The Revival (8 page)

Jefferson: “I'm with you.” He reaches out his hand, touches mine lightly.

Maybe that matters a lot.

Kath: “Me too, I guess. I think you can take it as a given that these little creeps are along for the ride.” She gestures at the Thrill Kill Twins, who practically wag their tails.

The Gurkha takes a step toward me.

Guja: “Wakefield said you stay with us.” His hand reaches for his knife, the locus of his authority. But then he finds Titch's giant mitt resting on his shoulder.

Titch: “I don't think so, Guja. I reckon this is her call.”

Guja looks to Wakefield, who suddenly seems thwarted. I'm not too sure about the command structure here. Maybe I thought Wakefield was the guy in charge because Titch is ginormous and working-class and Wakefield is human-size and fancy. But Titch is working for the Reconstruction Committee, at least for the spy guys who work with them. I guess Wakefield is just regular army.

Wakefield: “There's no question of delaying. And we need a local guide. That's why they're here in the first place.”

Then, a surprise.

Peter: “I'll stay with you, Colonel.” Instead of meeting my eyes, he looks at his shoes, which frankly aren't much to look at, bedraggled navy-issue sneakers covered in filth.

Me: “Really?”

He finally looks back up.

Peter: “He's right. They're gonna need a guide. Besides, I have to. You understand?”

At first, no. But then it makes sense after a second. He means he has to deal with Chapel.

Me: “Petra—”

Peter: “No advice, please. No tough love. I know. He was using me. I know there's nothing to be said. But… Look. He fooled me. He fooled all of us. Right? Well, somebody has to hold him to account. If not, and that fool Evan becomes, like, some kind of supervillain, I'll never be able to live with myself.”

Damn it, I'm crying again, in front of these old-world tough guys and the people I'm supposed to lead into battle. But the feels don't care, my eyes don't care. Come to think of it, I don't care. Too much has happened for it to matter whether it's good management style.

And there's good reason to cry. Maybe I won't ever see Petra again. In this place, you say good-bye to somebody, it's just as likely it'll be forever.

Wakefield is satisfied with the deal. Maybe he's relieved to be rid of me. I hug Peter a long time. Then I turn to go. But there's another surprise to come.

Rab: “I'm coming with you.”

Oh, no he didn't.

Me: “This isn't your problem.” Besides which, I'm not sure I actually want him along. The mission is challenging enough without balancing a love triangle on my shoulders. Plus, I hate him. Right?

Rab's eyes narrow. Calculating.

Rab: “We made an investment in you. I'm just keeping an eye on it.” But he says it in a way that makes it seem like he hardly means it. Like he's speaking for the benefit of Titch and Wakefield, not for me. “Besides, we need to keep our communications open. I'll stay in contact with Titch over our comms. We'll rendezvous after we help your friends.”

Rab looks over at Titch, who nods.

Titch: “Keep an eye on her.” He says it like,
Make sure she doesn't do anything wrong,
but I know—or I feel—that he means
Protect her
, since he can't.

Titch holds out his hand, big as a kid's baseball glove. I go up on tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek.

Me: “Keep your head down, you big lug.”

Titch: “Stay safe, miss.”

I turn to Peter and say, “I'll be seeing all of you soon.” But I know that's probably a lie.

We stalk westward through tall grass browned by the frost. The snow swallows our footfalls. It's remarkably peaceful here, nothing but a corpse or two observing our progress.

That is, until we encounter a bunch of randoms hauling ass our way, scared out of their minds. I waylay one of them—a firearm helps in getting people to stop and chat—and ask what's gotten into her.

Random chick: “Oldies. From outside. Majorly strapped.”

I figure she must mean the rest of the British squad.

Me: “How many?”

Random chick: “I don't know. Twenty, thirty? You'll see for yourself soon enough. They're coming this way.”

I turn to Rab.

Me to Rab: “Was there another team? More squaddies?”

Rab: “Not that I know of.” He takes in my look. “I'm telling you the truth. I have no idea who they are.”

Ahead of us is a redbrick compound, still within the walls of the park. There's a forecourt with upturned tables, and then inside, we find a restaurant called Tavern on the Green, its shiny wood and green carpets all beat to shit. We wait by the windows, eyes peeled, ears cored.

Five minutes on, I hear the crunching of broken glass under rubber-soled boots, like some giant beast chewing a barrel of Grape-Nuts. I peek through what's left of a broken window, to see a squad of soldiers walking down the tarmac path that leads past the restaurant toward the west end of Sheep Meadow. Over the jagged edges of the glass, I can see a flutter of camouflage. To my now-connoisseurial eye, it looks different from both the British regulation and the Uptowners' store-bought dress-up stuff.

Someone delivers a gruff, monosyllabic command, and the crunching stops. Now I can see, in the reflections of a bent piece of chrome-plated window frame, some soldiers close by in gray-green camouflage and sloped helmets, faces obscured by ski masks. They carry long, pipe-barreled rifles I don't recognize.

I look over at Rab. He shakes his head.
No idea.

Then the soldiers start talking, and it has the rolling, rhotic, diphthong-heavy sound of Russian. They're muttering to one another in low tones, guarded, suspicious of something, but I hear the words
Central Park
(or rather,
Tsintril Pyark
) pop out of the flow. I see a soldier straighten the folds of a map. Then something stops their talk. A hushed order, and the soldiers scatter.

I realize, to my horror, that at least one of them has made a beeline for the building and is right on the other side of the short outer wall of the restaurant's façade, so there's maybe eight inches of brick between us and some kind of Russian supersoldier. I can hear his breathing, slow and measured; I can see the nub of his rifle barrel poking over the ledge of the window frame. I look back at the others, crouching frozen on the floor by some nearby banquettes.

They haven't noticed us yet, but now we're effectively pinned, and if the Russians decide to look inside, they'll have us dead to rights. A copper penny of fear forms on my tongue.

I try to stay silent and look for something to concentrate on to stop from trembling. Across the floor, an abandoned plastic doll stares at me with glassy blue eyes. She's naked and sexless, arms reaching upward like she's begging or celebrating.

Then I spot Jefferson, reaching out for the doll. He swivels her arms back to a less awkward pose and sets her on a soft cushion away from the broken glass. He's always had a weird thing about stuffed animals and such being left in uncomfortable positions, and, yeah, I can see how holding her arms up like that must've been really tiring for her nonexistent plastic back muscles. He looks up and sees me seeing him and blushes.

There's a sound from the path, and I see gray-green movements reflected in the pupils of Jefferson's eyes. Then I look up to find a young soldier staring down at me, his gun poised lightly in his hands. He has a look of consternation on his face.

I put my hands up, and the others do, too. There doesn't seem to be much else for it. Then we hear a
CRACK
in the distance, and our Russian soldier falls forward into the restaurant, bleeding from the neck. He's practically on top of me.

There's a chorus of pops and bangs as the Russians fire back at whoever was stupid enough to engage. Meanwhile, the wounded soldier is scrabbling at his collar. Then his crazed eyes light on me and oscillate quickly between fear and hope.

It's pretty unlikely that this guy is gonna be around long. There's just so much important wiring in too little real estate in the neck. You've got your trachea, your esophagus, your carotid and cervical arteries… But what am I supposed to do, just let him croak? He's got nothing to do with Uptown or Washington Square or any of this—he may as well be E.T.

I bend over him and put pressure on the wound. It's a pretty neat little hole, and my guess is his spine is still intact, considering he's still moving his extremities. I shift my hand away from the hole for a peek and, amazingly, spot a nub of metal, the edge of a bullet, resting against the blue-purple sheath of his carotid artery. It didn't hit him at full velocity—might have been a ricochet. I can see it's no less painful for all that, though; the bullet twists slightly as he struggles.

It's difficult to concentrate in the thunderstorm of gunfire just outside. But it seems to me that while the guy has lucked out in terms of wound location, the jagged little slug will nick the carotid at any moment if I don't get it out.

He's not going to thank me for it, though.

I look over in the general direction of Jefferson.

Me: “Help me hold this guy down!”

Jefferson crawls over, nearly bumping into Rab, who's coming over as well. After a momentary mutual glare, each of them grabs one of the soldier's arms and holds the poor guy steady.

Since I don't have my old wound kit—they took it from me what feels like centuries ago, at the lab—I take a deep breath and carefully poke the ends of my fingers into the blood-slick wound. A muffled scream. My fingertips feel around for purchase on the slug, which turns suddenly elusive. It tucks back into the tortured flesh like a frightened mouse. I overcome my revulsion and my pity for the soldier and squeeze my fingers further, until finally, I grab hold of the bullet and pluck it out.

Tears roll from the soldier's eyes, and he looks at me with baffled incomprehension. I take his hand and press it to the wound.

Me: “Don't let go.”

I fish around in my bag and come up with a precious roll of duct tape I stole from the helicopter. I swab at the wound with the top of his shirt, then rip off a square of silvery tape and slap it down over the hole.

Some notion of what's happened is now lighting up the guy's eyes when suddenly he's pulled over the threshold by his legs, which have all the time been crooked over the edge of the window frame.

Amazingly, in the chaos of the firefight, the rest of the Russians don't seem to notice us. They'll be hella surprised when they find my ghetto bandage.

The wounded soldier's eyes linger one last moment in the window hole before he disappears, carried away to wherever the Russians are retreating. The sound of gunfire dies down. We're left in stunned and bruised silence.