Nugget whispers, “They die.”

“And the sick people they bring in from the outside, ones that don’t make it once they get here—what do you think happens to them?”

“Oh, come on, Zombie, just tell him!” Oompa says. He’s pushed away his food, too. A first for him. Oompa is the only one in the squad who ever goes back for seconds. To put it in the nicest way, the food in camp sucks.

“It isn’t something we like to do, but it has to be done,” I say, echoing the company line. “Because this is war, you know? It’s war.”

I look down the table for support. The only one who will make eye contact with me is Teacup, who is nodding happily.

“War,” she says. Happily.

Outside the mess hall and across the yard, where several squads are drilling under the watchful eyes of their drill sergeants, Nugget trots along beside me. Zombie’s dog, the squad calls him behind his back. Cutting between Barracks 3 and 4 to the road that leads to the power plant and the processing hangars. The day is cold and cloudy; it feels like it might snow. In the distance, the sound of a Black Hawk taking off and the sharp tat-tat-tat of automatic weapons’ fire. Directly in front of us the twin towers of the plant belching black and gray smoke. The gray smoke fades into the clouds. The black lingers.

A large white tent has been set up outside the entrance to the hangar, the staging area festooned with red-and-white biohazard warning signs. Here we suit up for processing. Once I’m dressed, I help Nugget with his orange suit, the boots, the rubber gloves, the mask, and the hood. I give him the lecture about never, ever taking off any part of his suit inside the hangar, under any circumstances, ever. He has to ask permission before handling anything and, if he has to leave the building for any reason, he has to decon and pass inspection before reentering.

“Just stick with me,” I tell him. “It’ll be okay.”

He nods and his hood bounces back and forth, the faceplate smacking him in the forehead. He’s trying to hold it together, and it’s not going well. So I say, “They’re just people, Nugget. Just people.”

Inside the processing hangar, the bodies of the just-people are sorted, the infected from the clean—or, as we call them, the Ted from the unTed. Teds are marked with bright green circles on their foreheads, but you rarely need to look; the Teds are always the freshest bodies.

They’ve been stacked against the back wall, waiting for their turn to be laid out on the long metal tables that run the length of the hangar. The bodies are in various stages of decay. Some are months old. Some look fresh enough to sit up and wave hello.

It takes three squads to work the line. One squad carts the bodies over to the metal tables. Another processes. A third carries the processed corpses to the front and stacks them for pickup. You rotate the duties to help break up the monotony.

Processing is the most interesting, and where our squad begins. I tell Nugget not to touch, just watch me until he gets the idea.

Empty the pockets. Separate the contents. Trash goes in one bin, electronics in another, precious metals in a third, all other metals in a fourth. Wallets, purses, paper, cash—all trash. Some of the squads can’t help themselves—old habits die hard—and walk around with wads of useless hundred-dollar bills stuffed in their pockets.

Photographs, IDs, any little memento that isn’t made of ceramic—trash. Almost without exception, from the oldest to the youngest, the pockets of the dead are filled to the brim with the strangest things only the owners could understand the value for.

Nugget doesn’t say a word. He watches me work down the line, keeping right beside me as I sidestep to the next body. The hangar is ventilated, but the smell is overpowering. Like any omnipresent smell—or rather, like anything omnipresent—you get used to it; you stop smelling it after a while.

Same is true for your other senses. And your soul. After you’ve seen your five hundredth dead baby, how can you be shocked or sickened or feel anything at all?

Beside me, Nugget is silent, watching.

“Tell me if you’re going to be sick,” I tell him sternly. It’s horrible throwing up in your suit.

The overhead speakers pop to life, and the tunes begin. Most of the guys prefer rap while they process; I like to mix it up with a little heavy metal and some R&B. Nugget wants something to do, so I have him carry the ruined clothes to the laundry bins. They’ll be burned with the processed corpses later that night. Disposal happens next door, in the power plant incinerator. They say the black smoke is from the coal and the gray smoke is from the bodies. I don’t know if that’s true.

It’s the hardest processing I’ve done. I’ve got Nugget, my own bodies to process, and the rest of the squad to keep an eye on, because there’s no drill sergeants or any adult period inside the processing hangar, except the dead ones. Just kids, and sometimes it’s like at school when the teacher is suddenly called out of the room. Things can get crazy.

There’s little interaction among the squads outside P&D. The competition for the top slots on the leaderboard is too intense, and there’s nothing friendly about the rivalry.

So when I see the fair-skinned, dark-haired girl wheeling corpses from Poundcake’s table to the disposal area, I don’t go over and introduce myself and I don’t grab one of her team members to ask her name. I just watch her while I dig my fingers through the pockets of dead people. I notice she’s directing traffic at the door; she must be the squad leader. At the midmorning break, I pull Poundcake aside. He’s a sweet kid, quiet, but not in a weird way. Dumbo has a theory that one day the cork will pop and Poundcake won’t stop talking for a week.

“You know that girl from Squad Nineteen working at your table?” I ask him. He nods. “Know anything about her?” He shakes his head. “Why am I asking you this, Cake?” He shrugs. “Okay,” I say. “But don’t tell anyone I asked.”

By the fourth hour on the line, Nugget’s not too steady on his feet. He needs a break, so I take him outside for a few minutes, where we sit against the hangar door and watch the black and gray smoke billowing beneath the clouds.

Nugget yanks off his hood and leans his head against the cold metal door, his round face shiny with sweat.

“They’re just people,” I say again, basically because I don’t know what else to say. “It gets easier,” I go on. “Every time you do it, you feel it a little less. Until it’s like—I don’t know—like making your bunk or brushing your teeth.”

I’m all tense, waiting for him to lose it. Cry. Run. Explode. Something. But there’s just this blank, faraway look in his eyes, and suddenly I’m the one about to explode. Not at him. Or at Reznik for making me bring him. At them. At the bastards who did this to us. Forget about my life—I know how that ends. What about Nugget’s? Five frigging years old, and what’s he got to look forward to? And why the hell did Commander Vosch assign him to a combat unit? Seriously, he can’t even lift a rifle. Maybe the idea is to catch ’em young, train ’em from the ground up. So by the time he’s my age you don’t have a stone-cold killer, but an ice-cold one. One with liquid nitrogen for blood.

I hear his voice before I feel his hand on my forearm. “Zombie, are you okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine.” Here’s a strange turn of events, him worried about me.

A large flatbed pulls up to the hangar door, and Squad 19 begins loading bodies, tossing them onto the truck like relief workers heaving sacks of grain. There’s the dark-haired girl again, straining at the front end of a very fat corpse. She glances our way before going back inside for the next body. Great. She’ll probably report us for goofing off to knock a few points off our score.

“Cassie says it won’t matter what they do,” Nugget says. “They can’t kill all of us.”