by Rick Yancey
I shook my head. My back was to the light, and I prayed he couldn’t see how badly I was shaking or the fear in my eyes. This wasn’t some damn rabbit that was stupid enough to hop into my camp one sunny morning. This was a person. Or, if it wasn’t, it looked just like one.
The thing about killing is you don’t know if you can actually do it until you actually do it.
He said it a third time, not as loud as the second. It came out like a plea.
“Drop your weapon.”
The hand holding his gun twitched. The muzzle dipped toward the floor. Not much, but my eyes had adjusted to the light by this point, and I saw a speck of blood run down the barrel.
And then he dropped the gun.
It fell between his legs with a sharp cling. He brought up his empty hand and held it, palm outward, over his shoulder.
“Okay,” he said with a bloody half smile. “Your turn.”
I shook my head. “Other hand,” I said. I hoped my voice sounded stronger than I felt. My knees had begun to shake and my arms ached and my head was spinning. I was also fighting the urge to hurl. You don’t know if you can do it until you do it.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Other hand.”
“If I move this hand, I’m afraid my stomach will fall out.”
I adjusted the butt of the rifle against my shoulder. I was sweating, shaking, trying to think. Either/or, Cassie. What are you going to do, either/or?
“I’m dying,” he said matter-of-factly. From this distance, his eyes were just pinpricks of reflected light. “So you can either finish me off or help me. I know you’re human—”
“How do you know?” I asked quickly, before he could die on me. If he was a real soldier, he might know how to tell the difference. It would be an extremely useful bit of information.
“Because if you weren’t, you would have shot me already.” He smiled again, his cheeks dimpled, and that’s when it hit me how young he was. Only a couple years older than me.
“See?” he said softly. “That’s how you know, too.”
“How I know what?” My eyes were tearing up. His crumpled-up body wiggled in my vision like an image in a fun-house mirror. But I didn’t dare release my grip on the rifle to rub my eyes.
“That I’m human. If I wasn’t, I would have shot you.”
That made sense. Or did it make sense because I wanted it to make sense? Maybe he dropped the gun to get me to drop mine, and once I did, the second gun he was hiding under his fatigues would come out and the bullet would say hello to my brain.
This is what the Others have done to us. You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope.
How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
“I have to see your other hand,” I said.
“I told you—”
“I have to see your other hand!” My voice cracked then. Couldn’t help it.
He lost it. “Then you’re just going to have to shoot me, bitch! Just shoot me and get it over with!”
His head fell back against the wall, his mouth came open, and a terrible howl of anguish tumbled out and bounced from wall to wall and floor to ceiling and pounded against my ears. I didn’t know if he was screaming from the pain or the realization that I wasn’t going to save him. He had given in to hope, and that will kill you. It kills you before you die. Long before you die.
“If I show you,” he gasped, rocking back and forth against the bloody concrete, “if I show you, will you help me?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer because I didn’t have an answer. I was playing this one nanosecond at a time.
So he decided for me. He wasn’t going to let them win, that’s what I think now. He wasn’t going to stop hoping. If it killed him, at least he would die with a sliver of his humanity intact.
Grimacing, he slowly pulled out his left hand. Not much day left now, hardly any light at all, and what light there was seemed to be flowing away from its source, from him, past me and out the half-open door.
His hand was caked in half-dried blood. It looked like he was wearing a crimson glove.
The stunted light kissed his bloody hand and flicked along the length of something long and thin and metallic, and my finger yanked back on the trigger, and the rifle kicked against my shoulder hard, and the barrel bucked in my hand as I emptied the clip, and from a great distance I heard someone screaming, but it wasn’t him screaming, it was me screaming, me and everybody else who was left, if there was anybody left, all of us helpless, hopeless, stupid humans screaming, because we got it wrong, we got it all wrong, there was no alien swarm descending from the sky in their flying saucers or big metal walkers like something out of Star Wars or cute little wrinkly E.T.s who just wanted to pluck a couple of leaves, eat some Reese’s Pieces, and go home. That’s not how it ends.
That’s not how it ends at all.
It ends with us killing each other behind rows of empty beer coolers in the dying light of a late-summer day.
I went up to him before the last of the light was gone. Not to see if he was dead. I knew he was dead. I wanted to see what he was still holding in his bloody hand.
It was a crucifix.
5
THAT WAS THE LAST PERSON I’ve seen.
The leaves are falling heavy now, and the nights have turned cold. I can’t stay in these woods. No leaves for cover from the drones, can’t risk a campfire—I gotta get out of here.
I know where I have to go. I’ve known for a long time. I made a promise. The kind of promise you don’t break because, if you break it, you’ve broken part of yourself, maybe the most important part.
But you tell yourself things. Things like, I need to come up with something first. I can’t just walk into the lion’s den without a plan. Or, It’s hopeless, there’s no point anymore. You’ve waited too long.
Whatever the reason I didn’t leave before, I should have left the night I killed him. I don’t know how he was wounded; I didn’t examine his body or anything, and I should have, no matter how freaked out I was. I guess he could have gotten hurt in an accident, but the odds were better that someone—or something—had shot him. And if someone or something had shot him, that someone or something was still out there…unless the Crucifix Soldier had offed her/him/them/it. Or he was one of them and the crucifix was a trick…
Another way the Others mess with your head: the uncertain circumstances of your certain destruction. Maybe that will be the 5th Wave, attacking us from the inside, turning our own minds into weapons.
Maybe the last human being on Earth won’t die of starvation or exposure or as a meal for wild animals.
Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.
Okay, that’s not someplace you want to go, Cassie.
Honestly, even though it’s suicide to stay here and I have a promise to keep, I don’t want to leave. These woods have been home for a long time. I know every path, every tree, every vine and bush. I lived in the same house for sixteen years and I can’t tell you exactly what my backyard looked like, but I can describe in detail every leaf and twig in this stretch of forest. I have no clue what’s out there beyond these woods and the two-mile stretch of interstate I hike every week to forage for supplies. I’m guessing a lot more of the same: abandoned towns reeking of sewage and rotting corpses, burned-out shells of houses, feral dogs and cats, pileups that stretch for miles on the highway. And bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.
I pack up. This tent has been my home for a long time, but it’s too bulky and I need to travel light. Just the essentials, with the Luger, the M16, the ammo, and my trusty bowie knife topping the list. Sleeping bag, first aid kit, five bottles of water, three boxes of Slim Jims, and some tins of sardines. I hated sardines before the Arrival. Now I’ve developed a real taste for them. First thing I look for when I hit a grocery store? Sardines.
Books? They’re heavy and take up room in my already bulging back
pack. But I have a thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother’s Radio Flyer carting home the books.
The mind-blowing numbers didn’t faze him. The fact that we’d gone from seven billion strong to a couple hundred thousand in four months didn’t shake his confidence that our race would survive.
“We have to think about the future,” he insisted. “When this is over, we’ll have to rebuild nearly every aspect of civilization.”
Solar flashlight.
Toothbrush and paste. I’m determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with clean teeth.
Gloves. Two pairs of socks, underwear, travel-size box of Tide, deodorant, and shampoo. (Gonna go out clean. See above.)
Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more.
My plastic baggie stuffed with pictures. Dad. Mom. My little brother, Sammy. My grandparents. Lizbeth, my best friend. One of Ben You-Were-Some-Kind-of-Serious-Gorgeous Parish, clipped from my yearbook, because Ben was my future boyfriend and/or/maybe future husband—not that he knew it. He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of separation removed. The only thing wrong with Ben was his height: He was six inches taller than me. Well, make that two things now: his height and the fact that he’s dead.
My cell phone. It was fried in the 1st Wave, and there’s no way to charge it. Cell towers don’t work, and there’s no one to call if they did. But, you know, it’s my cell phone.
Nail clippers.
Matches. I don’t light fires, but at some point I may need to burn something or blow it up.
Two spiral-bound notebooks, college ruled, one with a purple cover, the other red. My favorite colors, plus they’re my journals. It’s part of the hope thing. But if I am the last and there’s no one left to read them, maybe an alien will and they’ll know exactly what I think of them. In case you’re an alien and you’re reading this:
BITE ME.
My Starburst, already culled of the orange. Three packs of Wrigley’s Spearmint. My last two Tootsie Pops.
Mom’s wedding ring.
Sammy’s ratty old teddy bear. Not that it’s mine now. Not that I ever cuddle with it or anything.
That’s everything I can stuff into the backpack. Weird. Seems like too much and not enough.
Still room for a couple of paperbacks, barely. Huckleberry Finn or The Grapes of Wrath? The poems of Sylvia Plath or Sammy’s Shel Silverstein? Probably not a good idea to take the Plath. Depressing. Silverstein is for kids, but it still makes me smile. I decide to take Huckleberry (seems appropriate) and Where the Sidewalk Ends. See you there soon, Shel. Climb aboard, Jim.
I heave the backpack over one shoulder, sling the rifle over the other, and head down the trail toward the highway. I don’t look back.
I pause inside the last line of trees. A twenty-foot embankment runs down to the southbound lanes, littered with disabled cars, piles of clothing, shredded plastic garbage bags, the burned-out hulks of tractor trailers carrying everything from gasoline to milk. There are wrecks everywhere, some no worse than fender benders, some pileups that snake along the interstate for miles, and the morning sunlight sparkles on all the broken glass.
There are no bodies. These cars have been here since the 1st Wave, long abandoned by their owners.
Not many people died in the 1st Wave, the massive electromagnetic pulse that ripped through the atmosphere at precisely eleven A.M. on the tenth day. Only around half a million, Dad guessed. Okay, half a million sounds like a lot of people, but really it’s just a drop in the population bucket. World War II killed over a hundred times that number.
And we did have some time to prepare for it, though we weren’t exactly sure what we were preparing for. Ten days from the first satellite pictures of the mothership passing Mars to the launch of the 1st Wave. Ten days of mayhem. Martial law, sit-ins at the UN, parades, rooftop parties, endless Internet chatter, and 24/7 coverage of the Arrival over every medium. The president addressed the nation—and then disappeared into his bunker. The Security Council went into a locked-down, closed-to-the-press emergency session.
A lot of people just split, like our neighbors, the Majewskis. Packed up their camper on the afternoon of the sixth day with everything they could fit and hit the road, joining a mass exodus to somewhere else, because anywhere else seemed safer for some reason. Thousands of people took off for the mountains…or the desert…or the swamps. You know, somewhere else.
The Majewskis’ somewhere else was Disney World. They weren’t the only ones. Disney set attendance records during those ten days before the EMP strike.
Daddy asked Mr. Majewski, “So why Disney World?”
And Mr. Majewski said, “Well, the kids have never been.”
His kids were both in college.
Catherine, who had come home from her freshman year at Baylor the day before, asked, “Where are you guys going?”
“Nowhere,” I said. And I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was still living in denial, pretending all this crazy alien stuff would work out, I didn’t know how, maybe with the signing of some intergalactic peace treaty. Or maybe they’d dropped by to take a couple of soil samples and go home. Or maybe they were here on vacation, like the Majewskis going to Disney World.
“You need to get out,” she said. “They’ll hit the cities first.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “They’d never dream of taking out the Magic Kingdom.”
“How would you rather die?” she snapped. “Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?”
Good question.
Daddy said the world was dividing into two camps: runners and nesters. Runners headed for the hills—or Thunder Mountain. Nesters boarded up the windows, stocked up on the canned goods and ammunition, and kept the TV tuned to CNN 24/7.
There were no messages from our galactic party crashers during those first ten days. No light shows. No landing on the South Lawn or bug-eyed, butt-headed dudes in silver jumpsuits demanding to be taken to our leader. No bright, spinning tops blaring the universal language of music. And no answer when we sent our message. Something like, “Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don’t kill us.”
Nobody knew what to do. We figured the government sort of did. The government had a plan for everything, so we assumed they had a plan for E.T. showing up uninvited and unannounced, like the weird cousin nobody in the family likes to talk about.
Some people nested. Some people ran. Some got married. Some got divorced. Some made babies. Some killed themselves. We walked around like zombies, blank-faced and robotic, unable to absorb the magnitude of what was happening.
It’s hard to believe now, but my family, like the vast majority of people, went about our daily lives as if the most monumentally mind-blowing thing in human history wasn’t happening right over our heads. Mom and Dad went to work, Sammy went to day care, and I went to school and soccer practice. It was so normal, it was damn weird. By the end of Day One, everybody over the age of two had seen the mothership up close a thousand times, this big grayish-green glowing hulk about the size of Manhattan circling 250 miles above the Earth. NASA announced its plan to pull a space shuttle out of mothballs to attempt contact.
Well, that’s good, we thought. This silence is deafening. Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It’s rude.
On Day Three, I went out with a guy named Mitchell Phelps. Well, technically we went outside. The date was in my backyard because of the curfew. He hit the drive-through at Starbucks on his way over, and we sat on the back patio sipping our drinks and pretending we didn’t see Dad’s shadow passing back and forth as he paced the living room. Mitchell
had moved into town a few days before the Arrival. He sat behind me in World Lit, and I made the mistake of loaning him my highlighter. So the next thing I know he’s asking me out, because if a girl loans you a highlighter she must think you’re hot. I don’t know why I went out with him. He wasn’t that cute and he wasn’t that interesting beyond the whole New Kid aura, and he definitely wasn’t Ben Parish. Nobody was—except Ben Parish—and that was the whole problem.
By the third day, you either talked about the Others all the time or you tried not to talk about them at all. I fell into the second category.
Mitchell was in the first.
“What if they’re us?” he asked.
It didn’t take long after the Arrival for all the conspiracy nuts to start buzzing about classified government projects or the secret plan to manufacture an alien crisis in order to take away our liberties. I thought that’s where he was going and groaned.
“What?” he said. “I don’t mean us us. I mean, what if they’re us from the future?”
“And it’s like The Terminator, right?” I said, rolling my eyes. “They’ve come to stop the uprising of the machines. Or maybe they are the machines. Maybe it’s Skynet.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, acting like I was serious. “It’s the grandfather paradox.”
“What is? And what the hell is the grandfather paradox?” He said it like he assumed I knew what the grandfather paradox was, because, if I didn’t know, then I was a moron. I hate when people do that.
“They—I mean we—can’t go back in time and change anything. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather before you were born, then you wouldn’t be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather.”
“Why would you want to kill your grandfather?” I twisted the straw in my strawberry Frappuccino to produce that unique straw-in-a-lid squeak.
“The point is that just showing up changes history,” he said. Like I was the one who brought up time travel.
