And those tickets don’t come cheap, I think while I watch my Sams put the finishing touches on a bomb.
Oh, Sam. Crayons and coloring books. Construction paper and glue. Teddy bears and footy pajamas, swing sets and storybooks and everything else we knew you’d leave behind, though not this soon, not this way. Oh, Sam, you have the face of a child but the eyes of an old man.
I was too late. I risked everything to rescue you from the end, but the end already had you.
I push myself to my feet. Everybody looks at me except Sam. He’s humming softly, slightly off-key. Theme music to build explosives by. He’s the happiest I’ve seen him in a long time.
“I need to talk to Sam,” I tell Ringer.
“That’s fine,” she says. “I can spare him.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission.”
I grab his wrist and pull him from the chamber, into the narrow corridor, up the path toward the surface until I’m sure they can’t hear us. Fairly sure, anyway. Ringer can probably hear a butterfly beating its wings in Mexico.
“What is it?” he asks, frowning, or maybe-frowning. I didn’t bring a light; I can barely see his face.
That’s a damn good question, kid. Once again, here I go, half-cocked and winging it. This should be a speech weeks in the making.
“You know I’m doing this for you,” I tell him.
“Doing what?”
“Leaving you.”
He shrugs. Shrugs! “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”
There it is: the invitation to a promise I cannot make. I take his hand and say, “Remember that summer you chased the rainbow?” He looks up at me, utterly baffled. “Well, maybe not. I think you were still in diapers. We were in the backyard and I had the sprayer. When the sunlight hit the water . . . you know, a rainbow. And I was making you chase it. Telling you to catch the rainbow . . .” I’m about to let loose with some waterworks of my own. “Kind of cruel when I think about it.”
“Why are you thinking about it, then?”
“I just don’t want . . . I don’t want you to forget things, Sam.”
“Things like what?”
“You need to remember it wasn’t always like this.” Making bombs and hiding in caves and watching everyone you know die.
“I remember things,” he argues. “I remember what Mommy looked like now.”
“You do?”
He nods emphatically. “I remembered right before I shot that lady.”
Something in my expression must give me away. I’m guessing a mixture of shock and horror and a sadness that has no bottom. Because he turns on his heel and barrels back to the weapons chamber only to return after a minute with Bear in his arms.
Oh, that goddamned bear.
“No, Sams,” I whisper.
“He brought you luck last time.”
“He’s . . . he’s Megan’s now.”
“No, he’s mine. He’s always been mine.” Holding him out to me.
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.