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“The incendiary device to CO2.” His eyes cut away. The next words were hard for him. “Our breath, Cassie.”
Everybody understood by that point. But there’s a difference between understanding and accepting. The idea was unacceptable. After all we had experienced, there were still places our minds simply refused to go.
“Get downstairs now, all of you,” Ben snarled.
Evan shook his head. “Not far enough. You should leave the building.”
Ben grabbed Dumbo’s arm with one hand and Poundcake’s with the other and slung them toward the door. Sam had backed into the bathroom entrance, tiny fist pressed against his mouth.
“Also, somebody should open that window,” Evan gasped.
I pushed Sam into the hall, trotted over to the window, and pushed hard against the frame, but it wouldn’t budge, probably frozen shut. Ben pushed me out of the way and smashed out the glass with the butt of his rifle. Freezing air rushed into the room. Ben strode back to Evan’s bed and considered him for a second before grabbing a handful of his hair and yanking him forward.
“You son of a bitch . . .”
“Ben!” I put my hand on his arm. “Let him go. He didn’t—”
“Oh, right. I forgot. He’s a good evil alien.” He let go. Evan fell back; he didn’t have the strength to stay up. Then Ben suggested he do something to himself that was anatomically impossible.
Evan’s eyes cut over to me. “In her throat. Suspended directly above the epiglottis.”
“She’s a bomb,” Ben said, his voice quavering with rage and disbelief. “They took a child and turned her into an IED.”
“Can we remove it?” I asked.
Evan shook his head. “How?”
“That’s what she’s asking you, dipshit,” Ben barked.
“The explosive is connected to a CO2 detector imbedded in her throat. If the connection’s lost, it detonates.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I pointed out. “Can we remove it without blowing ourselves into orbit?”
“It’s feasible . . .”
“Feasible. Feasible.” Ben was laughing this weird, hiccupping kind of laugh. I was worried that he might be falling over the proverbial edge.
“Evan,” I said as softly and calmly as I could. “Can we do it without . . .” I couldn’t say it, and Evan didn’t make me.
“The odds of it not detonating are a lot better if you did.”
“Do it without . . . what?” Ben was having a hard time following. Not his fault. He was still flailing in the unthinkable place like a poor swimmer caught in a riptide.
“Killing her first,” Evan explained.
39
BEN AND I CONVENED the latest oh-we’re-screwed planning meeting in the hallway. Ben ordered everybody else to go across the parking lot and hide in the diner until he gave them the all-clear—or the hotel blew up, whichever came first. Sam refused. Ben got stern. Sam teared up and pouted. Ben reminded him that he was a soldier and a good soldier follows orders. Besides, if he stayed, who was going to protect Poundcake and Dumbo?
Before he left, Dumbo said, “I’m the medic.” He’d figured out what Ben was up to. “I should do it, Sarge.”
Ben shook his head. “Get out of here,” he said tersely.
Then we were alone. Ben’s eyes would not stay still. The trapped cockroach. The cornered rat. The falling man, off the cliff and no scrawny shrub to grasp.
“Well, I guess the big riddle’s been answered, huh?” he said. “What I don’t get is why they didn’t just waste us with a couple of Hellfire missiles. They know we’re here.”
“Not their style,” I said.
