I wasn’t holding up well. He was too deep, there was too much pressure, I couldn’t breathe.
“That’s it,” he said bitterly. “Cry, Cassie. Cry for her. Cry for all the children. They can’t hear you and they can’t see you and they can’t feel how really bad you feel, but cry for them. A tear for each of them, fill up the f**king ocean, cry.
“You know I’m right. You know I don’t have a choice. And you know Ringer was right. It’s about the risk. It’s always been about the risk. And if one little girl has to die so six people can live, then that’s the price. That’s the price.”
He pushed past me and limped down the hall to the broken door, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. I didn’t lift a finger or frame an argument to stop him. I’d reached the end of words, and gestures seemed pointless.
Stop him, Evan. Please, stop him, because I can’t.
In the safe room underground, their faces lifted up to me, and my silent prayer, my hopeless promise: Climb onto my shoulders, climb onto my shoulders, climb onto my shoulders.
He wouldn’t shoot her. Because of the risk. He’d smother her. Place a pillow over her face and press until he didn’t need to press anymore. He wouldn’t leave her body there: the risk. He would carry it outside, but he wouldn’t bury it or burn it: the risk. He would take it far into the woods and toss it on the frozen ground like so much trash for the buzzards and crows and insects. The risk.
I sank down the wall and drew my knees to my chest, ducked my head, and covered it up with my arms. I stopped my ears. I closed my eyes. And there was Vosch’s finger slamming down on the button, Ben’s hands holding the pillow, my finger on the trigger. Sam, Megan. The Crucifix Soldier. And Ringer’s voice, speaking out of the silent dark: Sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody’s fault.
And when Ben came out, all torn up and empty, I would get up and I would go to him and I would comfort him. I would take the hand that murdered a child and we would grieve for ourselves and the choices we made that weren’t choices at all.
Ben came out. He sat against the wall ten doors down. After a minute, I got up and went to him. He didn’t look up. He rested his forearms on his upraised knees and bowed his head. I sat next to him.
“You’re wrong,” I said. He twirled his hand: Whatever. “She did belong to us. They all belong to us.”
His head fell back against the wall. “Hear them? Those mother-effing rats.”
“Ben, I think you need to go. Now. Don’t wait till morning. Take Dumbo and Poundcake and get to the caverns as fast as you can.” Maybe Ringer could help him. He listened to her, always seemed a little intimidated by her, even awed.
He laughed from a spot deep in his gut. “I’m kind of busted up right now. Broke. I’m broke, Sullivan.” He looked at me. “And Walker is in no shape to do it.”
“No shape to do what?”
“Cut the damn thing out. You’re the only one here who has half a chance.”
“You didn’t . . . ?”
“I couldn’t.”
He laughed again. His head broke the surface and he took a deep, life-giving breath.
“I couldn’t.”
40
THE ROOM WHERE she lay was colder than a walk-in freezer, and Evan was sitting up now, watching me as I walked in. A pillow on the floor where Ben had dropped it, and me picking it up and sitting at the foot of Evan’s bed. Our breaths congealing and our hearts beating and the silence thickening between us.
Until I said, “Why?”
And he said, “To blow apart what remains. To break the final, unbreakable bond.”
I hugged the pillow to my chest and rocked slowly back and forth. Cold. So cold.
“No one can be trusted,” I said. “Not even a child.” The cold bored down to my bones and curled inside the marrow. “What are you, Evan Walker? What are you?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I told you.”
I nodded. “Yes, you did. Mr. Great White Shark. I’m not, though. Not yet. We’re not going to kill her, Evan. I’m going to pull it out, and you’re going to help me.”
He didn’t argue. He knew better.
Ben helped me gather the supplies before he left to join the others in the diner across the parking lot. Washcloth. Towels. A can of air freshener. Dumbo’s field kit. We said good-bye at the stairway door. I told him to be careful, there were some slippery rat guts on the way down.
“I lost it back there,” he said, lowering his eyes and scrubbing his foot across the carpet like an embarrassed little boy caught in a lie. “That wasn’t cool.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
He smiled. “Sullivan . . . Cassie . . . in case you don’t . . . I wanted to tell you . . .”
I waited. I didn’t push him.
“They made a major mistake,” he blurted out, “the dumb bastards, when they didn’t start by killing you first.”
“Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone’s ever given me.”
I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth.
“You know,” I whispered, “a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that.”
He shook his head. “Not worth it.” And, for one–ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.
“Get out of here,” I told him. “And if you let anything happen to my little brother, I’ll hunt you down like a dog.”
“I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”
He disappeared into the absolute dark of the stairwell.
I went back to the room. I couldn’t do this. I had to do this. Evan scooted back in the bed until his butt touched the headboard. I slid my arms beneath Megan and slowly lifted her, turned, and then lowered her carefully onto Evan, leaning her head back into his lap. I picked up the spray can of air freshener (A Delicate Blend of Essences!) and saturated the washcloth. My hands were shaking. No way could I do this. No way I couldn’t.