The Falling Away (29 page)

Dylan sighed. “I don't suppose I can just tap my ruby slippers together, say there's no place like home, and wake up again at Auntie Em's?”

“Sorry; this nightmare's just beginning.” She stood. “So which vehicle do you want?”

“You take the Ram. I'm good with the Silverado.”

She tossed him a set of keys. “Where you gonna go?” she asked.

“Don't know. Haven't heard any suggestions. But I figure, maybe if I get out away from any other people, if I find a place that's desolate and deserted, maybe—”

“Maybe you can just crawl out onto the eastern Montana prairie and freeze, cold and alone?”

“Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying.”

“Li will find someone else.”

“You've said that.”

“So you'll just give up, stop fighting.”

“Fighting's only worthwhile if you have a chance of winning.”

“That doesn't sound like an Apsáalooke warrior. A Biiluke.”

“So you think it's better to jump off the cliff, get shot by the arrows, rather than just lie down and die? That what you're saying?”

“I've done everything I can do,” she said. “Like I said, I'm operating without a plan here. But now you know. And God knows. And that's enough. God's going to give you a chance to do what you were chosen to do, and I want you to take that chance.”

“Well, that's quite the pep talk. You should go out on the motivational speaking circuit.”

She stared, nodded, remained quiet. “I'll go start the Ram,” she said. “Maybe you can go say something to Webb before we go.” She set Webb's room key on the bed, then went to the door, opened it, turned around again. “You might want to leave out the part about lying down and dying. That's not much of a motivational speech either.”

She closed the door, leaving Dylan to stare at it.

That went well
, Joni said.

I know how to charm 'em
, he answered.

Something else rolled inside. Li. Hearing his interior conversations with Joni, trying to respond. But not yet able to.

I think, once Li wakes up inside—

We'll have to end our conversations
? Joni finished.

I don't want him to know about you
.

Why not? I'm not really me. I'm just a part of you
.

Yeah, I know that. Of course I know that. It's just . .
.

You don't want to lose me twice
?

Exactly
.

Understood. I'll go straight to the kill box when . . . whenever
.

Dylan put the keys to the Silverado in his pocket, slid Webb's room key off the bed. He opened the door, shuffled the few steps to the adjoining room, knocked before sliding the key into the door and entering.

Webb was up but looked like he was hung over. He sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed, elbows propped on his thighs, as if trying to work up the energy to stand.

“Rough night?” Dylan asked, stepping into the room with a smile.

Webb looked up. “I've had better.” No smile. Very unlike Webb.

Dylan sat on the room's second bed, facing Webb. “You remember much?”

“About?”

“About . . . the HIVE?”

“That's just what I'm working on. I mean, I remember going in, just totally crashing that first night. I remember the big tour the next day, going to the apartment . . . then it starts to get fuzzy.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes fuzzy's not too bad.”

“Says the guy who likes to pop Percocets nonstop.” A smile from Webb. Good.

“Exactly. Right now, though—”

“You're leaving. This is the big good-bye speech.”

“I suppose. Not much for giving speeches, though.”

“I'm not much for listening to them.” Webb paused. “I had some crazy dreams, Dylan. Some way bad dreams. That's what they were, weren't they?”

Dylan gave his best smile. “ 'Course. Bad dreams are the sign of a good, sane mind.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Just made it up. Sounds good, though, doesn't it?”

“Works for me.”

There was a knock at the door; Dylan rose to let Quinn into the room. “Webb,” he said, “this is Quinn.”

“I remember her,” Webb said, staring. “Unless the parts with her were a dream too.”

Quinn smiled. “It was all a dream, Webb. It was all just a long, bad dream.”

46

“We got a box,” Sergeant Steve Gilbert said, stepping into the 710th's workshop.

Dylan looked at him, tried to ignore Claussen already heading outside for his body armor. Typical Claussen. Didn't ask for details, didn't question what he was doing. Just listened to what Sergeant Gilbert or any of the higher-ups said, gave a simple nod, and did it.

Dylan wasn't built that way. Not that he was opposed to carrying out orders. Far from it; there was something comforting, something satisfying, about the chain of command in army life. It spoke to a deep part of Dylan. Probably the part that constantly counted items, aligned objects in his field of vision, identified patterns in speech and cadence. Those things too were comforting.

Sergeant Gilbert, for instance, tended to be short and clipped with his sentences. Typically three or four words, delivered like punches to the gut.

“A box?” That, for instance, was a logical question, an interest in more information. Dylan wanted that information; Claussen, for his part, had already departed the plastic shelter. Was probably already in the Humvee, for that matter, armored up. Locked and loaded. Squared away. Hoo-wah.

“Box at Death X,” Sergeant Gilbert said, as if this explained everything. And in a way, it did. As part of the 710th EOD Company, their squad of three was called upon to investigate suspicious items in the zone surrounding Camp Victory outside Baghdad. Death X was an intersection of two highways, so named because it attracted heavy attention from enterprising bomb makers. Stalled vehicles, something all too common in the scorching Iraq heat, might be wired with remotely detonated explosives. On one mission, Dylan's squad had destroyed the decaying carcass of a donkey left at the intersection of Death X, its innards filled with canisters of gunpowder wired to a trigger made out of a remote-control toy. Large debris of any kind in the vicinity of Death X—debris such as an innocent-looking cardboard box—warranted a call to the 710th, which then sent a squad to investigate and destroy.

Dylan had been in Baghdad more than six months. In that time, his squad had been sent on more than three hundred missions.

Gilbert stepped out of the workshop; Dylan rose slowly and followed, the grit of the sand pummeling his face as he stepped out into the high sun of the morning.

Another day at the office
, Joni's voice said inside his mind.

Yeah
, he replied.
And I'm getting sick of my cubicle
.

Just as he'd imagined, Claussen was already in his armor and ready to go, waiting for him and Sergeant Gilbert at their Humvee.

“We got lucky,” Claussen said as Dylan began to shrug on his body armor. “I think Hammy and Slim were gonna run the house on us.”

“Yeah. Lucky us.”

Most of the time, when they weren't running missions, making repairs, or maintaining their ever-growing arsenal of equipment, they played cards. Cribbage, occasionally. Some spades. But mostly hearts. All ten squads in the 710th played hearts, keeping track of which squads won the most hands on a makeshift leaderboard in the workshop. The 710th was a secretive company, keeping their distance from other troops for one very personal reason: their lives depended on it.

Bomb makers desperately wanted to collect the $50,000 bounty for any EOD tech, and many of the Iraqi forces supposedly working with American troops were sources of information for the guerrilla efforts. By staying apart from the rest of the troops, taking their meals in the workshop, and mixing only among themselves, they stemmed the potential for leaked information.

“Relax,” Claussen said. “We got this.”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Gilbert said, swinging into the Humvee. “We got this.”

Dylan climbed into their squad's Humvee. The back of the Humvee had a sticker attached to it: THE CHOSEN, it said in large black letters, the name for their squad. Most squads chose their own names—monikers such as Boomerang, Zombie Squad, and Halo—but their squad had become The Chosen by default, thanks to Claussen.

Early on in their tour, Claussen had begun to spout off about their being chosen to be here in this exact place and at this exact time, quoting Scripture to anyone who would listen. One of those Bible thumpers, seeing some Grand Design in all of it.

Dylan, for his part, saw no grand design. Surrounded by palm trees wrapped in razor wire, endless streams of debris blowing down windswept roadways, and hungry bands of Iraqi kids begging for candy, he only saw . . . despair. Hopelessness.

Sergeant Gilbert fired up the diesel engine and steered their Humvee into the roadway; Dylan and Claussen, helmeted, sat and scanned the area outside their vehicle as they traveled. If everything went well, they'd be at Death X in roughly half an hour.

“This is where it all started,” Claussen shouted to him, his eyes scanning.

This was the way communication always went inside the Humvee: you never looked at anyone else inside the vehicle as you spoke. You watched the roadway. Always.

Dylan didn't want to ask, but he supposed he was obliged to. “Where what started?”

“Babylon,” Claussen said. “Straight from the Old Testament. The first of many great kingdoms, where God's first chosen walked the lands. Abraham. Moses, after him. The prophets who talked directly with God.”

Dylan watched as a band of barefooted Iraqi kids ran beside them in the street, waving their hands and hoping the soldiers would throw them some candy bars. Instead, Gilbert gunned the engine and moved past them quickly.

“Thought God talked directly to you,” Dylan shouted. “Ain't that what you're always telling me?”

“No God walking and talking among us anymore. That time has passed.”

“Why's that?”

“God wanted to speak to us through a burning bush today—the way He did with Moses—we wouldn't recognize Him. The world is one giant burning bush, and we don't care.”

Dylan watched the blur of buildings passing them by. “Amen to that,” he said.

Claussen laughed. “Now, to get our attention, God whispers. That's how I hear Him. That's how anyone can hear Him. Listen for the whisper.”

Dylan knew what was coming next, what always came next. In an odd way, he looked forward to it, after spending all this time with Claussen and Sergeant Gilbert. At the beginning of every mission, Claussen prayed.

“Father God,” Claussen began, still scanning the roadway as they traveled. “Once again, we go again into the fiery furnace, a fiery furnace that only You can save us from. But even if You do not save us on this day, we want You to know: we will not bow down before false idols. Open our eyes to Your way, Lord; help us to see life as Your loved and chosen ones.”

“Hoo-wah,” Sergeant Gilbert said from the front seat.

“Hoo-wah,” Dylan said.

They rode in relative silence for a few moments, the drone of the diesel in their ears. Finally Dylan spoke, without really meaning to. “You always put in that part about the chosen ones, Claussen, about opening your eyes to it.”

“Yeah.”

“I've heard you pray that a couple hundred times now.”

“Yeah.”

“How many times you think you have to say it before that God of yours hears it?”

Claussen laughed. “Let me ask you this, Dylan. How come you never said that before?”

“Dunno.”

“No, I mean it. Like you said, I probably said that a couple hundred times, and in all that time, you never asked me about it. Until now.”

Dylan shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Just saying, here we are still. Maybe you should stop beating your head against that wall.”

“Well,” Claussen said, “in God's eyes, it's already done. In my eyes, it's already done. What about your eyes, Sergeant Gilbert?”

“Already done.”

Sergeant Gilbert didn't strike Dylan as much of a religious zealot, but in his own way, he was something of a true believer; in all their missions, both he and Sergeant Gilbert had seen Claussen's almost supernatural ability to get them out of scrapes and close calls. Maybe that's why Dylan was asking the questions now, because he knew there was something different, something . . . foreign . . . about Claussen's ability to think and act in the midst of mayhem.

“I pray that to open
your
eyes, Dylan. Because I think I've been put here to change you. Change others, change this whole mess maybe, sure. But God's been whispering to me, and He's told me I've been chosen to help open your eyes. So I think you asking me about it today, I think maybe that says something.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe you're starting to open your eyes. Like maybe you just decided to stop beating your head against the wall.”

47

Half an hour after leaving Quinn and Webb, Dylan was on Highway 89, heading east, trying to keep his mind blank. Every time a thought surfaced, he folded it and banished it to the kill box.

Eventually, Joni spoke.
What are you thinking
?

I'm thinking, might as well go out in a blaze of glory
.

That's not what you told Quinn
.

Best if she doesn't know. She'll just get in the way
.

So what are you gonna do
?

It's a farm community, right? They have access to diesel . . . and to fertilizer. I can go homemade, stuff the Village Center full, blow it all sky high
.

Only one problem with that
.

What's that
?