I spit the blood from my mouth. “My name is Ringer.”
“Where are you from?”
“Well, I was born in San Francisco—”
He kicks me in the ribs. Not full force. Full force would have punctured a lung or burst my spleen. He doesn’t want to kill me—not yet.
“Why are you here?”
I look into his eyes and answer, “To kill you.”
He flings the rifle away. It sails a
hundred yards, arching over the road into the field beyond. He seizes me by the throat and hauls me into the air. My toes leave the ground. His head turns: the curious crow, the alert owl.
Against the next attack there is no defense. His consciousness lances into me, a savage thrust that rips into my mind with such force that my autonomic system shuts down. I am plunged into darkness absolute. No sound, no sight, no sensation. His mind chews through mine, and what I feel in him is a hatred wider than the universe, pure rage and utter disgust and, weird as it sounds, envy.
“Ahhhh,” he sighs. “Who do you seek? Not the ones who were lost. A little girl, a sad, soulful boy. They died that you might live. Yes? Yes. Oh, how lonely you are. How empty!”
I’m holding Teacup against me in the old hotel, fighting to keep her warm. Razor is holding me in the bowels of the base, fighting to keep me alive. It’s a circle, Zombie, bound by fear.
“But there is another,” the priest murmurs. “Hmmm. Do you know? Have you discovered it yet?”
His soft chuckle is cut short. I know why. There’s no guessing: We are one. He’s dredged up Constance and that stupid, vapid soccer-mom smile.
He flings me away like he flung the rifle—disdainfully, a useless piece of human-made garbage. The hub prepares my body for impact. There’s plenty of time for that while I sail through the air.
I smash into the rotten porch railing of the white farmhouse. The wood explodes with a loud wallop as the old boards crack beneath me. I lie still. The world spins.
Worse than the physical beating, though, was the pummeling of my mind. I can’t think. Fragmented, disconnected images explode into being, fade, bloom again. Zombie’s smile. Razor’s eyes. Teacup’s scowl. Then Vosch’s face, cut from stone, massive as a mountain, and the eyes that pierce to the very bottom, that see everything, that know me.
I roll onto my side. My stomach heaves. I throw up on the porch steps until there’s nothing left in my stomach, and then I throw up some more.
You have to get up, Ringer. If you don’t get up, Zombie’s lost.
I try to stand. I fall.
I try to sit up. I keel over.
The Silencer priest felt them inside me—I thought they were gone, I thought I had lost them, but you never lose those who love you, because love is a constant; love endures.
Someone’s arms are lifting me up: Razor’s.
Someone’s hands steady me: Teacup’s.
Someone’s smile is giving me hope: Zombie’s.
I should have told him when I had the chance how much I love the way he smiles.
I rise.
Razor lifting, Teacup steadying, Zombie smiling.
You know what you do when you can’t stand up and march, soldier? Vosch asks. You crawl.
26
ZOMBIE