I could be wrong. Maybe we’re alone, me and this dead kid. The more seconds that slip by, the safer I feel. If someone is watching, I can think of only one reason why he’d hold the shot: He’s waiting to see if any more idiotic kids playing soldier show up.
I finish my breakfast and slip the pellet back into my mouth. The minutes crawl. One of the most disorienting things about the invasion—after watching everyone you know and love die in horrible ways—was how time slowed down as events sped up. Ten thousand years to build civilization, ten months to tear it down, and each day lasted ten times longer than the one before, and the nights lasted ten times as long as the days. The only thing more excruciating than the boredom of those hours was the terror of knowing that any minute they could end.
Midmorning: The mist lifts and the snow begins to fall in flakes smaller than crows’ eyes. There’s not a breath of wind. The woods are draped in a dreamlike, glossy white glow. As long as the snow stays this light, I’m good till dark.
If I don’t fall asleep. I haven’t slept in over twenty hours, and I feel warm and comfortable and slightly spacy.
In the gossamer stillness, my paranoia ratchets up. My head is perfectly centered in his crosshairs. He’s high in the trees; he’s lying motionless like a lion in the brush. I’m a puzzle to him. I should be panicking. So he holds his fire, allowing the situation to develop. There must be some reason I’m hanging out here with a corpse.
But I don’t panic. I don’t bolt like a frightened gazelle. I am more than the sum of my fear.
It isn’t fear that will defeat them. Not fear or faith or hope or even love, but rage.
Fuck you, Sullivan said to Vosch. It’s the only part of her story that impressed me. She didn’t cry. She didn’t pray. She didn’t beg.
She thought it was over, and when it’s over, when the clock has wound to the final second, the time for crying, praying, and begging is over.
“Fuck you,” I whisper. Saying the words makes me feel better. I say them again, louder. My voice carries far in the winter air.
A flutter of black wings deep in the trees to my right, the petulant squawking of the crows, and through my eyepiece, a tiny green dot sparkling among the brown and white.
Found you.
The shot will be tough. Tough, not impossible. I’d never handled a firearm in my life until the enemy found me hiding in the rest stop outside Cincinnati, brought me to their camp, and placed a rifle in my hand, at which point the drill sergeant wondered aloud if command had slipped a ringer into the unit. Six months later, I put a bullet into that man’s heart.
I have a gift.
The fiery green light is coming closer. Maybe he knows I’ve spotted him. It doesn’t matter. I caress the smooth metal of the trigger and watch the blob of light expand through the eyepiece. Maybe he thinks he’s out of range or is positioning himself for a better shot.
Doesn’t matter.
It might not be one of Sullivan’s silent assassins. It might be just some poor lost survivor hoping for rescue.
Doesn’t matter. Only one thing matters anymore.
The risk.
5
AT THE HOTEL, Sullivan told me a story about shooting a soldier behind some beer coolers and how bad she felt afterward.
“It wasn’t a gun,” she tried to explain. “It was a crucifix.”
“Why is that important?” I asked. “It could have been a Raggedy Ann doll or a bag of M&Ms. What choice did you have?”
“I didn’t. That’s my point.”
I shook my head. “Sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody’s fault. You just want to feel bad so you’ll feel better.”
“Bad so I feel better?” With a deep blush of anger spreading beneath her freckles. “That makes absolutely no friggin’ sense.”
“‘I killed an innocent guy, but look how guilty I feel about it,’” I explained. “Guy’s still dead.”
She stared at me for a long time. “Well. I see why Vosch wanted you for the team.”
• • •
The green blob of his head advances toward me, weaving through the trees, and now I can see the glint of a rifle through the languid snow. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a crucifix.
Cradling my rifle, leaning my head against the tree as if I’m dozing or looking at the flakes float between the glistening bare branches, lioness in the tall grass.
Fifty yards away. The muzzle velocity of a M16 is 3,100 feet per second. Three feet in a yard, which means he has two-thirds of a second left on Earth.
Hope he spends it wisely.
I swing the rifle around, square my shoulders, and let loose the bullet that completes the circle.
The murder of crows rockets from the trees, a riot of black wings and hoarse, scolding cries. The green ball of light drops and doesn’t rise.
I wait. Better to wait and see what happens next. Five minutes. Ten. No motion. No sound. Nothing but the thunderous silence of snow. The woods feel very empty without the company of the birds. With my back pressed against the tree, I slide up and hold still another couple of minutes. Now I can see the green glow again, on the ground, not moving. I step over the body of the dead recruit. Frozen leaves crackle beneath my boots.
Each footstep measures out the time winding down. Halfway to the body, I realize what I’ve done.
Teacup lies curled into a tight ball beside a fallen tree, her face covered in the crumbs of last year’s leaves.
Behind a row of empty beer coolers, a dying man hugged a bloody crucifix to his chest. His killer didn’t have a choice. They gave her no choice. Because of the risk. To her. To them.