Rick Yancey - The 5th Wave

That’s not how it ends at all.

It ends with us killing each other behind rows of empty beer coolers in the dying light of a late-summer day.

I went up to him before the last of the light was gone. Not to see if he was dead. I knew he was dead. I wanted to see what he was still holding in his bloody hand.

It was a crucifix.

THAT WAS THE LAST PERSON I’ve seen.

The leaves are falling heavy now, and the nights have turned cold. I can’t stay in these woods. No leaves for cover from the drones, can’t risk a campfire—I gotta get out of here.

I know where I have to go. I’ve known for a long time. I made a promise. The kind of promise you don’t break because, if you break it, you’ve broken part of yourself, maybe the most important part.

But you tell yourself things. Things like, I need to come up with something first. I can’t just walk into the lion’s den without a plan. Or, It’s hopeless, there’s no point anymore. You’ve waited too long.

Whatever the reason I didn’t leave before, I should have left the night I killed him. I don’t know how he was wounded; I didn’t examine his body or anything, and I should have, no matter how freaked out I was. I guess he could have gotten hurt in an accident, but the odds were better that someone—or something—had shot him. And if someone or something had shot him, that someone or something was still out there…unless the Crucifix Soldier had offed her/him/them/it. Or he was one of them and the crucifix was a trick…

Another way the Others mess with your head: the uncertain circumstances of your certain destruction. Maybe that will be the 5th Wave, attacking us from the inside, turning our own minds into weapons.

Maybe the last human being on Earth won’t die of starvation or exposure or as a meal for wild animals.

Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.

Okay, that’s not someplace you want to go, Cassie.

Honestly, even though it’s suicide to stay here and I have a promise to keep, I don’t want to leave. These woods have been home for a long time. I know every path, every tree, every vine and bush. I lived in the same house for sixteen years and I can’t tell you exactly what my backyard looked like, but I can describe in detail every leaf and twig in this stretch of forest. I have no clue what’s out there beyond these woods and the two-mile stretch of interstate I hike every week to forage for supplies. I’m guessing a lot more of the same: abandoned towns reeking of sewage and rotting corpses, burned-out shells of houses, feral dogs and cats, pileups that stretch for miles on the highway. And bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.

I pack up. This tent has been my home for a long time, but it’s too bulky and I need to travel light. Just the essentials, with the Luger, the M16, the ammo, and my trusty bowie knife topping the list. Sleeping bag, first aid kit, five bottles of water, three boxes of Slim Jims, and some tins of sardines. I hated sardines before the Arrival. Now I’ve developed a real taste for them. First thing I look for when I hit a grocery store? Sardines.

Books? They’re heavy and take up room in my already bulging backpack. But I have a thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother’s Radio Flyer carting home the books.

The mind-blowing numbers didn’t faze him. The fact that we’d gone from seven billion strong to a couple hundred thousand in four months didn’t shake his confidence that our race would survive.

“We have to think about the future,” he insisted. “When this is over, we’ll have to rebuild nearly every aspect of civilization.”

Solar flashlight.

Toothbrush and paste. I’m determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with clean teeth.

Gloves. Two pairs of socks, underwear, travel-size box of Tide, deodorant, and shampoo. (Gonna go out clean. See above.)

Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more.

My plastic baggie stuffed with pictures. Dad. Mom. My little brother, Sammy. My grandparents. Lizbeth, my best friend. One of Ben You-Were-Some-Kind-of-Serious-Gorgeous Parish, clipped from my yearbook, because Ben was my future boyfriend and/or/maybe future husband—not that he knew it. He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of separation removed. The only thing wrong with Ben was his height: He was six inches taller than me. Well, make that two things now: his height and the fact that he’s dead.

My cell phone. It was fried in the 1st Wave, and there’s no way to charge it. Cell towers don’t work, and there’s no one to call if they did. But, you know, it’s my cell phone.

Nail clippers.

Matches. I don’t light fires, but at some point I may need to burn something or blow it up.

Two spiral-bound notebooks, college ruled, one with a purple cover, the other red. My favorite colors, plus they’re my journals. It’s part of the hope thing. But if I am the last and there’s no one left to read them, maybe an alien will and they’ll know exactly what I think of them. In case you’re an alien and you’re reading this:

BITE ME.

My Starburst, already culled of the orange. Three packs of Wrigley’s Spearmint. My last two Tootsie Pops.

Mom’s wedding ring.

Sammy’s ratty old teddy bear. Not that it’s mine now. Not that I ever cuddle with it or anything.

That’s everything I can stuff into the backpack. Weird. Seems like too much and not enough.

Still room for a couple of paperbacks, barely. Huckleberry Finn or The Grapes of Wrath ? The poems of Sylvia Plath or Sammy’s Shel Silverstein? Probably not a good idea to take the Plath. Depressing. Silverstein is for kids, but it still makes me smile. I decide to take Huckleberry (seems appropriate) and Where the Sidewalk Ends . See you there soon, Shel. Climb aboard, Jim.

I heave the backpack over one shoulder, sling the rifle over the other, and head down the trail toward the highway. I don’t look back.

I pause inside the last line of trees. A twenty-foot embankment runs down to the southbound lanes, littered with disabled cars, piles of clothing, shredded plastic garbage bags, the burned-out hulks of tractor trailers carrying everything from gasoline to milk. There are wrecks everywhere, some no worse than fender benders, some pileups that snake along the interstate for miles, and the morning sunlight sparkles on all the broken glass.

There are no bodies. These cars have been here since the 1st Wave, long abandoned by their owners.

Not many people died in the 1st Wave, the massive electromagnetic pulse that ripped through the atmosphere at precisely eleven A.M. on the tenth day. Only around half a million, Dad guessed. Okay, half a million sounds like a lot of people, but really it’s just a drop in the population bucket. World War II killed over a hundred times that number.

And we did have some time to prepare for it, though we weren’t exactly sure what we were preparing for. Ten days from the first satellite pictures of the mothership passing Mars to the launch of the 1st Wave. Ten days of mayhem. Martial law, sit-ins at the UN, parades, rooftop parties, endless Internet chatter, and 24/7 coverage of the Arrival over every medium. The president addressed the nation—and then disappeared into his bunker. The Security Council went into a locked-down, closed-to-the-press emergency session.