All You Need Is Kill (19 page)

I broke the awkward silence. “Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s just something I wanted to say. Guess I didn’t get the timing right.”

“We’ve had a conversation like this before in an earlier loop, haven’t we? But only you remember,” Rita said.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“No, it doesn’t bother me,” she said, shaking her head.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Tell me what you’re planning.”

“Well, there’s a lot I still don’t understand,” I said. “I need you to explain how to end the loop, for starters.”

“I’m asking what you’re planning to do next so I don’t have to think about it.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“I’m dead serious.”

“But you’re Rita Vrataski. You always know what to do.”

“It will be fun being the one outside the loop for a change.”

“Not much fun for me,” I said. I wondered what she meant by saying “will”; I thought she’d been freed from the loop already, after 211 times through thirty hours in Florida. I opened my mouth to ask, but she interrupted.

“I think I’ve earned the right to sit back and watch,” she said. “I’ve had to handle enough shit as it is. It’s your turn. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

I sighed. “I know.”

“Hey, don’t blame me.”

“Well then, it’s still a little early, but my next stop is the cafeteria. I hope you’re in the mood for Japanese food.”

The cafeteria was noisy. In one corner, a group of soldiers was seeing who could do the most push-ups in three minutes. Another group we walked past was playing gastronomic chicken with a mystery liquid that looked like a combination of ketchup, mustard, and orange juice. At the far end of the room some guy was singing a folk song—or maybe it was an old anime theme song—that had been popular at least seventy years ago, complete with banjo accompaniment. One of the feed religions had originally used it as an anti-war song, but that wasn’t the sort of detail that bothered guys who signed up with the UDF. The tune was easy to remember, and that’s all it took to be a hit with a crowd of Jacket jockeys.

Let’s all join the ar-my!

Let’s all join the ar-my!

Let’s all join the ar-my!

And kill ourselves some things!

I’d watched all this 159 times. But since I’d been caught in the loop, I hardly noticed a thing about the world outside my own head that didn’t directly pertain to my way out of here. I sat quietly in a small, gray cafeteria, devoid of sound, methodically shoveling tasteless food into my mouth.

Even if tomorrow’s battle went well, some of the soldiers here wouldn’t be coming back. If it went poorly, even fewer would return. Everybody knew it. The Armored Infantry was Santa Claus, and battle was our Christmas. What else for the elves to do on Christmas Eve but let their hair down and drink a little eggnog.

Rita Vrataski was sitting across from me, eating the same lunch for the 160th time. She examined her 160th
umeboshi
.

“What is this?”

“
Umeboshi.
It’s ume—people call it a plum, but it’s more like an apricot—dried in the sun, and then pickled. You eat it.”

“What’s it taste like?”

“Food is like war. You have to experience it for yourself.”

She poked at it two or three times with her chopsticks, then threw caution to the wind and put the whole thing in her mouth. The sourness hit her like a body blow from a heavyweight fighter and she doubled over, grabbing at her throat and chest. I could see the muscles twitching in her back.

“Like it?”

Rita worked her mouth without looking up. Her neck tensed. Something went flying out of her mouth—a perfectly clean pit skidded to a halt on her tray. She wiped the edges of her mouth as she gasped for breath.

“Not sour at all.”

“Not at this cafeteria,” I said. “Too many people from overseas. Go to a local place if you want the real stuff.”

I picked up the
umeboshi
from my tray and popped it into my mouth. I made a show of savoring the flavor. Truth be known, it was sour enough to twist my mouth as tight as a crab’s ass at low tide, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing that.

“Pretty good.” I smacked my lips.

Rita stood, her mouth a stern line. She left me sitting at the table as she strode down the corridor between the tables, past throngs of soldiers, and up to the serving counter. There, Rachel spoke to a gorilla of a man who could reach up and touch the ceiling without so much as stretching—the same gorilla from the 4th whose fist my jaw had encountered all those loops ago. Beauty and the Beast were understandably surprised to see the subject of their conversation walk up to them. The entire cafeteria could sense that something was up; the conversations dimmed, and the banjo music stopped. Thank God.

Rita cleared her throat. “Could I get some dried pickled plums?”

“Umeboshi?”

“Yeah, those.”

“Well, sure, if you like.”

Rachel took out a small plate and started piling it with
umeboshi
from a large, plastic bucket.

“I don’t need the plate.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That thing you’re holding in your left hand. Yeah, the bucket. I’ll take all of them.”

“Um, people don’t usually eat that many at once,” Rachel said.

“That a problem?”

“No, I suppose not—”

“Thanks for your help.”

Bucket in hand, Rita walked back triumphantly. She thunked it down in the middle of the table right in front of me.

The container was about thirty centimeters across at the mouth— a tub big enough to serve about two hundred men, since nobody ever wanted more than one—packed halfway to the top with bright red
umeboshi.
Big enough to drown a small cat. The base of my tongue started to ache just looking at it. Rita went for her chopsticks.

She singled out one of the wrinkled, reddish fruit from the bucket and popped it into her mouth. She chewed. She swallowed. Out came the pit.

“Not sour at all.” Her eyes watered.

Rita passed the barrel to me with a shove. My turn. I picked out the smallest one I could find and put it in my mouth. I ate it and spit out the pit.

“Mine either.”

We were playing our own game of gastronomic chicken. The tips of Rita’s chopsticks quivered as she plunged them back into the barrel. She tried twice to pick up another
umeboshi
between them before she gave up and just skewered one on a single stick, lifting it to her mouth. The fruit trailed drops of pink liquid that stained the tray where they fell.

A crowd of onlookers had begun to gather around us. They watched in uneasy silence at first, but the excitement grew palpably with each pit spat out on the tray.

Sweat beaded on our skin like condensation on a hot day’s beer can. The revolting pile of half-chewed pits grew. Rachel was off to the side, watching with a worried smile. I spotted my friend from the 4th in the throng, too. He was having such a good time watching me suffer. Each time Rita or I put another
ume
in our mouths, a wave of heckling rippled through the crowd.

“Come on, pick up the pace!”

“No turnin’ back now, keep ’em poppin’!”

“You’re not gonna let this little girl show you up, are you?”

“Fuck, you think he can beat Rita? You’re crazy!”

“Eat! Eat! Eat!”

“Watch the doors, don’t want nobody breakin’ this up! I got ten bucks on the scrawny guy!” followed immediately by, “Twenty on Rita!” Then someone else cried out, “Where’s my fried shrimp? I lost my fried shrimp!”

It was hot, it was loud, and in a way I can’t explain, it felt like home. There was an invisible bond that hadn’t been there my previous times through the loop. I’d had a taste of what tomorrow would bring, and suddenly all the little things that happen in our lives, the minutiae of the day, took on new importance. Just then, being surrounded by all that noise felt good.

In the end, we ate every industrially packed
umeboshi
in the barrel. Rita had the last one. I argued that it was a tie, but since Rita had gone first, she insisted that she had won. When I objected, Rita grinned and offered to settle it over another barrel. It’s hard to say whether that grin meant she really could have gone on eating or if the overload of sour food had made her a little funny in the head. The gorilla from the 4th brought in another full barrel of the red fruit from Hell and placed it in the middle of the table with a thud.

By that point, I felt like I was made of
umeboshi
from the waist on down. I waved the white flag.

After that, I talked with Rita about everything—Yonabaru who never shut up, Sergeant Ferrell and his training obsession, the rivalry between our platoon and the 4th. For her part, Rita told me things she hadn’t had time to get to in the last loop. When not encased in her Jacket, the Bitch wore a shy smile that suited her well. Her fingertips smelled of machine grease, pickled plum, and a hint of coffee.

I don’t know which flags I’d set or how, but on that 160th loop my relationship with Rita deepened as it never had before. The next morning, Corporal Jin Yonabaru didn’t wake up on the top bunk. He woke up on the floor.

3

I found no peace in sleep. A Mimic would snuff out my life, or I’d black out in the middle of battle. After that, nothing. Then without warning, the nothingness gave way. The finger that had been squeezing the trigger of my rifle was wedged three quarters of the way through my paperback. I’d find myself lying in bed, surrounded by its pipe frame, listening to the high-pitched voice of the DJ read the day’s weather.
Clear and sunny out here on the islands, same as yesterday, with a UV warning for the afternoon.
Each word wormed its way into my skull and stuck there.

By “sunny” I had picked up the pen, by “islands” I was writing the number on my hand, and by the time she’d gotten to “UV warning” I was out of bed and on my way to the armory. That was my wake-up routine.

Sleep on the night before the battle was an extension of training. For some reason, my body never grew fatigued. The only thing I brought with me were my memories and the skills I’d mastered. I spent the night tossing and turning, my mind replaying the movements it had learned the previous day as it burned the program into my brain. I had to be able to do what I couldn’t the last time through the loop, to kill the Mimics I couldn’t kill, to save the friends I couldn’t save. Like doing an iso push-up in my mind. My own private nightly torment.

I awoke in battle mode. Like a pilot flipping through switches before takeoff, I inspected myself one part at a time, checking for any muscles that might have knotted up overnight. I didn’t skip so much as a pinky toe.

Rotating ninety degrees on my ass, I sprang out of bed and opened my eyes. I blinked. My vision blurred. The room was different. The prime minister’s head wasn’t staring out at me from atop the swimsuit model. By the time I noticed, it was too late; my foot missed a platform that wasn’t there and my inertia sent me tumbling from the bed. My head slammed into a tile-covered floor, and I finally realized where I was.

Sunlight shone through layers of blast-resistant glass and spilled across the vast, airy room. An artificial breeze from the purifier poured over my body as I lay sprawled on the floor. The thick walls and glass completely blocked out the sounds of the base that were usually so loud in my ears.

I was in the Sky Lounge. In a base of exposed steel and khaki-colored, fire-retardant wood, this was the one and only properly appointed room. Originally an officers’ meeting room that doubled as a reception hall, the night view of Uchibo through its multilayered glass would have fetched a good price.

As nice as the view was, it was a lousy place to wake up, unless you were a mountain goat or a dedicated hermit with a love of heights. Or you could be Yonabaru. I’d heard he had some secret spot up here one floor higher than even the officers were allowed to go. “His love nest,” we called it.

More like a love aerie.

Looking out across the ocean I could see the gentle curve of the horizon. Uchibo beach was dimly visible through the morning mist. Triangles of waves rose, turned to foam, and faded back into the sea. Beyond those waves lay the island the Mimics had made their spawning grounds. For a moment, I thought I saw a bolt of bright green shoot through the surf. I blinked my eyes. It had only been a glint of sunlight on the water.

“You certainly slept well last night.” Rita stood over me, having walked in from the other room.

I looked up slowly from the tile floor. “Feels like it’s been years.”

“Years?”

“Since I had a good night’s sleep. I’d forgotten how good it is.”

“That’s crazy time-loop talk.”

“You should know.”

Rita gave a wave of her hand in sympathy.

Our savior, the Full Metal Bitch, looked more relaxed this morning than I had ever seen her. Her eyes were softer in the cool morning light, and the sunlight made her rust-colored hair glow orange. She gave me the sort of look she might give to a puppy who’d followed her home. She was placid as a Zen monk. She was beautiful.