Rick Yancey - The Infinite Sea

“Well, it’s obvious,” Ben said. “They must have a way of knowing you’re here. Right? Otherwise, you run the risk of taking out your own players.”

“If they knew I was here, there would be no need for a test. They suspect I’m here.”

Then I got it. And getting it did not bring me any comfort.

“Ringer.”

Ben’s head whipped toward me. The slightest breath of wind would have toppled him from his perch.

“She’s been captured,” I said. “Or Teacup. Or both.” I turned to Evan, because the look on Ben’s face was too much to bear.

“That makes the most sense,” Evan agreed.

“Bullshit! Ringer would never give us up,” Ben barked at him.

“Not willingly,” Evan said.

“Wonderland,” I breathed. “They’ve downloaded her memories…”

Ben came off the sill then, lost his balance, staggered forward, knocked against the edge of Sammy’s bed. He was shaking, and not from the cold. “Oh no. No, no, no. Ringer has not been captured. She’s safe and Teacup’s safe and we are not going there…”

“No,” Evan said. “We’re already there.”

I slid out of the chair and went to Ben. One of those moments when you know you have to do something but you have no idea what. “Ben, he’s right. The reason we’re alive right now is the same reason they sent Megan.”

“What is it with you?” Ben demanded. “You buy into everything he says like he’s Moses come down from the mountaintop. If they think he’s here, for whatever reason, then they know he’s a traitor and would still send us packing to Dubuque.”

Everybody looked at Dumbo, waiting for it.

“They don’t want to kill me,” Evan said finally. He had a sad, sick look on his face.

“That’s right, I forgot,” Ben said. “That would be me.” He pulled away from me and shuffled back to the window, leaned his hands on the sill and studied the night sky. “Stay here, we’re done. Bug out, we’re done. We’re like five-year-olds playing chess with Bobby Fischer.” He swung back around to Evan. “You could have been spotted by a patrol, followed here.” He pointed at the baggie. “That doesn’t mean they have Ringer or Cup. All it means is we’re out of time. Can’t hide, can’t run, so the question circles back to same question it’s always been: not if we’re gonna die, but how. How are we going to die? Dumbo, how do you want to die?”

Dumbo stiffened. His shoulders squared, his chin came up. “Standing up, sir.”

Ben looked at Poundcake. “Cake, do you want to die standing up?”

Poundcake had come to attention, too. He nodded smartly.

Ben didn’t have to ask Sam. My little brother simply stood up and very slowly and deliberately gave his commanding officer a salute.

OH, BROTHER. Guys.

I tossed Bear on the desk. “I’ve been here before,” I told the Macho Brigade. “Run equals die. Stay equals die. So before we go all O.K. Corral on this, let’s consider the third option: We blow it up.”

That suggestion sucked all the air from the room. Evan got it first, nodding slowly, but clearly not happy with the idea. Lots of variables. A thousand ways it can go wrong, only one way right.

Ben cut right to the gooey guts of the problem: “How? Who has the duty of breathing on it and getting vaporized?”

“I’ll do it, Sarge,” Dumbo said. His ears had turned red, like he was embarrassed by his own courage. He smiled shyly. He’d finally gotten it: “I’ve always wanted to see Dubuque.”

“Human breath isn’t the only source of CO 2,” I pointed out to the National Merit Finalist.

“Coke!” Dumbo fairly shouted.

“Good luck finding one of those,” Ben said. It was true. Along with anything alcoholic, soft drinks were one of the first casualties of the invasion.

“A can or a bottle, yes,” Evan said. “Cassie, didn’t you tell me there was a diner next door?”

“The CO 2canisters for the fountain drinks,” I started.

“Are probably still there,” he finished.

“Attach the bomb to the canister…”

“Rig the canister to dispense the CO 2…”

“A slow leak…”

“In a confined space…”

“The elevator!” we said in unison.

“Wow,” Ben breathed. “Brilliant. But I’m a little unclear on how this solves the problem.”

“They’ll think we’re dead, Zombie,” Sam said. The five-year-old understood, but he lacked Ben’s burden of experience in outwitting Vosch and company.

“Then they check it out, they find no bodies, they know,” Ben said.

“But it will buy us time,” Evan pointed out. “And my guess is by the time they realize the truth, it’ll be too late.”

“Because obviously we’re just too darn clever for them?” Ben asked.

Evan smiled grimly. “Because we’re going to the last place they’d think to look.”

THERE WAS NO TIME for more debate; we had to pull the trigger on Operation Early Checkout before the 5th Wave pulled the trigger on us. Ben and Poundcake left to fetch a CO 2canister from the diner. Dumbo took hall patrol. I told Sam he had to watch Megan, her being a pal from the old days on the school bus. He asked for the gun back. I reminded him that having the gun didn’t help so much the last time: He’d emptied the magazine without even nicking the target. I tried to give him Bear. He rolled his eyes. Bear was so six months ago.

Then Evan and I were alone. Just him, me, and a little green bomb made three.

“Spill it,” I ordered him.

“Spill what?” Eyes all big and innocent as Bear’s.

“Your guts, Walker. You’re holding back.”

“Why do you—?”

“Because that’s your style. Your modus operandi. Like an iceberg, three-quarters under the surface, but there’s no way I’m letting you turn this hotel into the Titanic. ”

He sighed, avoiding my glare. “Pen and paper?”

“What? Time for a tender love poem?” That was his style, too: Every time I edged too close to something, he deflected by telling me how much he loved me or how I saved him or some other swoony, pseudo-profound observation about the nature of my magnificence. But I grabbed the pad and pen from the desk and handed them over because, at the end of the day, who minds getting a tender love poem?

Instead he drew a map.

“Single-story, white—or used to be white—wood frame, I don’t remember the address, but it’s right on Highway 68. Next to a service station. Has one of those old metal signs hanging out front, Havoline Oil or something like that.”

He tore off the sheet and pressed it into my hand.

“And why is this the last place they’d look for us?” I was falling for the deflecting technique again, not that Havoline Oil had anything cloyingly poetical about it. “And why are you drawing me a map when you’re coming with us?”

“In case something happens.”

“To you. What if something happens to both of us?”

“You’re right. I’ll make five more.”

He started on the next one. I watched for two seconds, then grabbed the pad out of his hand and threw it at his head.

“You son of a bitch. I know what you’re doing.”

“I was drawing a map, Cassie.”

“Rigging a detonator from a soda fountain Mission: Impossible style, really? While we all run like hell for the Havoline sign with you in the lead on your broken ankle and stabbed leg, sporting a hundred-and-six-degree temperature…”