The 5th Wave (57 page)

Ben seems stunned by my response to his bombshell. Then I get it. He thinks I’ve been
indoctrinated like everybody else in the camp. It’s so ridiculous, I actually laugh.
While I’m laughing like an idiot, I get something else: He hasn’t been brainwashed,
either.

Which means I can trust him.

Unless he’s playing me, getting me to lower my guard—and my weapon—so he can waste
me and take Sam.

Which means I can’t trust him.

I also can’t read his mind, but he must be thinking along the same lines when I burst
out laughing. Why is this crazy girl with the helmet-hair laughing? Because he’s stated
the obvious or because I think his story’s crap?

“I know,” Sammy says to broker the peace. “We can all go together!”

“Do you know a way out of here?” I ask Ben. Sammy’s more trusting than I am, but the
idea’s worth exploring. Finding the escape pods—if they even exist—has always been
the weakest part of my getaway plan.

He nods. “Do you?”

“I know a way—I just don’t know the way to the way.”

“The way to the way? Okay.” He grins. He looks like hell, but the smile hasn’t changed
a bit. It lights up the tunnel like a thousand-watt bulb. “I know the way and the
way to the way.”

He drops the gun into his pocket and holds out his empty hand.

“Let’s go together.”

The thing that gets me is whether I’d take that hand if it belonged to anyone other
than Ben Parish.

84

SAMMY NOTICES THE BLOOD before I do.

“It’s nothing,” Ben grunts.

I don’t get that from the look on his face. From the look on his face, it’s a lot
more than nothing.

“It’s a long story, Nugget,” Ben says. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Where are we going?” I ask. Not that we’re getting there—wherever there is—very fast.
Ben is shuffling along the maze of corridors like an actual zombie. The face of the
Ben I remember is still there, but it’s faded…or maybe not faded, but congealed into
a leaner, sharper, harder version of his old face. Like someone cut away the parts
that weren’t absolutely necessary for Ben to maintain his Ben essence.

“In general? The hell out of here. After this next tunnel coming up on the right.
It leads to an air shaft that we can—”

“Wait!” I grab his arm. In my shock at seeing him again, I’d completely forgotten.
“Sammy’s tracker.”

He stares at me for a second, and then laughs ruefully. “I completely forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Sammy asks.

I go to one knee, take his hands in mine. We’re several corridors away from the safe
room, but Major Bob’s megaphoned voice still bounces and skips along the tunnels.
“Sams, there’s something we have to do. Something very important. The people here,
they’re not who they say they are.”

“Who are they?” he whispers.

“Bad people, Sam. Very bad people.”

“Teds,” Ben puts in. “Dr. Pam, the soldiers, the commander…even the commander. They’re
all infesteds. They tricked us, Nugget.”

Sammy’s eyes are big as pie plates. “The commander, too?”

“The commander, too,” Ben answers. “So we’re getting out of here and we’re going to
meet up with Ringer.” He catches me staring at him. “That’s not her real name.”

“Really?” I shake my head. Zombie, Nugget, Ringer. Must be an army thing. I turn back
to Sam. “They lied about a lot of things, Sam. About almost everything.” I let go
of his hand and run my fingers up the back of his neck, finding the small lump beneath
the skin. “This is one of their lies, this thing they put in you. They use it to track
you—but they can also use it to hurt you.”

Ben squats down beside me. “So we have to get it out, Nugget.”

Sam nods, fat bottom lip quivering, big eyes filling up with tears. “Oh-kay-ay…”

“But you have to be very quiet and very still,” I caution him. “You can’t yell or
cry or twist around. Think you can do that?”

He nods again, and a tear pops out and drops on my forearm. I stand up, and Ben and
I step away for a brief preoperative conference.

“We’ll have to use this,” I say, showing him the ten-inch combat knife, which I’m
careful not to let Sammy see.

Ben’s eyes widen. “If you say so, but I was going to use this.” And he pulls a scalpel
from his lab coat pocket.

“That’s probably better.”

“You want to do it?”

“I should do it. He’s my brother.” But the thought of cutting into Sammy’s neck gives
me the squishies.

“I can do it,” Ben offers. “You hold him, and I’ll cut.”

“So it’s not a disguise? You earned your MD here at E.T. University?”

He smiles grimly. “Just try to keep him as still as possible so I don’t slice into
something important.”

We return to Sam, who’s sitting now with his back against the wall, pressing Bear
into his chest and watching us, eyes flicking fearfully back and forth. I whisper
to Ben, “If you hurt him, Parish, I’m sticking this knife into your heart.”

He looks at me, startled. “I would never hurt him.”

I ease Sam into my lap. Roll him over so he’s lying facedown across my legs, his chin
hanging over the edge of my thigh. Ben kneels down. I look at the hand holding the
scalpel. It’s shaking.

“I’m okay,” Ben whispers. “Really. I’m okay. Don’t let him move.”

“Cassie…!” Sammy whimpers.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. Stay very still. He’ll be quick,” I say. “Be quick,” I tell Ben.

I hold Sam’s head with both hands. As Ben’s hand approaches with the scalpel, it becomes
rock steady.

“Hey, Nugget,” he says. “Okay if I take the locket back first?” Sammy nods, and Ben
undoes the clasp. The metal clinks in his hand as he pulls it free.

“It’s yours?” I ask Ben, startled.

“My sister’s.” Ben drops the chain into his pocket. The way he says it, I know she’s
dead.

I turn my head. Thirty minutes ago I’d blown a guy’s face off, and now I can’t watch
someone make the tiniest of cuts. Sammy jerks when the blade breaks his skin. He bites
down on my leg to keep from screaming. Bites hard. It takes everything in me to remain
still. If I move, Ben’s hand might slip.

“Hurry,” I squeak, mouse-voiced.

“Got it!” The tracker adheres to the end of Ben’s bloody middle finger.

“Get rid of it.”

Ben shakes it off his hand and slaps a bandage over the wound. He came prepared. I
came with a ten-inch combat knife.

“Okay, it’s over, Sam,” I moan. “You can stop biting me now.”

“It hurts, Cassie!”

“I know, I know.” I pull him up and give him a big hug. “And you were very brave.”

He nods seriously. “I know.”

Ben offers me his hand, helps me to my feet. His hand is tacky with my brother’s blood.
He drops the scalpel into his pocket and then the gun is back in his hand.

“We better get moving,” he says calmly, like we might miss a bus.

Back into the main corridor, Sammy leaning hard against my side. We make the last
turn, and Ben stops so suddenly, I run right into his back. The tunnel echoes with
the sound of a dozen semiautomatics being racked, and I hear a familiar voice say,
“You’re late, Ben. I expected you much sooner.”

A very deep voice, hard as steel.

85

I LOSE SAMMY for a second time. A Silencer-soldier takes him away, back to the safe
room to be evacuated with the other kids, I guess. Another Silencer brings Ben and
me to the execution room. The room with the mirror and the button. The room where
innocent people are wired up and electrocuted. The room of blood and lies. Seems fitting.

“Do you know why we will win this war?” Vosch asks us after we’re locked inside. “Why
we cannot lose? Because we know how you think. We’ve been watching you for six thousand
years. When the pyramids rose in the Egyptian desert, we were watching you. When Caesar
burned the library at Alexandria, we were watching you. When you crucified that first-century
Jewish peasant, we were watching. When Columbus set foot in the New World…when you
fought a war to free millions of your fellow humans from bondage…when you learned
how to split the atom…when you first ventured beyond your atmosphere…What were we
doing?”

Ben isn’t looking at him. Neither of us is. We’re both sitting in front of the mirror,
looking straight ahead at our distorted reflections in the broken glass. The room
on the other side is dark.

“You were watching us,” I say. Vosch is sitting in front of the monitor, about a foot
away from me. On my other side, Ben, and behind us, a very well-built Silencer.

“We were learning how you think. That’s the secret to victory, as Sergeant Parish
here already knows: understanding how your enemy thinks. The arrival of the mothership
was not the beginning, but the beginning of the end. And now here you are, in a front-row
seat for the finale, a special sneak peek into the future. Would you like to see the
future? Your future? Would you like to stare all the way down to the bottom of the
human cup?”

Vosch presses a button on the keyboard. The lights in the room on the other side of
the mirror flicker on.

There is a chair, a Silencer standing beside it, and strapped to the chair is my brother,
Sammy, thick wires attached to his head.

“This is the future,” Vosch whispers. “The human animal bound, its death at our fingertips.
And when you have finished the
work that we’ve given you, we will press the execute button and your deplorable stewardship
of this planet will come to an end.”

“You don’t have to do this!” I shout. The Silencer behind me puts a hand on my shoulder
and squeezes hard. But not hard enough to keep me from jumping out of the chair. “All
you have to do is implant us and download us into Wonderland. Won’t that tell you
everything you want to know? You don’t have to kill him…”

“Cassie,” Ben says softly. “He’s going to kill him anyway.”

“You shouldn’t listen to him, young lady,” Vosch says. “He’s weak. He’s always been
weak. You’ve shown more pluck and determination in a few hours than he has in his
miserable lifetime.”

He nods to the Silencer, who yanks me back into the chair.

“I am going to ‘download’ you,” Vosch tells me. “And I am going to kill Sergeant Parish.
But you can save the child. If you tell me who helped you infiltrate this base.”