As I fall in behind a cluster of recruits crowding the door into the first building, Ringer sets off the second bomb. Somebody yells Jesus Christ! and the logjam breaks. We all tumble inside like clowns bursting from the car at the circus.
There’s a part of me that hopes I find him first. Not Evan. Ringer’s creator. I’ve invested a lot of time imagining what I’d do to him—how I’d pay him back for the blood of the seven billion. Most of it’s too gross to talk about.
I’m moving through the lobby of the main administration building. Huge banners hang from the ceiling: WE ARE HUMANITY and WE ARE ONE. A sign that says UNITY and another that screams COURAGE. The largest spans the length of an entire wall, VINCIT QUI PATITUR. I run beneath it.
A red light spins in the corridor on the other side of the lobby. I jump when a voice booms from the ceiling: “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. REPEAT: GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA. REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT . . .”
Through the door at the end of the hall. Up the stairs straight ahead to the next door. Which is locked. With a keypad. I press my back against the wall beside the pad and wait. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three . . . While I’m counting, the third bomb detonates outside, a muffled pop! like someone coughing in another room. Then I hear the pop-pop, pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire. At one thousand eight, the door bursts open and a squad lumbers through. Right past me, not even a backward glance. Now, that’s too easy; I’m using up my quota of good luck way too soon.
I duck through the doorway and jog down another corridor, which is disconcertingly identical to the first corridor. Same spinning red light, same high-pitched UUUH-UHHH of the siren, same annoying Siri-on-dope voice, “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA . . .” It’s like a dream from which you can’t wake up. At the end of this hall is an identical door with an identical keypad. The only difference is the window right beside this door.
I open up with the M16 at full stride. The glass explodes and I dive through the blasted-out opening without missing a step. And Defiance shall be my name! Back outside in the fresh, clean Canadian air, running across the narrow strip of land that separates the buildings. A voice springs from the dark, hollering, “Halt!” I fire in the voice’s general direction. I don’t even look. Then, off to my left, in the vicinity of the newly repaired armory, the fourth bomb detonates. A chopper roars right over my head, sweeping its lights back and forth, and I slam into the side of the building and press my body flat against the steel-reinforced concrete.
The chopper moves off and I move on, around the side of the building to the sliver of a path that cuts down its length, wall on one side, a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire on the other. There should be a padlocked gate at the far end.
So the lock—I shoot it off, I said to Ringer back in the caves.
That only works in the movies, Sullivan.
Yeah, you’re right: It’s good this isn’t a movie, or the hectoring, self-important, annoying secondary character would definitely be dead by now.
“THIS IS NOT A DRILL. GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES TO REPORT . . .”
All right already, I get it. General Order Four is in effect. What the hell is General Order Four? Ringer never mentioned anything about general orders, four or otherwise. It must mean a lockdown of the base, all hands to battle stations, that kind of thing. That’s what I decide. Anyway, what they do doesn’t change what I have to do.
I jam a grenade into the diamond-shaped hole in the chain link, right above the lock, pull the pin, then hustle back the way I came, far enough not to get killed by the shrapnel, but not far enough to escape being peppered by a thousand tiny needles. If I hadn’t turned away at the last second, my face would have been shredded. The largest piece hits right in the middle of my back, wasp-sting sharp times ten. My left hand got a taste, too. I look down and see a wet glove of blood glistening in the starlight.
The grenade didn’t just take out the lock; it blew the entire gate from its hinges. It’s halfway across the courtyard, right next to the statue of some war hero from the days when wars had heroes. You know, the good ol’ days when we slaughtered each other for all the right reasons.
I trot toward the building on the other side of the courtyard. There are three doors evenly spaced along the wall facing me, and out of one, two, or all of them I can expect a welcoming committee, according to Ringer. I’m not disappointed. The middle door flies open right before my second grenade flies toward it and, predictively, somebody yells, “Grenade!” They slam the door closed—with the grenade inside.
The blast hurls the entire door toward my head. I dive out of the way. This is where it gets hard, Ringer said. There’s gonna be blood.
How much blood?
How much can you take?
What are you, my sensei or something? How many 5th Wavers am I going to have to kill?
As it turns out, at least three. I count that many semiautomatic rifles lying on the other side of the missing door, but it’s an educated guess. Hard to tell when the troops have been blown to pieces. I slip through the mess and sprint down the hall, leaving bloody boot prints in my wake.
Red light. Siren. Voice. “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO REPORT . . .” Somewhere on the base, the next bomb goes off, meaning two things: Ringer’s still at large, and she’s got one bomb left. I’m a building away from the command center, beneath which is the bunker that houses the Wonderland room. It’s also, as Ringer pointed out numerous times, a dead end. If we get trapped or cornered, there won’t be any vinciting to our patituring.