The 5th Wave (41 page)

THE TANKER’S BURNED down to its tires. Crouching in the pedestrian entrance to the
garage, I point at the building across the street glowing orange in the firelight.

“That’s our entry point. Third window from the left-hand corner, completely busted
out, see it?”

Ringer nods absently. Something’s on her mind. She keeps fiddling with the eyepiece,
pulling it away from her eye, pushing it back again. The certainty she showed in front
of the squad is gone.

“The impossible shot…,” she whispers. Then she turns to me. “How do you know when
you’re going Dorothy?”

I shake my head. Where’s this coming from? “You’re not going Dorothy,” I tell her,
and punctuate it with a pat on the arm.

“How can you be sure?” Eyes darting back and forth, restless, looking for somewhere
to light. The way Tank’s eyes danced before he popped. “Crazy people—they never think
they’re crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them.”

There’s a desperate, very un-Ringerlike look in her eyes.

“You’re not crazy. Trust me.”

Wrong thing to say.

“Why should I?” she shoots back. It’s the first time I’ve heard any emotion out of
her. “Why should I trust you, and why should you trust me? How do you know I’m not
one of them, Zombie?”

Finally, an easy question. “Because we’ve been screened. And we don’t light up in
each other’s eyepieces.”

She looks at me for a very long moment, then she murmurs, “God, I wish you played
chess.”

Our ten minutes are up. Above us, Poundcake opens up on the rooftop across the street;
the sniper immediately returns fire; and we go. We’re barely off the curb when the
asphalt explodes in front of us. We split up, Ringer zipping off to the right, me
to the left, and I hear the whine of the bullet, a high-pitched sandpapery sound,
about a month before it tears open the sleeve of my jacket. The instinct burned into
me from months of drilling to return fire is very hard to resist. I leap onto the
curb and in two strides I’m pressed hard against the comforting cold concrete of the
building. That’s when I see Ringer slip on a patch of ice and fall face-first toward
the curb. She waves me back. “No!” A round bites off a
piece of the curbing that rakes across her neck. Screw her
no
. I bound over to her, grab her arm, and sling her toward the building. Another round
whizzes past my head as I backpedal to safety.

She’s bleeding. The wound shimmers black in the firelight. She waves me on,
Go, go.
We trot along the side of the building to the broken window and dive inside.

Took less than a minute to cross. Felt like two hours.

We’re inside what used to be an upscale boutique. Looted several times over, full
of empty racks and broken hangers, creepy headless mannequins and posters of overly
serious fashion models on the walls. A sign on the service counter reads,
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE
.

Ringer’s scrunched into a corner of the room with good angles on the windows and the
door coming in from the lobby. A hand on her neck, and that hand is gloved in blood.
I have to look. She doesn’t want me to look. I’m like, “Don’t be stupid, I have to
look.” So she lets me look. It’s superficial, between a cut and a gouge. I find a
scarf lying on a display table and she wads it up and presses it against her neck.
Nods at my torn sleeve.

“Are you hit?”

I shake my head and ease down on the floor beside her. We’re both pulling hard for
air. My head swims with adrenaline. “Not to be judgmental, but as a sniper, this guy
sucks.”

“Three shots, three misses. Makes you wish this was baseball.”

“A lot more than three,” I correct her. Multiple tries at the targets, and the only
true hit a superficial wound to Teacup’s leg.

“Amateur.”

“He probably is.”

“Probably.” She bites off the word.

“He didn’t light up and he’s no pro. A loner defending his turf, maybe hiding from
the same guys we came after. Scared shitless.” I don’t add
like us
. I’m only sure about one of us.

Outside, Poundcake continues to occupy the sniper.
Pop-pop-pop
, a heavy quiet, then
pop-pop-pop
. The sniper responds each time.

“Then this should be easy,” Ringer says, her mouth set in a grim line.

I’m a little taken aback. “He didn’t light up, Ringer. We don’t have authorization
to—”

“I do.” Pulling her rifle into her lap. “Right here.”

“Um. I thought our mission was to save humanity.”

She looks at me out of the side of her uncovered eye. “Chess, Zombie: defending yourself
from the move that hasn’t happened yet. Does it matter that he doesn’t light up through
our eyepieces? That he missed us when he could have taken us down? If two possibilities
are equally probable but mutually exclusive, which one matters the most? Which one
do you bet your life on?”

I’m nodding at her, but not following her at all. “You’re saying he still could be
infested,” I guess.

“I’m saying the safe bet is to proceed as if he is.”

She pulls her combat knife from its sheath. I flinch, remembering her Dorothy remark.
Why did Ringer pull out her knife?

“What matters,” she says thoughtfully. There’s a terrible stillness to her now, a
thunderhead about to crack, a steaming volcano about to blow. “What matters, Zombie?
I was always pretty good at figuring that out. Got a lot better at it after the attacks.
What really matters? My mom died first. That was bad—but what really mattered was
I still had my dad, my brother, and baby sister. Then I lost them, and what mattered
was I still had
me
. And there
wasn’t much that mattered when it came to me. Food. Water. Shelter. What else do you
need? What else matters?”

This is bad, halfway down the road to being really bad. I have no idea where she’s
going with this, but if Ringer goes Dorothy on me now, I’m screwed. Maybe the rest
of my crew with me. I need to bring her back into the present. Best way is by touch,
but I’m afraid if I touch her she’ll gut me with that ten-inch blade.

“Does it matter, Zombie?” She cranes her neck to look up at me, turning the knife
slowly in her hands. “That he shot at us and not the three Teds right in front of
him? Or that when he shot at us he missed every time?” Turning the knife slowly, the
tip denting her finger. “Does it matter that they got everything up and running after
the EMP attack? That they’re operating right underneath the mothership, gathering
up survivors, killing infesteds and burning their bodies by the hundreds, arming and
training us and sending us out to kill the rest? Tell me that those things don’t matter.
Tell me the odds are insignificant that they aren’t really
them
. Tell me what possibility I should bet my life on.”

I’m nodding again, but this time I do follow her, and that path ends in a very dark
place. I squat down beside her and look her dead in the eye. “I don’t know what this
guy’s story is and I don’t know about the EMP, but the commander told me why they’re
leaving us alone. They think we’re no longer a threat to them.”

She flips back her bangs and snaps, “How does the commander know what they think?”

“Wonderland. We were able to profile a—”

“Wonderland,” she echoes. Nodding sharply. Eyes cutting from my face to the snowy
street outside and back again. “Wonderland is an alien program.”

“Right.” Stay with her, but gently try to lead her back. “It is,
Ringer. Remember? After we took back the base, we found it hidden—”

“Unless we didn’t. Zombie,
unless we didn’t.
” She jabs the knife toward me. “It’s a possibility, equally valid, and possibilities
matter. Trust me, Zombie; I’m an expert on what matters. Up to now, I’ve been playing
blind man’s bluff. Time for some chess.” She flips the knife around and shoves the
handle toward me. “Cut it out of me.”

I don’t know what to say. I stare dumbly at the knife in her hand.

“The implants, Zombie.” Poking me in the chest now. “We have to take them out. You
do me and I’ll do you.”

I clear my throat. “Ringer, we can’t cut them out.” I scramble for a second for the
best argument, but all I can come up with is, “If we can’t make it back to the rendezvous
point, how’re they going to find us?”

“Damn it, Zombie, haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? What if they aren’t
us
? What if they’re
them
? What if this whole thing has been a lie?”

I’m about to lose it. Okay, not about to. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ringer! Do you know
how cra—stupid that sounds? The enemy rescuing us, training us, giving us weapons?
Come on, let’s cut the crap; we’ve got a job to do. You may not be happy about it,
but I am your C.O….”

“All right.” Very calm now. As cool as I’m hot. “I’ll do it myself.”

She whips the blade around to the back of her neck, bowing her head low. I yank the
knife from her hand. Enough.

“Stand down, Private.” I hurl her knife into the deep shadows across the room and
get up. I’m shaking, every part of me, voice too. “You want to play the odds, that’s
cool. Stay here until I get back. Better yet, just waste me now. Maybe my alien masters
have figured out a way to hide my infestation from you. And after you’ve done me,
go back across the street and kill them all, put a bullet in Teacup’s head. She could
be the enemy, right? So blow her frigging head off! It’s the only answer, right? Kill
everyone or risk being killed by anyone.”

Ringer doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything, either, for a very long time. Snow whips
through the broken window, the flakes a deep crimson color, reflecting the smoldering
crumbs of the tanker.

“Are you sure you don’t play chess?” she asks. She pulls the rifle back into her lap,
runs her index finger along the trigger. “Turn your back on me, Zombie.”

We’re at the end of the dark path now, and it’s a dead end. I’m out of anything that
passes for a cogent argument, so I come back with the first thing that pops into my
head.

“My name is Ben.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Sucky name. Zombie’s better.”

“What your name?” Keeping at it.

“That’s one of the things that doesn’t matter. Hasn’t for a long time, Zombie.” Finger
caressing the trigger slowly. Very slowly. It’s hypnotic, dizzying.

“How about this?” Searching for a way out. “I cut out the tracker, and you promise
not to waste me.” This way I keep her on my side, because I’d rather take on a dozen
snipers than one Dorothied Ringer. In my mind’s eye, I can see my head shattering
like one of those plywood people on the firing range.

She cocks her head, and the side of her mouth twitches in an almost-but-not-quite
smile. “Check.”

I give her back an honest-to-goodness smile, the old Ben Parish smile, the one that
got me practically everything I wanted. Well, not practically; I’m being modest.

“Is that
check
as in
yes
, or are you giving me a chess lesson?”

She sets her gun aside and turns her back to me. Bows her head. Pulls her silky black
hair away from her neck.

“Both.”

Pop-pop-pop
goes Poundcake’s gun. And the sniper answers. Their jam plays in the background as
I kneel behind Ringer with my knife. Part of me more than willing to humor her if
it keeps me—and the rest of the unit—alive. The other part screaming silently,
Aren’t you, like, giving a mouse a cookie? What will she demand next—a physical inspection
of my cerebral cortex?

“Relax, Zombie,” she says, quiet and calm, the old Ringer again. “If the trackers
aren’t ours, it’s probably not a good idea to have them inside us. If they are ours,
Dr. Pam can always implant us again when we get back. Agreed?”

“Checkmate.”

“Check and mate,” she corrects me.

Her neck is long and graceful and very cold beneath my fingers as I explore the area
beneath the scar for the lump. My hand shakes.
Just humor her. It probably means a court-martial and the rest of your life peeling
potatoes, but at least you’ll be alive.

“Be gentle,” she whispers.

I take a deep breath and draw the tip of the blade along the tiny scar. Her blood
wells up bright red, shockingly red against her pearly skin. She doesn’t even flinch,
but I have to ask: “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I like it a lot.”

I tease the implant from her neck with the tip of the blade. She grunts softly. The
pellet clings to the metal, sealed within a droplet of blood.

“So,” she says, turning around. The almost-smile is almost there. “How was it for
you?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I’ve lost the ability to talk. The knife falls from my hand.
I’m two feet away looking right at her, but her face is gone. I can’t see it through
my eyepiece.

Ringer’s entire head is lit up in a blinding green fire.

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