The 5th Wave (11 page)

“If you were the last person on Earth, I wouldn’t be here to do anything with you.”

“Okay. What if we were the last
two
people on Earth?”

“Then you’d still end up being the last, because I’d kill myself.”

“You don’t like me.”

“Really, Crisco? What was your first clue?”

“Say we saw them, right here, right now, coming down to finish us off. What would
you do?”

“I don’t know. Ask them to kill you first. What’s the point, Crisco?”

“Are you a virgin?” he asked suddenly.

I stared at him. He was totally serious. But most thirteen-year-old boys are when
it comes to hormonal issues.

“Screw you,” I said, and brushed past him, heading back toward the camp.

Bad choice of words. He trotted after me and not one strand of plastered-down hair
moved as he ran. It was like a shiny black helmet.

“I’m serious, Cassie,” he puffed. “These are the times when any night could be your
last night.”

“Dork, it was that way before they came, too.”

He grabbed my wrist. Tugged me around. Pushed his wide, greasy face close to mine.
I had an inch on him, but he had twenty pounds on me.

“Do you really want to die without knowing what it’s like?”

“How do you know I don’t?” I said, yanking free. “Don’t ever touch me again.” Changing
the subject.

“Nobody’s gonna know,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

He tried to grab me again. I slapped his hand away with my left and popped him hard
in the nose with the open palm of my right. It opened up a faucet of bright red blood.
It ran into his mouth, and he gagged.

“Bitch,” he gasped. “At least you’ve got someone. At least everybody you ever frigging
knew in your life isn’t dead.”

He busted out in tears. Fell onto the path and gave in to it, the bigness of it, the
big Buick that’s parked over you, the horrible feeling that, as bad as it’s been,
it’s going to get worse.

Ah, crap.

I sat on the path next to him. Told him to lean his head back. He complained that
made the blood run down his throat.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he begged. “I’ll lose my cred.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked.

“Girl Scouts.”

“There’s badges for that?”

“There’s badges for everything.”

Actually, it was seven years of karate classes. I dropped karate last year. Don’t
remember my reasons now. They seemed like good ones at the time.

“I’m one, too,” he said.

“What?”

He spat a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. “A virgin.”

What a shock.

“What makes you think I’m a virgin?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t have hit me if you weren’t.”

14

ON OUR SIXTH DAY in camp, I saw a drone for the first time.

Glittering gray in the bright afternoon sky.

There was a lot of shouting and running around, people grabbing guns, waving their
hats and shirts or just spazzing in general: crying, jumping, hugging, high-fiving
one another. They thought they were rescued. Hutchfield and Brogden tried to calm
everybody down, but weren’t very successful. The drone zipped across the sky, disappeared
behind the trees, then came back, slower this time. From the ground, it looked like
a blimp. Hutchfield and Dad huddled in the doorway of the barracks, watching it, swapping
a pair of binoculars back and forth.

“No wings. No markings. And did you see that first pass? Mach 2 at least. Unless we’ve
launched some kind of classified aircraft, no way this thing is terrestrial.” As he
spoke, Hutchfield was popping his fist up and down in the dirt, beating out a rhythm
to match the words.

Dad agreed. We were herded into the barracks. Dad and Hutchfield hovered in the doorway,
still swapping the binoculars back and forth.

“Is it the aliens?” Sammy asked. “Are they coming, Cassie?”

“Shhh.”

I looked over and saw Crisco watching me.
Twenty minutes,
he mouthed.

“If they come, I’m going to beat them up,” Sammy whispered. “I’m going to karate kick
them and I’m going to kill them all!”

“That’s right,” I said, nervously running my hand over his hair.

“I’m not going to run,” he said. “I’m going to kill them for killing Mommy.”

The drone vanished—straight up, Dad told me later. If you blinked, you missed it.

We reacted to the drone the way anyone would react.

We freaked.

Some people ran. Grabbed whatever they could carry and raced into the woods. Some
just took off with the clothes on their backs and the fear in their guts. Nothing
Hutchfield said could stop them.

The rest of us huddled in the barracks until night came on, then we
took the freakout party to the next level. Had they spotted us? Were the Stormtroopers
or clone army or robot walkers next? Were we about to be fried by laser cannons? It
was pitch-black. We couldn’t see a foot in front of our noses, because we didn’t dare
light the kerosene lamps. Frantic whispers. Muffled crying. Huddled on our cots, jumping
at every little sound. Hutchfield assigned the best marksmen to the night watch. If
it moved, shoot it. No one was allowed outside without permission. And Hutchfield
never gave permission.

That night lasted a thousand years.

Dad came up to me in the dark and pressed something into my hands.

A loaded semiautomatic Luger.

“You don’t believe in guns,” I whispered.

“I used to not believe in a lot of things.”

A lady started to recite the Lord’s Prayer. We called her Mother Teresa. Big legs.
Skinny arms. A faded blue dress. Wispy gray hair. Somewhere along the way she had
lost her dentures. She was always working her beads and talking to Jesus. A few others
joined her. Then some more. “‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
against us.’” At which point her arch nemesis, the sole atheist in Camp Ashpit’s foxhole,
a college professor named Dawkins, shouted out, “Particularly those of extraterrestrial
origin!”

“You’re going to hell!” a voice yelled at him in the dark.

“How will I know the difference?” Dawkins hollered back.

“Quiet!” Hutchfield called softly from his spot in the doorway. “Stow that praying,
people!”

“His judgment has come upon us,” Mother Teresa wailed.

Sammy scooted closer to me on the cot. I shoved the gun between my legs. I was afraid
he might grab it and accidently blow my head off.

“Shut up, all of you!” I said. “You’re scaring my brother.”

“I’m not scared,” Sammy said. His little fist twisting in my shirt. “Are you scared,
Cassie?”

“Yes,” I said. I kissed the top of his head. His hair smelled a little sour. I decided
to wash it in the morning.

If we were still there in the morning.

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re never scared.”

“I’m so scared right now, I could pee my pants.”

He giggled. His face felt warm in the crook of my arm. Did he have a fever? That’s
how it starts. I told myself I was being paranoid. He’d been exposed a hundred times.
And the Red Tsunami roars in fast once you’re exposed, unless you have immunity. And
Sammy had to have it. If he didn’t, he’d already be dead.

“You better put on a diaper,” he teased me.

“Maybe I will.”

“‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…’” She wasn’t going to stop.
I could hear her beads clicking in the dark. Dawkins was humming loudly to drown her
out. “Three Blind Mice.” I couldn’t decide who was more annoying, the fanatic or the
cynic.

“Mommy said they might be angels,” Sammy said suddenly.

“Who?” I asked.

“The aliens. When they first came, I asked if they came to kill us, and she said maybe
they weren’t aliens at all. Maybe they were angels from heaven, like in the Bible
when the angels talk to Abraham and to Mary and to Jesus and everybody.”

“They sure talked a lot more to us back then,” I said.

“But then they did kill us. They killed Mommy.”

He started to cry.

“‘Thou prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies.’”

I kissed the top of his head and rubbed his arms.

“‘Thou anointed my head with oil.’”

“Cassie, does God hate us?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Does he hate Mommy?”

“Of course not. Mommy was a good person.”

“Then why did he let her die?”

I shook my head. I felt heavy all over, like I weighed twenty thousand tons.

“‘My cup runneth over.’”

“Why did he let the aliens come and kill us? Why doesn’t God stop them?”

“Maybe,” I whispered slowly. Even my tongue felt heavy. “Maybe he will.”

“‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.’”

“Don’t let them get me, Cassie. Don’t let me die.”

“You’re not going to die, Sams.”

“Promise?”

I promised.

15

THE NEXT DAY, the drone came back.

Or a different drone, identical to the first. The Others probably hadn’t traveled
all the way from another planet with just one in the hold.

It moved slowly across the sky. Silent. No growl of an engine.
No hum. Just gliding soundlessly, like a fishing lure drawn through still water. We
hustled into the barracks. No one had to tell us. I found myself sitting on a cot
next to Crisco.

“I know what they’re going to do,” he whispered.

“Don’t talk,” I whispered back.

He nodded, and said, “Sonic bombs. You know what happens when you’re blasted with
two hundred decibels? Your eardrums shatter. Your lungs bust open and air gets into
your bloodstream, and then your heart collapses.”

“Where do you come up with this crap, Crisco?”

Dad and Hutchfield were crouched by the open door again. They watched the same spot
for several minutes. Apparently, the drone had frozen in the sky.

“Here, I got you something,” Crisco said. It was a diamond pendant necklace. Body
booty from the ash pit.

“That’s disgusting,” I told him.

“Why? It’s not like I stole it or anything.” He pouted. “I know what it is. I’m not
stupid. It’s not the necklace. It’s me. You’d take it in a heartbeat if you thought
I was hot.”