I was biting my lower lip. My eyes burned. I clenched my fists so hard, my nails were biting into my palms. Why, oh, why didn’t I go with option two?
She said, “You want me to stop now.” Not a question.
I lifted my chin. And Defiance shall be my nom de guerre! “What’s my favorite color?”
“Green.”
“Wrong. It’s yellow,” I lied.
She shrugged. She knew I was lying. Ringer: the human Wonderland.
“Seriously, though, why ‘Ringer’?” That’s it. Put her back on the defensive. Well, she never actually was on the defensive. That would be me.
“I’m human,” she said.
“Yeah.” I peeked through the crack in the curtains to the parking lot two stories below. Why did I do that? Did I really think I’d see him standing there, lurker that he was, smiling up at me? See? I said I’d find you. “Someone else told me that, too. And, like a dummy, I believed him.”
“Not so dumb, given the circumstances.”
Oh, now she was being kind? Now she was cutting me some slack? I didn’t know which was worse: ice maiden Ringer or compassionate queen Ringer.
“Don’t pretend,” I snapped. “I know you don’t believe me about Evan.”
“I believe you. It’s his story that doesn’t make sense.”
Then she walked out of the room. Just like that. Right in the middle, before anything was resolved. Who, besides every male person ever born, does that?
A virtual existence doesn’t require a physical planet . . .
Who was Evan Walker? Shifting my eyes from the highway to my baby brother and back again. Who were you, Evan Walker?
I was an idiot for trusting him, but I was hurt and alone (alone as in thinking I was the last human being in the freaking universe) and majorly mind screwed because I had already killed one innocent person, and this person, this Evan Walker, didn’t end my life when he could have; he saved it. So when the bells went off, I ignored them. Plus it didn’t hurt (help?) that he was impossibly gorgeous and equally impossibly obsessed with making me feel like I mattered more to him than he did to himself, from bathing me to feeding me to teaching me how to kill to telling me I was the one thing he had left worth dying for to proving it all by dying for me.
He began as Evan, woke up thirteen years later to find out he wasn’t, then woke again, he told me, when he saw himself through my eyes. He found himself in me, and then I found him in me and I was in him and there was no space between us. He began by telling me everything I wanted to hear and ended telling me the things I needed to: The principal weapon to eradicate the human hangers-on were the humans themselves. And when the last of the “infested” were dead, Vosch and company would pull the plug on the 5th Wave. Purge over. House clean and ready to move in.
When I told Ben and Ringer all this—minus the part about Evan being inside me, a bit too nuanced for Parish—there was a lot of dubious staring and significant looks from which I was painfully excluded.
“One of them was in love with you?” Ringer asked when I finished. “Wouldn’t that be like us falling in love with a cockroach?”
“Or a mayfly,” I shot back. “Maybe they have a thing for insects.”
We were meeting in Ben’s room. Our first night at the Walker Hotel, as Ringer dubbed it, mostly, I think, to get under my skin.
“What else did he tell you?” Ben asked. He was sprawled on the bed. Four miles from Camp Haven to the hotel, and he looked like he’d just sprinted a marathon. The kid who patched me and Sam up, Dumbo, wouldn’t commit when I asked him about Ben. Wouldn’t say if he’d get better. Wouldn’t say if he’d get worse. Of course, Dumbo was only twelve. “Capabilities? Weaknesses?”
“They have no bodies anymore,” I said. “Evan told me that it was the only way they could make the journey. Some were downloaded—him, Vosch, the other Silencers—some are still on the mothership, waiting for us to be gone.”
Ben rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “The camps were set up to winnow out the best candidates for brainwashing . . .”
“And to dispose of the ones who weren’t,” I finished. “Once the 5th Wave was rolled out, all they had to do was sit back and let the stupid humans do their dirty work.”
Ringer was sitting by the window, silent as a shadow.
“But why use us at all?” Ben wondered. “Why not download enough of their troops into human bodies to finish us off?”
“Not enough of them, maybe,” I guessed. “Or setting up the 5th Wave posed the least risk.”
“What risk?” Shadow-Ringer said, breaking her silence.
I decided to ignore her. For a lot of reasons, the main one being you engaged with Ringer at your own peril. She could humiliate you with a single word.
“You were there,” I reminded Ben. “You heard Vosch. They’d been watching us for centuries. But Evan proved that, even with thousands of years to plan, something can still go wrong. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that by becoming us, they might actually become us.”
“Right,” Ben said. “So how can we use that?”
“We can’t,” Ringer answered. “There’s nothing Sullivan’s told us that will help, unless this Evan person somehow survived the blast and can fill in the blanks.”
Ben was shaking his head. “Nothing could have survived that.”
“There were escape pods,” I said, grasping at the same straw I’d been reaching for since he said good-bye.
“Really?” Ringer didn’t sound like she believed me. “Then why didn’t he put you in one?”
I told her, “Look, I probably shouldn’t tell someone holding a high-powered semiautomatic rifle this, but you’re really starting to get on my nerves.”
She acted surprised. “Why?”
“We’ve got to get a handle on this,” Ben said sharply, cutting off my answer, which was a good thing: Ringer was holding an M16 and Ben had told me she was the best shot in the camp. “What’s the plan? Wait for Evan to show up or run? And if we run, where to?” Cheeks flaming with fever, eyes shining. It’s fourth and long with four seconds left. “Is there anything else Evan told you that might help? What are they going to do with the cities?”
“They’re not going to blow them up,” Ringer said. She didn’t wait for me to answer. Then she didn’t wait for me to ask how the hell she would know that. “If that was the plan, they would’ve blown them up first. Over half the world’s population lived in urban areas.”
“So they plan to use them,” Ben said. “Because they’re using human bodies?”
“We can’t hide in a city, Zombie,” Ringer said. “Any city.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t safe. Fires, sewage, disease from all the rotting corpses, other survivors who must know by now they’re using human bodies. If we want to stay alive as long as possible, we have to keep moving. Keep moving and stay alone as long as possible.”
Oh, boy. Where did I hear that rule before? My head felt light. My knee was killing me. The knee shot by a Silencer. My Silencer. I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you? Not this time, Evan. I don’t think so. I sat on the bed next to Ben.
“She’s right,” I said to him. “Staying anywhere for more than a few days is not a good idea.”
“Or staying together.”
Ringer’s words hung in the icy air. Beside me, Ben stiffened. I closed my eyes. Heard that rule, too: Trust no one.
“Not going to happen, Ringer,” Ben said.
“I take Teacup and Poundcake. You take the rest. Our chances double.”
“Why stop there?” I asked her. “Why don’t we all split up? Our chances quadruple.”
“Septuple,” she corrected me.
“Well, I’m no math whiz,” Ben said. “But it seems to me splitting up plays right into their strategy. Isolate, th
en exterminate.” He gave Ringer a hard look. “Personally, I like the idea of someone having my back.”
He pushed himself from the bed and swayed for a second. Ringer told him to lie back down. He ignored her.
“We can’t stay, but we have nowhere to go. You can’t get to nowhere from here, so where do we go?” he asked.
“South,” Ringer said. “As far south as possible.” She was looking out the window. I understood—a decent snow and you’re trapped until it thaws. Ergo, get somewhere where it doesn’t snow.
“Texas?” Ben said.
“Mexico,” Ringer answered. “Or Central America, once the water recedes. You could hide in the rain forest for years.”
“I like it,” Ben said. “Back to nature. There’s just one little flaw.” He spread his hands. “We don’t have passports.”
He watched her, holding the gesture, like he was waiting for something. Ringer looked back at him, expressionless. Ben dropped his hands with a shrug.
“You’re not serious,” I said. This was getting ridiculous. “Central America? In the middle of winter, on foot, with Ben hurt and two little kids. We’ll be lucky to make it to Kentucky.”
“Beats hanging around here waiting for your alien prince to come.”
That did it. I didn’t care if she was holding an M16. I was grabbing a handful of those silky locks and slinging her out that window. Ben saw it coming and stepped between us.
“We’re all on the same team here, Sullivan. Let’s keep it together, okay?” He turned to Ringer. “You’re right. He probably didn’t make it, but we’re gonna give Evan a chance to keep his promise. I’m in no shape for a road trip anyway.”
“I didn’t come back for you and Nugget so we could be the featured guests at a turkey shoot, Zombie,” Ringer said. “Do what you think is right, but if things get hot, I’m out of here.”
I said to Ben, “Team player.”
“Maybe you’re forgetting who saved your life,” Ringer said.
“Oh, kiss my ass.”
“That does it!” Ben boomed in his best quarterback, I’m-the-guy-in-charge-here voice. “I don’t know how we’re making it through this unholy mess, but I do know that this is not the way. Stow the crap, both of you. That’s an order.”
He fell back onto the bed, gasping for air, a hand pressed against his side. Ringer left to find Dumbo, which left Ben and me alone for the first time since our reunion deep in the bowels of Camp Haven.
“Something weird,” Ben said. “You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better.”
Um, that would be one percent, Parish. I started to point that out and then saw him smiling, waiting for me to correct his math, knowing it would nearly impossible for me to resist. He played with the stereotype of the dumb jock the way someone Sammy’s age played with sidewalk chalk: in broad, clumsy strokes.
“She’s a psycho,” I said. “Seriously, something’s off. You look in her eyes and there’s no one there there.”
He shook his head. “I think there’s a lot there. It’s just . . . real deep.”
He winced, hand tucked in the pocket of that hideous hoodie like he was doing a Napoleon impression, pressing on the bullet wound that Ringer had given him. A wound he asked for. A wound so he could risk everything to save my little brother. A wound that now may cost him his life.
“It can’t be done,” I whispered.
“Of course it can,” he said. He laid his hand on top of mine.
I shook my head. He didn’t understand. I wasn’t talking about us.
The shadow of their coming fell upon us and we lost sight of something fundamental within the absolute dark of that shadow. But simply because we couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there: My father mouthing to me, Run! when he couldn’t. Evan pulling me from the belly of the beast before giving himself up to it. Ben plunging into the jaws of hell to snatch Sam from them. There were some things—well, there was probably only one thing—unblemished by the shadow. Confounding. Indefatigable. Undefeatable.
They can kill us, even down to the last of us, but they can’t kill—can never kill—what lasts in us.
Cassie, do you want to fly?
Yes, Daddy. I want to fly.
12
THE SILVER HIGHWAY that faded into the black. The black seared by starlight unleashed. The leafless trees with arms upraised like thieves caught in the act. My brother’s breath congealing in the frigid air as he slept. The window fogging as I breathed. And, beyond the frosty glass, beside the silver highway in the searing starlight, a tiny figure darting beneath the upraised arms of the trees.
Oh, crap.
I launched across the room and smashed into the hall, where Poundcake whipped around, rifle up, Relax, big boy, then busted into Ben’s room, where Dumbo leaned against the windowsill and Ben sprawled on the bed closest to the door. Dumbo stood up. Ben sat up. And I spoke up: “Where’s Teacup?”
Dumbo pointed at the bed next to Ben’s. “Right here.” Giving me a look like This crazy chick’s lost it.
I went to the bed and whipped aside the mound of covers. Ben cursed and Dumbo backed up against the wall, his face turning red.
“I swear to God she was just there!”
“I saw her,” I told Ben. “Outside—”
“Outside?” He rolled his legs off the side of the bed, grunting with the effort.
“On the highway.”
Then he understood. “Ringer. She’s going after Ringer.” He slapped his open hand on the mattress. “Damn it!”
“I’ll go,” Dumbo said.
Ben held up his hand. “Poundcake!” he hollered. You could hear the big kid coming. The floor protested his passage. He stuck his head in the room, and Ben said, “Teacup took off. After Ringer. Go grab her little butt and bring it back here so I can whale on it.”
Poundcake lumbered off and the floor went Thanks a lot!
Ben was strapping on his holster. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Taking Poundcake’s post until he gets back with that little shit. You stay with Nugget. I mean, Sam. Whoever. We need to pick one name and stick to it.”
His fingers were shaking. Fever. Fear. A little of both.
Dumbo’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Ben noticed. “At ease, Bo. Not your bad.”
“I’ll take the hall,” Dumbo said. “You stay here, Sarge. You shouldn’t be on your feet.”
He rushed from the room before Ben could stop him. Ben, now looking at me with sparkly eyes, fever bright. “I don’t think I told you,” he said. “After we went rogue in Dayton, Vosch dispatched two squads to hunt us down. If they were still in the field when the camp blew . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought. Either he thought he didn’t need to or he couldn’t. He stood up. Staggered. I went to him and he threw his arm around my shoulders without embarrassment. There’s no nice way to say this: Ben Parish smelled sick. The sour odor of infection and old sweat. For the first time since I realized he wasn’t a corpse, I thought he might be one soon.
“Get back in bed,” I told him. He shook his head, then his hand loosed on my shoulder and he fell back, hitting the edge of the mattress with his butt and sliding down to the floor.
“Dizzy,” he murmured. “Go get Nugget and bring him in here with us.”
“Sam. Can we go with Sam?” Whenever I heard Nugget, I thought of the McDonald’s drive-thru and hot French fries and strawberry-banana smoothies and McCafé Frappé Mochas topped with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate.
Ben smiled. And it broke my heart, that luminous smile on that wasted face. “We’ll go with it,” he said.
Sam barely sighed when I pulled him from the bed and carried him into Ben’s room. I laid him in Teacup’s vacated bed, tucked him in, touched his cheek with the back
of my hand, an old habit left over from the plague days. Ben was still sitting on the floor, head thrown back, staring at the ceiling. I started toward him, and he waved me back.
“Window,” he gasped. “Now we’re blind on one side. Thanks a lot, Teacup.”
“Why would she take off like—?”
“Ever since Dayton, she’s been latched on to Ringer like a pilot fish.”
“All I ever saw them do is fight.” Thinking of the chess brawl, the coin smacking Teacup in the head, and I hate your fucking guts!
Ben chuckled. “It’s a thin line.”
I glanced down at the parking lot. The asphalt shone like onyx. Latched on to her like a pilot fish. I thought of Evan lurking behind doors and around corners. I thought of the unblemished thing, the thing that lasts, and I thought the only thing with the power to save us also had the power to slay us.
“You really shouldn’t be on the floor like that,” I scolded him. “It’s warmer up on the bed.”
“A half of a half of a half of a degree, right. This is nothing, Sullivan. A head cold next to the plague.”
“You had the plague?”
“Oh, yeah. Refugee camp outside Wright-Patterson. After they took over the base, they hauled me in, pumped me full of antivirals, then put a rifle in my hand and told me to go kill some people. How about you?”
A crucifix clutched in a bloody hand. You can either finish me or help me. The soldier behind the beer coolers was the first. No. The first was the guy who shot Crisco in a pit of ashes. That’s two, and then there were the Silencers, the one I shot right before I found Sam and the one right before Evan found me. Four, then. Was I missing somebody? The bodies pile up and you lose track. Oh God, you lose track.
“I’ve killed people,” I said softly.
“I meant the plague.”
“No. My mom . . .”
“How about your dad?”
“Different kind of plague,” I said. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Vosch. Vosch murdered him.”