LISTEN TO ME, BEN PARISH ( 2 )

EIGHT

      I wipe my mouth and go back inside. I don't know where Poundcake and Dumbo are but Zombie and Sam have moved in Evan's room to talk with Cassie. When I enter, they all stare at me.

      Cassie clears her throat. "I didn't find anything."

      I purse my lips. "You checked her throat?"

      Zombie nods slowly. He's treading lightly though I'm not sure why. "I checked. It's pretty red," he tells me. Then he nods. "Right. Which is why she she said it hurt." He scratches his stubble, thinking it over. "Not 'help me' or 'I'm cold' or even 'resistance is futile.' Just 'my throat hurts.'"

      Cassie crosses her arms over her chest. "'Resistance is futile'? Really?"

      I chuckle. Never change, Ben. Never change.

      Sam stands beside me in the doorway, staring at Megan with big brown, worried eyes. "Is she okay, Cassie?"

      "She's alive," Cassie replies. Better to say that than give him any hope.

     "She swallowed it!" Zombie says. "You didn't find it because it's in her stomach!"

      "That doesn't make sense," I but in. "Those tracking devices are the size of a grain of rice. Why would swallowing one hurt her throat?"

      "I'm not saying the device hurt her throat. Her throat has nothing to do with it."

      "Then why are you so worried about it being sore?" Cassie asks.

      "Here's what I'm worried about, Sullivan." Zombie seems to be losing his cool, but he's trying very hard to stay calm for the rest of us. "Her showing up out of the blue like this could mean a lot of things, but none of those things could be a good thing. In fact, it can only be a bad thing. A very bad thing made even badder by the fact that we don't know the reason she was sent here."

     "Badder?" Cassie asks.

      "Not a word," I tell him, smirking. 

      "Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can't talk the Queen's English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face."

      Cassie sighs. She was getting frustrated. I wonder what happened when she was alone.

      Zombie looked at Megan for a long moment. "We have to wake her up," he decided.

      Dumbo and Poundcake entered the room. "Don't tell me," Zombie says to Poundcake, ironically. "You didn't find nothing."

      "Anything," Dumbo corrected him.

      Zombie didn't punch him in the face. I felt the need to point that out, but decided against it when Zombie held out his hand to the big-eared boy. "Give me your canteen."

      Dumbo did. Zombie unscrewed the cap, held the container over Megan's forehead. A tiny tug in my stomach told me to stop him, that something was wrong and he needed to move away from the girl. But the drop of water dangled on the edge of the lip for an eternity. And Evan Walker spoke up from behind us: "I wouldn't do that I were you."

      Everyone froze. Evan stared at us, waiting for someone to ask the question we were all thinking. Zombie finally did: "Why?"

      "Waking her like that could make her take a very deep breath, and that would be bad."

      Zombie turned to face him. The water dribbled onto the carpet. "What the hell are you talking about?"

      Evan swallowed, grimacing from the effort. His face was eeily white. Blood loss. "She is implanted—but not with a tracking device."

      Zombie's lips tightened into a hard, white line. My stomach dropped into the pits of Hell we all seemed to be stuck in. We got it before the anyone else.

      I have to move to sit next to the window, let out a few shuddering breaths to keep myself from completely losing it. My forehead presses against the cold glass, relieving me of some warmth.

      Zombie looked at me and then looked at Dumbo and Poundcake. "Out. Sullivan, you and Sam, too."

      "I'm not going anywhere," she told him.

      "You should," Evan says, worried about his little girlfriend. "I don't know how finely it's been calibrated."

      "How finely what's been calibrated to what?" She demands.

      "The incendiary device to CO2." He wouldn't look at her. How do you look at someone you love and tell you that a little girl was sent here to incinerate you? "Our breath, 2, Cassie."

      Everyone got it then. They planted a bomb in a little girl and sent her out here to die. It was. . . unthinkable. Unacceptable.

      "Get downstairs now, all of you," Zombie snarled. It took the breath right out of my lungs. Zombie was angry, and when Zombie was angry there was hell to pay.

      Evan shook his head. "Not far enough. You should leave the building."

      Zombie 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 tried to pull it open but it didn't budge. It was frozen shut. Zombie pushed me out of the way and smashed out the glass with the butt of his rifle. Frosty air hits me like a bus, an overwhelmingly fresh smell covering the stink of dead rats and infection.

      Zombie walked back to Evan's bed, stared at him for a second, then grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked him forward. "You son of a bitch. . ."

      "Ben!" Cassie put her hand on his arm. "Let him go. He didn't--"

      "Oh, right. I forgot. He's a good evil alien." He dropped him. Evan fell back. Not enough strength to stay up.

      Evan looked at Cassie. "In her throat. Suspended directly above the epiglottis."

      "She's a bomb," Zombie said, his voice quavering with rage and disbelief. "They took a child and turned her into an IED."

      "Can we remove it?" I ask, still not looking their way. If I turn and see Megan I might dry heave out of this window.

      Evan shook his head. "How?"

      "That's what she's asking you, dipshit," Zombie barked.

     "The explosive is connected to a CO detector imbedded in her throat. If the connection's lost, it 2 detonates."

     "That doesn't answer her question," Cassie pointed out. "Can we remove it without blowing ourselves into orbit?"

     "It's feasible . . ."

      "Feasible. Feasible. " Zombie laughs a strange, hollow laugh. He was losing it but who could really blame him?

      "Evan," Cassie said as softly and calmly as she could. "Can we do it without . . ."

      "The odds of it not detonating are a lot better if you did."

      "Do it without . . . what?" Zombie doesn't get it or Zombie doesn't want to get it. One of those things.

      "Killing her first," Evan explained.

      I stuck my head out of the window and dry-heaved.