by Rick Yancey
“You know we’re not coming back,” he says, and lights the match.
67
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER and I’ve completed the circle that connects me and Sammy as if by a silver cord, returning to the place where I made my promise.
Camp Ashpit is exactly how I left it, which means there is no Camp Ashpit, just a dirt road cutting through woods interrupted by a mile-wide emptiness where Camp Ashpit used to be, the ground harder than steel and bare of everything, even the tiniest weed or blade of grass or dead leaf. Of course, it’s winter, but somehow I don’t think when springtime comes this Other-made clearing will blossom like a meadow.
I point to a spot on our right. “That’s where the barracks was. I think. It’s hard to tell without any point of reference except the road. Over there the storage shed. Back that way the ash pit, and farther back the ravine.”
Evan is shaking his head with wonder. “There’s nothing left.” He stamps his foot on the rock-hard ground.
“Oh yeah, there is. I’m left.”
He sighs. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m being too intense,” I say.
“Hmmm. Not really like you.” He tries out a smile, but his smile isn’t working that well lately. He’s been very quiet since we left his house burning in the middle of farm country. In the waning daylight, he kneels on the hard ground, pulls out the map, and points at our location with his flashlight.
“The dirt road over there isn’t on the map, but it must connect with this road, maybe around here? We can follow it to 675, and then it’s a straight shot to Wright-Patterson.”
“How far?” I ask, peering over his shoulder.
“About twenty-five or thirty miles. Another day if we push it.”
“We’ll push it.”
I sit down beside him and dig through his pack for something to eat. I find some cured mystery meat wrapped in wax paper and a couple of hard biscuits. I offer one to Evan. He shakes his head no.
“You need to eat,” I scold him. “Stop worrying so much.”
He’s afraid we’ll run out of food. He has his rifle, of course, but there’ll be no hunting during this phase of the rescue operation. We have to pass quietly through the countryside—not that the countryside has been particularly quiet. The first night, we heard gunfire. Sometimes the echo of a single gun going off, sometimes more than one. Always in the distance, though, never close enough to freak us out. Maybe lone hunters like Evan, living off the land. Maybe roving gangs of Twigs. Who knew? Maybe there are other sixteen-year-old girls with M16s stupid enough to think they are humanity’s last representatives on Earth.
He gives in and takes one of the biscuits. Gnaws off a hunk. Chews thoughtfully, looking around the wasteland as the light dies. “What if they’ve stopped running buses?” he asks for the hundredth time. “How do we get in?”
“We come up with something else.” Cassie Sullivan: expert strategic planner.
He gives me a look. “Professional soldiers. Humvees. And Black Hawks. And this—what did you call it?—green-eyed bomb. We better come up with something good.”
He jams the map into his pocket and stands up, adjusting the rifle over his shoulder. He’s on the verge of something. I’m not sure what. Tears? Screams? Laughter?
Me too. All three. And maybe not for the same reasons. I’ve decided to trust him, but like somebody once said, you can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it. My problem is that buried box is like a scab I can’t stop picking at.
“We better go,” he says tightly, glancing up at the sky. The clouds that moved in the day before still linger, hiding the stars. “We’re exposed here.”
Suddenly, Evan snaps his head to the left and goes all statuelike.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He holds up his hand. Gives a sharp shake of his head. Peers into the near perfect darkness. I don’t see anything. Don’t hear anything. But I’m not a hunter like Evan.
“A damned flashlight,” he murmurs. He presses his lips to my ear. “What’s closer, the woods on the other side of the road or the ravine?”
I shake my head. I really don’t know. “The ravine, I guess.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He grabs my hand, and we take off in a quick trot toward where I hoped the ravine was. I don’t know how far we ran till we came to it. Probably not as far as it seemed, because it seemed like we ran forever. Evan lowers me down the rocky face to the bottom, then jumps in beside me.
“Evan?”
He presses his finger to his lips. Scoots up the side to peek over the edge. He motions to his pack, and I fish around until I find his binoculars. I tug on his pant leg—What’s going on?—but he shakes off my hand. He taps his fingers against his thigh, thumb tucked. Four of them? Is that what he meant? Or is he using some kind of hunter’s code, like, Get down on all fours!
He doesn’t move for a long time. Finally he shimmies back down and puts his lips to my ear again.
“They’re coming this way.” He squints in the gloom toward the opposite wall of the ravine, which is much steeper than the one we came down, but there are woods on the other side, or what’s left of them: shattered stumps of trees, tangles of broken branches and vines. Good cover. Or at least better cover than being totally exposed in a gully where the bad guys can pick you off like fish in a barrel. He bites his lip, weighing the odds. Do we have time to scale the other side before being spotted?
“Stay down.”
He swings his rifle off his shoulder and braces his boots against the unsteady surface, resting his elbows on the ground above. I’m standing directly beneath him, cradling the M16. Yeah, he told me to stay down, I know. But I’m not about to huddle in a heap waiting for the end. I’ve been there before, and I’m never going back.
Evan fires; the twilight stillness shatters. The kickback of the rifle knocks him off balance, his foot slips, and he falls straight down. Luckily, there’s a moron directly beneath him to break his fall. Lucky for him. Not so lucky for the moron.
He rolls off me, yanks me to my feet, and shoves me toward the opposite side. But it’s kind of difficult to move fast when you can’t breathe.
A flare drops into the ravine, ripping apart the dark with a hellish red glare. Evan slides his hands under my arms and hurls me toward the top. I catch hold of the edge with my fingertips and furiously dig into the wall with my toes, like some crazy bicyclist. Then Evan’s hands on my butt for the final heave-ho, and I’m on the other side.
I swing around to help him up, but he shouts for me to run—no reason to be quiet now—as a small, pineapple-shaped object plops into the ravine behind him.
I scream, “Grenade!” which gives Evan an entire second to take cover.
That’s not quite enough time.
The blast drops him, and at that moment a figure wearing fatigues appears on the opposite side of the ravine. I open up with my M16, screaming incoherently at the top of my lungs. The figure scrambles backward, but I keep firing at the spot where he stood. I don’t think he was expecting Cassie Sullivan’s answer to his invitation to party down post–alien apocalypse style.
I empty my clip, slap home a fresh one. Count to ten. Make myself look down, sure of what I’m going to see when I do. Evan’s body at the bottom of the ravine, ripped to shreds, all because I was the one thing he found worth dying for. Me, the girl who let him kiss her but never kissed him first. The girl who never thanked him for saving her life but paid him back with sarcasm and accusations. I know what I’m going to see when I look down, but that’s not what I see.
Evan is gone.
The little voice inside my head whose job it is to keep me alive shouts, Run!
So I run.
Leaping over fallen trees and winter dry scrub, and now the familiar pop-pop-pop of rapid-arms fire.
Grenades. Flares. Assault weapons. These aren’t Twigs after us. These are pros.
&nb
sp; Outside the fiendish glow of the flare, I hit a wall of dark, then run smack into a tree. The impact knocks me off my feet. I don’t know how far I ran, but it must be a good distance, because I can’t see the ravine, can’t hear anything but my own heartbeat roaring in my ears.
I scuttle forward to a fallen pine tree and huddle behind it, waiting for the breath I left back at the ravine to catch up with me. Waiting for another flare to drop into the woods in front of me. Waiting for the Silencers to come crashing through the underbrush.
A rifle pops in the distance, followed by a high-pitched scream. Then an answering barrage of automatic weapons and another grenade explosion, and then silence.
Well, it isn’t me they’re shooting at, so it must be Evan, I think. Which makes me feel better and a whole lot worse, because he’s out there alone against pros, and where am I? Hiding behind a tree like a girl.
But what about Sams? I can run back into a fight I’ll probably lose, or stay down to stay alive long enough to keep my promise.
It’s an either/or world.
Another crack! of a rifle. Another girly scream.
More silence.
He’s picking them off one by one. A farm boy with no combat experience against a squad of professional soldiers. Outnumbered. Outgunned. Cutting them down with the same brutal efficiency as the Silencer on the interstate, the hunter in the woods who chased me under a car and then mysteriously disappeared.
Crack!
Scream.
Silence.
I don’t move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it’s become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.
You know, when I first saw you in the woods, I thought he was your bear.
The snap and crunch of dead leaves and twigs underfoot. A darker shadow against the dark of the woods. The soft call of the Silencer. My Silencer.
“Cassie? Cassie, it’s safe now.”
I heave myself upright and point my rifle directly at Evan Walker’s face.
68
HE PULLS UP QUICKLY, but the look of confusion comes slowly.
“Cassie, it’s me.”
“I know it’s you. I just don’t know who you are.”
His jaw tightens. His voice is strained. Anger? Frustration? I can’t tell. “Lower the gun, Cassie.”
“Who are you, Evan? If that’s evan your name. Even your name.”
He smiles wanly. And then he falls to his knees, sways, topples over, and lies still.
I wait, the gun trained on the back of his head. He doesn’t move. I hop over Howard and poke him with my toe. He still doesn’t move. I kneel beside him, resting the butt of my rifle on my thigh, and press my fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse. He’s alive. His pants are shredded from the thighs down. Wet to the touch. I smell my fingertips. Blood.
I lean my M16 against the fallen tree and roll Evan onto his back. His eyelids flutter. He reaches up and touches my cheek with his bloody palm.
“Cassie,” he whispers. “Cassie for Cassiopeia.”
“Stop it,” I say. I notice his rifle lying next to him and kick it out of his reach. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I think pretty bad.”
“How many were there?”
“Four.”
“They never had a chance, did they?”
Long sigh. His eyes lift up to mine. I don’t need him to speak; I can see the answer in his eyes. “Not much, no.”
“Because you don’t have the heart to kill, but you have the heart to do what you have to do.” I hold my breath. He must know where I’m going with this.
He hesitates. Nods. I can see the pain in his eyes. I look away so he can’t see the pain in mine. But you started down this road, Cassie. No turning back now.
“And you’re very good at what you have the heart to do, aren’t you?”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Yours, too: What do you have the heart to do, Cassie?
He saved my life. How could he also be the one who tried to take it? It doesn’t make sense.
Do I have the heart to let him bleed to death because now I know he lied to me—that he isn’t gentle Evan Walker the reluctant hunter, the grieving son and brother and lover, but something that might not even be human? Do I have what it takes to follow the first rule down to its final, brutal, unforgiving conclusion and put a bullet through his finely sculpted forehead?
Oh, crap, who are you kidding?
I start to unbutton his shirt. “Got to get these clothes off,” I mutter.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.” Smile. Lopsided. Sexy.
“You’re not charming your way out of this one, buddy. Can you sit up a little? A little more. Here, take these.” A couple of pain pills from the first aid kit. He swallows them with two long gulps of water from a bottle I hand him.
I pull off his shirt. He’s looking up into my face; I avoid his gaze. While I tug off his boots, he unbuckles his belt and pulls down the zipper. He lifts his butt, but I can’t get his pants off—they’re plastered to his body with tacky blood.
“Rip them,” he says. He rolls over onto his stomach. I try, but the material keeps slipping through my fingers when I pull.
“Here, use this.” He holds up a bloody knife. I don’t ask him where the blood came from.
I cut from hole to hole slowly; I’m terrified of cutting him. Then I strip the pants away from each leg, like peeling a banana. That’s it, the perfect metaphor: peeling a banana. I have to know what the truth is, and you can’t get to the tasty fruit without stripping off the outer layer.
Speaking of fruit, I’m down—I mean, he’s down—to his underwear.
Confronted with them, I ask, “Do I need to look at your butt?”
“I’ve been wondering about your opinion.”
“Enough with the lame attempts at humor.” I slice the material at both hips and peel back the underwear, exposing him. His butt is bad. I mean bad as in peppered with shrapnel wounds. Otherwise, it’s pretty good.
I dab at the blood with some gauze from the kit, fighting back hysterical giggles. I blame it on the unbearable stress, not on the fact that I’m wiping Evan Walker’s ass.
“God, you’re a mess.”
He’s gasping for air. “Just try to stop the bleeding for now.”
I pack the wounds on this side of him the best I can. “Can you roll back over?” I ask.
“I’d rather not.”
“I need to see the front.” Oh my God. The front?
“The front’s okay. Really.”
I sit back, exhausted. Guess that’s one thing I’ll take his word for. “Tell me what happened.”
“After I got you out of the ravine, I ran. Found a shallow spot to climb out. Circled around them. The rest you probably heard.”
“I heard three shots. You said there were four guys.”
“Knife.”
“This knife?”
“That knife. This is his blood on my hands, not mine.”
“Oh, thanks.” I scrub my cheek where he touched me. I decide to just come out with the worst explanation for what’s going on. “You’re a Silencer, aren’t you?”
Silence. How ironic.
“Or are you human?” I whisper. Say human, Evan. And when you say it, say it perfectly so there’s no doubt. Please, Evan, I really need you to take the doubt away. I know you said you can’t make yourself trust—so, damn it, make somebody else trust. Make me trust. Say it. Say you’re human.
“Cassie…”
“Are you human?”
“Of course I’m human.”
I take a deep breath. He said it, but not perfectly. I can’t see his face; it’s tucked beneath his elbow. Maybe if I could see his face that would make it perfect and I could let this awful thought go. I pick up some sterile wipes and begin to clean his blood—or whoever’s—from my hands.
“If you’re human, why have you been lying to me?”
&nbs
p; “I haven’t lied to you about everything.”
“Just the parts that matter.”
“Those are the parts I haven’t lied about.”
“Did you kill those three people on the interstate?”
“Yes.”
I flinch. I didn’t expect him to say yes. I expected an Are you kidding? Stop being so paranoid. Instead I get a soft, simple answer, as if I asked him if he ever skinny-dipped.
Next question is the hardest yet: “Did you shoot me in the leg?”
“Yes.”
I shudder and drop the bloody wipe between my legs. “Why did you shoot me in the leg, Evan?”
“Because I couldn’t shoot you in the head.”
Well. There you have it.
I pull out the Luger and hold it in my lap. His head is about a foot from my knee. The one thing that puzzles me is the person with the gun is shaking like a leaf and the one at her mercy is perfectly calm.
“I’m going now,” I tell him. “I’m going to leave you to bleed to death the way you left me under that car.”
I wait for him to say something.
“You’re not leaving,” he points out.
“I’m waiting to hear what you have to say.”
“This is complicated.”
“No, Evan. Lies are complicated. The truth is simple. Why were you shooting people on the highway?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” I ask.
“Afraid they weren’t people.”
I sigh and fish out a bottle of water from my backpack, lean back against the fallen tree, and take a deep drink.
“You shot those people on the highway—and me, and God knows who else; I know you weren’t going out every night hunting animals—because you already knew about the 4th Wave. I’m your Crucifix Soldier.”
He nods into the crook of his elbow. Muffled voice: “If you want to put it that way.”
“If you wanted me dead, why did you pull me out of the snow instead of letting me freeze to death?”
“I didn’t want you dead.”
