He put one finger to his lips and pointed at the ceiling with another. Listen.

I heard it: the unmistakable sound of a chopper’s rotors—faint but growing louder. I jumped from the bed, grabbed my rifle, and followed Sam into the hall, where Poundcake and Dumbo huddled around Ben, the former quarterback squatting on his haunches, calling the play.

“Might be just a patrol,” he was whispering. “Not even after us. There were two squads out there when the camp blew. Might be a rescue mission.”

“They’ll pick up our signatures,” Dumbo said, panicking. “We’re done, Sarge.”

“Maybe not,” Ben said hopefully. He’d gotten back some of his mojo. “Hear it? Fading already . . .”

Not his imagination: The sound was fainter. You had to hold your breath to hear it. We hung there in the hall for another ten minutes until the sound disappeared. Waited another ten and it didn’t come back. Ben blew out his cheeks.

“Think we’re good . . .”

“For how long?” Dumbo wanted to know. “We shouldn’t stay here tonight, Sarge. I say we head for the caverns now.”

“And chance missing Ringer on her way back?” Ben shook his head. “Or risk that chopper coming back while we’re exposed? No, Dumbo. We stick to the plan.”

He pushed himself to his feet. His eyes fell on my face. “What’s up with Buzz Lightyear? No change?”

“His name is Evan and no. No change.”

Ben smiled. I don’t know, maybe imminent peril made him feel more alive somehow, for the same reason zombies are carnivores with only one item on the menu. You never heard of undead vegetarians. Where’s the challenge in attacking a plate of asparagus?

Sams giggled. “Zombie called your boyfriend a space ranger.”

“He isn’t a space ranger—and why is everyone calling him my boyfriend?”

Ben’s smile broadened. “He’s not your boyfriend? But he kissed you . . .”

“Full on?” Dumbo asked.

“Oh, yeah. Twice. That’s what I saw.”

“With tongue?”

“Ewww.” Sammy mouth’s formed a sour lemon pout.

“I have a gun,” I announced, only half joking.

“I didn’t see any tongue,” Ben said.

“Want to?” I stuck my tongue out at him. Dumbo laughed. Even Poundcake smiled.

That’s when the girl appeared, stepping into the hallway from the stairwell, and then everything got very strange, very fast.

36

A MUD-(or it could have been blood-)stained, tattered pink Hello Kitty T-shirt. A pair of shorts that once had been tan, maybe, faded to a dirty white. Grungy white flip-flops with a couple stubborn rhinestones clinging to the straps. A narrow, pixieish face dominated by huge eyes, topped by a mass of tangled dark hair. And young, around Sammy’s age, though she was so thin, her face looked like a little old lady’s.

Nobody said anything. We were shocked. Seeing her at the far end of the hall, teeth chattering, knobby knees knocking in the freezing cold, was another Camp Ashpit, yellow-school-bus-pulling-up-when-school-would-never-exist-again moment. Something that simply could not be.

Then Sammy whispered, “Megan?”

And Ben said, “Who the hell is Megan?” Which was very much what the rest of us were thinking.

Sam took off before anybody could grab him. Pulled up halfway to her. The little girl didn’t move. Didn’t hardly blink. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dwindling light, bright and birdlike, like a wizened owl’s.

Sam turned to us and said, “Megan!” As if he were pointing out the obvious. “It’s Megan, Zombie. She was on the bus with me!” He turned back to her. “Hi, Megan.” Casually, like they were meeting up at the monkey bars for a playdate.

“Poundcake,” Ben said softly. “Check the stairs. Dumbo, take the windows. Then sweep the first floor, both of you. There’s no way she’s alone.”

She spoke, and her voice came out in a high-pitched, scratchy whine that reminded me of fingernails scraping across a blackboard.

“My throat hurts.”

Her big eyes rolled back in her head. Her knees buckled. Sam raced toward her, but he was too late: She went down hard, smacking the thin carpeting with her forehead a second before Sam could reach her. Ben and I rushed over, and he bent down to pick her up. I pushed him away.

“You shouldn’t be lifting anything,” I scolded him.

“She doesn’t weigh anything,” he protested.

I picked her up. He was nearly right. Megan weighed little more than a sack of flour; bones and skin and hair and teeth and that’s about it. I carried her into Evan’s room, put her in the empty bed, and piled six layers of blankets over her quaking little body. I told Sam to fetch my rifle from the hall.

“Sullivan,” Ben said from the doorway. “This doesn’t fit.”

I nodded. Worse than the odds of her lucking into this hotel at random were the odds of her surviving this weather in her summer outfit. Ben and I were thinking the same thing: Twenty minutes after our hearing the chopper, Li’l Miss Megan appeared on our doorstep.

She didn’t wander in here on her own. She was delivered.

“They know we’re here,” I said.

“But instead of firebombing the building, they drop her in. Why?”

Sam came back with my rifle. He said, “That’s Megan. We met on the bus on the way to Camp Haven, Cassie.”

“Small world, huh?” I pushed him away from the bed, toward Ben. “Thoughts?”

He rubbed his chin. I rubbed my neck. Too many thoughts skittering around both our heads. I stared at him rubbing his chin and he stared at me rubbing my neck, and that’s when he said, “Tracker. They’ve implanted her with a pellet.”

Of course. That must be why Ben’s in charge. He’s the Idea Man. I massaged the back of Megan’s pencil-thin neck, probing for the telltale lump. Nothing. I looked at Ben and shook my head.

“They know we’d look there,” he said impatiently. “Search her. Every inch, Sullivan. Sam, you come with me.”

“Why can’t I stay?” Sam whined. After all, he’d just reunited with a long-lost friend.

“You want to see a naked girl?” Ben made a face. “Gross.”

Ben pushed Sam out the door and backed out of the room. I dug my knuckles into my eyes. Damn it. Goddamn it. I pulled the covers to the foot of the bed, exposing her wasted body to the dying light of a midwinter’s evening. Covered in scabs and bruises and open sores and layers of dirt and grime, whittled down to her bones by the horrible cruelty of indifference and the brutal indifference of cruelty, she was one of us and she was all of us. She was the Others’ masterwork, their magnum opus, humanity’s past and its future, what they had done and what they promised to do, and I cried. I cried for Megan and I cried for me and I cried for my brother and I cried for all the ones too stupid or unlucky to be dead already.

Suck it up, Sullivan. We’re here, then we’re gone, and that was true before they came. That’s always been true. The Others didn’t invent death; they just perfected it. Gave death a face to put back in our face, because they knew that was the only way to crush us. It won’t end on any continent or ocean, no mountain or plain, jungle or desert. It will end where it began, where it had been from the beginning, on the battlefield of the last beating human heart.

I stripped her of the filthy, threadbare summer clothes. I spread her arms and legs like the Da Vinci drawing of the naked dude inside the box, contained within the circle. I forced myself to go slowly, methodically, starting with her head and moving down her body. I whispered to her, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” pressing, kneading, probing.