Huynh looked like he was molded from wax.
He was unconscious, his nostrils flaring with each uneven breath. Antonelli didn’t want another death on his conscience, but he also didn’t want to delve into the Zap world of unfathomable science. According to Franklin, mutants took “alternative healing” to a whole new level.
“What’s the prognosis?” Antonelli asked Randall, although Colleen was the one tending the stricken soldier.
“McCracken is bird bait,” the lieutenant said, referring to their dead medic. “If you add up the medical knowledge of the rest of us, you might get enough to prescribe two aspirin.”
“He probably won’t make it until morning,” Colleen said. “Pulse is low, and he’s probably suffering organ failure from the shock. If that doesn’t get him, then infection is going to set in. As the saying goes, ‘Septicemia always wins.’”
“And that’s not even counting what that thing pumped into him,” Randall said, pointing to the bird “neck” they’d extracted from the wound. It lay on a towel draped across a card table amid splotches of blood and whatever bizarre fluid leaked from the manufactured fowl. Antonelli couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the clotted silver beak part and close again.
“All right,” he said to Randall. “Check on the sentries at the door. Then meet me in the telecom room for a briefing at twenty-three-hundred hours. Close the door on your way out.”
Randall glanced from him to Colleen as if he expected them to take off their clothes and crawl into one of the bunks the moment he left. But he saluted and left without comment.
Antonelli knelt so that he was face-to-face with Colleen. Her green eyes were bright with concern. He wished he was just a normal man back in the old world, getting ready to kiss his girlfriend in a meadow. But in the old world he was a military man, with no time for a wife and children, and he never would have considered a younger woman. In the old world, he was a straight arrow, a no-nonsense, by-the-book officer committed to the larger mission of preserving a certain way of life.
Under existing conditions, he allowed himself some weakness, at the very time when weakness was the worst possible quality.
“I have to make a choice,” Antonelli said. “It’s not just for Huynh, and it’s not just for me. It’s for what we want out of this new world. The one we have, not the one we want.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll support whatever you decide. I always do.”
“I don’t want to make it alone.”
“You’re not alone.” She gave him a kiss, not a romantic or sexy kiss, just an “I am here” kiss.
He briefly explained Kokona’s offer, including his own total ignorance of the process and outcome. “I’m not worried so much about not comprehending the quantum principles. I’m not even worried that it might fail. I just don’t know what will happen to Huynh if he does survive. That’s the part that scares me the most.”
She wiped a moist towel across the man’s sweating forehead. “If I was Private Huynh, I’d rather live and take my chances.”
“Yeah, I guess I would, too. But this crosses a line. This is accepting aid and comfort from the enemy. It’s a kind of surrender, and I’m not sure I have the authority for that kind of decision.”
“Can you radio HQ? Or the field command in Wytheville?”
“Not with the EMF screwing the atmosphere. Auroras are spectacular tonight. Too bad we can’t go out and enjoy them.”
He thought of the dead soldiers scattered around the ridge line and forest and whatever night scavengers might be licking their bones clean.
“Besides,” he added. “How would I ever explain the situation? We’re supposed to avoid enemy contact, but if we do make contact, orders are to kill without mercy.”
“But she’s just a baby!”
“Yes, but not any baby we can understand. She’s probably got an IQ that’s exponential to mine, and she has abilities we can’t even contemplate, much less hope to measure. She might even have orchestrated the bird attack.”
Colleen shook her freckled head in disbelief. “She can barely crawl. And she’s so goddamned cute. If not for those creepy-as-hell eyes, you could picture her on a jar of mashed bananas in the grocery store.”
“I can’t even picture a grocery store anymore.” Antonelli pulled the sodden cigar from his chest pocket. It was falling apart, but he couldn’t resist fingering it like a talisman that would guide him onto the right path. “But if this Kokona Zap has that kind of power, then I’m putting all of us at risk by even staying here, much less letting her live.”
“Maybe staying here would be the right move,” Colleen said, knowing full well the implication of her words. They were treasonous, and if even a shred of the old-school, brass-balls Marine Captain Mark Antonelli existed, he would arrest her for insubordination and failure to obey an order, likely throwing a sedition charge in there for good measure.
But she was only guilty of voicing what Antonelli had already been mulling.
“We’re supposed to link up with the Fourth Division in two weeks,” he said.
“That’s just your rah-rah bullshit pep talk for the troops. That’s talking out of your ass, not out of your heart. Don’t you think saving a dozen lives is worth something?”
Antonelli crumbled the wet cigar between his fingers.
Colleen gripped his head between her two palms and brought his face close enough that she could feel her whisper across his lips. “What about saving us?”
Antonelli looked past her at Huynh, who trembled slightly, seemed to skip a breath, and then lapse back into his stupor. He stood, avoiding Colleen’s eyes, because that would sway him.
Yeah, right, you old son of a bitch. She had you before you even walked in the door.
He left without a word and found Kokona, who insisted that Marina accompany her. When Franklin tried to join them, Kokona’s tiny brows knitted and she said, “Alone.”
Franklin shrugged and put an arm around Stephen. “Let’s go check the monitors.”
Marina carried Kokona back to the makeshift medical ward, and when Antonelli tried to follow them inside, Kokona said, “Alone means alone, Captain.”
“That’s my man in there. I’m responsible for his life.”
“Not any more,” Kokona said. “Now I’m the one responsible.”
“Can PFC Kelly stay, at least?” He resented bargaining with this little mutant brat, and he struggled to retain whatever sense of military comportment he had left to project.
“Is she good?” Marina asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Colleen came up behind Marina and smiled down at Kokona. The radiance of the baby’s eyes made Colleen’s eyes even more brilliant, like multi-faceted emeralds encased in ice. “Hello, Kokona. I’m the patient’s nurse. I want to help him, too.”
“She’s good,” Kokona said to Marina, who nodded.
“Trust me,” Colleen said to Antonelli, closing the door. A moment later, the small, wire-reinforced window was covered with a pillowcase.
Trust you? I can’t even trust myself anymore.