Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)(54)

"I could do it," I said.

"Maybe Babar could," Enzo said. "But he has two legs more than you."

"Fine," I said. "I'll send Babar to have dinner with you."

Enzo laughed. "Do that," he said. "I'll tell you what, Zoe. Walk here at a reasonable pace, and you'll probably make it in time for dessert. Mom made a pie."

"Yay, pie," I said. "What kind?"

"I think it's called 'Zoe gets whatever kind of pie she gets and likes it' pie," Enzo said.

"Mmmm," I said. "I always like that kind of pie."

"Well, yeah," Enzo said. "It's right there in the title."

"It's a date," I said.

"Good," Enzo said. "Don't forget. I know that's a problem for you."

"Jerk," I said.

"Check your mail queue," Enzo said. "There might be a poem there."

"I'm going to wait for the hand waving," I said.

"That's probably for the best," Enzo said. "It'll be better that way. And now my mom is glaring at me with laser eyeballs. I have to go."

"Go," I said. "See you soon."

"Okay," Enzo said. "Love you." We had started saying that to each other recently. It seemed to fit.

"Love you too," I said, and disconnected.

"You two make me want to vomit so hard," Gretchen said. She'd been hearing my side of the conversation and had been rolling her eyes the whole time. We were sitting in her bedroom.

I set down the PDA and whacked her with a pillow. "You're just jealous Magdy never says that to you."

"Oh, dear Lord," Gretchen said. "Leaving aside the fact that I so do not want to hear that from him, if he ever did try to say that to me, his head would actually explode before the words could even get out of his mouth. Which now that I think about it might be an excellent reason to try to get him to say it."

"You two are so cute," I said. "I can see you two standing at the altar and getting into it right before saying 'I do.'"

"Zoe, if I ever get anywhere near an altar with Magdy, I authorize you to make a flying tackle and drag me away," Gretchen said.

"Oh, fine," I said.

"Now let's never speak of this again," Gretchen said.

"You're so in denial," I said.

"At least I'm not the one who forgot her dinner date," Gretchen said.

"It gets worse," I said. "He wrote me poetry. He was going to read it to me."

"You missed dinner and a show," Gretchen said. "You are the worst girlfriend ever."

"I know," I said. I reached for my PDA. "I'll write him an apology note saying that."

"Make it extra grovelly," Gretchen said. "Because that's sexy."

"That comment explains a lot about you, Gretchen," I said, and then my PDA took on a life of its own, blasting an alarm sound from its speaker and scrolling an air attack notice on its screen. Over on Gretchen's desk, her PDA made the same alarm sound and scrolled the same message. Every PDA in the colony did the same. In the distance, we heard the sirens, posted near the Mennonite homesteads, alerting them because they didn't use personal technology.

For the first time since the defeat of the Conclave fleet, Roanoke was under attack. Missiles were on their way.

I rushed to the door of Gretchen's room. "Where are you going?" she asked. I ignored her and went outside, where people were bursting out of their homes and running for cover, and looked into the sky.

"What are you doing?" Gretchen said, catching up with me. "We need to get to a shelter."

"Look," I said, and pointed.

In the distance, a bright needle of light was tracing across the sky, aiming at something we couldn't quite see. Then there was a flash, blinding white. There was a defense satellite above Roanoke; it had fired on and hit one of the missiles coming for us. But others were still on their way.

The sharp pop of the missile explosion reached us, with not nearly enough time lag.

"Come on, Zoe," Gretchen said, and started tugging at me. "We've got to go."

I stopped looking at the sky and ran with Gretchen to one of the community shelters we had recently excavated and built; it was filling up quickly with colonists. As I ran I saw Hickory and Dickory, who had spotted me; they closed in and took either side of me as we got into the shelter. Even in the panic, people still made room for them. Gretchen, Hickory, Dickory, about four dozen other colonists, and I all hunched down in the shelter, straining to hear what was going on above us through nearly a dozen feet of dirt and concrete.

"What do you think is happ - " someone said and then there was unspeakable wrenching noise, like someone had taken one of the cargo containers that made up the colony wall and peeled it apart, right on top of our eardrums and then I was tumbling to the ground because there was an earthquake and I screamed and bet that everyone else in the shelter did too but I couldn't hear it because then came the single loudest noise I had ever heard, so loud that my brain surrendered and the noise became the absence of noise, and the only way I knew that I, at least, was still screaming was that I could feel my throat getting raw. Either Hickory or Dickory grabbed me and held me steady; I could see Gretchen being held the same way by the other Obin.