“It looks like you’re actually cutting your hair.”
“I’ve decided to get rid of all the things that bug me.” Giving him a look in the mirror.
“Why does it bug you?”
“Why are you asking?” Looking at my reflection now, but he’s there in the corner of my eye. Damn it, more symbolism.
He wisely makes an exit. Snip, snip, snip, and the sink fills up with my curls. I hear him clumping around downstairs, then the kitchen door slamming. I guess I was supposed to ask his permission first. Like he owns me. Like I’m a puppy he found lost in the snow.
I step back to examine my handiwork. With the short cut and no makeup, I look about twelve years old. Okay, no older than fourteen. But with the right attitude and the right prop, someone might mistake me for a tween. Maybe even offer me a ride to safety on their friendly yellow school bus.
That afternoon a gray sheet of clouds draws itself across the sky, bringing an early dusk. Evan disappears again and comes back a few minutes later carrying two five-gallon containers of gasoline. I give him a look, and he says, “I was thinking a diversion might help.”
It takes me a minute to process. “You’re going to burn down your house?”
He nods. He seems kind of excited about the prospect.
“I’m going to burn down my house.”
He lugs one of the containers upstairs to douse the bedrooms. I go out onto the porch to escape the fumes. A big black crow is hopping across the yard, and he stops and gives me a beady-eyed look. I consider pulling out my gun and shooting him.
I don’t think I’d miss. I’m a pretty good shot now, thanks to Evan, and also I really hate birds.
The door opens behind me and a wave of nauseating fumes roars out. I step off the porch and the crow takes off, screeching. Evan splashes down the porch, then tosses the empty can against the side of the house.
“The barn,” I say. “If you wanted to create a diversion, you should have burned down the barn. That way the house would still be here when we get back.” Because I’d like to believe we’re coming back, Evan. You, me, and Sammy, one big happy family.
“You know we’re not coming back,” he says, and lights the match.
67
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER and I’ve completed the circle that connects me and Sammy as if by a silver cord, returning to the place where I made my promise.
Camp Ashpit is exactly how I left it, which means there is no Camp Ashpit, just a dirt road cutting through woods interrupted by a mile-wide emptiness where Camp Ashpit used to be, the ground harder than steel and bare of everything, even the tiniest weed or blade of grass or dead leaf. Of course, it’s winter, but somehow I don’t think when springtime comes this Other-made clearing will blossom like a meadow.
I point to a spot on our right. “That’s where the barracks was. I think. It’s hard to tell without any point of reference except the road. Over there the storage shed. Back that way the ash pit, and farther back the ravine.”
Evan is shaking his head with wonder. “There’s nothing left.” He stamps his foot on the rock-hard ground.
“Oh yeah, there is. I’m left.”
He sighs. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m being too intense,” I say.
“Hmmm. Not really like you.” He tries out a smile, but his smile isn’t working that well lately. He’s been very quiet since we left his house burning in the middle of farm country. In the waning daylight, he kneels on the hard ground, pulls out the map, and points at our location with his flashlight.
“The dirt road over there isn’t on the map, but it must connect with this road, maybe around here? We can follow it to 675, and then it’s a straight shot to Wright-Patterson.”
“How far?” I ask, peering over his shoulder.
“About twenty-five or thirty miles. Another day if we push it.”
“We’ll push it.”
I sit down beside him and dig through his pack for something to eat. I find some cured mystery meat wrapped in wax paper and a couple of hard biscuits. I offer one to Evan. He shakes his head no.
“You need to eat,” I scold him. “Stop worrying so much.”
He’s afraid we’ll run out of food. He has his rifle, of course, but there’ll be no hunting during this phase of the rescue operation. We have to pass quietly through the countryside—not that the countryside has been particularly quiet. The first night, we heard gunfire. Sometimes the echo of a single gun going off, sometimes more than one. Always in the distance, though, never close enough to freak us out. Maybe lone hunters like Evan, living off the land. Maybe roving gangs of Twigs. Who knew? Maybe there are other sixteen-year-old girls with M16s stupid enough to think they are humanity’s last representatives on Earth.
He gives in and takes one of the biscuits. Gnaws off a hunk. Chews thoughtfully, looking around the wasteland as the light dies. “What if they’ve stopped running buses?” he asks for the hundredth time. “How do we get in?”
“We come up with something else.” Cassie Sullivan: expert strategic planner.
He gives me a look. “Professional soldiers. Humvees. And Black Hawks. And this—what did you call it?—green-eyed bomb. We better come up with something good.”
He jams the map into his pocket and stands up, adjusting the rifle over his shoulder. He’s on the verge of something. I’m not sure what. Tears? Screams? Laughter?
Me too. All three. And maybe not for the same reasons. I’ve decided to trust him, but like somebody once said, you can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it. My problem is that buried box is like a scab I can’t stop picking at.
“We better go,” he says tightly, glancing up at the sky. The clouds that moved in the day before still linger, hiding the stars. “We’re exposed here.”
Suddenly, Evan snaps his head to the left and goes all statuelike.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He holds up his hand. Gives a sharp shake of his head. Peers into the near perfect darkness. I don’t see anything. Don’t hear anything. But I’m not a hunter like Evan.
“A damned flashlight,” he murmurs. He presses his lips to my ear. “What’s closer, the woods on the other side of the road or the ravine?”
I shake my head. I really don’t know. “The ravine, I guess.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He grabs my hand, and we take off in a quick trot toward where I hoped the ravine was. I don’t know how far we ran till we came to it. Probably not as far as it seemed, because it seemed like we ran forever. Evan lowers me down the rocky face to the bottom, then jumps in beside me.
“Evan?”
He presses his finger to his lips. Scoots up the side to peek over the edge. He motions to his pack, and I fish around until I find his binoculars. I tug on his pant leg—What’s going on?—but he shakes off my hand. He taps his fingers against his thigh, thumb tucked. Four of them? Is that what he meant? Or is he using some kind of hunter’s code, like, Get down on all fours!
He doesn’t move for a long time. Finally he shimmies back down and puts his lips to my ear again.
“They’re coming this way.” He squints in the gloom toward the opposite wall of the ravine, which is much steeper than the one we came down, but there are woods on the other side, or what’s left of them: shattered stumps of trees, tangles of broken branches and vines. Good cover. Or at least better cover than being totally exposed in a gully where the bad guys can pick you off like fish in a barrel. He bites his lip, weighing the odds. Do we have time to scale the other side before being spotted?
“Stay down.”
He swings his rifle off his shoulder and braces his boots against the unsteady surface, resting his elbows on the ground above. I’m standing directly beneath him, cradling the M16. Yeah, he told me to stay down, I know. But I’m not about to huddle in a heap waiting for the end. I’ve been there before, and I’m never going back.
Evan fires; the twilight stillness shatters. The kickback of the rifle knocks him off balance, his foot slips, and he falls straight down. Luckily, there’s a moron directly beneath him to break his fall. Lucky for him. Not so lucky for the moron.
He rolls off me, yanks me to my feet, and shoves me toward the opposite side. But it’s kind of difficult to move fast when you can’t breathe.
A flare drops into the ravine, ripping apart the dark with a hellish red glare. Evan slides his hands under my arms and hurls me toward the top. I catch hold of the edge with my fingertips and furiously dig into the wall with my toes, like some crazy bicyclist. Then Evan’s hands on my butt for the final heave-ho, and I’m on the other side.
I swing around to help him up, but he shouts for me to run—no reason to be quiet now—as a small, pineapple-shaped object plops into the ravine behind him.
I scream, “Grenade!” which gives Evan an entire second to take cover.
That’s not quite enough time.
The blast drops him, and at that moment a figure wearing fatigues appears on the opposite side of the ravine. I open up with my M16, screaming incoherently at the top of my lungs. The figure scrambles backward, but I keep firing at the spot where he stood. I don’t think he was expecting Cassie Sullivan’s answer to his invitation to party down post–alien apocalypse style.