The 5th Wave t5w-1

by Rick Yancey

  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.”

  “Won’t downloading me tell you that?” I ask. While I’m thinking, Evan is alive! And then I think, No, maybe he isn’t. He could have been killed in the bombing, vaporized like everything else on the surface. It could be that Vosch, like me, doesn’t know whether Evan’s alive or dead.

  “Because someone helped you,” Vosch says, ignoring my question. “And I suspect that someone is not someone like Mr. Parish here. He—or they—would be someone more like…well, me. Someone who would know how to defeat the Wonderland program by hiding your true memories, the same method we have used for centuries to hide ourselves from you.”

  I’m shaking my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about. True memories?

  “Birds are the most common,” Vosch says. He’s absently running his finger over the button marked EXECUTE. “Owls. During the initial phase, when we were inserting ourselves into you, we often used the screen memory of an owl to hide the fact from the expectant mother.”

  “I hate birds,” I whisper.

  Vosch smiles. “The most useful of this planet’s indigenous fauna. Diverse. Considered benign, for the most part. So ubiquitous they’re practically invisible. Did you know they’re descended from the dinosaurs? There’s a very satisfying irony in that. The dinosaurs made way for you, and now, with the help of their descendants, you will make way for us.”

  “No one helped me!” I screech, cutting off the lecture. “I did it all myself!”

  “Really? Then how is it, at the precise moment you were killing Dr. Pam in Hangar One, tw
o of our sentries were shot, another eviscerated, and a fourth hurled a hundred feet down from his post on the south watchtower?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I just came to find my brother.”

  His face darkens. “There really is no hope, you know. All your daydreams and childish fantasies about defeating us—useless.”

  I open my mouth and the words come out. They just come out.

  “Fuck you.”

  And his finger comes down hard on the button, like he hates it, like the button has a face and its face is a human face, the face of the sentient cockroach, and his finger the boot, stomping down.

  86

  I DON’T KNOW what I did first. I think I screamed. I know I also ripped free from the Silencer’s grip and lunged at Vosch with the intention of tearing his eyeballs out. But I don’t remember which came first, the scream or the lunge. Ben throwing his arms around me to hold me back, I know that came after the scream and the lunge. He threw his arms around me and pulled me back because I was focused on Vosch, on my hate. I didn’t even look through the mirror at my brother, but Ben had been looking at the monitor and the word that popped up when Vosch hit the execute button:

  OOPS.

  I whip around to the mirror. Sammy is still alive—crying buckets, but alive. Beside me, Vosch stands up so fast, the chair flies across the room and smacks against the wall.

  “He’s hacked into the mainframe and overwritten the program,” he snarls at the Silencer. “He’ll cut the power next. Hold them here.” He yells at the man standing beside Sammy. “Secure that door! No one leaves until I get back.”

  He slams out of the room. The lock clicks. No way out now. Or there is a way, the way I took the first time I was trapped in this room. I glance up at the grating. Forget it, Cassie. It’s you and Ben against two Silencers, and Ben’s hurt. Don’t even think about it.

  No. It’s me and Ben and Evan against the Silencers. Evan is alive. And if Evan’s alive, we haven’t reached the end—the bottom of the human cup. The boot hasn’t crushed the roach. Not yet.

  And that’s when I see it drop between the slats and tumble onto the floor, the body of a real cockroach, freshly squashed. I watch it fall in slow motion, so slow I can see the tiny bounce when it hits the floor.

  You want to compare yourself to an insect, Cassie?

  My eyes fly back to the grate, where a shadow flickers, like the flurry of a mayfly’s wings.

  And I whisper to Ben Parish, “The one with Sammy—he’s mine.”

  Startled, Ben whispers back to me, “What?”

  I drive my shoulder into our Silencer’s gut, catching him off guard, and he stumbles backward beneath the grate, his arms flailing for balance, and Evan’s bullet tears into his fully human brain, killing him instantly. I have his gun before he hits the floor, and I have one chance, one shot through the hole I had made earlier. If I miss, Sammy is dead—his Silencer is turning on him even as I turn on him.

  But I had an excellent instructor. One of the best marksmen in the world—even when there were seven billion people in it.

  It isn’t exactly like shooting a can from a fence post.

  It’s actually a lot easier: His head is closer and a heck of a lot bigger.

  Sammy is halfway to me before the guy’s body hits the floor. I pull him through the hole. Ben is looking at us, at the dead Silencer, at the other dead Silencer, at the gun in my hand. He doesn’t know what to look at. I’m looking up at the grate.

  “We’re clear!” I call up to him.

  He knocks once against the side. I don’t get it at first, and then I laugh.

  Let’s establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you’d like to come in.

  “Yes, Evan.” I’m laughing so hard, it’s starting to hurt. “You can come in.” I’m about to pee myself with relief that we’re all alive, but mostly because he is.

  He drops into the room, landing on the balls of his feet like a cat. I’m in his arms in the time it takes to say “I love you,” which he does, stroking my hair, whispering my name and the words, “My mayfly.”

  “How did you find us?” I ask him. He’s so completely with me, so there, it’s like I’m seeing his yummy chocolate eyes for the first time, feeling his strong arms and his soft lips for the first time.

  “Easy. Somebody was up there ahead of me and left a blood trail.”

  “Cassie?”

  It’s Sammy, holding on to Ben, because he’s feeling the Ben thing a little more than he is the Cassie one at the moment. Who’s this guy falling from the ductwork, and what’s he doing with my sister?

  “This must be Sammy,” Evan says.

  “This is Sammy,” I say. “Oh! And this is—”

  “Ben Parish,” Ben says.

  “Ben Parish?” Evan looks at me. That Ben Parish?

  “Ben,” I say, my face on fire. I want to laugh and crawl under the counter at the same time. “This is Evan Walker.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Sammy asks.

  I don’t know what to say. Ben looks totally lost, Evan completely amused, and Sammy just damned curious. It’s my first truly awkward moment in the alien lair, and I’d been through my share of moments.

  “He’s a friend from high school,” I mutter.

  And Evan corrects me, since it’s clear I’ve lost my mind. “Actually, Sam, Ben is Cassie’s friend from high school.”

  “She’s not my friend,” Ben says. “I mean, I guess I kind of remember her…” Then Evan’s words sink in. “How do you know who I am?”

  “He doesn’t!” I fairly shout.

  “Cassie told me about you,” Evan says. I elbow him in the ribs, and he gives me a look like What?

  “Maybe we can chat about how everybody knows one another later,” I plead with Evan. “Right now don’t you think it would be a good idea for us to leave?”

  “Right.” Evan nods. “Let’s go.” He looks at Ben. “You’re injured.”

  Ben shrugs. “A couple of torn stitches. I’m okay.”

  I slip the Silencer’s gun into my empty holster, realize Ben will need a weapon, and pop through the hole in the mirror to fetch it. They’re all still just standing around when I get back, Ben and Evan smiling at each other—knowingly, in my opinion.

  “What are we standing around for?” I ask, my voice harsher than I’d intended. I scoot the chair beside the Silencer’s body and motion toward the grate. “Evan, you should take point.”

  “We’re not going that way,” Evan says back. He takes a key card from the Silencer’s pouch and swipes it through the door lock. The light flashes green.

  “We’re walking out?” I ask. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Evan answers.

  He checks out the corridor first, then motions for us to follow, and we step out of the execution room. The door locks behind us. The hallway is eerily quiet, feels deserted.

  “He said you were going to cut the power,” I whisper, pulling the gun from my holster.

  Evan holds up a silver object that looks like a flip phone.

  “I am. Right now.”

  He hits a button, and the corridor plunges into darkness. I can’t see anything. My free hand shoots into the dark, searching for Sammy’s. I find Ben’s instead. He grips my hand hard before letting it go. Little fingers tug at my pant leg and I pull them up, hook one through my belt loop.

  “Ben, hold on to me,” Evan says softly. “Cassie, hold on to Ben. It isn’t far.”

  I expect a slow shuffle of this rumba line through the pitch dark, but we take off fast, nearly tripping over one another’s heels. He must be able to see in the dark, another catlike quality. We don’t go very far before we’re clustered around a door. At least I think it’s a door. It’s smooth, not like the textured cinder-block walls. Someone—it has to be Evan—pushes against the smooth surface and there’s a puff of fresh, cold air.

  “Stairs?” I whisper. I’m completely blind and disoriented,
but I think these might be the same stairs I came down when I first got here.

  “Halfway up you’re going to hit some debris,” Evan says. “But you should be able to squeeze through. Be careful; it might be a little unstable. When you get to the top, head due north. Do you know which way is north?”

  Ben says, “I do. Or at least I know how to figure it out.”

  “What do you mean, when we get to the top?” I demand. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  I feel his hand on my cheek. I know what this means and I slap his hand away.

  “You’re coming with us, Evan,” I say.

  “There’s something I have to do.”

  “That’s right.” My hand flails for his in the dark. I find it and pull hard. “You have to come with us.”

  “I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you? I—”

  “Don’t, Evan. You don’t know you’ll be able to find me.”

  “Cassie.” I don’t like the way he says my name. His voice is too soft, too sad, too much like a good-bye voice. “I was wrong when I said I was both and neither. I can’t be; I know that now. I have to choose.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ben says. “Cassie, this guy is one of them?”

  “It’s complicated,” I answer. “We’ll go over it later.” I grab Evan’s hand in both of mine and press it against my chest. “Don’t leave me again.”

  “You left me, remember?” He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square.

  I give in. What am I going to do, put a gun to his head? He’s gotten this far, I tell myself. He’ll get the rest of the way.

  “What’s due north?” I ask, pushing against his fingers.

  “I don’t know. But it’s the shortest path to the farthest spot.”

  “The farthest spot from what?”

  “From here. Wait for the plane. When the plane takes off, run. Ben, do you think you can run?”

  “I think so.”

  “Run fast?”

  “Yes.” He doesn’t sound too confident about it, though.