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Nugget doesn’t say a word He watches ht beside ar is ventilated, but the s Like any oet used to it; you stop s 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

"Tellto be sick," I tell hi 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 et wants so 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 sray 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 rooet crazy

There’s little interaction a 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 froo over and introduce rab one of her tea h the pockets of dead people I notice she’s directing traffic at the door; shebreak, 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 fro at your table?" I ask hi about her?" He shakes his head "Why as "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 hiar door and watch the black and gray set 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 knohat 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--likeyour teeth"

I’ for hi But there’s just this blank, faraway look in his eyes, and suddenly I’m the one about to explode Not at hi hiet about ing years old, and what’s he got to look forward to? And why the hell did Con him to a combat unit? Seriously, he can’t even lift a rifle Maybe the idea is to catch ’eround up So by the tie 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’e turn of events, hie flatbed pulls up to the hangar door, and Squad 19 begins loading bodies, tossing therain 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 et says "They can’t kill all of us"

"Why can’t they?" Because, kid, I’d really, really like to know

"Because we’re too hard to kill We’re invista…investra…invinta…"

"Invincible?"

"That’s it!" With a reassuring pat on ray s our cheeks and the heat froet and the brooding clouds above us and, hidden above theray smoke and, in a way, to us Us too

46

EVERY NIGHT NOW Nugget crawls into hts-out to say his prayer, and I let him stay until he falls asleep Then I carry him back to his bunk Tank threatens to turn ive him an order he doesn’t like But he doesn’t I think he secretly looks forward to prayer tiet has adjusted to caet used to practically anything He can’t lift a rifle to his shoulder, but he does everything else, and sometimes better than the older kids He’s faster than Oompa on the obstacle course and a quicker study than Flintstone The one squad uess it’s jealousy: Before Nugget caet did have ahis first air raid drill Like the rest of us, he had no idea it was co, but unlike the rest of us, he had no idea what the hell was going on

It happens once a ht The sirens screa under your bare feet as you sturabbing your M16, racing outside as all the barracks e across the yard toward the access tunnels that lead underground