by Rick Yancey
What the hell? Why don’t they waste him?
Pix, you dumbass, he’s gotta be the frigging target. Sonofabitch made it.
The chopper sets down and now Milk can see Hersh and Reese hop from the hold. He can’t hear them, but he knows what they’re screaming at the Ted over the cacophony of the engine: Down, down, down! Hands on your head! The figure drops to its knees; its hands are swallowed by the green fire dancing around its face. They drag the prisoner over to the bird and haul him inside.
The pilot’s voice squawks in Milk’s ear: “Returning target to base. See you on the back side, soldiers.”
The Hawk roars directly over them, northbound. The Havoline sign quivers at its passing. Gummy watches the chopper shrink toward the horizon, and the world goes quiet fast, leaving only the wind and fire and his own heavy breath. This will be quick, he tells himself. Absently, he presses his hand against his shoulder, still tender from the night before, the wounds still fresh: VQP.
It was Milk’s idea. Milk had seen Razor’s body with his own eyes, and it was Milk who figured out what the letters stood for. Vincit qui patitur. He conquers who endures. They carved the same letters into their own arms—VQP—in honor of the fallen.
Milk gives the signal and they move out. Milk on the point, Pix right behind, Swizz and Snick the flankers, and Gummy bringing up the rear. Mark those windows across the street there, Snick. Check those cars, Swizz.
They’ve drilled this a thousand times, house to house, room to room, basement to roof. You clear the block, then move to the next one. Don’t rush. Watch your back. Watch your buddy’s back. If you have the shot, take the shot. Simple. Easy. So easy a child could do it, which is one of the chief reasons they picked children to do it.
Six months, two weeks, and three days after the school bus rolled to a stop and a voice called out, Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now, perfectly safe, Gummy hears something other than the wind and the fire and his own breath: a high-pitched whine like the squealing of that bus’s brakes. That’s the last sound he hears before the twenty-inch steel rim smashes into the back of his head, snapping his spinal cord. He’s dead before he hits the ground.
One hundred and eighty-four days after rolling into camp, Snicks is next. She and Swizz drop to the ground when Gummy falls, that’s the training, that’s the memory their muscles hold, and their adversary knows it. She anticipated it.
Lying on his belly, Swizz looks to his right. Snicks is making a strangled gurgling sound, her rifle abandoned on the road next to her, both hands clutching the handle of the twenty-five-inch screwdriver embedded in her neck. Her jugular has been severed. She will be dead in less than a minute.
Four thousand, four hundred and sixteen hours after he saw the lights of the bus’s headlamps stabbing through the woods in which he hid, Swizz scrambles on his hands and knees to the roadside—and sees the green light through his eyepiece for a split second before it vanishes behind the old garage: the pale fire of an infested. Got you now, you sonofabitch. Swizz doesn’t know what happened to Milk and Pix, and he doesn’t turn around to find out. He’s running on instinct and adrenaline and a rage that cannot be measured or exhausted. He heaves himself to his feet and takes off for the garage. She’s already on the roof by the time he reaches the southeast corner of the building, waiting for him, ready to leap.
At least it’ll be quick.
Milk and Pix hear his rifle’s report from their hiding place behind the overturned Tahoe that straddles the shoulder of the road. Three short, staccato bursts: tat-tat-tat!
Then silence.
With a soft, disgusted cry, Pix rips off the eyepiece, screw this, fucker won’t stay up, and Milk calmly orders him to put it back on while he scans their surroundings. Pix ignores him. Broad daylight, he can see fine, and who cares whether they’re human or infested anymore?
Wind and fire and their own breath. Don’t get pinned. Don’t go down any dead ends. Don’t split up. Lying on his side, his shoulder pressing against the comforting steel of the SUV, Pix looks up into Milk’s face. Milk’s the sarge. Milk won’t let him down. VQP. Hell yes. VQP.
The girl’s bullet travels across the road, shatters the driver’s window, passes through the interior and exits on the other side, ripping through Pix’s jacket and burrowing into his back until it reaches his spine. There the bullet stops.
Two hundred sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and sixty-three minutes from his rescue to this moment, and Milk scoots toward the front bumper, dragging Pix’s body with him. The upper half jerks in his hands; the lower half is paralyzed, dead already, and what the fuck were they thinking, carving those stupid letters into their arms? Pix’s small fingers clawing at Milk’s face as the light drains from his eyes. Protect me, cover me, keep the bastards off me, Sarge.
That’s right, that’s right, Pix. VQP. V Q fucking P.
He’s still whispering to him when she steps around the hood of the car. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t even hear her.
Fifteen million, eight hundred ninety-seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two ticks of the clock, and Milk follows the rest of Squad 19 down.
45
RINGER
I WON’T LEAVE these boys to rot where they fell.
I won’t leave them for the rats and the crows and the blowflies, the buzzards and packs of feral dogs.
I will not abandon their bones to be picked over and scattered by vultures and vermin.
I will not burn them, either.
With my bare hands, I will dig a grave for them in the cold earth.
The sun slips toward the horizon. The wind picks up, whipping my hair across my face, and the ground breaks between my fingers, my hands the plow that breaks the stubborn soil for the planting.
I know Zombie’s watching me. I can see him at the edge of the black, blasted-out ruins of the house. He’s leaning on a piece of charred two-by-four, holding his rifle and watching me. Twilight settles around us and still he watches as I carry the bodies one by one to the hole I’ve dug.
He hobbles over. He’s going to shoot me. He’s going to kick my body into the hole and bury me with my victims. He won’t wait for me to explain. There will be no questions, because everything out of my mouth will be a lie.
He stops. I’m kneeling beside the grave and their faces are looking sightlessly up at me. The oldest—the squad leader, I’m guessing—could not be older than twenty.
The sound of the bolt on Zombie’s rifle drawing back is enhanced and the hub orders a defensive response. I ignore it.
“I shot Teacup,” I say into the face of the dead recruit. “I thought she was the enemy and I shot her. She had one chance and I had no choice. I let them take us, Zombie. It was the only way to save her.”
His voice is as dry as dead leaves rattling on winter boughs. “Then where is she?”
“Gone.”
The word hangs. Even the wind can’t move it.
“What did they do to you, Ringer?”
I look up. Not at him. Straight up. The first stars peek at me through the gloaming.
“The same thing they did to Walker. The same thing they did to Constance and that priest and the cat lady.”
Above me, the stars shine down unblinking. I blink, and my tears fall silver in their light. Vosch’s gift allows me to see to the very edge of the universe, but I couldn’t see the prison walls on every side.
The truth. The 12th System enhances all others, including the one that’s been tearing my body apart since I returned from the wilderness. I refused to face the truth. I knew it, and I refused. A man blind from birth reaches out and touches an elephant’s ear. An elephant is flat like a sheet. Another blind man touches its trunk. An elephant is shaped like a snake. A third strokes its leg. An elephant is like a tree.
I lower my head to the grave and speak the truth aloud:
“I’
m pregnant.”
46
CASSIE
BEN’S DEAD.
He left us, saying he’d be right back. But he hasn’t come right back. He hasn’t come back at all.
I huddle in the far corner of the basement with Sam and Megan. I’ve got a rifle, Megan’s got Bear, and Sam’s got an attitude. Grace’s gun collection is six feet away. So many pretty shiny things, Sam can hardly contain himself. The most delightful thing he’s discovered about shooting someone is how ridiculously easy it is. Tying your shoes is harder.
I grab a heavy wool blanket from the stack beside the workbench and throw it over all three of them, Sams, Megs, and Bear.
“I’m not cold!” he cries—Sam, not Bear.
“It isn’t for warmth,” I mutter at him. I start to explain, but the words peter out into meaningless dribble. What happened to Evan? What happened to Ben? What happened to Ringer? Finding out the answer to any of those questions would require me to rise from this floor, cross the length of this basement, climb those stairs, and possibly shoot someone or be shot myself, all of which calls for something I haven’t got right now.
Last time, Mayfly. I promise.
Oh, that stupid, gag-worthy pet name. I should have called him something equally demeaning and cloying. Sharkboy is a good one. Jawsie.
The wooden stairs creak. I stay put. Cassiopeia’s last stand. I have a full magazine and a heart full of hate; you don’t need much of anything else.
Beside me, Sam hisses, “Cassie, it’s Zombie.”
Sure enough. Clumping awkwardly and badly off balance, too, like a real zombie. He’s out of breath by the time he reaches the bottom. He leans against the wall, lips parted, face drained of color.
“Well?” I call across the room at him. “Did you find him?”
He shakes his head. He glances up the stairs. He looks back at me.
“Chopper,” he says.
“What about the chopper? Evan blew it up?” Stupid question. I would have heard it.
“He got on it.”
Ben needs to sit. A wound like his hurts like a mother; I should know. Why won’t he sit? Why is he hanging there by the stairs?
“What do you mean, he got on it?”
“I mean he got on it. They took him, Cassie.” Another look up the stairs, so I ask him why he keeps looking up the stairs. He goes, “There was a strike team . . .”
“There’s a strike team?”
“There was a strike team.” He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “Not anymore.” His voice shakes—and I don’t think it’s from the pain or the cold. Ben Parish appears to be scared shitless.
“Ringer?” Duh, Sullivan, who else? “Ringer.”
He nods. Then glances again topside. That’s when I stand up. Sam, too. I tell him to stay. He tells me no. Ben holds up a hand.
“There’s an explanation, Cassie.”
“I’m sure there is.”
“You need to hear her out.”
“Or what? She snaps my neck with her super-ninja powers? Ben, what’s the matter with you? She brought them to us.”
“You gotta trust me on this.”
“No, you need to trust me. I told you before she left—there’s something not right about her. Now she’s back and there’s something really not right. What else do you need, Ben? What does she have to do for you to accept the fact she isn’t on your side?”
“Cassie . . .” Trying very hard to keep it together. “I want you to put down that weapon . . .”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Trying very hard to be patient. “I won’t let you hurt her, Cassie.”
And Sam goes, “Zombie’s the sarge. You have to do what he says.”
The stairs creak again. Ringer stops halfway down. She’s not looking at me; she’s looking at Ben. For a horrible second, I think about shooting them both, grabbing Sam and Megan, and running until we run out of land to run on. Picking sides, deciding who you can trust, deciding what’s truth and what’s not, you reach a point where chucking it all seems like the least intolerable option. Like people who commit suicide, you just get sick of the hassle.
“It’s all right,” Ben says to her or maybe to me or maybe to both of us. “It’s going to be fine.”
“She leaves the gun on the stairs,” I call over.
Ringer drops her rifle right away. Why am I not comforted? Then she descends to the last step and sits.
47
THERE’S BEEN A SHITLOAD of huh? moments since the Others came, but this one has gotta be the huh-est of them all.
After the first go-around, I figure I must be missing something, so I ask Ringer to explain herself again, slower this time, with a little more detail and a lot more evidence.
“They aren’t here,” she says. “I’m not even sure they’re there.” With a nod toward the basement ceiling—and the unseen sky beyond.
“How could they not be there?” Ben wonders. There he goes again, deferring to her like the mealymouthiest courtier in Queen Ringer’s court. I’m starting to wonder about Ben’s ability to judge character. Since this war began, he’s been shot twice—both times by the person who claimed to be on his side.
“The mothership could be completely automated,” Ringer explains. “Obviously some form of sentient life built it, but the builders themselves could be light-years from here—or nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” Ben echoes.
“Dead. Extinct.”
“Sure, why not?” I’m fiddling with the bolt catch of my M16. Ben might still trust her after she lied about Teacup and where she was and what happened while she was there, plus her delivering an assassin to our doorstep, plus being shot by her, twice; I’m not so gobsmacked by her feminine charm, which, by the way, you could fit on the head of a pin and still leave room for angels to dance. “A couple thousand years ago, their probes find us. They watch. They wait. At some point they figure out we’re no good for the Earth or ourselves, so they build the mothership and load it down with bombs and drones and viral plague and proceed to wipe out ninety-nine point nine percent of the population with the help of human thralls who’ve been brainwashed since birth . . . because that’s our medicine, that’s what good for us—”
“Cassie,” Ben says. “Take a breath.”
“That’s one scenario,” Ringer says calmly. “Actually, it’s the best-case scenario.”
I shake my head and look over at Sam and Megan huddled under a big blanket in the corner. Incredibly, both have fallen asleep, their heads pressed together, Bear tucked beneath their chins, in a tableau that would be cute beyond words if it wasn’t so heartbreakingly symbolic of something. Well, of everything.
“Just like your Silencer theory,” I snap at her. “A computer program downloaded into fetuses that boots up when the kid hits puberty. A scenario.”
“No, that’s a fact. Vosch confirmed it.”
“Right. The maniac who orchestrated the murder of seven billion people. Well, sure, if he said it, then it must be true.”
“Why else would he want Walker so badly?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because Evan betrayed his entire civilization and is the one person on the planet who can stop them?”
Ringer is looking at me like I’m something disgusting she found growing on her toothbrush. “If that’s all there is to it, your boyfriend would be dead right now.”
“He could be dead right now. It kills me how you claim to know so much despite the fact that you don’t know much at all. Theories, scenarios, possibilities, odds, whatever. And for your information, just so you know, and this is no supposition based on the theory that I-am-Ringer-ergo-I-know-all, he isn’t my boyfriend.”
My face is hot. I’m thinking of the night I landed on the shores of Evanland and planted my flag upon that sculpted beach. Ben says something a
t that point, which I totally miss, because my mind has a way of scolding its own thoughts. Like, how could I be the flag-planter? Shouldn’t that be Evan?
“Evan is human,” Ringer insists. “His purpose is obvious. What isn’t so obvious—and why Vosch needs to deconstruct his programming—is what triggered Evan’s mind to rebel. He didn’t just betray his ‘people.’ He betrayed himself.”
“Well,” Ben sighs, “that’s fucked up.” He shifts his weight against the wall, trying to find a more comfortable position. That’s not possible with a bullet in your leg. Believe me, I’ve tried. “So there are no escape pods coming to evac the Silencers,” Ben says slowly. “No pods, so no way to the mothership. No way to the mothership, so no way to blow it up. Shoots that plan all to hell. What about bombing the cities? Or is that a lie his programming told him, too?”
Ringer doesn’t answer for a long time. I have no clue what she’s thinking. Then I start thinking maybe this whole deal is a trick—of Vosch’s. Something happened to Ringer after she checked out of the Walker Hotel. Somebody implanted her with bionics that turned her into a part-human, part-machine weapon of mass destruction. How do we know she hasn’t flipped to the other side? A certain Brawny-paper-towel-looking guy did. How do we know she wasn’t always on the other side?
My thumb’s working that bolt catch again.
“I think they are going to bomb the cities,” she finally says.
“Why?” I demand. “What’s the point?”
“A lot of reasons. For one, it evens the playing field before the launch of the 5th Wave—urban combat gives the Silencers every advantage, and you can’t tip favor too far to one side. But the most important reason is cities hold our memories.”
Whaaaaa? Then I get it, and getting it makes my stomach hurt. My father and that damned wagon and those damned books. Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They’re the vessels into which human knowledge is poured. Blowing them up will be the final reset of the clock back to the Neolithic.
