The 5th Wave (31 page)

HERE’S A TYPICAL day in the atypical new reality of Camp Haven.

5:00
A.M.
: Reveille and wash up. Dress and prep bunks for inspection.

5:10
A.M.
: Fall in. Reznik inspects our billets. Finds a wrinkle in someone’s sheet. Screams
for twenty minutes. Then picks another recruit at random and screams for another twenty
for no
real reason. Then three laps around the yard freezing our asses off, me urging Oompa
and Nugget to keep up or I get to run another lap as the last man to finish. The frozen
ground beneath our boots. Our breaths frosting in the air. The twin columns of black
smoke from the power plant rising beyond the airfield and the rumble of buses pulling
out of the main gate.

6:30
A.M.
: Chow in the crowded mess hall that smells faintly like soured milk, reminding me
of the plague and the fact that once upon a time I thought about just three things—cars,
football, and girls, in that order. I help Nugget with his tray, urging him to eat
because, if he doesn’t eat, boot camp will kill him. Those are my exact words:
Boot camp will kill you.
Tank and Flintstone laugh at me mothering Nugget. Already calling me Nugget’s Nanna.
Screw them. After chow we check out the leaderboard. Every morning the scores from
the previous day are posted on a big board outside the mess hall. Points for marksmanship.
Points for best times on the obstacle course, the air raid drills, the two-mile runs.
The top four squads will graduate at the end of November, and the competition is fierce.
Our squad’s been stuck in tenth place for weeks. Tenth isn’t bad, but it’s not good
enough.

7:30
A.M.
: Training. Weapons. Hand-to-hand. Basic wilderness survival. Basic urban survival.
Recon. Communications. My favorite is survival training. That memorable session where
we had to drink our own urine.

12:00
P.M.
: Noon chow. Some mystery meat between hard crusts of bread. Dumbo, whose jokes are
as tasteless as his ears are big, cracks that we’re not incinerating the infested
bodies but grinding them up to feed the troops. I have to pull Teacup off him before
she smacks his head with a tray. Nugget stares at his burger
like it might jump off his plate and bite his face. Thanks, Dumbo. The kid’s skinny
enough as it is.

1:00
P.M.
: More training. Mostly on the firing range. Nugget is issued a stick for a rifle
and fires pretend rounds while we fire real ones into life-size plywood cutouts. The
crack of the M16s. The screech of plywood being shredded. Poundcake earns a perfect
score; I’m the worst shot in the squad. I pretend the cutout is Reznik, hoping that
will improve my aim. It doesn’t.

5:00
P.M.
: Evening chow. Canned meat, canned peas, canned fruit. Nugget pushes his food around
and then bursts into tears. The squad glares at me. Nugget is my responsibility. If
Reznik comes down on us for conduct unbefitting, there’s hell to pay, and I’m picking
up the tab. Extra push-ups, reduced rations—he could even deduct some points. Nothing
matters but getting through basic with enough points to graduate, get out into the
field, rid ourselves of Reznik. Across the table, Flintstone is glowering at me from
beneath the unibrow. He’s pissed at Nugget, but more pissed at me for taking his job.
Not that I asked for squad leader. He came at me after that day and growled, “I don’t
care what you are now, I’m gonna make sergeant when we graduate.” And I’m like, “More
power to you, Flint.” The idea of my leading a unit into combat is ludicrous. Meanwhile,
nothing I say calms Nugget down. He keeps going on about his sister. About how she
promised to come for him. I wonder why the commander would stick a little kid who
can’t even lift a rifle into our squad. If Wonderland winnowed out the best fighters,
what sort of profile did this little guy produce?

6:00
P.M.
: Drill instructor Q&A in the barracks, my favorite part of the day, where I get to
spend some quality time with my
favorite person in the whole wide world. After informing us what worthless piles of
desiccated rat feces we are, Reznik opens the floor for questions and concerns.

Most of our questions have to do with the competition. Rules, procedures in case of
a tie, rumors about this or that squad cheating. Making the grade is all we can think
about. Graduation means active duty, real fighting—a chance to show the ones who died
that we had not survived in vain.

Other topics: the status of the rescue and winnowing operation (code name Li’l Bo
Peep; I’m not kidding). What news from the outside? When will we hunker full-time
in the underground bunker, because obviously the enemy can see what we’re doing down
here and it’s only a matter of time before they vaporize us. For that we get the standard-issue
reply: Commander Vosch knows what he’s doing. Our job isn’t to worry about strategy
and logistics. Our job is to kill the enemy.

8:30
P.M.
: Personal time. Free of Reznik at last. We wash our jumpsuits, shine our boots, scrub
the barracks floor and the latrine, clean our rifles, pass around dirty magazines,
and swap other contraband like candy and chewing gum. We play cards and bust each
other’s nuts and complain about Reznik. We share the day’s rumors and tell bad jokes
and push back against the silence inside our own heads, the place where the never-ending
voiceless scream rises like the superheated air above a lava flow. Inevitably an argument
erupts and stops just short of a fistfight. It’s tearing away at us. We know too much.
We don’t know enough. Why is our regiment composed entirely of kids like us, no one
over the age of eighteen? What happened to all the adults? Are they being taken somewhere
else and, if they are, where and why? Are the Teds the final wave, or
is there another one coming, a fifth wave that will make the first four pale in comparison?
Thinking about a fifth wave shuts down the conversation.

9:30
P.M.
: Lights-out. Time to lie awake and think of a wholly new and creative way to waste
Sergeant Reznik. After a while I get tired of that and think about the girls I’ve
dated, shuffling them around in various orders. Hottest. Smartest. Funniest. Blondes.
Brunettes. Which base I got to. They start to blend together into one girl, the Girl
Who Is No More, and in her eyes Ben Parish, high school hallway god, lives again.
From its hiding place under my bunk, I pull out Sissy’s locket and press it against
my heart. No more guilt. No more grief. I will trade my self-pity for hate. My guilt
for cunning. My grief for the spirit of vengeance.

“Zombie?” It’s Nugget in the bunk next to me.

“No talking after lights-out,” I whisper back.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Close your eyes and think of something nice.”

“Can we pray? Is that against the rules?”

“Sure you can pray. Just not out loud.”

I can hear him breathing, the creak of the metal frame as he flips and flops around
on the bunk.

“Cassie always said my prayer with me,” he confesses.

“Who’s Cassie?”

“I told you.”

“I forgot.”

“Cassie’s my sister. She’s coming for me.”

“Oh, sure.” I don’t tell him that if she hasn’t shown up by now, she’s probably dead.
It isn’t up to me to break his heart; that’s time’s job.

“She’s promised. Promised.”

A tiny hiccup of a sob. Great. Nobody knows for sure, but we accept it as fact that
the barracks are bugged, that every second Reznik is spying on us, waiting for us
to break one of the rules so he can bring the hammer down. Violating the no-talking
rule at lights-out will earn all of us a week of kitchen patrol.

“Hey, it’s all right, Nugget…”

Reaching my hand out to comfort him, finding the top of his freshly shaved head, running
my fingertips over his scalp. Sissy liked for me to rub her head when she felt bad—maybe
Nugget likes it, too.

“Hey, stow that over there!” Flintstone calls out softly.

“Yeah,” Tank says. “You wanna get us busted, Zombie?”

“Come here,” I whisper to Nugget, scooting over and patting the mattress. “I’ll say
your prayer with you, and then you can go to sleep, okay?”

The mattress gives with his added weight. Oh God, what am I doing? If Reznik pops
in for a surprise inspection, I’ll be peeling potatoes for a month. Nugget lies on
his side facing me, and his fists rub against my arm as he brings them up to his chin.

“What prayer does she say with you?” I ask.

“‘Now I lay me,’” he whispers.

“Somebody put a pillow over that nugget’s face,” Dumbo says from his bunk.

I can see the ambient light shining in his big brown eyes. Sissy’s locket pressed
against my chest and Nugget’s eyes, glittering like twin beacons in the dark. Prayers
and promises. The one his sister made to him. The unspoken one I made to my sister.
Prayers are promises, too, and these are the days of broken promises. All of a sudden
I want to put my fist through the wall.

“‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’”

He joins in on the next line.

“‘When in the morning light I wake, teach me the path of love to take.’”

The hisses and shushes pick up on the next stanza. Somebody hurls a pillow at us,
but we keep praying.

“‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Your angels watch me
through the night, and keep me safe till morning’s light.’”

On
angels watch me
, the hissing and shushing stops. A profound stillness settles over the barracks.

Our voices slow on the last stanza. Like we’re reluctant to finish because on the
other side of a prayer is the nothingness of another exhausted sleep and then another
day waiting for the last day, the day we will die. Even Teacup knows she probably
won’t live to see her eighth birthday. But we’ll get up and put ourselves through
seventeen hours of hell anyway. Because we will die, but at least we will die unbroken.

“‘And if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’”

45

THE NEXT MORNING I’m in Reznik’s office with a special request. I know what his answer’s
going to be, but I’m asking anyway.

“Sir, the squad leader requests that the senior drill instructor grant Private Nugget
a special exemption from this morning’s detail.”

“Private Nugget is a member of this squad,” Reznik reminds me. “And as a member of
this squad, he is expected to perform all duties assigned by Central Command. All
duties, Private.”

“Sir, the squad leader requests that the senior drill instructor reconsider his decision
based on Private Nugget’s age and—”

Reznik dismisses the point with a wave of his hand. “The boy didn’t drop out of the
damned sky, Private. If he didn’t pass his prelims, he wouldn’t have been assigned
to your squad. But the fact of the matter is he
did
pass his prelims, he
was
assigned to your squad, and he
will
perform all duties of your squad as assigned by Central Command, including P and
D. Are we clear, Private?”

Well, Nugget, I tried.

“What’s P and D?” he asks at morning chow.

“Processing and disposal,” I answer, cutting my eyes away from him.

Across from us, Dumbo groans and pushes his tray away. “Great. The only way I can
get through breakfast is by not thinking about it!”

“Churn and burn, baby,” Tank says, glancing at Flintstone for approval. Those two
are tight. On the day Reznik gave me the job, Tank told me he didn’t care who was
squad leader, he’d only listen to Flint. I shrugged. Whatever. Once we graduated—if
we ever graduated—one of us would be promoted to sergeant, and I knew that someone
would not be me.

“Dr. Pam showed you a Ted,” I say to Nugget. He nods. From his expression, I can tell
it isn’t a pleasant memory. “You hit the button.” Another nod. Slower than the first
one. “What do you think happens to the person on the other side of the glass after
you hit the button?”

Nugget whispers, “They die.”