"You shouldn't have left," he goes on. "We needed you. If you hadn't left, Teacup would still be alive. And if you'd come back, Poundcake might be alive. Instead, you decided to hang out with a total stranger, to hell with us, and now Dumbo's blood is on your hands, too." He jabs a finger at my face. "If he dies, it's your fault. Dumbo came looking for you."

"Hey, kids, is everything all right?" Constance, her smile withered to a concerned grin.

"Oh, sure," Zombie says. "We were just discussing where we should go for dinner. Chinese sound good to you?"

"Well, it's closer to breakfast," Constance answers brightly. "I could really go for some pancakes."

Zombie looks at me. "She's fun. What a blast you must have had this winter."

Constance's worried grin disappears. Her bottom lip quivers. Then she bursts into tears and flops down on the asphalt, resting her elbows on her knees and burying her broken face in her hands. Zombie takes in the act for a long, uncomfortable moment.

I know what she's doing: The best hammer to break the bonds of distrust is natural human sympathy. Pity has killed more people than hate.

When the last day comes for Zombie, it won't be another person who betrays him; it will be his heart.

He glances at me. What's with this woman?

I shrug. Who knows? My apathy fuels his pity, and he gives in to it, squatting beside her.

"Hey, look, I was being an asshole, I'm sorry."

Constance mutters something that sounds like pancakes. Zombie touches her shoulder gently. "Hey, Connie . . . It's Connie, right?"

"Con-stan-stan . . ."

"Constance, right. I have a friend, Constance. He's hurt pretty bad and I need to get back to him. Now." Rubbing her shoulder. "Like, right now."

It makes me sick to my stomach. I turn away. Across the eastern horizon a slash of garish pink glows. Another day closer to the end.

"I just-I just don't know-how much more-I can take . . ." Constance is moaning, on her feet now and leaning her whole body into Zombie's, a hand on his shoulder, a not-so-young-and-fair damsel in distress. If I had to give Constance a nom de guerre, I would pick Cougar.

Zombie gives me a look: A little help here?

"Of course you can take more," I say to her, my stomach still churning. I wish the hub would get a grip on my gut. "And then you're gonna take a little more, then a little more, and after that a little more." I pull her off him, not gently. She snuffles loudly, pouring it on.

"Please don't be mean to me, Marika," she whimpers. "You're always so mean."

Oh dear God.

"Here," Zombie says, taking her arm. "She can walk with me. You should be covering the rear anyway, Ringer."

"Oh yes," Constance purrs. "Cover the rear, Marika!"

The world spins. The ground heaves. I stumble a couple feet off the road and double over, at which point everything in my stomach comes out in a violent gush.

A hand on my back: Zombie's. "Hey, Ringer-what the hell?"

"I'm okay," I gasp, shrugging off his hand. "Must be the undercooked rabbit." Another lie and not even a necessary one.

33.

MIDMORNING, DOWNTOWN URBANA, under a cloudless sky, the temperature in the midforties. You can feel it coming. Spring.

Zombie and Constance rush into the coffee shop while I cover the street. From the doorway, I hear Zombie's startled cry, and then he's skittering back to me across the treacherous coffee-bean-covered floor.

"What?"

He pushes past me and lurches onto the street, whipping right, then left, then back again. Constance comes over and says, "Apparently the kid's gone."

In the middle of Main Street, Zombie throws back his head and howls Dumbo's name. As if in mockery, the echo ricochets back at him.

I trot over to his side. "Screaming probably isn't a good idea, Zombie."

His response is a wide-eyed, uncomprehending stare. Then he turns and races down the street, calling his name over and over, Dumbo! Dumbo! and Dumbo, you dumbass, where are you? He loops back to us after a couple of blocks, out of breath and shaking with panic.

"Somebody took him."

"How do you know?" I ask.

"You're right, I don't. Thanks for the reality check, Ringer. He probably got up and ran all the way to the safe house, except for the inconvenient fact that he was shot in the back."

I ignore the sarcasm. "I don't think anyone took him, Zombie."

He laughs. "That's right. I forgot. You're the one with the answers. Come on, the suspense is killing me. What happened to Dumbo, Ringer?"

"I don't know," I answer. "But I don't think anyone took him because there's nobody left to do the taking. Your cat lady would have seen to that."

I start off down the street. He watches me for a few seconds, then shouts at my back, "Where the hell are you going?"

"The safe house, Zombie. Didn't you say it was south on Highway 68?"

"Unbelievable!" He erupts in a torrent of curses. I keep walking. Then he shouts: "What the hell happened to you out here, anyway? Where's the Ringer who told me that everyone matters?"

"Mean," Constance whispers to him. I hear her clearly. "I told you."

I keep walking.

Five minutes later, I find Dumbo crumpled at the base of a barricade that stretches from sidewalk to sidewalk across Main. That he made it this far-nearly ten blocks from where he was hit-is extraordinary. I kneel beside him and press my fingers against his neck. I whistle loudly. When Zombie comes sprinting to the scene, he's out of breath and ready to collapse. So is Constance, except her exhaustion is an act.

"How the hell did he get here?" Zombie wonders aloud. He looks around wildly.

"The only way he could," I answer. "He crawled."

34.

ZOMBIE DOESN'T ASK why Dumbo would drag himself ten blocks in great pain and with a bullet in his back. He doesn't ask because he knows the answer. Dumbo wasn't fleeing danger or looking for help: Dumbo was looking for his sarge.

It's more than Zombie can handle. He falls against the side of the barricade, gulping air, his face lifted up to the sky. Lost, found, dead, alive, the cycle repeats; there's no escape, there's no reprieve. Zombie closes his eyes and waits for his breath to slow, his heart to steady. A small break before it begins again: the next loss, the next death.

It's always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.

I scooch next to Dumbo and lift up his shirt. The bandage is soaked. The packing beneath the bandage is saturated. If he wasn't bleeding out before, he is now. I press my hand onto his ashen cheek. His skin is cool, but I am going deeper than the skin. I am going into him. Beside me, Constance watches; she knows what I'm doing.

"Is it too late?" she whispers.

Dumbo feels me inside him. His eyelids flutter, his lips part, and breath roils from his open mouth. In the dwindling twilight of his consciousness, a question, an aching need. I go where you go.

"Zombie," I murmur. "Say something to him."

To live, Dumbo would need a massive blood transfusion. He won't get one.

But he didn't crawl ten blocks in blistering pain for that. That isn't why he held on.

"Tell him he made it, Zombie. Tell him he found you."

There is a light that glimmers along the darkening edge of an infinite horizon. In that light the heart finds what the heart seeks. In that light, Dumbo goes where his beloved Zombie goes. In that light, a boy named Ben Parish finds his baby sister. In that light, Marika saves a little girl called Teacup. In that light are promises kept, dreams realized, time redeemed.

And Zombie's voice, speeding Dumbo toward the light: "You made it, Private. You found me."

No darkness slamming down. No endless fall into lightlessness. All was light when I felt Dumbo's soul break the horizon.

Lost, found, and all was light.

35.

ZOMBIE.

I WON'T LEAVE Dumbo to rot where he fell. I won't leave him for the rats and the crows and the blowflies. I will not burn him, either. I will not abandon his bones to be picked over and scattered by vultures and vermin.

I will dig a grave for him in the cold, stubborn earth. I will bury his med kit with him, but no rifle. Dumbo was not a killer; he was a healer. He saved my life twice. No, three times. I have to count his telling Ringer where to shoot me that night in Dayton.

There are dozens of faded flags stuck throughout the barricade. I will mark his grave with them. The fabric will fade to white. The wooden dowels will fall and slowly decay. Or, if Walker fails to blow up the mothership, the bombs that are coming will leave nothing behind-no flags, no grave, no Dumbo.

Then the earth will settle and grass will grow over my friend, covering him in a blanket of vivid green.

"Zombie, there's no time," Ringer informs me.

"There's time for this."

She doesn't put up another argument. I'm sure there are about twelve she could whip out, but she holds back.

It's past noon by the time I'm finished. Dear Christ, it's turned into a beautiful goddamned day. We sit by the mound of freshly turned dirt and I pull out the rest of my power bars to share. Ringer takes a few tiny bites, then shoves the rest into her jacket pocket.

"The rabbit?" I ask.

She grunts a nonanswer. The woman named Constance gobbles down her bar. Speaking of rabbits: Her eyes dart around like one's, nose twitching as if she's sniffing the air for danger. Dumbo's rifle lies on the ground beside her. She refused to take it at first. Said she had a problem with guns. Like, for real? How'd she live this long?

The other odd thing: Father Silencer had said something very similar about guns-right before Constance blew his head off with mine.

"Anybody want to say something?" I ask.

"I hardly knew him," Ringer answers.

"I didn't know him at all," Constance says. Maybe she thinks that sounded harsh, because she adds, "Poor thing."

"He was from Pittsburgh. He loved the Packers. Video games. He was a gamer." I took a breath. Damn. Didn't seem like much. Nothing, really. "Call of Duty. Borderline MLG."

And Ringer goes, "Irony."

"I'm sure he was a very sweet boy," Constance chimes in.

I shake my head. "I didn't even know his real name." Then to Ringer: "It's just you and me now."

"What do you mean?"

"Squad 53. We're the last." I snap my fingers. "Christ, I forgot Nugget. Three, then. Who would have thought it, huh, back in the day? That it'd be down to the three of us. Well, I would have put my money on you. Not that money means anything anymore. Or my judgment. Nugget, Jesus, that kid's indestructible. But me? Never. Never in a million years. I should have died so many times, I've lost count."

"You're here for a purpose." Constance leans toward me and points at my chest. "There's a special place in his plan for you."

"Whose plan? Vosch's?"

"God's!" She looks at Ringer, then back at me. "A place for all of us."

I'm looking at the mound of dirt at my feet. "What was his place? What purpose did God have for Dumbo? Take the bullet for me so I could get on to my purpose, whatever the hell that is?"