The 5th Wave

“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.

“Wait for the plane,” Evan whispers. “Don’t forget.”

He kisses me hard on the mouth, and then the stairwell goes all Evanless. I can feel Ben’s breath on my neck, hot in the cool air.

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” Ben says. “Who is that guy? He’s a…What is he? Where’d he come from? And where’s he going now?”

“I’m not sure, but I think he’s found the armory.”

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

Oh God, Evan. No wonder you didn’t tell me.

“He’s going to blow this whole place to hell.”

87

IT’S NOT A RACE up the stairs to freedom. We practically crawl up, hanging on to one another as we climb, me in the lead, Ben at the rear, and Sammy between us. The closed space is choked with fine particles of dust, and soon we’re all coughing and wheezing loud enough, it seems to me, to be heard by every Silencer in a two-mile radius. I move with one hand extended in front of me in the blackness and call out our progress softly.

“First landing!”

A hundred years later we reach the second landing. Almost halfway to the top, but we haven’t hit the debris Evan warned us about.

I have to choose.

Now that he’s gone and it’s too late, I’ve come up with about a dozen good arguments for why he shouldn’t leave us. My best argument is this:

You won’t have time.

The Eye takes—what?—about a minute or two from activation to detonation. Barely enough time to get to the armory doors. Okay, so you’re going to go all noble and sacrifice yourself to save us, but then don’t say things like I’ll find you, which implies there’ll be an I to find me after you unleash the green fireball from hell.

Unless…Maybe the Eyes can be detonated remotely. Maybe that little silver thing he’s carrying around…

No. If that was a possibility, he would have come with us and set them off once we were a safe distance away.

Damn it. Every time I think I’m starting to understand Evan Walker, he slips away. It’s like I’m blind from birth, trying to visualize a rainbow. If what I think is about to happen actually happens, will I feel his passing like he felt Lauren’s, like a punch in the heart?

We’re halfway to the third landing when my hand smacks into stone. I turn to Ben and whisper, “I’m going to see if I can climb it—there might be room to squeeze through at the top.”

I hand my rifle to him and get a good grip with both hands. I’ve never done much rock climbing—okay, my experience is zero—but how hard could it be, really?

I’m maybe three feet up when a rock slips beneath my foot and I come back down, smacking my chin hard on the way.

“I’ll try,” Ben says.

“Don’t be stupid. You’re hurt.”

“I’d have to try if you made it, Cassie,” he points out.

He’s right, of course. I hold on to Sammy while Ben scales the mass of broken concrete and shattered reinforcement rods. I can hear him grunting every time he reaches up for the next handhold. Something wet drops onto my nose. Blood.

“Are you okay?” I call up to him.

“Um. Define okay.”

“Okay means you’re not bleeding to death.”

“I’m okay.”

He’s weak, Vosch said. I remember the way Ben used to stroll down the hallways at school, his broad shoulders rolling, zapping people with his death-ray smile, the master of his universe. I never would have called him weak then. But the Ben Parish I knew then is very different from the Ben Parish who now pulls himself up a jagged wall of broken stone and twisted metal. The new Ben Parish has the eyes of a wounded animal. I don’t know everything that’s happened to him between that day in the gym and now, but I do know the Others have succeeded in winnowing the weak from the strong.

The weak have been swept away.

That’s the flaw in Vosch’s master plan: If you don’t kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.

It’s the strong who remain, the bent but unbroken, like the iron rods that used to give this concrete its strength.

Floods, fires, earthquakes, disease, starvation, betrayal, isolation, murder.

What doesn’t kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us.

You’re beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us.

We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo.

And we will be your masterpiece.