The Last Star (14 page)

31

I FALL IN
next to him. Constance trails several yards behind—out of normal human earshot, but Constance isn’t a normal human. Zombie walks with shoulders hunched, head thrust forward, eyes darting up, down, side to side. The road stretches before us, cutting across rolling farmland that will never be farmland again.

“What Teacup did was her choice,” I say. “Not your fault, Zombie.”

A sharp shake of his head, then: “Why didn’t you come back?”

Deep breath. Time to lie again. “Too risky.”

“Yeah. Well. It’s all about the risk, isn’t it?” Then: “Poundcake is dead.”

“Impossible.”
I saw the surveillance tape. I counted the people in the safe house. If Poundcake’s dead, who’s the extra person?

“Impossible? Really?” he says. “How do you figure?”

“What happened?”

He waves his hand at me like he’s brushing away a gnat. “Had a little trouble after you left. Long story. Short story: Walker found us. Vosch found us. A Silencer found us. Then Cake blew himself up.” His eyes close briefly, snap open again. “We rode out the rest of the winter in the dead Silencer’s safe house. We have four days left, which is why Bo and I decided to come for you.” He swallows. “Why
I
decided.”

“Four days left till what?”

He glances at me, and the smile that crawls across his face is frightening. “The end of the world.”

32

THEN HE TELLS ME
what happened in Urbana.

“How about that, huh?” he asks. “My first kill of the war, and it’s some random old cat lady.”

“Except she wasn’t random and wasn’t a cat lady.”

“I never saw so many cats.”

“Cat ladies don’t eat their pets.”

“Handy food supply, though. You’d think after a while the cats would get wise.”

He sounds like the old Zombie, the one I left behind in that rat-infested hotel wearing a ridiculous yellow hoodie while he flirted with me. The voice is right but the appearance is wrong: restless, sleep-deprived eyes, downturned, grayish mouth, cheeks camouflaged in dried blood. He glances back at Constance, then ducks his head slightly and lowers his voice. “So what’s her story?”

“The typical one,” I begin. Here comes lie number five. “Rode out the plague in Urbana, then headed north to the caves after her family was gone. She guesses over two hundred people were holed up down there by the first snow of the season. Then the priest showed up. Around Christmas,” I add, a nicely ironic detail. You can’t have a good story without one or two of those.

“Nobody caught on at first. Someone goes missing one night, well, maybe they panicked and hit the road. One day, they wake up and realize over half the population is gone. You know what happened next, Zombie. Paranoia. People forming factions, alliances. Your basic tribal response. This person is accused. That
person. Fingers pointing everywhere, and in the middle of it all, this priest trying to keep the peace.”

I rattle on. Adding detail, nuance, a snatch of dialogue here and there. I’m surprised by how effortlessly the bullshit flows from my mouth. Lying is like murder—after the first one, each one that follows is easier.

Eventually, inevitably, the priest is found out for the Silencer he is. Mayhem ensues. By the time the survivors realize they’re no match for him, it’s too late. Constance barely manages to escape, returning to Urbana and skipping from abandoned house to abandoned house, by dumb luck staying in an area between the cat lady’s territory and the priest’s—a place that’s rarely patrolled by either of them.

“That’s where we found each other,” I tell him. “She warned me off the caverns, and ever since then we’ve been—”

“Teacup,” he snaps. He doesn’t give a shit about The Adventures of Constance and Ringer. “Tell me about Teacup.”

“She found me,” I say without thinking. The truth. Now for the next lie. Sixth? Seventh? I’ve lost count. This lie to shift the burden from his hunched shoulders onto the ones to which it belonged. “Just south of Urbana. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t want to risk bringing her back. Didn’t want to risk taking her with me. Then that choice was taken away.”

“Cat lady,” he breathed.

I nod, relieved. “Just like Dumbo, only Teacup wasn’t so lucky.”
See, Zombie, I’m the one who lost her—and you’re the one who avenged her.
Not exactly absolution but the nearest I can give him.

“Tell me it was quick.”

“It was quick.”

“Tell me she didn’t suffer.”

“She didn’t suffer.”

He turns his head and spits on the side of the road. A bad taste in his mouth. “A couple of days, you said. ‘I’ll scope them out and be back in a couple of days.’”

“I don’t make the rules, Zombie. The odds—”

“Oh, take the odds and stuff them up your ass. You should have come back. Your place is with us, Ringer. We’re all you’ve got and you left us.”

“That’s not what happened and you know it.”

He stops suddenly. Beneath the rust-colored mask, his face is a deeper red. “You don’t run from the people who need you. You fight for them. You fight
beside
them. No matter the cost. No matter the
risk.
” He spits out the word. “I thought you understood that. You told me in Dayton that you did. You said you were an expert on what matters, and I guess you are, if what matters is saving yourself while the rest of the world burns.”

I don’t say anything because he isn’t talking to me. I am the mirror.

“You shouldn’t have left,” he goes on. “We needed you. If you hadn’t left, Teacup would still be alive. And if you’d come back, Poundcake might be alive. Instead, you decided to hang out with a total stranger, to hell with us, and now Dumbo’s blood is on your hands, too.” He jabs a finger at my face. “If he dies, it’s
your
fault. Dumbo came looking for
you.
”

“Hey, kids, is everything all right?” Constance, her smile withered to a concerned grin.

“Oh, sure,” Zombie says. “We were just discussing where we should go for dinner. Chinese sound good to you?”

“Well, it’s closer to breakfast,” Constance answers brightly. “I could really go for some pancakes.”

Zombie looks at me. “She’s fun. What a blast you must have had this winter.”

Constance’s worried grin disappears. Her bottom lip quivers. Then she bursts into tears and flops down on the asphalt, resting her elbows on her knees and burying her broken face in her hands. Zombie takes in the act for a long, uncomfortable moment.

I know what she’s doing: The best hammer to break the bonds of distrust is natural human sympathy. Pity has killed more people than hate.

When the last day comes for Zombie, it won’t be another person who betrays him; it will be his heart.

He glances at me.
What’s with this woman?

I shrug.
Who knows?
My apathy fuels his pity, and he gives in to it, squatting beside her.

“Hey, look, I was being an asshole, I’m sorry.”

Constance mutters something that sounds like
pancakes.
Zombie touches her shoulder gently. “Hey, Connie . . . It’s Connie, right?”

“Con-stan-stan . . .”

“Constance, right. I have a friend, Constance. He’s hurt pretty bad and I need to get back to him. Now.” Rubbing her shoulder. “Like, right now.”

It makes me sick to my stomach. I turn away. Across the eastern horizon a slash of garish pink glows. Another day closer to the end.

“I just—I just don’t know—how much more—I can take . . .” Constance is moaning, on her feet now and leaning her whole body into Zombie’s, a hand on his shoulder, a not-so-young-and-fair
damsel in distress. If I had to give Constance a nom de guerre, I would pick
Cougar.

Zombie gives me a look:
A little help here?

“Of course you can take more,” I say to her, my stomach still churning. I wish the hub would get a grip on my gut. “And then you’re gonna take a little more, then a little more, and after that a little more.” I pull her off him, not gently. She snuffles loudly, pouring it on.

“Please don’t be mean to me, Marika,” she whimpers. “You’re always so
mean.
”

Oh dear God.

“Here,” Zombie says, taking her arm. “She can walk with me. You should be covering the rear anyway, Ringer.”

“Oh yes,” Constance purrs. “Cover the rear, Marika!”

The world spins. The ground heaves. I stumble a couple feet off the road and double over, at which point everything in my stomach comes out in a violent gush.

A hand on my back: Zombie’s. “Hey, Ringer—what the hell?”

“I’m okay,” I gasp, shrugging off his hand. “Must be the undercooked rabbit.” Another lie and not even a necessary one.

33

MIDMORNING, DOWNTOWN URBANA,
under a cloudless sky, the temperature in the midforties. You can feel it coming.
Spring.

Zombie and Constance rush into the coffee shop while I cover the street. From the doorway, I hear Zombie’s startled cry, and
then he’s skittering back to me across the treacherous coffee-bean-covered floor.

“What?”

He pushes past me and lurches onto the street, whipping right, then left, then back again. Constance comes over and says, “Apparently the kid’s gone.”

In the middle of Main Street, Zombie throws back his head and howls Dumbo’s name. As if in mockery, the echo ricochets back at him.

I trot over to his side. “Screaming probably isn’t a good idea, Zombie.”

His response is a wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare. Then he turns and races down the street, calling his name over and over,
Dumbo! Dumbo!
and
Dumbo, you dumbass, where are you?
He loops back to us after a couple of blocks, out of breath and shaking with panic.

“Somebody took him.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“You’re right, I don’t. Thanks for the reality check, Ringer. He probably got up and ran all the way to the safe house, except for the inconvenient fact that he was
shot in the back.
”

I ignore the sarcasm. “I don’t think anyone took him, Zombie.”

He laughs. “That’s right. I forgot. You’re the one with the answers. Come on, the suspense is killing me. What happened to Dumbo, Ringer?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “But I don’t think anyone took him because there’s nobody left to do the taking. Your cat lady would have seen to that.”

I start off down the street. He watches me for a few seconds, then shouts at my back, “Where the hell are you going?”

“The safe house, Zombie. Didn’t you say it was south on Highway 68?”

“
Unbelievable!
” He erupts in a torrent of curses. I keep walking. Then he shouts: “What the hell happened to you out here, anyway? Where’s the Ringer who told me that
everyone
matters?”

“
Mean,
” Constance whispers to him. I hear her clearly. “I told you.”

I keep walking.

Five minutes later, I find Dumbo crumpled at the base of a barricade that stretches from sidewalk to sidewalk across Main. That he made it this far—nearly ten blocks from where he was hit—is extraordinary. I kneel beside him and press my fingers against his neck. I whistle loudly. When Zombie comes sprinting to the scene, he’s out of breath and ready to collapse. So is Constance, except her exhaustion is an act.

“How the hell did he get here?” Zombie wonders aloud. He looks around wildly.

“The only way he could,” I answer. “He crawled.”