The 5th Wave

73

WE SPEND OUR LAST DAY TOGETHER sleeping under the highway overpass like two homeless people, which literally we both are. One person sleeps, the other keeps watch. When it’s his turn to rest, he gives my guns back without hesitating and falls asleep instantly, as if it doesn’t occur to him I could easily run away or shoot him in the head. I don’t know; maybe it does occur to him. Our problem has always been that we don’t think like they do. It’s why I trusted him in the beginning and why he knew I would trust him. Silencers kill people. Evan didn’t kill me. Ergo, Evan couldn’t be a Silencer. See? That’s logic. Ahem—human logic.

At dusk we finish the rest of our provisions and hike up the embankment to take cover in the trees bordering Highway 35. The buses run only at night, he tells me. And you’ll know when they’re coming. You can hear the sound of their engines for miles because that’s the only sound for miles. First you see the headlights, and then you hear them, and then they’re whizzing past like big yellow race cars because the highway’s been cleared of wrecks and there aren’t speed limits anymore. He doesn’t know: Maybe they’ll stop, maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll just slow down long enough for one of the soldiers on board to put a bullet between my eyes. Maybe they won’t come at all.

“You said they were still gathering people,” I point out. “Why wouldn’t they come?”

He’s watching the road beneath us. “At some point the ‘rescued’ will figure out they’ve been duped, or the survivors on the outside will. When that happens, they’ll shut down the base—or the part of the base that’s dedicated to cleansing.” He clears his throat. Staring down at the road.

“What does that mean, ‘shut down the base’?”

“Shut it down the way they shut down Camp Ashpit.”

I think about what he’s saying. Like him, looking at the empty road.

“Okay,” I say finally. “Then we hope Vosch hasn’t pulled the plug yet.”

I scoop up a handful of dirt and twigs and dead leaves and rub it over my face. Another handful for my hair. He watches me without saying anything.

“This is the point where you bop me over the head,” I say. I smell like the earth, and for some reason I think about my father kneeling in the rose bed and the white sheet. “Or offer to go in my place. Or bop me in the head and then go in my place.”

He jumps to his feet. For a second I’m afraid he is going to bop me over the head, he’s that upset. Instead, he wraps his arms around himself like he’s cold—or he does it to keep himself from bopping me over the head.

“It’s suicide,” he snaps. “We’re both thinking it. One of us might as well say it. Suicide if I go, suicide if you go. Dead or alive, he’s lost.”

I pull the Luger from my waistband. Put it on the ground at his feet. Then the M16.

“Save these for me,” I tell him. “I’m going to need them when I get back. And by the way, somebody should say this: You look ridiculous in those pants.” I scooch over to the backpack without getting up. Pull out Bear. No need to dirty him up; he’s already rough-looking.

“Are you listening to me?” he demands.

“The problem is you don’t listen to yourself,” I shoot back. “There’s only one way in, and that’s the way Sammy took. You can’t go. I have to. So don’t even open your mouth. If you say anything, I’ll slap you.”

I stand up, and a weird thing happens: As I rise, Evan seems to shrink. “I’m going to get my little brother, and there’s only one way I can do it.”

He’s looking up at me, nodding. He has been inside me. There has been no place where he ended and I began. He knows what I’m going to say:

Alone.

74

THERE ARE THE STARS, the pinpricks of light stabbing down.

There is the empty road beneath the light stabbing down and the girl on the road with the smudged face and twigs and dead leaves entangled in her short, curly hair, clutching a battered old teddy bear, on the empty road, beneath the stars stabbing down.

There is the growl of engines and then the twin bars of the headlights cutting across the horizon, and the lights grow larger, brighter, like two stars going supernova, bearing down on the girl, who has secrets in her heart and promises to keep, and she faces the lights that bear down on her, she does not run or hide.

The driver sees me with plenty of time to stop. The brakes squeal, the door hisses open, and a soldier steps onto the asphalt. He has a gun but he doesn’t point it at me. He looks at me, pinned in the headlights, and I look back at him.

He’s wearing a white armband with a red cross on it. His name tag says PARKER. I remember that name. My heart skips a beat. What if he recognizes me? I’m supposed to be dead.

What’s my name? Lizbeth. Am I hurt? No. Am I alone? Yes.

Parker does a slow 360, surveying the landscape. He doesn’t see the hunter in the woods who is watching this play out, his scope trained on Parker’s head. Of course Parker doesn’t see him. The hunter in the woods is a Silencer.

Parker takes my arm and helps me onto the bus. It smells like blood and sweat. Half the seats are empty. There are kids. Adults, too. They don’t matter, though. Only Parker and the driver and the soldier with the name tag HUDSON matter. I flop into the last seat by the emergency door, the same seat Sam sat in when he pressed his little hand to the glass and watched me shrink until the dust swallowed me.

Parker hands me a bag of smushed gummies and a bottle of water. I don’t want either, but I consume both. The gummies have been in his pocket and are warm and gooey, and I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.

The bus picks up speed. Someone near the front is crying. Besides that, there’s the hum of the wheels and the high rev of the engine and the cold wind rushing through the cracked windows.

Parker comes back with a silver disk that he presses against my forehead. To take my temperature, he tells me. The disk glows red. I’m good, he says. What’s my bear’s name?

Sammy, I tell him.

Lights on the horizon. That’s Camp Haven, Parker tells me. It’s perfectly safe. No more running. No more hiding. I nod. Perfectly safe.

The light grows, seeps slowly through the windshield, then rushes in as we get closer, flooding the bus now, and we’re pulling up to the gate and a loud bell goes off and the gate rolls open. The silhouette of a soldier high in the watchtower.

We stop in front of a hangar. A fat man bounds onto the bus, light on the balls of his feet like a lot of fat guys. His name is Major Bob. We shouldn’t be afraid, he tells us. We are perfectly safe. There are only two rules to remember. Rule one is remember our colors. Rule two is listen and follow.

I fall into line with my group and follow Parker to the side door of the hangar. He pats Lizbeth on the shoulder and wishes her good luck.

I find a red circle and sit down. There are soldiers everywhere. But most of these soldiers are kids, some not much older than Sam. They all look very serious, especially the younger ones. The really young ones are the most serious of all.

You can manipulate a kid into believing almost anything, into doing almost anything, Evan explained in our mission briefing. With the right training, there are few things more savage than a ten-year-old.

I have a number: T-sixty-two. T for Terminator. Ha.

The numbers are called out over a loudspeaker.

“SIXTY-TWO! TEE-SIXTY-TWO! PROCEED TO THE RED DOOR, PLEASE! NUMBER TEE-SIXTY-TWO!”

The first station is the shower room.

On the other side of the red door is a thin woman wearing green scrubs. Everything comes off and into the