He fumbled for the rag soaked in air freshener.
I shouted, “No, hold her head still, moron! Don’t let her—”
“Let go of the wire,” he gasped.
“What? You just said don’t let go of the . . .”
He pinched her nose shut. Let go? Don’t let go? If I let go, the wire might twist around the tweezers and pull free. If I don’t let go, all the turning and twisting and whipping around might yank it free. Megan’s eyes rolled in her head. Pain and terror and confusion, the constant mix the Others never failed to deliver. Her mouth flew open and I jammed the scissors down her throat.
“I hate you right now,” I breathed at him. “I hate you more than I hate anyone else in the world.” I felt like he needed to know that before I snapped the scissors closed. In case we were vaporized.
“Do you have it?” he asked.
“I have no freaking clue if I have it!”
“Do it.” Then he smiled. Smiled! “Cut the wire, Mayfly,” he said.
I cut the wire.
41
“IT’S A TEST,” Evan said.
The green liquid-gelcap-looking thing lay on the desk, safely—we hoped—sealed inside a clear plastic baggie, the kind your mom used in the long-gone good old days to keep your sandwich and chips fresh for lunch period.
“What, like human IEDs are still in the R-and-D phase?” Ben asked. He was leaning on the sill of the busted-out window, shivering, but someone had to watch the parking lot, and he wasn’t letting anyone else take the risk. At least he had changed out of the blood-soaked, hideous (it was hideous before it was blood-soaked) yellow hoodie and into a black sweatshirt that almost brought him back to his pre-Arrival, buffed-out period.
From the bed, Sam giggled hesitantly, unsure if his beloved Zombie leader was making a joke. I’m no shrink, but I guessed Sams had undergone some transference due to seriously unresolved daddy issues.
“Not the bomb,” Evan answered. “Us.”
“Great,” Ben growled. “First test I’ve passed in three years.”
“Cut it out, Parish,” I said. Who passed the law that said jocks had to act stupid to be cool? “I know for a fact you were a National Merit Finalist last year.”
“Really?” Dumbo’s ears perked up. Okay, I shouldn’t make remarks about his ears, but he did appear to be dumbfounded.
“Yes, really,” Ben said with a patented Parish smile. “But it was a very weak year. Aliens invaded.” He looked at Evan. His smile died, which his smile usually did when he looked at Evan. “What are they testing us for?”
“Knowledge.”
“Yeah, that would be the purpose of a test. You know what would be really helpful right now? If you’d knock off the enigmatic alien routine and get the fuck real. Because every second that goes by and that thing doesn’t go off”—nodding to the baggie—“is a second that doubles our risk. Sooner or later, and I’m leaning toward sooner, they’re coming back and blowing our asses to Dubuque.”
“Dubuque?” Dumbo squeaked. He didn’t get the reference and that frightened him. What was wrong in Dubuque?
“Just a town, Dumbo,” Ben said. “A random town.”
Evan was nodding. I glanced over at Poundcake filling the doorway, his mouth hanging open slightly as his big head ping-ponged to follow the conversation.
“They will come back,” Evan said. “Unless we fail the test so they don’t have to.”
“Fail it? We passed, didn’t we?” Ben turned to me. “I feel as if we passed. How about you?”
“Failing means we took her in, all fat, dumb, and happy,” I explained, “and then got our asses blown back to Dubuque.”
“Dubuque,” Dumbo echoed, mystified.
“The absence of detonation can mean only one of three things,” Evan said. “One, the device malfunctioned. Two, the device was incorrectly calibrated. Or three . . .”