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Number forty-nine has been mapped

41

DR PAM UNDOES the straps and helps hiive out She holds on to his ar His stomach heaves, and he vole and bounce The big, uns nurse takes him back to the exa is fine, asks if she can bring hi

"I want my bear!" he screao holoith understanding She knohat he’s feeling She tells him how brave he is, how brave and lucky and smart to have co colors He’s perfectly healthy and perfectly safe The worst is over

"That’s whatbad happened, and every ti back tears

They bring hihter pilot’s outfit, zippered in the front, thefor hi over his hands

"Do you knohy you’re so important to us, Sammy?" Dr Pam asks "Because you’re the future Without you and all those other children, on’t stand a chance against theht you here and e’re doing all this You know sos they’ve done to us, and they’re terrible Terrible, awful things, but that isn’t the worst part, that isn’t everything they’ve done"

"What else have they done?" Sammy whispers

"Do you really want to know? I can show you, but only if you want to know"

In the white room, he had just relived his mother’s death, smelled her coppery blood, watched his father wash it fros the Others had done, the doctor said Did he really want to know?

"I want to know," he says

The doctor holds up the small silver disk the nurse had used to take his teainst his and Megan’s foreheads on the bus

"This isn’t a ther, but it isn’t your temperature It tells us who you are Or , Sam Have you seen one of them yet? Have you seen an alien?"

He shakes his head no Shivering inside the white suit Curled up on the little exa, weak fro in him wants her to stop He nearly shouts out, Stop! I don’t want to know! But he bites his lip He doesn’t want to know; he has to know

"I’m very sorry to say you have seen one," Dr Pa for them to coht under our noses, for a very long ti his head over and over Dr Pa He’s never seen one For hours he listened to Daddy speculating about what they ht never knohat they look like There had been no ns of their existence except the grayish-green h orbit and the un he had seen one?

She holds out her hand "If you want to see, I can show you"

42

BEN PARISH IS DEAD

I don’t miss him Ben was a wuss, a crybaby, a thumb-sucker

Not Zo Ben wasn’t Zombie is hardcore Zombie is badass Zo I left the convalescent ward Traded in ned a bunk in Barracks 10 Whipped back into shape by three squares a day and brutal physical training, but iment’s senior drill instructor, the man who smashed Ben Parish into a million pieces, then reconstructed hi : Reznik is a cruel, unfeeling, sadistic bastard, and I fall asleep every night fantasizing about ways to kill him From day one he’s made it his mission to make my life as miserable as possible, and he’s pretty much succeeded I’ve been slapped, punched, pushed, kicked, and spat on I’ve been ridiculed,Forced to stand for hours in the freezing rain, scrub the entire barracks floor with a toothbrush, disasseers bled, run until et the idea

I didn’t get it, though Not at first Was he trainingto kill me? I was pretty sure it was the latter Then I realized it was both: He really was training ive you just one exa calisthenics in the yard, every squad in the regiment, over three hundred troops, and Reznik picks this tis spread wide, hands on knees, his fleshy, pockmarked face close to mine as I dipped into push-up number seventy-nine

"Private Zombie, did your mother have any children that lived?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"I bet when you were born she took one look at you and tried to shove you back in!"

Ja the heel of his black boot intoknuckle push-ups on the asphalt trail that rings the yard, because the ground is frozen solid and asphalt absorbs blood; you don’t slip around as much He wants to ainst his heel: No way I’i forfor Reznik to win Reznik alins

"Private Zombie, do you think I’m mean?"

"Sir! No, sir!"

My ained back sootten back the heart?