The 5th Wave (16 page)

I CAN’T STOP thinking about the soldier behind the coolers and the crucifix in his
hand. The soldier and the crucifix. I’m thinking maybe that’s why I pulled the trigger.
Not because I thought the crucifix was another gun. I pulled the trigger because he
was a soldier, or at least he was dressed like a soldier.

He wasn’t Branch or Vosch or any of the soldiers I saw that day my father died.

He wasn’t and he was.

Not any of them, and all of them.

Not my fault. That’s what I tell myself. It’s their fault.
They’re the ones, not me,
I tell the dead soldier.
You want to blame somebody, blame the Others, and get off my back.

Run = die. Stay = die. Sort of the theme of this party.

Beneath the Buick, I slipped into a warm and dreamy twilight. My makeshift tourniquet
had stopped most of the bleeding, but the wound throbbed with each slowing beat of
my heart.

It’s not so bad,
I remember thinking.
This whole dying thing isn’t so bad at all.

And then I saw Sammy’s face pressed against the back window of the yellow school bus.
He was smiling. He was happy. He felt safe surrounded by those other kids, and besides,
the soldiers were there now, the soldiers would protect him and take care of him and
make sure everything was okay.

It had been bugging me for weeks. Keeping me up at night. Hitting me when I least
expected it, when I was reading or foraging or just lying in my little tent in the
woods thinking about my life before the Others came.

What was the point?

Why did they play that giant charade of soldiers arriving in the nick of time to save
us? The gas masks, the uniforms, the “briefing” in the barracks. What was the point
to all that when they could have just dropped one of their blinky eyeballs from a
drone and blown us all to hell?

On that cold autumn day while I lay bleeding to death beneath the Buick, the answer
hit me. Hit me harder than the bullet that had just torn through my leg.

Sammy.

They wanted Sammy. No, not just Sammy. They wanted all the kids. And to get the kids,
they had to make us trust them.
Make the humans trust us, get the kids, and then we blow them all to hell.

But why bother saving the children? Billions had died in the first three waves; it
wasn’t like the Others had a soft spot for kids. Why did the Others take Sammy?

I raised my head without thinking and whacked it into the Buick’s undercarriage. I
barely noticed.

I didn’t know if Sammy was alive. For all I knew, I was the last person on Earth.
But I had made a promise.

The cool asphalt scraping against my back.

The warm sun on my cold cheek.

My numb fingers clawing at the door handle, using it to pull my sorry, self-pitying
butt off the ground.

I can’t put any weight on my wounded leg. I lean against the car for a second, then
push myself upright. On one leg, but upright.

I might be wrong about them wanting to keep Sammy alive. I’d been wrong about practically
everything since the Arrival. I still could be the last human being on Earth.

I might be—no, I probably am—doomed.

But if I’m it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I’m
going to let the story end this way.

I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face
the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running,
not staying, but facing.

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.

And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.

25

CALL ME ZOMBIE.

Head, hands, feet, back, stomach, legs, arms, chest—everything hurts. Even blinking
hurts. So I try not to move and I try not to think too much about the pain. I try
not to think too much period. I’ve seen enough of the plague over the past three months
to know what’s coming: total system meltdown, starting with your brain. The Red Death
turns your brain to mashed potatoes before your other organs liquefy. You don’t know
where you are, who you are, what you are. You become a zombie, the walking dead—if
you had the strength to walk, which you don’t.

I’m dying. I know that. Seventeen years old and the party’s over.

Short party.

Six months ago my biggest worries were passing AP Chemistry and finding a summer job
that paid enough for me to finish rebuilding the engine on my ’69 Corvette. And when
the mothership first appeared, sure, that took up some of my thoughts, but after a
while it faded to a distant fourth. I watched the news like everybody else and spent
way too much time sharing funny YouTube videos about it, but I never thought it would
affect me personally. Seeing all the demonstrations and marches and riots on TV leading
up to the first attack was like watching a movie or news footage from a foreign country.
It didn’t seem like any of it was happening to me.

Dying isn’t so different from that. You don’t feel like it’s going to happen to you…until
it happens to you.

I know I’m dying. Nobody has to tell me.

Chris, the guy who shared this tent with me before I got sick, tells me anyway: “Dude,
I think you’re dying,” he says, squatting outside the tent’s opening, his eyes wide
and unblinking above the filthy rag that he presses against his nose.

Chris has come by to check up on me. He’s about ten years older, and I think he looks
at me like a little brother. Or maybe he’s come to see if I’m still alive; he’s in
charge of disposal for this part of the camp. The fires burn day and night. By day
the refugee camp ringing Wright-Patterson swims in a dense, choking fog. At night
the firelight turns the smoke a deep crimson, like the air itself is bleeding.

I ignore his remark and ask him what he’s heard from Wright-Patterson. The base has
been on full lockdown since the tent city sprang up after the attack on the coasts.
No one allowed in or out. They’re trying to contain the Red Death, that’s what they
tell us. Occasionally some well-armed soldiers well-wrapped in hazmat suits roll out
the main gates with water and rations, tell us everything will be okay, and then hightail
it back inside, leaving us to fend for ourselves. We need medicine. They tell us there’s
no cure for the plague. We need sanitation. They give us shovels to dig a trench.
We need information.
What the hell is going on?
They tell us they don’t know.

“They don’t know anything,” Chris says to me. He’s on the thin side, balding, an accountant
before the attacks made accounting obsolete. “Nobody knows anything. Just a bunch
of rumors that everybody treats like news.” He cuts his eyes at me, then looks away.
Like looking at me hurts. “You want to hear the latest?”

Not really. “Sure.” To keep him there. I’ve only known the guy for a month, but he’s
the only guy left who I know. I lie here
on this old camping bed with a sliver of sky for a view. Vague, people-shaped forms
drift by in the smoke, like figures out of a horror movie, and sometimes I can hear
screaming or crying, but I haven’t spoken to another person in days.

“The plague isn’t theirs, it’s ours,” Chris says. “Escaped from some top-secret government
facility after the power failed.”

I cough. He flinches, but he doesn’t leave. He waits for the fit to subside. Somewhere
along the way he lost one of the lenses to his glasses. His left eye is stuck in a
perpetual squint. He rocks from foot to foot in the muddy ground. He wants to leave;
he doesn’t want to leave. I know the feeling.

“Wouldn’t that be ironic?” I gasp. I can taste blood.

He shrugs. Irony? There is no irony anymore. Or maybe there’s just so much of it that
you can’t call it irony. “It’s not ours. Think about it. The first two attacks drive
the survivors inland to take shelter in camps just like this one. That concentrates
the population, creating the perfect breeding ground for the virus. Millions of pounds
of fresh meat all conveniently located in one spot. It’s genius.”

“Gotta hand it to ’em,” I say, trying to be ironic. I don’t want him to leave, but
I also don’t want him to talk. He has a habit of going off on rants, one of those
guys who has an opinion about everything. But something happens when every person
you meet dies within days of your meeting them: You start being a lot less picky about
who you hang out with. You can overlook a lot of flaws. And you let go of a lot of
personal hang-ups, like the big lie that having your insides turn to soup doesn’t
scare the living shit out of you.

“They know how we think,” he says.

“How the hell do you know what they know?” I’m getting
pissed. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m jealous. We shared the tent, same water, same
food, and I’m the one who’s dying. What makes him so special?

“I don’t,” he answers quickly. “The only thing I know is I don’t know anything anymore.”

In the distance, a gun fires. Chris barely reacts. Gunfire is pretty common in the
camp. Potshots at birds. Warning shots at the gangs coming for your stash. Some shots
signal a suicide, a person in the final stages who decides to show the plague who’s
boss. When I first came to the camp, I heard a story about a mom who took out her
three kids and then did herself rather than face the Fourth Horseman. I couldn’t decide
whether she was brave or stupid. And then I stopped worrying about it. Who cares what
she
was
when what she is now is dead?

He doesn’t have much more to say, so he says it quickly to get the hell away. Like
a lot of the uninfected, Chris has a bad case of the twitchies, always waiting for
the other shoe to drop. Scratchy throat—from the smoke or…? Headache—from lack of
sleep or hunger or…? It’s the moment you’re passed the ball and out of the corner
of your eye you see the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linebacker bearing down at full
speed—only the moment never ends.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says. “You need anything?”

“Water.” Though I can’t keep it down.

“You got it, dude.”

He stands up. All I can see now is his mud-stained pants and mud-caked boots. I don’t
know how I know, but I know it’s the last I’ll see of Chris. He won’t come back, or
if he does, I won’t realize it. We don’t say good-bye. Nobody says good-bye anymore.
The word has taken on a whole new meaning since the Big Green Eye in the Sky showed
up.

I watch the smoke swirl in his passing. Then I pull out the silver chain from beneath
the blanket. I run my thumb over the smooth surface of the heart-shaped locket, holding
it close to my eyes in the fading light. The clasp broke on the night I yanked it
free from her neck, but I managed to fix it using a pair of fingernail clippers.

I look toward the tent opening and see her standing there, and I know it isn’t really
her, it’s the virus showing her to me, because she’s wearing the same locket I’m holding
in my hand. The bug has been showing me all kinds of things. Things I want to see
and things I don’t. The little girl in the opening is both.

Bubby, why did you leave me?