The 5th Wave (27 page)

Without thinking, Sammy takes her hand. Like when Cassie took his the night she told
him what the Others had done.

That was their first night in the refugee camp. The hugeness of what had happened
over the past few months hadn’t hit him until that night, after the lamps were turned
off and he lay curled next
to Cassie in the dark. Everything had happened so fast, from the day the power died
to the day his father wrapped Mommy in the white sheet to their arrival at the camp.
He always thought they’d go home one day and everything would be like it was before
they came. Mommy wouldn’t come back—he wasn’t a baby; he knew Mommy wasn’t coming
back—but he didn’t understand that there was no going back, that what had happened
was forever.

Until that night. The night Cassie held his hand and told him Mommy was just one of
billions. That almost everybody on Earth was dead. That they would never live in their
house again. That he would never go to school again. That all his friends were dead.

“It isn’t right,” Megan whispers now in the dark of the bus. “It isn’t right.” She
is staring at Sammy’s face. “My whole family’s gone, and your father
and
your sister? It isn’t right!”

Parker has gotten up again. He’s stopping at each seat, speaking softly to each child,
and then he’s touching their foreheads. When he touches them, a light glows in the
gloom. Sometimes the light is green. Sometimes it’s red. After the light fades away,
Parker stamps the child’s hand. Red light, red stamp. Green light, green stamp.

“My little brother was around your age,” Megan says to Sammy. It sounds like an accusation:
How come you’re alive and he isn’t?

“What’s his name?” Sammy asks.

“What’s that matter? Why do you want to know his name?”

He wishes Cassie were here. Cassie would know what to say to make Megan feel better.
She always knew the right thing to say.

“His name was Michael, okay? Michael Joseph, and he was six years old and he never
did anything to anybody. Is that okay? Are you happy now? Michael Joseph was my brother’s
name. You want to know everybody else’s?”

She is looking over Sammy’s shoulder at Parker, who has stopped at their row.

“Well, hello, sleepyhead,” the medic says to Megan.

“She’s sick, Parker,” Sammy tells him. “You need to make her better.”

“We’re going to make everybody better,” Parker says with a smile.

“I’m not sick,” Megan says, then shivers violently beneath Parker’s green jacket.

“Heck no,” Parker says with a nod and a big grin. “But maybe I should check your temperature,
just to make sure. Okay?”

He holds up a quarter-size silver disk. “Anything over a hundred degrees glows green.”
He leans over Sammy and presses the disk against Megan’s forehead. It lights up green.
“Uh-oh,” Parker says. “Lemme check you, Sam.”

The metal is warm against his forehead. Parker’s face is bathed for a second in red
light. Parker rolls the stamp over the back of Megan’s hand. The green ink shines
wetly in the dimness. It’s a smiley face. Then a red smiley face for Sammy.

“Wait for them to call your color, okay?” Parker says to Megan. “Greens are going
straight to the hospital.”

“I’m not sick,” Megan shouts hoarsely. Her voice cracks. She doubles over, coughing,
and Sammy instinctively recoils.

Parker pats him on the shoulder. “It’s just a bad cold, Sam,” he whispers. “She’s
gonna be okay.”

“I’m not going to the hospital,” Megan tells Sammy after Parker returns to the front
of the bus. She furiously rubs the back of her hand against the jacket, smearing the
ink. The smiley face is now just a green blob.

“You have to,” Sammy says. “Don’t you want to get better?”

She shakes her head sharply. He doesn’t get it. “Hospitals aren’t where you go to
get better. Hospitals are where you go to die.”

After his mother got sick, he asked Daddy, “Aren’t you going to take Mommy to the
hospital?” And his father said that it wasn’t safe. Too many sick people, not enough
doctors, and not anything the doctors could do for her, anyway. Cassie told him the
hospital was broken, just like the TV and the lights and the cars and everything else.

“Everything’s broken?” he asked Cassie. “Everything?”

“No, not everything, Sams,” she answered. “Not this.”

She took his hand and put it against his chest, and his pounding heart pushed fiercely
against his open palm.

“Unbroken,” she said.

39

HIS MOTHER WILL only come to him in the in-between space, the gray time between waking
and sleeping. She stays away from his dreams, as if she knows not to go there, because
dreams are not real but feel more than real when you’re dreaming them. She loves him
too much to do that.

Sometimes he can see her face, though most of the time he can’t, just her shape, a
little darker than the gray behind his lids, and he can smell her and touch her hair,
feel it trail through his fingers. If he tries too hard to see her face, she fades
into the dark. And if he tries to hold her too tightly, she slips away like her hair
between his fingers.

The hum of the wheels on the dark road. The stale warm air and the swaying of the
bus beneath the cold stars. How much farther to Camp Heaven? It seems like they’ve
been on the dark road beneath the cold stars forever. He waits for his mother in the
in-between space, his eyes closed, while Megan watches him with those big, round,
owly eyes.

He falls asleep waiting.

He is still asleep when the three school buses pull up to the gates of Camp Haven.
High above in the watchtower, the sentry pushes a button, the electronic lock releases,
and the gate slides open. The buses pull in and the gate slides shut behind them.

He doesn’t wake up until the buses roll to a stop with a final, angry hiss of their
brakes. Two soldiers are moving down the aisle, waking the children who have fallen
asleep. The soldiers are heavily armed, but they smile and their voices are gentle.
It’s okay. Time to get up. You’re perfectly safe now.

Sammy sits up, squinting in the sudden blaze of light flooding through the windows,
and looks outside. They have stopped in front of a large airplane hangar. The big
bay doors are closed, so he can’t see inside. For a moment he isn’t worried about
being in a strange place without Daddy or Cassie or Bear. He knows what the bright
light means: The aliens couldn’t kill the power here. It also means Parker told the
truth: The camp does have a force field. It has to. They don’t care if the Others
know about the camp.

They are perfectly safe.

Megan’s breath is heavy in his ear, and he turns to look at her. Her eyes are huge
in the glare of the floodlights. She grabs his hand.

“Don’t leave me,” she begs.

A big man heaves himself onto the bus. He stands beside the driver, hands on hips.
He has a wide, fleshy face and very small eyes.

“Good morning, boys and girls, and welcome to Camp Haven! My name is Major Bob. I
know you’re tired and hungry and maybe a little scared…Who’s a little scared right
now? Raise your hand.” No hands go up. Twenty-six pairs of eyes stare blankly at him,
and Major Bob grins. His teeth are small, like his eyes. “That’s outstanding. And
you know what? You shouldn’t be scared! Our camp is the safest place in the whole
ding-dong world right now, I kid you not. You’re all perfectly safe.” He turns to
one of the smiling soldiers, who hands him a clipboard. “Now there are only two rules
here at Camp Haven. Rule number one: Remember your colors. Everybody hold up your
colors!” Twenty-five fists fly into the air. The twenty-sixth, Megan’s, remains in
her lap. “Reds, in a couple of minutes you’ll be escorted into Hangar Number One for
processing. Greens, sit tight, you’ve got a little farther to go.”

“I’m not going,” Megan whispers in Sammy’s ear.

“Rule number two!” Major Bob booms. “Rule two is two words: Listen and follow. That’s
easy to remember, right? Rule two, two words. Listen to your group leader. Follow
every instruction your group leader gives you. Don’t question and don’t talk back.
They are—we all are—here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to keep you
guys safe. And we can’t keep you guys safe unless you guys listen and follow all instructions,
right away, no questions.” He hands the clipboard back to the smiling soldier, claps
his pudgy hands, and says, “Any questions?”

“He just said don’t ask questions,” Megan whispers. “And then he asks if we have any
questions.”

“Outstanding!” Major Bob yells. “Let’s get you processed! Reds, your group leader
is Corporal Parker. No running, pushing, or shoving, but keep it moving. No breaking
line and no talking, and remember to show your stamp at the door. Let’s move it, people.
The sooner we get you processed, the sooner you can catch some sleep and have some
breakfast. I’m not saying the food is the best in the world, but there’s plenty of
it!”

He lumbers down the steps. The bus rocks with each footfall. Sammy starts to get up,
and Megan yanks him back down.

“Don’t leave me,” she says again.

“But I’m a red,” Sammy protests. He feels sorry for Megan, but he’s anxious to leave.
It feels like he’s been on the bus forever. And the sooner the buses are empty, the
sooner they can turn around and go back for Cassie and Daddy.

“It’s all right, Megan,” he tries to comfort her. “You heard Parker. They’re going
to make everybody better.”

He falls into line behind the other reds. Parker is standing at the bottom of the
steps, checking stamps. The driver shouts out, “Hey!” and Sammy turns, just as Megan
hits the bottom step. She slams into Parker’s chest and screams when he grabs her
flailing arms.

“Let me go!”

The driver pulls her from Parker’s grip and drags her back up the steps, an arm locked
around her waist.

“Sammy!” Megan screams. “Sammy, don’t leave me! Don’t let them—”

The doors slam closed, cutting off her cries. Sammy glances up at Parker, who gives
him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“She’s going to be fine, Sam,” the medic says quietly. “Come on.”

As he walks to the hangar, he can hear her screaming behind
the yellow metal skin of the bus, over the throaty growl of its engine, the hiss of
its brakes letting go. Screaming as if she’s dying, as if they’re torturing her. And
then he steps through a side door into the hangar and he can’t hear her anymore.

A soldier is standing just inside the door. He hands Sammy a card with the number
forty-nine printed on it.

“Go to the closest red circle,” the soldier tells him. “Sit down. Wait for your number
to be called.”

“I gotta get over to the hospital now,” Parker says. “Stay frosty, champ, and remember
it’s all cool now. There’s nothing that can hurt you here.” He tousles Sammy’s hair,
promises he’ll see him again soon, and gives him a fist bump before leaving.

There are no planes in the huge hangar, much to Sammy’s disappointment. He’d never
seen a fighter jet up close, though he has piloted one a thousand times since the
Arrival. While his mother lay dying down the hall, he was in the cockpit of a Fighting
Falcon, soaring at the edge of the atmosphere at three times the speed of sound, heading
straight toward the alien mothership. Sure, its gray hull bristled with gun turrets
and ray cannons and its force field glowed a fiendish, sickly green, but there was
a weakness in the field, a hole only two inches wider than his fighter, that if he
hit just right…And he’d have to hit it just right, because the whole squadron had
been wiped out, he was down to his last missile, and there was no one left to defend
the Earth from the alien horde but him, Sammy “the Viper” Sullivan.

Three large red circles have been painted on the floor. Sam joins the other children
in the one closest to the door and sits down. He can’t get Megan’s terrified screams
out of his head. Her huge eyes and the way her skin shimmered with sweat and the sick-smell
of her breath. Cassie told him the Pesky Ants was over,
that it had killed all the people it was going to kill because some people couldn’t
catch it, like Cassie and Daddy and him and everyone else at Camp Ashpit. They were
immune, Cassie said.