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"Ready? Ready for what?"
Dad s day"
16
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN Our last day at Camp Ashpit A Sunday
Saly wary baby-fist
The best part of the day
Those few seconds when you’re awake but eet where you are What you are nohat you were before It’s all breath and heartbeat and blood ain The peace of the void
That’s what I thought the sound was at first My own heartbeat
Thumpa-thuh to feel the beat on your skin A glow sprang up in the roo on clothes, fulow faded, ca Hutchfield was yelling at everyone to stay calnized the sound And everyone knehat that sound meant
Rescue!
Hutchfield tried to block off the doorith his body
"Stay inside!" he hollered "We don’t want to--"
He was shoved out of the way Oh yes, we do We poured out the doorway and stood in the yard and waved at the helicopter, a Black Hawk, as it htening dark of the predawn sky The spotlight stabbed down, blinding us, but most of us were already blinded by tears We jued one another A couple of people aving little Aot those
Hutchfield was furiously screaet back inside Nobody listened He wasn’t the boss of us anye had arrived
And then, just as unexpectedly as it had coht The sound of its rotors faded A heavy silence flooded in after it We were confused, stunned, frightened They must have seen us Why didn’t they land?
We waited for the helicopter to cos Speculated about where they would take us, what it would be like, how many others would be there A Black Hawk helicopter! What else had survived the 1st Wave? We dreahts and hot showers
No one doubted we’d be rescued now that the People in Charge knew about us Help was on its way
Dad, being Dad, of course, wasn’t so sure
"They may not come back," he said
"They wouldn’t just leave us here, Dad," I said Soe "How does that make sense?"
"It ht have been looking for so else"
"The drone?"
The one that had crashed a week earlier He nodded
"Still, they knoe’re here now," I said "They’ll do soain Absently, like he was thinking about so else
"They will," he said He looked hard at un?"
I patted my back pocket He threw his arm around me and ledin a corner Underneath it was an M16 semiautomatic assault rifle The saone
He picked it up and turned it in his hands, inspecting the rifle with that same absentminded professor look in his eyes
"What do you think?" he whispered
"About that? It’s totally badass"
He didn’t juh
He showed me hoorked How to hold it How to aim How to switch out a clip
"Here, you try"
He held it toward me
I think he was pleasantly surprised by what a quick study I was And ood, thanks to the karate lessons Dance classes have nothing on karate when it corace
"Keep it," he said when I tried to hand it back "I hid it in here for you"
"Why?" I asked Not that I,in firearms
"Do you kno to tell who the enemy is in wartime, Cassie?" His eyes darted around the shack Why couldn’t he look atat you--that’s how you tell Don’t forget that" He nodded toward the gun "Don’t walk around with it Keep it close, but keep it hidden Not in here and not in the barracks Okay?"
Shoulder pat Shoulder pat not quite enough Big hug
"Froht Understand, Cassie? Never Now go find hiot to see Hutchfield And Cassie? If someone tries to take that rifle fro it up with me And if they still try to take it, shoot theh His eyes were as hard and blank and cold as a shark’s
He was lucky, h the first three waves But even the best ga I thinkthat day Not that our luck had run out No one could know that But I think he knew in the end it wouldn’t be the lucky ones left standing
It would be the hardcore The ones who tell Lady Luck to go screw herself The ones with hearts of stone The ones who could let a hundred die so one e in order to save it
The world was FUBAR now