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There’s a single window facing me. I’ll smash it with the butt of my rifle, toss the grenade, and then hoof it around the building to the front door. Six seconds, tops. They won’t know what hit them.
That’ll be my story, anyway, when I tell my grandkids about this day: I was so focused on the window, I forgot to look where I was going.
I wish I had another explanation for how I fell into that damn hole, six feet wide and twice as deep, a hole you couldn’t miss, even in the dark, not only because of its size but because of what it contained.
Bodies.
Hundreds of bodies.
Big bodies, little bodies, medium-sized bodies. Clothed bodies, half-clothed bodies, naked bodies. Freshly dead bodies and bodies not-so-freshly dead. Whole bodies and body parts and parts that used to be inside bodies but no longer were.
I went down to my hips into the slimy, reeking mass, and my feet found no bottom—I just kept . . . sinking. Nothing to grab hold of except bodies, which slid down with me. I came face-to-face with a fresh one as I sank—like a really fresh one, a woman in her thirties, her blond hair caked in dirt and blood, two black eyes, one cheek swollen to the size of my fist, her skin still pink, her lips plump. She couldn’t have been more than a few hours dead.
I twist away. I’d rather face a dozen rotted faces than one that looks that alive.
I’m shoulder-deep by this point and still being sucked under. I’m going to be suffocated by human remains. I’m going to drown in death. It’s so ridiculously metaphorical, I nearly bust out laughing.
That’s when the fingers lock around my neck.
Then her definitely-not-corpse-cold lips against my ear: “Don’t make a sound, Ben. Play dead.”
Ben? I try to turn my head. No way. Her grip is too strong.
“We’ve got one shot,” the voice whispers. “So don’t move. It knows where we are now and it’s coming.”
27
A SHADOW RISES at the pit’s edge, silhouetted against the blaze of stars overhead, a small figure, its head cocked to one side, listening. I don’t even think about it: I hold my breath and go limp, watching him through slitted lids. He’s holding a familiar-looking object in his right hand. A KA-BAR combat knife, standard issue to all recruits.
The woman’s fingers loosen on my throat. She’s gone limp, too. Who do I trust? Her, him, neither?
Thirty seconds pass, a minute, pushing two. I don’t move. She doesn’t move. He doesn’t move. I won’t be able to hold my breath—or put off the decision—much longer. I’ll have to take either a breath or a shot—at somebody. But my arms are entangled with dead ones, and anyway, I lost the rifle when I fell. I don’t even know where it landed.
He does, though, the priest who traded his crucifix for a knife. “I see your rifle, son,” he says. “Come on up. There’s nothing to fear. They’re all dead and I’m completely harmless.” He kneels at the edge of the ossuary and holds out his empty hand. “Don’t worry, you can have your rifle back. I don’t like guns. I never have.”
He smiles. Then the not-dead lady’s got him by the wrist. Then he’s flying into the pit with us and then there’s Dumbo’s sidearm against his temple and her voice saying, “Then you’re gonna hate this,” and then the priest’s head explodes.
Not sure, but I think that’s my cue to get the hell out of that hole.
28
I’VE LOST MY RIFLE. And somehow the not-dead lady ended up with the pistol. I have no idea if she saved my life or just started with the priest and I’m next.
Pushing and clawing your way out of a mass grave wasn’t something they covered in camp. Because under normal circumstances, if you find yourself neck-deep in dead people, the odds are you’re probably one yourself.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. She smiles broadly, and that’s gotta hurt with a broken cheek.
“Then drop the gun.”
She does, immediately. She holds up her empty hands.
“How do you know my name?” I ask. More of a shout, really.
“Marika told me.”
“Who the hell is Marika?” I scoop up the pistol. She makes no move to stop me.
“The girl standing behind you.”
