AFTER THE GIRL midshipman—or should it be midshipwoman? Midshipchick?—finds me in the head (which is what they call the toilet, which is a terrible name for it, it makes me feel like I’m peeing in someone’s skull) and tells me about the plan to go back to New York, I keep looking at the others, trying to figure out whether they’ve been contacted, too. I’m not supposed to speak about it with them. They, the “they” who have us captive, who are the navy but not (I guess they’re more like mercenaries now or maybe, like, military dictators, according to my night visitor), are watching and listening. So I go around just looking at my friends with slightly bugged-out eyes and hoping for a response that matches up, like, “Yeah, I know.”

Brainbox is unreadable as ever. He was unreadable back when he was double-crossing us at Plum Island, which was a good thing, because he was actually double-double-crossing the Old Man, which amounted to either triple-crossing or quadruple-crossing, depending on how you figured it. That saved us all. But I can’t say I feel particularly like confiding in him.

Theo—who’s great at affecting cool indifference—well, I don’t know if he’s been contacted. But Peter for sure has been told something’s up, which might not have been the best idea, since his response to my look is to sing out, “Girrrrrrrrlll,” as though he just heard the best gossip ever. Then he mimes locking his lips and putting the key in his back pocket. Not particularly discreet.

With Jefferson, it’s easier to bring it up. We’re lying in our tiny bunk in our cozy little battleship-gray love nest. And I put my lips to his ear and whisper, “What are we going to do?”

This starts a weird sort of conversation, like, one person whispers into the other’s ear, then we look at each other—then the other person whispers back. Kind of like that game telephone without anybody in the middle.

Jefferson: “What we have to do.”

This is typical. Jefferson is all, like, duty and responsibility and public service.

Me: “Please don’t tell me that you want to go back.”

He looks me in the eyes. Then—mouth to ear.

Jefferson: “I don’t want to go back. But if we don’t… everybody dies.”

I don’t have a good answer to that, not one I can speak out loud. The only answer I can think of is, Yeah, but what about us? But I don’t say it.

I don’t want to go back to the danger and the misery and the stink. Not now that I’ve gotten away. I don’t want to fear for my life or for his. I want to just lie here with him forever, or for the next longest period of time available.

And also I want—is this wrong?—to live. To go somewhere. To see the world, or what is left of it. To sit in a quiet café and write self-indulgent crap in a journal. To go online and buy a song. Walk the dog. Tweet. Have kids. I can’t see this happening in a big way back in the post-apocalyptic wasteland we just left.

What should happen is that the navy just whip up a bunch of antidote and save the day. Brainbox could show them how to do it—anyway, they already know how, otherwise they wouldn’t be alive in the first place. Chapel said something about “transgenic shift,” which sounds like a shitty post-punk band. Like maybe the Sickness has been mutating into something else, so they need to be sure they’ll be immune to the new strain before they go back. Transgenic shift or no transgenic shift, they should just grow a pair of balls and cruise into New York harbor, or whatever, and start helping people. The kids in New York don’t even have a notion that the rest of the world has made it.

Then a nasty little thought traipses into my brainpan, which is—tell Ed the Interrogator or Admiral Whatsisface what’s going on. Rat out that guy Chapel and the Resistance. Then nobody would have to go back, and I’d have Jefferson and our friends safe and sound.

But I can’t find it in myself to pull a dick move like that. So I say the only thing I can. This is what you get for falling in love.

Me: “Wherever you go, I’ll go.”

They come two nights later, not three the way they told us. It’s past four in the morning—they’ve allowed us to have a clock, finally, which lets me know just how godforsaken the hour is. I’d been starting to catch up on my sleep after years of fretful waking and cold sweats. When Chapel shows up at the hatch and raps on the metal wall, for a moment I don’t know who I am or what I’m here for.

Me: “It’s too soon!”

But I know—the punch-in-the-heart feeling tells me—that we’re going.

Chapel: “Sorry. Extra precaution in case any of you dropped a dime.”

I don’t even know what that means.

In the lounge, the others are already up and equally frazzled. By the exit hatch there’s a guy in slouchy casual clothes and a beard, cradling a pimped-out carbine. He casts glances up and down the hall outside.

Captain is arguing with the midshiplady.

Midshiplady: “You’ve got to come. It’s all or nothing.”

Captain: “Then nobody’s going. This is me. Right here.”

Theo (glares at him): “What about home?”

Captain: “Man, I’m done. I served my time, a’ight? I’m not going back.”

And I get it. The first time I met Captain was on his ship, the Annie. Since the Islanders took it and burned it, he’s been grieving. But the carrier lifted his spirits—the sea and the machinery and the order. If he’s got a chance at this life… well, I’m not gonna deny him that.

Captain turns and heads back to his bunk.

The lady midshipman points a pistol at him.

Me: “Don’t!”

Theo grabs the gun, and the two of them wrestle, and the guy with the beard raises his carbine, and for an ugly moment, there’s a scrap brewing, but Chapel hisses for them to stop.

Chapel: “We’re not going to do that. That’s not us.”

By this point, Captain has turned to look at us.

Chapel: “You raise the alarm, and all of us are dead.”

Captain: “Fuck you, man. Ain’t raising no alarm.”

Beard: “Whatever we do, we gotta go do it now.”

So we leave Captain there. Theo glares at him like he hates him. Then, his fury snapping just like that, he goes and hugs him good-bye. Angry tears stream down his face when he turns back to us. Captain, face contorted with the pain of his decision, holds a hand up in farewell.

We hurry along through the metal halls. The lights are dim for once; nobody seems to be around. I keep banging my shins against the thresholds. An air of quiet, controlled panic.

Ladders, steps, hatches, Chapel navigates at speed. And suddenly, we’re up on the flight deck.

Even in the queasy purple-black of the predawn, there is clamor and movement. A big fighter jet is idling nearby, and its engine sounds like an endless scream. The crews in color-coordinated jumpsuits seethe around it over the immense plateau of the runway, past the massive stays of the arresting cable.

At a signal from Chapel, somebody somewhere looses the cable, and it springs free from its moorings with a horrific clang, snaking across the deck, a lethal metal rope as wide as a man’s leg.

A tumult of shouting and barked commands, and the crews are sucked in by the vortex of habit and the hurry to fix it, and Chapel motions us across the deck.

As I hurry, I can feel the sick lurching of the ocean underneath—I see the other ships that lie off the sides rise and fall, like buildings in the shock wave of an earthquake, and I stumble. Jefferson grabs me by the elbow and pulls me up.

We come into the blast zone of a big helicopter’s chop, the wake of the rotors blowing my hair back and stunning my senses raw. It’s gassing up, a snaking rubber line fastened like a limpet pumping fuel into its belly. I gag on the turpentine smell.

An argument is in progress—or in lack-of-progress. A sailor with a yellow helmet and yellow sleeves is pointing at a sheaf of papers on a clipboard. I make out the words “not cleared.” Opposite him, a marine is barking back.

Barely pausing, Chapel takes an oblong object from his pocket and holds it to the yellow guy’s neck. There’s a crackling sound and a burst of purple spark, and he flops to the ground. Chapel motions us through the square hatch of the chopper.

We’ve barely squeezed in before we hear shots. Chapel scurries to a corner of the hold.

There, Admiral Whatsisface is secured to the hull by a ratchet strap. His mouth is covered with duct tape. His face is red.

The marine pulls himself up from the deck, then with the cracking sound of a shot, he falls backward. The guy with the beard fires over my shoulder, and the report of the gun deafens me.

So what happens now happens on mute.

First, I look out the hatch at the marine, and I see a pool of blood guttering out of him. And then I see that the blood is merging with a slick of some other liquid. And I realize that it’s fuel. The hose is punctured and leaking.

Then I see the lick of flame not so far away, I see a crew of men in white running for a fire hose, I see the squad of marines with their guns trained on the helicopter.

I see the flame running up the fuel hose.

I see the fuel hose still stuck to the helicopter’s gut as the flame climbs toward it.

So I jump out of the chopper. I scrabble along the deck toward the port where the fuel hose links up.

I grab the end of the hose and my hands slip. The flame gets closer and closer as I pull at the hose.

And I go with a lurch from hoping that I can fix it and get back to the helicopter to hoping that I can just get the thing loose and set the others free before I die.

I hear shouting behind me and look back, and I see Jefferson leaning out the door of the chopper, held back by the guy with the beard and Chapel. He’s shouting my name.

And I twist the collar at the end of the hose, and the housing opens with a satisfying clack, and the hose falls to the ground as the flame catches and it gouts fire across the deck.

And Chapel shouts something to the pilot, and the chopper rises from the deck.

And I slip and fall and feel the metal deck smash me in the face, and I can barely roll over to see the chopper diminish and diminish as the blades pull it away into the sky.

I want to get up and catch it, but my legs won’t move.

So I watch as it disappears into the low clouds, and inside I say good-bye.