Gods of Anthem (26 page)

Crystal laughs and adjusts her helmet under her arm. “Well, well, well. Not only a patriot, but also an idealist.” Her grin broadens, and a few laughs come from the ranks behind her. “Kiniva’s as traitorous as those bleeder-hounds he trains; he comes for the meat, then leaves when it’s gone. Not a patriot. You’ve met him, so you know that.”

“No. He’s not an American either, but he sees an opportunity here, and his hatred for the Authority is as honest as anyone’s love of country.”

Crystal eyes me with wisdom beyond her years. “Enemy of my enemy.”

She shrugs, then turns to Jeremy. “Figure out how we can meet and discuss. I don’t think it’s wise to trust Kiniva, but we should exhaust all of our options before the big bang.”

“The big bang…?” I say.

“Easy there, killer,” Crystal says with a cutting glare. “You just got into the club. You aren’t exactly a member yet.”

When
the Skulls leave, with Crystal at their lead, Jeremy watches me carefully.

“But, what about the purged people? Were they the ones who came back, dressed as guards? Is that how it happened with you? They washed you out and you had been outside the wall?”

He nods, still not deterred from searching my face. “Yes. She helped me. And Crystal will round these ones up, give them a place to heal. It takes some time to help their minds regain a sense of normal … if ever.”

We head for the tunnel, and Jeremy’s got a new tension in his walk.

“What’s with the spiders?” I ask.

“Huh?” he says distractedly.

“She was getting one as a tattoo—Crystal was—when I saw her before, at the black market. Another had one on his neck. I thought your insignia was the skull?”

After checking that we’re all clear, Jeremy lifts the manhole cover. “Perceptive
and
pretty. I shall have to remember that. Every time you get purged, you get a spider tattoo. It’s kind of a tradition. The skull is drama. People love drama. And we need the people.”

I’m trying not to imagine where his tattoo’s at.

We move into the tunnel, and once inside, he pauses, grins, and crosses his arms. “It’s on my back.”

“I wasn’t … never mind.” I walk ahead, guiltily avoiding him. Jeremy follows closely behind.

My voice is husky. “Hers was a web of three.”

“She’s been through it three times.” He sounds subdued. “More than any other. Last time she was caught … she shouldn’t have lived. She disappeared for a while, even, and we all thought she was lost to us, but somehow she came back and has been the leader ever since.” Jeremy sighs, his breath warm on my neck. “They say the blood is tainted with spider venom. I’m not sure if it’s true, but we all believe it has some kind of neurotoxin, because you see things.”

Then, he mutters more softly, “Forget things.”

At the end of the tunnel, I turn to place a hand on his chest. “Why?”

He knows what I’m asking: Why he brought me there.

“Liza, I trusted you with my life before I even knew you. That girl in the courtroom, so obviously out of her element, the one who hesitated, who said ‘not guilty’ when anyone else would have just pressed the button….” His knuckles graze my cheek. “I thought I was a goner, but then I realized we’ve got ourselves a hero.” He chuckles. “Someone finally made it out of that hellhole Island. Someone amazing.”

My face feels like it’s on fire as his warm hands find mine in the dark, washing away his shared hug with Crystal like it never happened. Why can’t it just be like this forever? Just me and him?

Another time and place, maybe. But for now, Jeremy Writer is holding my hand, and he just called me a hero.

“So let me
get this straight,” Sergeant Nolan says from behind his desk.

We’re in his office back at the barracks. I’ve changed clothes, and Cory’s switched underwear, no doubt. His perfect face isn’t so perfect anymore.

Sergeant Nolan continues, “You two retards used your voodoo magic bull on my live-fire training mission.”

We don’t answer. It’s not a question.

A laugh jumps from Sergeant Nolan’s mouth. It’s almost obscene to witness the man find anything humorous. “Leaders running around like crack pots. I’ve got magneto, here, and some kind of giant, fighting like children, when they’re supposed to be training for war.” He spits into his cup. “Then, the magic hands-with-boobs talks fathead out of going boom-boom-kachue on all of my entry squad. One poor dead idiot, because you two needed to measure your wieners, is that it?”

Sergeant Nolan doesn’t want to hear anyone’s version of events. Around here, Murphy’s death won’t rank high on the scale of “what the hell,” and UG has already written it off as a casualty of war. They’re not interested in trials, or punishment, or locking up nutty soldiers like Cory.

“We die a lot nowadays,” Sergeant Nolan says. “And it ain’t pretty.”

The sergeant grabs his Mountain Dew and chugs, then he tiredly wipes his eyes, and when he looks across the desk again, it’s like he’s another person. “You know, boys … I wish I could say this war is gonna be the last, or even that there’ll be a reprieve after we get back to that ol’ hunk of dirt that used to be ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ But the Authority, or the UG, or even stiffies can’t bring back what was ours—not fully. No pressin’ rewind and livin’ like we did. Ain’t no amount of winning here to be had, you get me? Only just not dying.

“The UG came in with this idea to do more screwing with your bodies, and I don’t understand it—a fightin’ man is what I am. It’s no good that you”—he points at Cory—“can get into people’s heads like they scraped out their brains and fed ‘em to ya with a spoon. Or that you”—he points to me—“turn into something out of a circus freak show. I think you two are no better than the stiffies, if you ask me. I should put a bullet in you both right now.” He pulls out his pistol, closing one eye to sight it on us. “I think if the Man upstairs wanted weirdos like you, he woulda made ‘em.”

Sergeant Nolan puts his gun down with a sigh, then gets up and walks past his medals and inspirational posters to tip his head at three urns sitting on a shelf. “The scientists was so busy tryna keep everybody alive, like death was the worst thing that could happen, and now look. My healthy wife.” And he flicks the first black urn with a ping, before flicking the other two in kind. “Daughter, and her son—my grandson—Kyle. That boy didn’t know a Sergeant Nolan, he only knew Papa, and he only knew smilin’. That loser boyfriend of hers? … well, he’s as stiffie as they come, still wanderin’ around since he cut out on my baby and my baby’s baby. I didn’t even put him out of his misery when I seen him all zombie’d up. Not too long ago, I found him on the same block, up and back again.”

Sergeant Nolan looks at us suspiciously. “He’d even stopped at his own car to stare through the window like he recognized what’s in there. What do you two smart asses think of that? You think them stiffies are wanderin’ around the same places, like they remember? Like some of us is left in them rotten brains? Sure as hell ain’t gonna be me. You see me stiff up, you put a bullet right here.” He taps his forehead.

After he moves back to his desk, his face returns to its familiar sneer. “Nah, it’s the scientists who made more death. And here you two are, given these gifts. If you can call ‘em that. And ya squander it, fight each other like two high schoolers. And I suppose that ya are. We’ve had boys before in war, eighteen to nineteen. Now we got thirteen-year-olds who suck blood.” He glares at us. “And if you two want to kick the bucket, then by all means, go ahead and leave the facility. Let the stiffies gnaw your idiot faces off, for all I care. It ain’t right, if you ask me. None of it. Let the stiffies have us, if that’s what they want.”

“Then why do it? Why train us?” Cory asks, wiping blood from his mouth.

Sergeant Nolan pushes his tongue into one cheek and eyeballs Cory, making it obvious who he answers to. We don’t rank high enough to get his patronization. “I heard biggie here kicked your ass. That true?”

Cory swallows with an icy glare.

I try not to smile. Try.

Sergeant Nolan puts his hands out to encompass it all—the situation, the place. “Let’s just say I do this out of morbid curiosity, gentleman.”