“I’ve killed people,” I said softly.
“I meant the plague.”
“No. My mom . . .”
“How about your dad?”
“Different kind of plague,” I said. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Vosch. Vosch murdered him.”
I told him about Camp Ashpit. The Humvees and big flatbed full of troops. The surreal appearance of the school buses. Just the kids. Room only for the little ones. The gathering of the rest in the barracks and Dad sending me with my first victim to find Crisco. Then Dad in the dirt, Vosch towering over him, while I hid in the woods, and Dad mouthing Run.
“Weird that they didn’t put you on a bus,” Ben said. “If the point was to build an army of brainwashed kids.”
“I saw mostly little kids, Sam’s age, some even younger.”
“At camp, they separated anyone under five, kept them in the bunker . . .”
I nodded. “I found them.” In the safe room, their faces lifted up to mine as I hunted for Sam.
“Which makes you wonder: Why keep them?” Ben said. “Unless Vosch expects a very long war.” The way he said it, as if he doubted that that was the reason. He drummed his fingers on the mattress. “What the hell is going on with Teacup? They should be back by now.”
“I’ll go check,” I said.
“Like hell you will. This is turning into every horror movie ever made. You know? Getting picked off one by one. Uh-uh. Five more minutes.”
We fell silent, listening. But there was only the wind whispering in the poorly sealed window and the constant undercurrent of rats scratching in the walls. Teacup was obsessed with them. I listened to hours of her and Ringer plotting their demise. That annoying lecturing tone of Ringer’s, explaining how the population was out of control: The hotel had more rats than we had bullets.
“Rats,” Ben said, as if he read my mind. “Rats, rats, rats. Hundreds of rats. Thousands of rats. More rats than us now. Planet of the rats.” He laughed hoarsely. Maybe he was delirious. “You know what’s been bugging the hell out of me? Vosch telling us they’ve been watching us for centuries. Like, how is that possible? Oh, I get how it’s possible, but I don’t get why they didn’t attack us then. How many people were on Earth when we built the pyramids? Why would you wait until there’re seven billion of us spread out over every continent with technology a little more advanced than spears and clubs? You like a challenge? The time to exterminate the vermin in your new house isn’t after the vermin outnumber you. What about Evan? He say anything about that?”
I cleared my throat. “He said they were divided over whether to exterminate us.”
“Huh. So maybe they debated it for six thousand years. Dicked around because nobody could make up his mind, until someone said, ‘Oh, what the hell, let’s just off the bastards.’”
“I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.” I was feeling a little defensive. As if knowing Evan meant I should know everything.
“Vosch could have been lying, I guess,” Ben mused. “I don’t know, to get in our heads, mess with us. He messed with me from the start.” He looked at me, then looked away. “Shouldn’t admit this, but I worshipped the guy. I thought he was, like . . .” He twirled his hand in the air, searching for the words. “The best of us.”
His shoulders began to shake. At first, I thought it must be the fever, and then I thought it could be something else, so I left my spot by the window and went to him.
For guys, breaking down is a private thing. Never let them see you cry, means you’re weak, means you’re soft, a baby, a wuss. Not very manly and all that BS. I couldn’t imagine the pre-Arrival Ben Parish crying in front of anyone, the guy who had everything, the boy who all the other boys wanted to be, the one who broke others’ hearts and never suffered his own to be broken.