The 5th Wave (12 page)

I wondered if he was right. If Ben Parish had dug the necklace out of the pit, would
I have taken the gift?

“Not that I think
you
are,” Crisco added.

Bummer. Crisco the grave robber didn’t think I was hot.

“Then why do you want to give it to me?”

“I was a douche that night in the woods. I don’t want you to hate me. Think I’m a
creeper.”

A little late for that.

“I don’t want dead people’s jewelry,” I said.

“Neither do they,” he said, meaning dead people.

He wasn’t going to leave me alone. I scooted up to sit behind
Dad. Over his shoulder, I saw a tiny gray dot, a silvery freckle on the unblemished
skin of the sky.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

Right when I said that, the dot disappeared. Moved so fast, it seemed to wink out.

“Reconnaissance flights,” Hutchfield breathed. “Has to be.”

“We had satellites that could read someone’s watch from orbit,” Dad said quietly.
“If we could do that with our primitive technology, why would they need to leave their
ship to spy on us?”

“You got a better theory?” Hutchfield didn’t like his decisions being questioned.

“They may have nothing to do with us,” Dad pointed out. “These things might be atmospheric
probes or devices used to measure something they can’t calibrate from space. Or they’re
looking for something that can’t be detected until we’re mostly neutralized.”

Then Dad sighed. I knew that sigh. It meant he believed something was true that he
didn’t want to be true.

“It comes down to a simple question, Hutchfield: Why are they here? Not to rape the
planet for our resources—there’s plenty of those spread evenly throughout the universe,
so you don’t have to travel hundreds of light-years to get them. Not to kill us, though
killing us—or most of us—is necessary. They’re like a landlord who kicks out a deadbeat
renter so he can get the house cleaned up for the new tenant; I think this has always
been about getting the place ready.”

“Ready? Ready for what?”

Dad smiled humorlessly.

“Moving day.”

16

AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN. Our last day at Camp Ashpit. A Sunday.

Sammy beside me. Little kid snuggly warm, hand on his bear, other hand on my chest,
curled-up pudgy baby-fist.

The best part of the day.

Those few seconds when you’re awake but empty. You forget where you are. What you
are now, what you were before. It’s all breath and heartbeat and blood moving. Like
being in your mother’s womb again. The peace of the void.

That’s what I thought the sound was at first. My own heartbeat.

Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.
Faint, then louder, then really loud, loud enough to feel the beat on your skin.
A glow sprang up in the room, grew brighter. People were stumbling around, yanking
on clothes, fumbling for guns. The bright glow faded, came back. Shadows jumped across
the floor, raced up the ceiling. Hutchfield was yelling at everyone to stay calm.
It wasn’t working. Everyone recognized the sound. And everyone knew what that sound
meant.

Rescue!

Hutchfield tried to block off the doorway with his body.

“Stay inside!” he hollered. “We don’t want to—”

He was shoved out of the way.
Oh yes, we do.
We poured out the doorway and stood in the yard and waved at the helicopter, a Black
Hawk, as it made another sweep of the compound, black against the lightening dark
of the predawn sky. The spotlight
stabbed down, blinding us, but most of us were already blinded by tears. We jumped,
we shouted, we hugged one another. A couple of people were waving little American
flags, and I remember wondering where the hell they got those.

Hutchfield was furiously screaming at us to get back inside. Nobody listened. He wasn’t
the boss of us anymore. The People in Charge had arrived.

And then, just as unexpectedly as it had come, the helicopter made one last turn and
thundered out of sight. The sound of its rotors faded. A heavy silence flooded in
after it. We were confused, stunned, frightened. They must have seen us. Why didn’t
they land?

We waited for the helicopter to come back. All morning we waited. People packed up
their things. Speculated about where they would take us, what it would be like, how
many others would be there. A Black Hawk helicopter! What else had survived the 1st
Wave? We dreamed of electric lights and hot showers.

No one doubted we’d be rescued now that the People in Charge knew about us. Help was
on its way.

Dad, being Dad, of course, wasn’t so sure.

“They may not come back,” he said.

“They wouldn’t just leave us here, Dad,” I said. Sometimes you had to talk to him
like he was Sammy’s age. “How does that make sense?”

“It may not have been a search and rescue. They might have been looking for something
else.”

“The drone?”

The one that had crashed a week earlier. He nodded.

“Still, they know we’re here now,” I said. “They’ll do something.”

He nodded again. Absently, like he was thinking about something else.

“They will,” he said. He looked hard at me. Do you still have the gun?”

I patted my back pocket. He threw his arm around me and led me to the storehouse.
He pulled aside an old tarp lying in a corner. Underneath it was an M16 semiautomatic
assault rifle. The same rifle that would become my bestie after everyone else was
gone.

He picked it up and turned it in his hands, inspecting the rifle with that same absentminded
professor look in his eyes.

“What do you think?” he whispered.

“About that? It’s totally badass.”

He didn’t jump on me for the language. Instead, he gave a little laugh.

He showed me how it worked. How to hold it. How to aim. How to switch out a clip.

“Here, you try.”

He held it toward me.

I think he was pleasantly surprised by what a quick study I was. And my coordination
was pretty good, thanks to the karate lessons. Dance classes have nothing on karate
when it comes to developing grace.

“Keep it,” he said when I tried to hand it back. “I hid it in here for you.”

“Why?” I asked. Not that I minded having it, but he was freaking me out a little.
While everyone else was celebrating, my father was giving me training in firearms.

“Do you know how to tell who the enemy is in wartime, Cassie?” His eyes darted around
the shack. Why couldn’t he look at me?
“The guy who’s shooting at you—that’s how you tell. Don’t forget that.” He nodded
toward the gun. “Don’t walk around with it. Keep it close, but keep it hidden. Not
in here and not in the barracks. Okay?”

Shoulder pat. Shoulder pat not quite enough. Big hug.

“From now on, never let Sam out of your sight. Understand, Cassie? Never. Now go find
him. I’ve got to see Hutchfield. And Cassie? If someone tries to take that rifle from
you, you tell them to bring it up with me. And if they still try to take it, shoot
them.”

He smiled. Not with his eyes, though. His eyes were as hard and blank and cold as
a shark’s.

He was lucky, my dad. All of us were. Luck had carried us through the first three
waves. But even the best gambler will tell you that luck only lasts so long. I think
my dad had a feeling that day. Not that our luck had run out. No one could know that.
But I think he knew in the end it wouldn’t be the lucky ones left standing.

It would be the hardcore. The ones who tell Lady Luck to go screw herself. The ones
with hearts of stone. The ones who could let a hundred die so one might live. The
ones who see the wisdom in torching a village in order to save it.

The world was FUBAR now.

And if you’re not okay with that, you’re just a corpse waiting to happen.

I took the M16 and hid it behind a tree bordering the path to the ash pit.

17

THE LAST REMNANT of the world I knew ripped apart on a sunny, warm Sunday afternoon.

Heralded by the growl of diesel engines, the rumble and squeak of axles, the whine
of air brakes. Our sentries spotted the convoy long before it reached the compound.
Saw the bright sunlight glinting off windows and the plumes of dust trailing the huge
tires like contrails. We didn’t rush out to greet them with flowers and kisses. We
stayed back while Hutchfield, Dad, and our four best shooters went out to meet them.
Everyone was feeling a little spooked. And a lot less enthusiastic than we’d been
just a few hours before.

Everything we’d expected to happen since the Arrival didn’t. Everything we hadn’t
did. It took two whole weeks into the 3rd Wave for us to realize that the deadly flu
was part of their plan. Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think
what you always thought, expect what you always expected, so it was never “Will we
be rescued?” It was “When will we be rescued?”

And when we saw exactly what we wanted to see, what we expected to see—the big flatbed
loaded with soldiers, the Humvees bristling with machine gun turrets and surface-to-air
launchers—we still held back.

Then the school buses pulled into view.

Three of them, bumper to bumper.

Packed with kids.

Nobody expected that. Like I said, it was so weirdly normal, so shockingly surreal.
Some of us actually laughed. A yellow freaking school bus! Where the hell is the school?

After a few tense minutes, where all we could hear was the throaty snarl of engines
and the faint laughter and calls of the children on the buses, Dad left Hutchfield
talking to the commander and came over to me and Sammy. A knot of people gathered
around us to listen in.

“They’re from Wright-Patterson,” Dad said. He sounded out of breath. “And apparently
a lot more of our military has survived than we thought.”

“Why are they wearing gas masks?” I asked.

“It’s precautionary,” he answered. “They’ve been in lockdown since the plague hit.
We’ve all been exposed; we could be carriers.”

He looked down at Sammy, who was pressed up against me, his arms wrapped around my
leg.

“They’ve come for the children,” Dad said.

“Why?” I asked.