I freeze. I’m totally exposed. No place to take cover. The blob grows larger, edging along the front of the welcome center now. I rise to my elbows and sight him through the scope of the M16. He’s such a little guy that at first I think he’s a kid.
Black pants, black shirt, and a collar that in better days was white.
Looks like I’ve found the owner of the crucifix.
I should probably shoot him before he sees me.
Oh, how stupid. What a dumb idea. Shoot him and you’ll have the whole encampment on your ass. Fire only if you’re fired upon. You’re here to save people, remember?
The man in black with the green blobby head disappears around the corner of the building. I count the seconds. When I reach 120 and he hasn’t reappeared, I high-crawl it to the nearest tree, where I brush the dead grass and dirt from my face and try to collect my breath and my thoughts, in that order. I do better on the breath part.
I’m getting now why Vosch passed over Ringer to promote me to squad leader. She was definitely the wiser choice: smarter than me, a better shot, sharper instincts. But I got the nod instead because I had one thing that she didn’t: blind loyalty to the cause, and unflinching faith in its leader. Okay, that’s actually two things. Whatever. My point is that faith trumps smarts every time. Guts beat brains. At least that’s true if you want an army of misguided, suicidal buffoons willing to sacrifice their lives so the enemy doesn’t have to.
Can’t hide here forever. And I didn’t leave Dumbo behind so he could die while I hid with my thumb up my ass waiting for an idea to spring forth in this Cro-Magnon brain I’ve been blessed with.
What I really need, I decide, is a hostage.
Of course, that idea comes five minutes after the perfect candidate disappears.
I peek around the tree toward the welcome center. Nothing. I haul ass to the closest tree, stop, drop, peek. Nothing. Two trees later and about fifty yards closer, I still don’t see him. He probably just found a private place to take a leak. Or he’s already below, safe and warm and telling Ringer all’s clear topside while he gently rocks Teacup to sleep.
I’ve been having fantasies about these caves since Ringer left, minus the priest, in which she and Teacup stay warm and dry and well-fed throughout this endless goddamned winter. I think about what I’ll say when I finally see her. What she’ll say to me. How the perfectly dropped phrase might finally make her smile. There’s a part of me that’s convinced this everlasting war will end when I coax a smile out of that girl.
Okay, I decide, forget the priest. That welcome center has to be manned. I might end up with half a dozen hostages instead of one, but beggars can’t be choosers. I need to get into those caves ASAP.
I scan the terrain, plot my route, mentally rehearse the assault. I have one flash grenade left. I have the element of surprise. Surprise is good. I have my rifle and Dumbo’s sidearm. Probably will not be enough. I’ll be outgunned, which means I will die. Which means Dumbo will die.
There’s a single window facing me. I’ll smash it with the butt of my rifle, toss the grenade, and then hoof it around the building to the front door. Six seconds, tops. They won’t know what hit them.
That’ll be my story, anyway, when I tell my grandkids about this day: I was so focused on the window, I forgot to look where I was going.
I wish I had another explanation for how I fell into that damn hole, six feet wide and twice as deep, a hole you couldn’t miss, even in the dark, not only because of its size but because of what it contained.
Bodies.
Hundreds of bodies.
Big bodies, little bodies, medium-sized bodies. Clothed bodies, half-clothed bodies, naked bodies. Freshly dead bodies and bodies not-so-freshly dead. Whole bodies and body parts and parts that used to be inside bodies but no longer were.
I went down to my hips into the slimy, reeking mass, and my feet found no bottom—I just kept . . . sinking. Nothing to grab hold of except bodies, which slid down with me. I came face-to-face with a fresh one as I sank—like a really fresh one, a woman in her thirties, her blond hair caked in dirt and blood, two black eyes, one cheek swollen to the size of my fist, her skin still pink, her lips plump. She couldn’t have been more than a few hours dead.
I twist away. I’d rather face a dozen rotted faces than one that looks that alive.
I’m shoulder-deep by this point and still being sucked under. I’m going to be suffocated by human remains. I’m going to drown in death. It’s so ridiculously metaphorical, I nearly bust out laughing.
That’s when the fingers lock around my neck.
Then her definitely-not-corpse-cold lips against my ear: “Don’t make a sound, Ben. Play dead.”
Ben? I try to turn my head. No way. Her grip is too strong.
“We’ve got one shot,” the voice whispers. “So don’t move. It knows where we are now and it’s coming.”
27
A SHADOW RISES at the pit’s edge, silhouetted against the blaze of stars overhead, a small figure, its head cocked to one side, listening. I don’t even think about it: I hold my breath and go limp, watching him through slitted lids. He’s holding a familiar-looking object in his right hand. A KA-BAR combat knife, standard issue to all recruits.
The woman’s fingers loosen on my throat. She’s gone limp, too. Who do I trust? Her, him, neither?
Thirty seconds pass, a minute, pushing two. I don’t move. She doesn’t move. He doesn’t move. I won’t be able to hold my breath—or put off the decision—much longer. I’ll have to take either a breath or a shot—at somebody. But my arms are entangled with dead ones, and anyway, I lost the rifle when I fell. I don’t even know where it landed.