?

  Teacup was pressed tight against me. Even under mounds of
covers, the cold squeezed hard. Winter: a wave they didn’t have to engineer. The cold would kill off thousands more.

  Nothing that happens is insignificant, Marika, my father told me during one of my chess lessons. Every move matters. Mastery is in understanding how much each time, every time.

  It nagged at me. The problem of rats. Not Teacup’s problem. Not the problem with rats. The problem of rats.

  9

  I SEE THE CHOPPERS closing in through the leafless branches clothed in white, three black dots against the gray. I have seconds.

  Options:

  Finish Teacup and take my chances against three Black Hawks equipped with Hellfire missiles.

  Leave Teacup to be finished by them—or worse, saved.

  One last option: Finish both of us. A bullet for her. A bullet for me.

  I don’t know if Zombie is okay. I don’t know what—if anything—drove Teacup from the hotel. What I do know is our deaths may be his only chance to live.

  I will myself to squeeze the trigger. If I can fire the first round, the second will be much easier. I tell myself it’s too late—too late for her and too late for me. There’s no avoiding death, anyway. Isn’t that the lesson they’ve been hammering into our heads for months? No hiding from it, no running from it. Put it off for a day, and death will surely find you tomorrow.

  She looks so beautiful, not even real, nestled in a bower of snow, her dark hair shimmering like onyx, her expression in sleep the indescribable serenity of an ancient statue.

  I know that killing both of us is the only option with the least risk to the most people. And I think of rats again and how sometimes, to pass the interminable hours, Teacup and I would plot our campaign against the vermin, stratagems and tactics, waves of attack, each more ridiculous than the last, until she dissolved into hysterical laughter, and I gave her the same speech I gave Zombie on the firing range, the same lesson that now comes home to me, the fear that binds killer to prey and the bullet connecting both as if by a silver cord. Now I am the killer and the prey, a circle of a completely different kind, and my mouth has gone dry as the sterile air, my heart as cold: The temperature of true rage is absolute zero, and mine is deeper than the ocean, wider than the universe.