“Outstanding!” Major Bob yells. “Let’s get you processed! Reds, your group leader is Corporal Parker. No running, pushing, or shoving, but keep it moving. No breaking line and no talking, and remember to show your stamp at the door. Let’s move it, people. The sooner we get you processed, the sooner you can catch some sleep and have some breakfast. I’m not saying the food is the best in the world, but there’s plenty of it!”
He lumbers down the steps. The bus rocks with each footfall. Sammy starts to get up, and Megan yanks him back down.
“Don’t leave me,” she says again.
“But I’m a red,” Sammy protests. He feels sorry for Megan, but he’s anxious to leave. It feels like he’s been on the bus forever. And the sooner the buses are empty, the sooner they can turn around and go back for Cassie and Daddy.
“It’s all right, Megan,” he tries to comfort her. “You heard Parker. They’re going to make everybody better.”
He falls into line behind the other reds. Parker is standing at the bottom of the steps, checking stamps. The driver shouts out, “Hey!” and Sammy turns, just as Megan hits the bottom step. She slams into Parker’s chest and screams when he grabs her flailing arms.
“Let me go!”
The driver pulls her from Parker’s grip and drags her back up the steps, an arm locked around her waist.
“Sammy!” Megan screams. “Sammy, don’t leave me! Don’t let them—”
The doors slam closed, cutting off her cries. Sammy glances up at Parker, who gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“She’s going to be fine, Sam,” the medic says quietly. “Come on.”
As he walks to the hangar, he can hear her screaming behind the yellow metal skin of the bus, over the throaty growl of its engine, the hiss of its brakes letting go. Screaming as if she’s dying, as if they’re torturing her. And then he steps through a side door into the hangar and he can’t hear her anymore.
A soldier is standing just inside the door. He hands Sammy a card with the number forty-nine printed on it.
“Go to the closest red circle,” the soldier tells him. “Sit down. Wait for your number to be called.”
“I gotta get over to the hospital now,” Parker says. “Stay frosty, champ, and remember it’s all cool now. There’s nothing that can hurt you here.” He tousles Sammy’s hair, promises he’ll see him again soon, and gives him a fist bump before leaving.
There are no planes in the huge hangar, much to Sammy’s disappointment. He’d never seen a fighter jet up close, though he has piloted one a thousand times since the Arrival. While his mother lay dying down the hall, he was in the cockpit of a Fighting Falcon, soaring at the edge of the atmosphere at three times the speed of sound, heading straight toward the alien mothership. Sure, its gray hull bristled with gun turrets and ray cannons and its force field glowed a fiendish, sickly green, but there was a weakness in the field, a hole only two inches wider than his fighter, that if he hit just right…And he’d have to hit it just right, because the whole squadron had been wiped out, he was down to his last missile, and there was no one left to defend the Earth from the alien horde but him, Sammy “the Viper” Sullivan.
Three large red circles have been painted on the floor. Sam joins the other children in the one closest to the door and sits down. He can’t get Megan’s terrified screams out of his head. Her huge eyes and the way her skin shimmered with sweat and the sick-smell of her breath. Cassie told him the Pesky Ants was over, that it had killed all the people it was going to kill because some people couldn’t catch it, like Cassie and Daddy and him and everyone else at Camp Ashpit. They were immune, Cassie said.
But what if Cassie’s wrong? Maybe the disease took longer to kill some people. Maybe it’s killing Megan right now.
Or maybe, he thinks, the Others have unleashed a second plague, one even worse than the Pesky Ants, one that will kill everyone who survived the first one.
He pushes the thought away. Since the death of his mother, he’s become good at pushing bad thoughts away.
There are over a hundred kids gathered into the three circles, but the hangar is very quiet. The boy sitting next to Sammy is so exhausted, he lies down on his side on the cold concrete, curls into a ball, and falls asleep. The boy is older than Sammy, maybe ten or eleven, and he sleeps with his thumb tucked firmly between his lips.
A bell rings, and then a lady’s voice blares over a loudspeaker. First in English, then in Spanish.
“WELCOME, CHILDREN, TO CAMP HAVEN! WE ARE SO HAPPY TO SEE ALL OF YOU! WE KNOW YOU’RE TIRED AND HUNGRY AND SOME OF YOU AREN’T FEELING VERY WELL, BUT EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE NOW. STAY IN YOUR CIRCLE AND LISTEN CAREFULLY FOR YOUR NUMBER TO BE CALLED. DON’T LEAVE YOUR CIRCLE FOR ANY REASON. WE DON’T WANT TO LOSE ANY OF YOU! STAY QUIET AND CALM AND REMEMBER THAT WE’RE HERE TO TAKE CARE OF YOU! YOU’RE PERFECTLY SAFE.”
A moment later, the first number is called out. The child rises from his red circle and is escorted by a soldier to a door painted the same color at the far end of the hangar. The soldier takes the card from him and opens the door. The child goes in alone. The soldier closes the door and returns to his station beside a red circle. Each circle has two soldiers, both heavily armed, but they smile. All the soldiers smile. They never stop smiling.
One by one the children’s numbers are called. They leave their circle, cross the hangar floor, and disappear behind the red door. They don’t come back.
It takes almost an hour for the lady to call Sammy’s number. Morning comes, and sunlight breaks through the high windows, filling the hangar with golden light. He’s very tired, ravenously hungry, and a little stiff from sitting so long, but he leaps up when he hears it—“FORTY-NINE! PROCEED TO THE RED DOOR, PLEASE! NUMBER FORTY-NINE!”—and in his hurry nearly trips over the sleeping boy beside him.
A nurse is waiting for him on the other side of the door. He knows she’s a nurse because she’s wearing green scrubs and soft-soled sneakers like Nurse Rachel from his doctor’s office. Her smile is warm like Nurse Rachel’s, too, and she takes his hand and leads him into a small room. There’s a hamper overflowing with dirty clothing and paper robes hanging from hooks next to a white curtain.
“Okay, champ,” the nurse says. “How long has it been since you’ve had a bath?”
She laughs at his startled expression. Then the nurse whips back the white curtain to reveal a shower stall.
“Everything comes off and into the hamper. Yes, even the underwear. We love children here, but not lice or ticks or anything with more than two legs!”
Though he protests, the nurse insists on doing the chore herself. He stands with his arms folded in front of him while she squirts a stream of foul-smelling shampoo into his hair and sudses his entire body, from his head to his toes. “Keep your eyes closed tight or it’ll burn,” the nurse gently instructs him.
She lets him dry himself off, and then tells him to put on one of the paper robes.
“Go through that door over there.” She points at the door at the other end of the room.
The robe is much too big for him. The bottom of it trails the floor as he goes to the next room. Another nurse is waiting there for him. She’s heavier than the first one, older, and not quite so friendly. She has Sammy step onto the scale, writes down his weight on a clipboard beside his number, and then has him hop onto the examination table. She places a metal disk—the same kind Parker used on the bus—against his forehead.
“I’m taking your temperature,” she explains.
He nods. “I know. Parker told me. Red means normal.”
“You’re red, all right,” the nurse says. Her cold fingers press on his wrist, taking his pulse.
Sammy shivers. He’s goose-bumpy cold in the flimsy robe and a little scared. He never liked going to the doctor, and he’s worried they might give him a shot. The nurse sits down in front of him and says she needs to ask some questions. He’s supposed to listen carefully and answer as honestly as he can. If he doesn’t know the answer, that’s okay. Does he understand?