A tiny lump beneath a mound of covers, brown eyes big and round and blank like the teddy bear’s pressed against his cheek. Teddy bears are for babies, he told me the first night at Hotel Hell. I’m a soldier now.
Burrowed in the bed next to his, another solemn, pint-sized soldier staring at me, the seven-year-old they call Teacup. The one with the adorable baby-doll face and haunted eyes who doesn’t share a bed with a stuffed animal; she sleeps with a rifle.
Welcome to the post-human age.
“Oh, Sam.” I left my post by the window and sat beside the cocoon of covers swaddling him. “Sammy, I didn’t know how—”
He slugged me in the cheek with a balled-up, apple-sized fist. I never saw it coming, in both meanings of the phrase. Bright stars exploded in my vision. For a second I was afraid he’d detached my retina.
Okay. Rubbing my cheek. I deserved that.
“Why did you let him die?” he demanded. He didn’t cry or scream. His voice was low and fierce, simmering with rage. “You were supposed to take care of him.”
“I didn’t let him die, Sams.”
My father bleeding, crawling in the dirt—Where are you going, Dad?—and Vosch standing over him, watching my father crawl the way a sadistic kid might a fly that he’s dewinged, grimly satisfied.
Teacup from her bed: “Hit her again.”
Sam snarled at her, “You shut up.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered, my arm wrapped around the bear.
“He was soft,” Teacup said. “That’s what happens when you go—”
Sam was on her in two seconds. Then it was all fists and knees and feet and dust flying from the blankets and Dear God, there’s a rifle in that bed! and I shoved Teacup away, scooped Sam into my arms, and held him tightly against my chest while he swung his arms and kicked his legs, spitting and gnashing his teeth, and Teacup was shouting obscenities at him and promising she’d put him down like a dog if he ever touched her again. The door flew open and Ben burst into the room wearing that ridiculous yellow hoodie.
“It’s cool!” I shouted over the screaming. “I’ve got this!”
“Cup! Nugget! Stand down!”
Like a switch being flipped, the minute Ben barked the order, both kids fell silent. Sam went limp. Teacup flopped against the headboard and folded her arms over her chest.
“She started it.” Sam pouted.
“I was just thinking of painting a big red X on the roof,” Ben said. He holstered his pistol. “Thanks, guys, for saving me the trouble.” He grinned at me. “Maybe Teacup should bunk in my room until Ringer gets back.”
“Good!” Teacup said. She jumped out of bed, marched to the door, turned on her heel, went back to the bed, grabbed the rifle, and yanked on Ben’s wrist. “Let’s go, Zombie.”
“In a minute,” he said gently. “Dumbo’s on the watch. Take his bed.”
“My bed now.” She couldn’t resist a parting shot: “A-holes.”
“You’re the a-hole!” Sammy shouted after her. The door slammed in that quick, violent way of hotel doors. “A-hole.”
Ben looked at me, right eyebrow cocked. “What happened to your face?”
“Nothing.”
“I hit her,” Sammy said.
“You hit her?”
“For letting my daddy die.”
Now Sam lost it. As in tears, not fists, and the next thing I knew, Ben was kneeling and my baby brother was crying in his arms, and Ben was saying, “Hey, it’s okay, soldier. It’s going to be okay.” Stroking the crew cut I was still getting used to—Sammy just didn’t seem like Sammy without the mop of hair—saying that dumb-ass camp name over and over. Nugget, Nugget. I knew it shouldn’t, but it bothered me that everyone had a nom de guerre but me. I liked Defiance.
Ben picked him up and deposited him in the bed. Then he found Bear lying on the floor and placed him on the pillow. Sam knocked him away. Ben picked him up again.
“You really want to decommission Teddy?” he asked.
“His name isn’t Teddy.”
“Private Bear,” Ben tried.
“Just Bear, and I never want to see him again!” Sam yanked the covers over his head. “Now go away! Everybody. Just. Go. Away!”
I took a step toward him. Ben tsked at me and jerked his head toward the door. I followed him out of the room. A large shadow hulked by the window down the hall: the big, silent kid named Poundcake, whose silence did not fall into the creepy category, more like the profound stillness of a mountain lake variety. Ben leaned against the wall, hugging Bear to his chest, mouth slightly open, sweating despite the freezing temperature. Exhausted after a tussle with a couple of kids, Ben was in trouble, which meant we all were.
“He didn’t know your dad was dead,” he said.
I shook my head. “He did and he didn’t. One of those things.”
“Yeah.” Ben sighed. “Those things.”
A lead ball of silence the size of Newark dropped between us. Ben was absently stroking Bear’s head like an old man strokes a cat while reading the newspaper.
“I should go back to him,” I said.
Ben sidestepped to the door, blocking my way. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t poke your nose into—”
“Not the first person in his life to die. He’ll deal.”
“Wow. That was harsh.” We’re talking about the guy who was my father, too, Zombie boy.
“You know what I meant.”
“Why do people always say that after they say something totally cruel?” Then I said it, because I may have certain issues with self-editing: “I happen to know what it’s like to ‘deal’ with death all by yourself. Just you and nothing else but the big empty of where everything used to be. It would have been nice, really, really nice, to have had someone there with me . . .”
“Hey,” Ben said softly. “Hey, Cassie, I didn’t—”
“No, you didn’t. You really didn’t.” Zombie. Because he didn’t have feelings, dead inside like a zombie? There were people at Ashpit like that. Shufflers, I called them, human-shaped sackfuls of dust. Something irreplaceable had crumbled inside. Too much loss. Too much pain. Shuffling, blank-eyed, slack-jawed mutterers. Was that Ben? Was he a shuffler? Then why did he risk everything to rescue Sam?