The 5th Wave (22 page)

THIS PLACE CAN’T BE HEAVEN. It doesn’t have the right vibe.

I’m walking in a dense fog of white lifeless nothingness. Dead space. No sound. Not
even the sound of my own breath. In fact, I can’t even tell if I’m breathing. That’s
number one on the “How do I know if I’m alive?” checklist.

I know someone is here with me. I don’t see him or hear him, touch or smell him, but
I know he’s here. I don’t know how I know he’s a he, but I do know, and he’s watching
me. He’s staying still while I move through the thick white fog, but somehow he’s
always the same distance away. It doesn’t freak me that he’s there, watching. It doesn’t
exactly comfort me, either. He’s another fact, like the fact of the fog. There’s the
fog and un-breathing me and the person with me, always close, always watching.

But there’s no one there when the fog clears, and I find myself in a four-poster bed
beneath three layers of quilts that smell
faintly of cedar. The white nothing fades and is replaced by the warm yellow glow
of a kerosene lamp sitting on the small table beside the bed. Lifting my head a little,
I can see a rocking chair, a freestanding full-length mirror, and the slatted doors
of a bedroom closet. A plastic tube is attached to my arm, and the other end is attached
to a bag of clear fluid hanging from a metal hook.

It takes a few minutes to absorb my new surroundings, the fact that I’m numb from
the waist down, and the ultra-mega-confusing fact that I’m definitely not dead.

I reach down, and my fingers find thick bandages wrapped around my knee. I’d also
like to feel my calf and toes, because there’s no sensation and I’m kind of concerned
I don’t
have
a calf or toes or anything else below the big wad of bandages. But I can’t reach
that far without sitting up, and sitting up isn’t an option. It seems like the only
working parts are my arms. I use those to throw the covers off, exposing the upper
half of my body to the chilly air. I’m wearing a floral-print cotton nightie. And
then I’m like,
What’s with the cotton nightie?
Beneath which, I am naked. Which means, of course, that at some point between the
removal of my clothes and donning of the nightie I was completely naked, which means
I was
completely naked
.

Okay, ultra-mega-confusing fact number two.

I turn my head to the left: dresser, table, lamp. To the right: window, chair, table.
And there’s Bear, reclining on the pillow beside me, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling,
not a care in the world.

Where the hell are we, Bear?

The floorboards rattle as below me someone slams a door. The
kulump, kulump
of heavy boots on bare wood. Then silence. A very heavy silence, if you don’t count
my heart knocking against
my ribs, which you probably should since it sounds as loud as one of Crisco’s sonic
bombs.

Thunk-thunk-thunk.
Growing louder with each
thunk
.

Someone is coming up the stairs.

I try to sit up. Not a smart idea. I get about four inches off the pillow and that’s
it. Where’s my rifle? Where’s my Luger? Someone is just outside the door now, and
I can’t move, and even if I could all I have is this damned stuffed toy. What was
I going to do with that? Snuggle the dude to death?

When you’re out of options, the best option is to do nothing. Play dead. The possum
option.

I watch the door swing open through slits for eyes. I see a red plaid shirt, a wide
brown belt, blue jeans. A pair of large, strong hands and very nicely trimmed fingernails.
I keep my breath nice and even while he stands right beside me, by the metal pole,
checking my drip, I guess. Then he turns and there’s his butt and then he turns again
and his face lowers into view as he sits in the rocker by the mirror. I can see his
face, and I can see my face in the mirror.
Breathe, Cassie, breathe. He has a good face, not the face of someone who wants to
hurt you. If he wanted to hurt you, he wouldn’t have brought you here and stuck an
IV in you to keep you hydrated, and the sheets feel nice and clean, and so what, he
took your clothes and dressed you in this cotton nightie, what did you expect him
to do? Your clothes were filthy, like you, only you’re not anymore, and your skin
smells a little like lilacs, which means holy Christ he
bathed
you.

Trying to keep my breath steady and not doing a very good job at it.

Then the owner of the good face says, “I know you’re awake.”

When I don’t say anything, he goes, “And I know you’re watching me, Cassie.”

“How do you know my name?” I croak. My throat feels like it’s lined with sandpaper.
I open up my eyes. I can see him clearer now. I wasn’t wrong about the face. It’s
good in a clean-cut, Clark Kent kind of way. I’m guessing eighteen or nineteen, broad
through the shoulders, nice arms, and those hands with the perfect cuticles.
Well,
I tell myself,
it could be worse. You could have been rescued by some fifty-year-old perv sporting
a spare tire the size of a monster truck’s who keeps his dead mother in the attic.

“Driver’s license,” he says. He doesn’t get up. He stays in the chair with his elbows
resting on his knees and his head lowered, which strikes me as more shy than menacing.
I watch his dangling hands and imagine them running a warm, wet cloth over every inch
of my body. My completely naked body.

“I’m Evan,” he says next. “Evan Walker.”

“Hi,” I say.

He gives a little laugh like I said something funny.

“Hi,” he says.

“Where the hell am I, Evan Walker?”

“My sister’s bedroom.” His deep-set eyes are a chocolate brown, like his hair, and
a little mournful and questioning, like a puppy’s.

“Is she…?”

He nods. Rubbing his hands together slowly. “Whole family. How about you?”

“Everyone except my baby brother. That’s, um, his bear, not mine.”

He smiles. It’s a good smile, like his face. “It’s a very nice bear.”

“He’s looked better.”

“Like most things.”

I assume he’s talking about the world in general, not my body.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

He looks away. Looks back at me. Chocolate-colored, lost-puppy eyes. “The birds.”

“What birds?”

“Buzzards. When I see them circling, I always check it out. You know. In case—”

“Sure, okay.” I didn’t want him to elaborate. “So you brought me here to your house,
stuck me with an IV—where’d you get the IV, anyway? And then you took off all my…and
then you cleaned me up…”

“I honestly couldn’t believe you were alive, and then I couldn’t believe you’d stay
alive.” He’s rubbing his hands together. Is he cold? Nervous? I’m both. “The IV was
already here. It came in handy during the plague. I shouldn’t say this, I guess, but
every day I came home I honestly expected you to be dead. You were in pretty bad shape.”

He reaches into his shirt pocket, and for some reason I flinch, which he notices,
and then smiles reassuringly. He holds out a chunk of knotty-looking metal the size
of a thimble.

“If this had hit you practically anyplace else, you
would
be dead.” He rolls the slug between his index finger and thumb. “Where’d it come
from?”

I roll my eyes. Can’t help it. But I leave out the
duh
. “A rifle.”

He shakes his head. He thinks I don’t understand the question. Sarcasm doesn’t appear
to work on him. If that’s true, I’m in trouble: It’s my normal mode of communication.

“Whose rifle?”

“I don’t know—the Others. A troop of them pretending to be soldiers wasted my father
and everybody in our refugee camp. I
was the only one who made it out alive. Well, not counting Sammy and the rest of the
kids.”

He’s looking at me like I’m completely whacked. “What happened to the kids?”

“They took them. In school buses.”

“School buses…?” He’s shaking his head. Aliens in school buses? He looks like he’s
about to smile. I must have looked a little too long at his lips, because he rubs
them self-consciously with the back of his hand. “Took them where?”

“I don’t know. They told us Wright-Patterson, but—”

“Wright-Patterson. The air force base? I heard it was abandoned.”

“Well, I’m not sure you can trust anything they tell you. They
are
the enemy.” I swallow. My throat’s parched.

Evan Walker must be one of those people who notices everything, because he says, “You
want something to drink?”

“I’m not thirsty,” I lie. Now, why did I lie about something like that? To show him
how tough I am? Or to keep him in that chair because he’s the first person I’ve talked
to in weeks, if you didn’t count the bear, which you shouldn’t.

“Why did they take the kids?” His eyes are big and round now, like Bear’s. It’s hard
to decide his best feature. Those soft, chocolaty eyes or the lean jaw? Maybe the
thick hair, the way it falls over his forehead when he leans toward me.

“I don’t know the real reason, but I figure it’s a very good one to them and a very
bad one to us.”

“Do you think…?” He can’t finish the question—or won’t, to spare me having to answer
it. He’s looking at Sam’s bear leaning on the pillow beside me.

“What? That my little brother’s dead? No. I think he’s alive. Mostly because it doesn’t
make sense that they’d pull out the kids,
then kill everybody else. They blew up the whole camp with some kind of green bomb—”

“Wait a minute,” he says, holding up one of his large hands. “A green bomb?”

“I’m not making this up.”

“Why green, though?”

“Because green is the color of money, grass, oak leaves, and alien bombs. How the
hell would I know why it was green?”

He’s laughing. A quiet, held-in kind of laugh. When he smiles, the right side of his
mouth goes slightly higher than the left. Then I’m like,
Cassie, why are you staring at his mouth anyway?

Somehow the fact that I was rescued by a very good-looking guy with a lopsided grin
and large, strong hands is the most unnerving thing that has happened to me since
the Others arrived.

Thinking about what happened at the camp is giving me the heebie-jeebies, so I decide
to change the subject. I peer down at the quilt covering me. It looks homemade. The
image of an old woman sewing it flashes through my mind and, for some reason, I suddenly
feel like crying.

“How long have I been here?” I ask weakly.

“It’ll be a week tomorrow.”

“Did you have to cut…?” I don’t know how to put the question.

Thankfully, I don’t have to. “Amputate? No. The bullet just missed your knee, so I
think you’ll be able to walk, but there could be nerve damage.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m getting used to that.”

34

HE LEAVES ME for a little while and returns with some clear broth, not chicken- or
beef-based, but some kind of meat, deer maybe, and while I clutch the edges of the
quilt he helps me sit up so I can sip, holding the warm cup in both hands. He’s staring
at me, not a creeper stare, but the way you look at a sick person, feeling a little
sick yourself and not knowing how to make it better. Or maybe, I think, it
is
a creeper stare and the concerned look is just a clever cover. Are pervs only pervs
if you don’t find them attractive? I called Crisco a sicko for trying to give me a
corpse’s jewelry, and he said I wouldn’t think that if he were Ben Parish–hot.

Remembering Crisco kills my appetite. Evan sees me staring at the cup in my lap and
gently pulls it from my hands and places it on the table.

“I could have done that,” I say, more sharply than I meant to.

“Tell me about these soldiers,” he says. “How do you know they weren’t…human?”

I tell him about them showing up not long after the drones, the way they loaded up
the kids, then gathered everybody into the barracks and mowed them down. But the clincher
was the Eye. Clearly extraterrestrial.

“They’re human,” he decides after I’m done. “They must be working with the visitors.”

“Oh God, please don’t call them that.” I hate that name for them. The talking heads
used it before the 1st Wave—all the YouTubers, everyone in the Twitterverse, even
the president during news briefings.