The 5th Wave

56

THE WORLD IS SCREAMING.

Just the icy wind racing through the open hatch of the Black Hawk, but that’s what it sounds like. At the height of the plague, when people were dying by the hundreds every day, the panicky residents of Tent City would sometimes toss an unconscious person into the fire by mistake, and you didn’t just hear their screams as they were burned alive, you felt them like a punch to your heart.

Some things you can never leave behind. They don’t belong to the past. They belong to you.

The world is screaming. The world is being burned alive.

Through the chopper windows, you can see the fires dotting the dark landscape, amber blotches against the inky backdrop, multiplying as you near the outskirts of the city. These aren’t funeral pyres. Lightning from summer storms started them, and the autumn winds carried the smoldering embers to new feeding grounds, because there was so much to eat, the pantry was stuffed. The world will burn for years. It will burn until I’m my father’s age—if I live that long.

We’re skimming ten feet above treetop level, the rotors muffled by some kind of stealth technology, approaching downtown Dayton from the north. A light snow is falling; it shimmers around the fires below like golden halos, shedding light, illuminating nothing.

I turn from the window and see Ringer across the aisle, staring at me. She holds up two fingers. I nod. Two minutes to the drop. I pull the headband down to position the lens of the eyepiece over my left eye and adjust the strap.

Ringer is pointing at Teacup, who’s in the chair next to me. Her eyepiece keeps slipping. I tighten the strap; she gives me a thumbs-up, and something sour rises in my throat. Seven years old. Dear Jesus. I lean over and shout in her ear, “You stay right next to me, understand?”

Teacup smiles, shakes her head, points at Ringer. I’m staying with her! I laugh. Teacup’s no dummy.

Over the river now, the Black Hawk skimming only a few feet above the water. Ringer is checking her weapon for the thousandth time. Beside her, Flintstone is tapping his foot nervously, staring forward, looking at nothing.

There’s Dumbo inventorying his med kit, and Oompa bending his head in an attempt to keep us from seeing him stuff one last candy bar into his mouth.

Finally, Poundcake with his head down, hands folded in his lap. Reznik named him Poundcake because he said he was soft and sweet. He doesn’t strike me as either, especially on the firing range. Ringer’s a better marksman overall, but I’ve seen Poundcake take out six targets in six seconds.

Yeah, Zombie. Targets. Plywood cutouts of human beings. When it comes down to the real deal, how will his aim be then? Or any of ours?

Unbelievable. We’re the vanguard. Seven kids who just six months ago were, well, just kids; we’re the counterpunch to attacks that left seven billion dead.

There’s Ringer, staring at me again. As the chopper begins to descend, she unbuckles her harness and steps across the aisle. Places her hands on my shoulders and shouts in my face, “Remember the circle! We’re not going to die!”

We dive into the drop zone fast and steep. The chopper doesn’t land; it hovers a few inches above the frozen turf while the squad hops out. From the open hatchway, I look over and see Teacup struggling with her harness. Then she’s loose and jumps out ahead of me. I’m the last to go. In the cockpit, the pilot looks over his shoulder, gives me a thumbs-up. I return the signal.

The Black Hawk rockets into the night sky, turning hard north, its black hull blending quickly into the dark clouds until they swallow it, and it’s gone.

The air in the little park by the river has been blasted clear of snow by the rotors. After the chopper leaves, the snow returns, spinning angrily around us. The sudden quiet that follows the screaming wind is deafening. Straight ahead a huge human shadow looms: the statue of a Korean War veteran. To the statue’s left is the bridge. Across the bridge and ten blocks southwest is the old courthouse where several infesteds have amassed a small arsenal of automatic weapons and grenade launchers, as well as FIM-92 Stinger missiles, according to the Wonderland profile of one infested captured in Operation Li’l Bo Peep. It’s the Stingers that brought us here. Our air capability has been devastated by the attacks; it’s imperative we protect the few resources we have left.

Our mission is twofold: Destroy or capture all enemy ordnance and terminate all infested personnel.

Terminate with extreme prejudice.

Ringer’s on the point; she has the best eyes. We follow her past the stern-faced statue onto the bridge; Flint, Dumbo, Oompa, Poundcake, and Teacup, with me covering our rear. Weaving through the stalled cars that seem to pop through a white curtain, covered in three seasons’ worth of debris. Some have had their windows smashed, decorated with graffiti, looted for any valuables, but what’s valuable anymore? Teacup scurrying along in front of me on baby feet—she’s valuable. There’s my big takeaway from the Arrival. By killing us, they showed us the idiocy of stuff. The guy who owned this BMW? He’s in the same place as the woman who owned that Kia.

We pull up just shy of Patterson Boulevard, at the southern end of the bridge. Hunker down beside the smashed front bumper of an SUV and survey the road ahead. The snow cuts down our visibility to about half a block. This might take a while. I look at my watch. Four hours till pickup back at the park.

A tanker truck has stalled out in the middle of the intersection twenty yards away, blocking our view of the left-hand side of the street. I can’t see it, but I know from the mission briefing there’s a four-story building on that side, a prime sentry point if they wanted to keep an eye on the bridge. I motion for Ringer to keep to the right as we leave the bridge, putting the truck between us and the building.

She pulls up sharply at the truck’s front bumper and drops to the ground. The squad follows her lead, and I belly-scoot forward to join her.

“What do you see?” I whisper.

“Three of them, two o’clock.”

I squint through my eyepiece toward the building on the other side of the street. Through the cottony fuzz of the snow, I see three green blobs of light bobbing along the sidewalk, growing larger as they approach the intersection. My first thought is, Holy crap, these lenses actually work. My second thought: Holy crap, Teds, and they’re coming straight at us.

“Patrol?” I ask Ringer.

She shrugs. “Probably marked the chopper and they’re coming to check it out.” She’s lying on her belly, holding them in her sights, waiting for the order to fire. The green blobs grow larger; they’ve reached the opposite corner. I can barely make out their bodies beneath the green beacons on top of their shoulders. It’s a weird, jarring effect, as if their heads are engulfed in a spinning, iridescent green fire.

Not yet. If they start to cross, give the order.

Beside me, Ringer takes a deep breath, holds it, waits for my order patiently, like she could wait for a thousand years. Snow settles on her shoulders, clings to her dark hair. The tip of her nose is bright red. The moment drags out. What if there’s more than three? If we announce our presence, it could bring a hundred of them down on us from a dozen different hiding places. Engage or wait? I chew on my bottom lip, working through the options.

“I’ve got them,” she says, misreading my hesitation.

Across the street, the green blobs of light are stationary, clustered together as if locked in conversation. I can’t tell if they’re even facing this way, but I’m sure they don’t know we’re here. If they did, they’d rush us, open fire, take cover, do something. We have the element of surprise. And we have Ringer. Even if she misses with the first shot, the follow-ups won’t. It’s an easy call, really.

So what’s stopping me from making it?

Ringer must be wondering the same thing, because she glances over at me and whispers, “Zombie? What’s the call?”

There’s my orders: Terminate all infested personnel. There’s my gut instinct: Don’t rush. Don’t force the issue. Let it play out. And there’s me, squeezed in the middle.

A heartbeat before our ears register the high-powered rifle’s report, the pavement two feet in front of us disintegrates in a spray of dirty snow and pulverized concrete. That resolves my dilemma fast. The words fly out as if snatched from my lungs by the icy wind: “Take them.”

Ringer’s bullet smashes into one of the bobbing green lights, and the light winks out. One light takes off to our right. Ringer swings the barrel toward my face. I duck as she fires again, and the second light winks out. The third seems to shrink as he tears up the street, heading back the way he came.

I jump to my feet. Can’t let him get away to sound the alarm. Ringer grabs my wrist and yanks hard to bring me back down.

“Damn it, Ringer, what are you do—”

“It’s a trap.” She points at the six-inch scar in the concrete. “Didn’t you hear it? It didn’t come from them. It came from over there.” She jerks her head toward the building on the opposite side of the street. “From our left. And judging by the angle, from high up, maybe the roof.”

I shake my head. A fourth infested on the roof? How did he know we were here—and why didn’t he warn the others? We’re hidden behind the truck, which means he must have spotted us on the bridge—spotted us and held his fire until we were blocked from view and there was no way he could hit us. It didn’t make sense.

And Ringer goes, like she’s read my mind, “I guess this is what they meant by ‘the fog of war.’”

I nod. Things are getting way too complicated way too fast.

“How’d he see us cross?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Night vision, has to be.”

“Then we’re screwed.” Pinned down. Beside several thousands of gallons of gasoline. “He’ll take out the truck.”

Ringer shrugs. “Not with a bullet, he won’t. That only works in the movies, Zombie.” She looks at me. Waiting for my call.

Along with the rest of the squad. I glance behind me. Their eyes look back at me, big and bug-eyed in the snowy dark. Teacup is either freezing to death or shaking with complete terror. Flint is scowling, and the only one to speak up and let me know what the rest are thinking: “Trapped. We abort now, right?”

Tempting, but suicidal. If the sniper on the roof doesn’t take us down on the retreat, the reinforcements that must be coming will.

Retreating is not an option. Advancing is not an option. Staying put is not an option. There are no options.

Run = die. Stay = die.

“Speaking of night vision,” Ringer growls, “they might have thought of that before dropping us on a night mission. We’re totally blind out here.”

I stare at her. Totally blind. Bless you, Ringer. I order the squad to close ranks around me and whisper, “Next block, right-hand side, attached to the back side of the office building, there’s a parking garage.” Or at least there should be, according to the map. “Get up to the third floor. Buddy system: Flint with Ringer, Poundcake with Oompa, Dumbo with Teacup.”

“What about you?” Ringer asks. “Where’s your buddy?”

“I don’t need a buddy,” I answer. “I’m a freaking zombie.”

Here comes the smile. Wait for it.

57

I POINT OUT the embankment leading down to the water’s edge. “All the way down to that walking trail,” I say to Ringer. “And don’t wait for me.” She shakes her head, frowning. I lean in, keeping my expression as serious as I can. “I thought I had you with the zombie remark. One of these days, I’m going to get a smile out of you, Private.”

Very much not smiling. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“You have something against smiling?”

“It was the first thing to go.” Then the snow and the dark swallow her. The rest of the squad follows. I can hear Teacup whimpering beneath her breath as Dumbo leads her off, going, “Run hard when it goes, Cup, okay?”

I squat beside the truck’s fuel tank and grab hold of the metal cap, praying one of those counterintuitive prayers that this bad boy is topped off—or better, half-full, since fumes will give us the biggest bang for the buck. I don’t dare ignite the cargo, but the few gallons of diesel contained beneath it should set it off. I hope.

The cap is frozen. I beat on it with the butt of my rifle, wrap both hands around it, and give it everything I’ve got. It pops loose with a very pungent, very satisfying hiss. I’ll have ten seconds. Should I count? Naw, screw it. I pull the pin on the grenade, drop it in the hole, and take off down the hill. The snow whips fitfully in my wake. My toe catches on something and I tumble the rest of the way, landing on my back at the bottom, hitting my head on the asphalt of the paved walking trail. I see snow spinning around my head and I can smell the river, and then I hear a soft wuh-wuumph and the tanker jumps about two feet into the air, followed by a gorgeous blossoming fireball that reflects off the falling snow, a mini universe of tiny suns shimmering, and now I’m up and chugging up the hill, my team nowhere in sight, and I can feel the heat against my left cheek as I come even with the truck, which is still in one piece, the tank intact. Dropping the grenade inside the fuel tank didn’t ignite the cargo. Do I throw another? Do I keep running? Blinded by the explosion, the sniper would rip off his night vision goggles. He won’t be blind for long.

I’m through the intersection and onto the curb when the gasoline ignites. The blast throws me forward, over the body of the first Ted dropped by Ringer, right into the glass doors of the office building. I hear something crack and hope it’s the doors and not some important part of me. Huge jagged shards of metal rain down, pieces of the tank torn apart by the blast hurled a hundred yards in every direction at bullet speeds. I hear someone screaming as I fold my arms over my head and curl myself into the tiniest ball possible. The heat is incredible. It’s like I’ve been swallowed by the sun.

The glass behind me shatters—from a high-caliber bullet, not the explosion. Half a block from the garage—go, Zombie. And I’m going hard until I come across Oompa crumpled on the sidewalk, Poundcake kneeling beside him, tugging on his shoulder, his face twisted in a soundless cry. It was Oompa I heard screaming after the tanker blew, and it takes me only a half second to see why: A piece of metal the size of a Frisbee juts out of his lower back.

I push Poundcake toward the garage—“Go!”—and heave Oompa’s round little body over my shoulder. I hear the report of the rifle this time, two beats after the shooter across the street fires, and a chunk of concrete breaks free of the wall behind me.

The first level of the garage is separated from the sidewalk by a waist-high concrete wall. I ease Oompa over the wall, then hop over and duck down. Ka-thunk: A fist-size chunk of the wall blows back toward me. Kneeling beside Oompa, I look up to see Poundcake hoofing it toward the stairwell. Now, as long as there isn’t another sniper’s nest in this building, and as long as the infested who got away hasn’t taken refuge here, too…

A quick check of Oompa’s injury isn’t encouraging. The sooner I can get him upstairs to Dumbo, the better.

“Private Oompa,” I breathe in his ear. “You do not have permission to die, understood?”

He nods, sucking in the freezing air, blowing it out again, warm from the center of his body. But he’s as white as the snow billowing in the golden light. I throw him back onto my shoulder and trot to the stairs, keeping as low as I can without losing my balance.

I take the stairs two at a time till I reach the third level, where I find the unit crouched behind the first line of cars, several feet back from the wall that faces the sniper’s building. Dumbo is kneeling beside Teacup, working on her leg. Her fatigues are ripped, and I can see an ugly red gash where a bullet tore across her calf. Dumbo slaps a dressing over the wound, hands her off to Ringer, then rushes over to Oompa. Flintstone is shaking his head at me.

“Told you we should abort,” Flint says. His eyes glitter with malice. “Now look.”

I ignore him. Turn to Dumbo. “Well?”

“It’s not good, Sarge.”

“Then make it good.” I look over at Teacup, who’s buried her head into Ringer’s chest, whimpering softly.

“It’s superficial,” Ringer tells me. “She can move.”

I nod. Oompa down. Teacup shot. Flint ready to mutiny. A sniper across the street and a hundred or so of his best friends on their way to the party. I’ve got to come up with something brilliant and come up with it quickly. “He knows where we are, which means we can’t camp here long. See if you can take him.”

She nods, but she can’t peel Teacup off her. I hold out my hands wet with Oompa’s blood: Give her to me. Delivered, Teacup squirms against my shirt. She doesn’t want me. I jerk my head toward the street and turn to Poundcake, “Cake, go with Ringer. Take the SOB out.”

Ringer and Poundcake duck between two cars and disappear. I stroke Teacup’s bare head—somewhere along the way she lost her cap—and watch Dumbo gingerly pull on the fragment in Oompa’s back. Oompa howls in agony, his fingers clawing at the ground. Unsure, Dumbo looks up at me. I nod. It’s gotta come out. “Quick, Dumbo. Slow makes it worse.” So he yanks.

Oompa folds in on himself, and the echoes of his screams rocket around the garage. Dumbo tosses the jagged piece of metal to one side and shines his light on the gaping wound.

Grimacing, he rolls Oompa onto his back. His shirtfront is soaked. Dumbo rips the shirt open, exposing the exit wound: The shrapnel had entered through his back and slammed through to the other side.

Flint turns away, crawls a couple feet, and his back arches as he vomits. Teacup gets very still watching all this. She’s going into shock. Teacup, the one who screamed the loudest during mock charges in the yard. Teacup, the bloodthirstiest, the one who sang the loudest in P&D. I’m losing her.

And I’m losing Oompa. As Dumbo presses wadding against the wound in Oompa’s gut, trying to stem the flow, his eyes seek out mine.

“What are your orders, Private?” I ask him.

“I—I am not to—to…”

Dumbo tosses the blood-soaked dressing away and presses a fresh patch against Oompa’s stomach. Looking into my face. Doesn’t have to say anything. Not to me. Not to Oompa.

I ease Teacup from my lap and kneel beside Oompa. His breath smells like blood and chocolate.

“It’s because I’m fat,” he chokes out. He starts to cry.

“Stow that shit,” I tell him sternly.

He whispers something. I bring my ear close to his mouth. “My name is Kenny.” Like it’s a terrible secret he’s been afraid to share.

His eyes roll toward the ceiling. Then he’s gone.

58

TEACUP’S LOST IT. Hugging her legs, forehead pressed against her upraised knees. I call over to Flint to keep an eye on her. I’m worried about Ringer and Poundcake. Flint looks like he wants to kill me with his bare hands.

“You’re the one who gave the order,” he snarls. “You watch her.”

Dumbo is cleaning his hands of Oompa’s—no, Kenny’s—blood. “I got it, Sarge,” he says calmly, but his hands are shaking.

“Sarge,” Flint spits out. “That’s right. What now, Sarge?”

I ignore him and scramble toward the wall, where I find Poundcake squatting beside Ringer. She’s on her knees, peeking over the edge of the wall toward the building across the street. I lower myself beside her, avoiding Poundcake’s questioning look.

“Oompa’s not screaming anymore,” Ringer says without taking her eyes off the building.

“His name was Kenny,” I say. Ringer nods; she gets it, but it takes Poundcake a minute or two more. He scoots away, putting distance between us, and presses both hands against the concrete, takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“You had to, Zombie,” Ringer says. “If you hadn’t, we might all be Kenny.”

That sounds really good. It sounded good when I said it to myself. Looking up at her profile, I wonder what Vosch was thinking, pinning the stripes on my collar. The commander promoted the wrong squad member.

“Well?” I ask her.

She nods across the street. “Pop goes the weasel.”

I slowly rise up. In the light of the dying fire, I can see the building: a facade of broken windows, peeling white paint, and the roof one story higher than us. A vague shadow that might be a water tower up there, but that’s all I see.

“Where?” I whisper.

“He just ducked down again. Been doing that. Up, down, up, down, like a jack-in-the-box.”

“Just one?”

“Only one I’ve seen.”

“Does he light up?”

Ringer shakes her head. “Negative, Zombie. He doesn’t read infested.”

I chew on my bottom lip. “Poundcake see him, too?”

She nods. “No green.” Watching me with those dark eyes like knives cutting deep.

“Maybe he’s not the shooter…,” I try.

“Saw his weapon,” she says. “Sniper rifle.”

So why doesn’t he glow green? The ones on the street lit up, and they were farther away than he is. Then I think it doesn’t matter if he glows green or purple or nothing at all: He’s trying to kill us, and we can’t move until he’s neutralized. And we have to move before the one who got away comes back with reinforcements.

“Aren’t they smart?” Ringer mutters, like she’s read my mind. “Put on a human face so no human face can be trusted. The only answer: Kill everyone or risk being killed by anyone.”

“He thinks we’re one of them?”

“Or decided it doesn’t matter. Only way to be safe.”

“But he fired on us—not on the three right below him. Why would he ignore the easy shots to take the impossible one?”

Like me, she doesn’t have an answer to that question. Unlike me, it’s not high on her list of problems to be resolved. “Only way to be safe,” she repeats pointedly. I look over at Poundcake, who’s looking back at me. Waiting for my decision, but there really isn’t a decision to make.

“Can you take him from here?” I ask Ringer.

She shakes her head. “Too far away. I’d just give away our position.”

I scoot over to Poundcake. “Stay here. In ten minutes, open up on him to cover our crossing.” Staring up at me all doe-eyed and trusting. “You know, Private, it’s customary to acknowledge an order from your commanding officer.” Poundcake nods. I try again: “With a ‘yes, sir.’” He nods again. “Like, out loud. With words.” Another nod.

Okay, at least I tried.

When Ringer and I join the others, Oompa’s body is gone. They stashed him in one of the cars. Flint’s idea. Very similar to his idea for the rest of us.

“We’ve got good cover in here. I say we hunker down in the cars until pickup.”

“Only one person’s vote counts in this unit, Flint,” I tell him.

“Yeah, and how’s that working out for us?” he says, thrusting his chin toward me, mouth curled into a sneer. “Oh, I know. Let’s ask Oompa!”

“Flintstone,” Ringer says. “At ease. Zombie’s right.”

“Until you two walk into an ambush, and then I guess he’s wrong.”

“At which point you’re the C.O., and you can make the call,” I snap. “Dumbo, you’ve got Teacup duty.” If we can pry her off Ringer. She’s pasted herself back onto Ringer’s leg. “If we’re not back in thirty minutes, we’re not coming back.”

And then Ringer says, because she’s Ringer, “We’re coming back.”

59

THE TANKER’S BURNED down to its tires. Crouching in the pedestrian entrance to the garage, I point at the building across the street glowing orange in the firelight.

“That’s our entry point. Third window from the left-hand corner, completely busted out, see it?”

Ringer nods absently. Something’s on her mind. She keeps fiddling with the eyepiece, pulling it away from her eye, pushing it back again. The certainty she showed in front of the squad is gone.

“The impossible shot…,” she whispers. Then she turns to me. “How do you know when you’re going Dorothy?”

I shake my head. Where’s this coming from? “You’re not going Dorothy,” I tell her, and punctuate it with a pat on the arm.

“How can you be sure?” Eyes darting back and forth, restless, looking for somewhere to light. The way Tank’s eyes danced before he popped. “Crazy people—they never think they’re crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them.”

There’s a desperate, very un-Ringerlike look in her eyes.

“You’re not crazy. Trust me.”

Wrong thing to say.

“Why should I?” she shoots back. It’s the first time I’ve heard any emotion out of her. “Why should I trust you, and why should you trust me? How do you know I’m not one of them, Zombie?”

Finally, an easy question. “Because we’ve been screened. And we don’t light up in each other’s eyepieces.”

She looks at me for a very long moment, then she murmurs, “God, I wish you played chess.”

Our ten minutes are up. Above us, Poundcake opens up on the rooftop across the street; the sniper immediately returns fire; and we go. We’re barely off the curb when the asphalt explodes in front of us. We split up, Ringer zipping off to the right, me to the left, and I hear the whine of the bullet, a high-pitched sandpapery sound, about a month before it tears open the sleeve of my jacket. The instinct burned into me from months of drilling to return fire is very hard to resist. I leap onto the curb and in two strides I’m pressed hard against the comforting cold concrete of the building. That’s when I see Ringer slip on a patch of ice and fall face-first toward the curb. She waves me back. “No!” A round bites off a piece of the curbing that rakes across her neck. Screw her no. I bound over to her, grab her arm, and sling her toward the building. Another round whizzes past my head as I backpedal to safety.

She’s bleeding. The wound shimmers black in the firelight. She waves me on, Go, go. We trot along the side of the building to the broken window and dive inside.

Took less than a minute to cross. Felt like two hours.

We’re inside what used to be an upscale boutique. Looted several times over, full of empty racks and broken hangers, creepy headless mannequins and posters of overly serious fashion models on the walls. A sign on the service counter reads, GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE.

Ringer’s scrunched into a corner of the room with good angles on the windows and the door coming in from the lobby. A hand on her neck, and that hand is gloved in blood. I have to look. She doesn’t want me to look. I’m like, “Don’t be stupid, I have to look.” So she lets me look. It’s superficial, between a cut and a gouge. I find a scarf lying on a display table and she wads it up and presses it against her neck. Nods at my torn sleeve.

“Are you hit?”

I shake my head and ease down on the floor beside her. We’re both pulling hard for air. My head swims with adrenaline. “Not to be judgmental, but as a sniper, this guy sucks.”

“Three shots, three misses. Makes you wish this was baseball.”

“A lot more than three,” I correct her. Multiple tries at the targets, and the only true hit a superficial wound to Teacup’s leg.

“Amateur.”

“He probably is.”

“Probably.” She bites off the word.

“He didn’t light up and he’s no pro. A loner defending his turf, maybe hiding from the same guys we came after. Scared shitless.” I don’t add like us. I’m only sure about one of us.

Outside, Poundcake continues to occupy the sniper. Pop-pop-pop, a heavy quiet, then pop-pop-pop. The sniper responds each time.

“Then this should be easy,” Ringer says, her mouth set in a grim line.

I’m a little taken aback. “He didn’t light up, Ringer. We don’t have authorization to—”

“I do.” Pulling her rifle into her lap. “Right here.”

“Um. I thought our mission was to save humanity.”

She looks at me out of the side of her uncovered eye. “Chess, Zombie: defending yourself from the move that hasn’t happened yet. Does it matter that he doesn’t light up through our eyepieces? That he missed us when he could have taken us down? If two possibilities are equally probable but mutually exclusive, which one matters the most? Which one do you bet your life on?”

I’m nodding at her, but not following her at all. “You’re saying he still could be infested,” I guess.

“I’m saying the safe bet is to proceed as if he is.”

She pulls her combat knife from its sheath. I flinch, remembering her Dorothy remark. Why did Ringer pull out her knife?

“What matters,” she says thoughtfully. There’s a terrible stillness to her now, a thunderhead about to crack, a steaming volcano about to blow. “What matters, Zombie? I was always pretty good at figuring that out. Got a lot better at it after the attacks. What really matters? My mom died first. That was bad—but what really mattered was I still had my dad, my brother, and baby sister. Then I lost them, and what mattered was I still had me. And there wasn’t much that mattered when it came to me. Food. Water. Shelter. What else do you need? What else matters?”

This is bad, halfway down the road to being really bad. I have no idea where she’s going with this, but if Ringer goes Dorothy on me now, I’m screwed. Maybe the rest of my crew with me. I need to bring her back into the present. Best way is by touch, but I’m afraid if I touch her she’ll gut me with that ten-inch blade.

“Does it matter, Zombie?” She cranes her neck to look up at me, turning the knife slowly in her hands. “That he shot at us and not the three Teds right in front of him? Or that when he shot at us he missed every time?” Turning the knife slowly, the tip denting her finger. “Does it matter that they got everything up and running after the EMP attack? That they’re operating right underneath the mothership, gathering up survivors, killing infesteds and burning their bodies by the hundreds, arming and training us and sending us out to kill the rest? Tell me that those things don’t matter. Tell me the odds are insignificant that they aren’t really them. Tell me what possibility I should bet my life on.”

I’m nodding again, but this time I do follow her, and that path ends in a very dark place. I squat down beside her and look her dead in the eye. “I don’t know what this guy’s story is and I don’t know about the EMP, but the commander told me why they’re leaving us alone. They think we’re no longer a threat to them.”

She flips back her bangs and snaps, “How does the commander know what they think?”

“Wonderland. We were able to profile a—”

“Wonderland,” she echoes. Nodding sharply. Eyes cutting from my face to the snowy street outside and back again. “Wonderland is an alien program.”

“Right.” Stay with her, but gently try to lead her back. “It is, Ringer. Remember? After we took back the base, we found it hidden—”

“Unless we didn’t. Zombie, unless we didn’t.” She jabs the knife toward me. “It’s a possibility, equally valid, and possibilities matter. Trust me, Zombie; I’m an expert on what matters. Up to now, I’ve been playing blind man’s bluff. Time for some chess.” She flips the knife around and shoves the handle toward me. “Cut it out of me.”

I don’t know what to say. I stare dumbly at the knife in her hand.

“The implants, Zombie.” Poking me in the chest now. “We have to take them out. You do me and I’ll do you.”

I clear my throat. “Ringer, we can’t cut them out.” I scramble for a second for the best argument, but all I can come up with is, “If we can’t make it back to the rendezvous point, how’re they going to find us?”

“Damn it, Zombie, haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? What if they aren’t us? What if they’re them? What if this whole thing has been a lie?”

I’m about to lose it. Okay, not about to. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ringer! Do you know how cra—stupid that sounds? The enemy rescuing us, training us, giving us weapons? Come on, let’s cut the crap; we’ve got a job to do. You may not be happy about it, but I am your C.O….”

“All right.” Very calm now. As cool as I’m hot. “I’ll do it myself.”

She whips the blade around to the back of her neck, bowing her head low. I yank the knife from her hand. Enough.

“Stand down, Private.” I hurl her knife into the deep shadows across the room and get up. I’m shaking, every part of me, voice too. “You want to play the odds, that’s cool. Stay here until I get back. Better yet, just waste me now. Maybe my alien masters have figured out a way to hide my infestation from you. And after you’ve done me, go back across the street and kill them all, put a bullet in Teacup’s head. She could be the enemy, right? So blow her frigging head off! It’s the only answer, right? Kill everyone or risk being killed by anyone.”

Ringer doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything, either, for a very long time. Snow whips through the broken window, the flakes a deep crimson color, reflecting the smoldering crumbs of the tanker.

“Are you sure you don’t play chess?” she asks. She pulls the rifle back into her lap, runs her index finger along the trigger. “Turn your back on me, Zombie.”

We’re at the end of the dark path now, and it’s a dead end. I’m out of anything that passes for a cogent argument, so I come back with the first thing that pops into my head.

“My name is Ben.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Sucky name. Zombie’s better.”

“What your name?” Keeping at it.

“That’s one of the things that doesn’t matter. Hasn’t for a long time, Zombie.” Finger caressing the trigger slowly. Very slowly. It’s hypnotic, dizzying.

“How about this?” Searching for a way out. “I cut out the tracker, and you promise not to waste me.” This way I keep her on my side, because I’d rather take on a dozen snipers than one Dorothied Ringer. In my mind’s eye, I can see my head shattering like one of those plywood people on the firing range.

She cocks her head, and the side of her mouth twitches in an almost-but-not-quite smile. “Check.”

I give her back an honest-to-goodness smile, the old Ben Parish smile, the one that got me practically everything I wanted. Well, not practically; I’m being modest.

“Is that check as in yes, or are you giving me a chess lesson?”

She sets her gun aside and turns her back to me. Bows her head. Pulls her silky black hair away from her neck.

“Both.”

Pop-pop-pop goes Poundcake’s gun. And the sniper answers. Their jam plays in the background as I kneel behind Ringer with my knife. Part of me more than willing to humor her if it keeps me—and the rest of the unit—alive. The other part screaming silently, Aren’t you, like, giving a mouse a cookie? What will she demand next—a physical inspection of my cerebral cortex?

“Relax, Zombie,” she says, quiet and calm, the old Ringer again. “If the trackers aren’t ours, it’s probably not a good idea to have them inside us. If they are ours, Dr. Pam can always implant us again when we get back. Agreed?”

“Checkmate.”

“Check and mate,” she corrects me.

Her neck is long and graceful and very cold beneath my fingers as I explore the area beneath the scar for the lump. My hand shakes. Just humor her. It probably means a court-martial and the rest of your life peeling potatoes, but at least you’ll be alive.

“Be gentle,” she whispers.

I take a deep breath and draw the tip of the blade along the tiny scar. Her blood wells up bright red, shockingly red against her pearly skin. She doesn’t even flinch, but I have to ask: “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I like it a lot.”

I tease the implant from her neck with the tip of the blade. She grunts softly. The pellet clings to the metal, sealed within a droplet of blood.

“So,” she says, turning around. The almost-smile is almost there. “How was it for you?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I’ve lost the ability to talk. The knife falls from my hand. I’m two feet away looking right at her, but her face is gone. I can’t see it through my eyepiece.

Ringer’s entire head is lit up in a blinding green fire.

60

MY FIRST REACTION is to yank off the hardware, but I don’t. I’m paralyzed with shock. A shudder of revulsion next. Then panic. Followed closely by confusion. Ringer’s head has lit up like a Christmas tree, bright enough to be seen a mile away. The green fire sparks and swirls, so intense it burns an afterimage in my left eye.

“What is it?” she demands. “What happened?”

“You lit up. As soon as I pulled out the tracker.”

We stare at each other for a long couple of minutes. Then she says, “Unclean glows green.”

I’m already on my feet, M16 in my hands, backing toward the door. And outside, beneath the sound-deadening snowfall, Poundcake and the sniper, trading barbs. Unclean glows green. Ringer doesn’t make a move for the rifle lying next to her. Through my right eye, she’s normal. Through the left, she burns like a Roman candle.

“Think this through, Zombie,” she says. “Think this through.” Holding up her empty hands, scratched and scuffed from her fall, one caked in dried blood. “I lit up after you pulled out the implant. The eyepieces don’t pick up infestations. They react when there’s no implant.”

“Excuse me, Ringer, but that makes no freaking sense. They lit up on those three infesteds. Why would the eyepieces light up if they weren’t?”

“You know why. You just can’t admit it to yourself. They lit up because those people weren’t infested. They’re just like us, the only difference being they don’t have implants.”

She stands up. God, she looks so small, like a kid… But she is a kid, right? Through one eye normal. Through the other a green fireball. Which is she? What is she?

“Take us in.” She steps toward me. I bring up the gun. She stops. “Tag and bag us. Train us to kill.” Another step. I swing the muzzle toward her. Not at her. But toward her: Stay away. “Anyone who isn’t tagged will glow green, and when they defend themselves or challenge us, shoot at us like that sniper up there—well, that just proves they’re the enemy, doesn’t it?” Another step. Now I’m aiming right at her heart.

“Don’t,” I beg her. “Please, Ringer.” One face pure. One face in fire.

“Until we’ve killed everyone who isn’t tagged.” Another step. Right in front of me now. The end of the gun pressing lightly against her chest. “It’s the 5th Wave, Ben.”

I’m shaking my head. “No fifth wave. No fifth wave! The commander said—”

“The commander lied.”

She reaches up with bloody hands and pulls the rifle from my grip. I feel myself falling into a completely different kind of wonderland, where up is down and true is false and the enemy has two faces, my face and his, the one who saved me from drowning, who took my heart and made it a battlefield.

She gathers her hands into mine and pronounces me dead:

“Ben, we’re the 5th Wave.”

61

WE ARE HUMANITY.

It’s a lie. Wonderland. Camp Haven. The war itself.

How easy it was. How incredibly easy, even after all that we’d been through. Or maybe it was easy because of all we’d been through.

They gathered us in. They emptied us out. They filled us up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance.

So they could send us out again.

To kill what’s left of the rest of us.

Check and mate.

I’m going to be sick. Ringer hangs on to my shoulder while I heave all over a poster that fell off the wall: FALL INTO FASHION!

There’s Chris, behind the two-way glass. And there’s the button marked EXECUTE. And there’s my finger, slamming down. How easy it was to make me kill another human being.

When I’m done, I rock back on my heels. I feel Ringer’s cool fingers rubbing my neck. Hear her voice telling me it’s going to be okay. I yank off the eyepiece, killing the green fire and giving Ringer back her face. She’s Ringer and I’m me, only I’m not sure what me means anymore. I’m not what I thought I was. The world is not what I thought it was. Maybe that’s the point:

It’s their world now, and we’re the aliens.

“We can’t go back,” I choke out. And there’s her deep-cutting eyes and her cool fingers massaging my neck.

“No, we can’t. But we can go forward.” She picks up my rifle and pushes it against my chest. “And we can start with that son of a bitch upstairs.”

Not before taking out my implant. It hurts more than I expect, less than I deserve.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Ringer tells me while she digs it out. “They fooled all of us.”

“And the ones they couldn’t, they called Dorothys and killed.”

“Not the only ones,” she says bitterly. And then it hits me like a punch in the heart: the P&D hangar. The twin stacks spewing black and gray smoke. The trucks loaded with bodies—hundreds of bodies every day. Thousands every week. And the buses pulling in all night, every night, filled with refugees, filled with the walking dead.

“Camp Haven isn’t a military base,” I whisper as blood trickles down my neck.

She shakes her head. “Or a refugee camp.”

I nod. Swallow back the bile rising in my throat. I can tell she’s waiting for me to say it out loud. Sometimes you have to speak the truth aloud or it doesn’t seem real. “It’s a death camp.”

There’s an old saying about the truth setting you free. Don’t buy it. Sometimes the truth slams the cell door shut and throws a thousand bolts.

“Are you ready?” Ringer asks. She seems anxious to get it over with.

“We don’t kill him,” I say. Ringer gives me a look like WTF? But I’m thinking of Chris strapped to a chair behind a two-way mirror. Thinking of heaving bodies onto the conveyor belt that carried its human cargo into the hot, hungry mouth of the incinerator. I’ve been their tool long enough. “Neutralize and disarm, that’s the order. Understood?”

She hesitates, then nods. I can’t read her expression—not unusual. Is she playing chess again? We can still hear Poundcake firing from across the street. He has to be getting low on ammo. It’s time.

Stepping into the lobby is a dive into total darkness. We advance shoulder-to-shoulder, trailing our fingers along the walls to keep our bearings in the dark, trying every door, looking for the one to the stairs. The only sounds are our breath in the stale, cold air and the sloshing of our boots through an inch of sour-smelling, freezing cold water; a pipe must have burst. I push open a door at the end of the hall and feel a rush of fresh air. Stairwell.

We pause on the fourth-floor landing, at the bottom of the narrow steps that lead up to the roof. The door is cracked open; we can hear the sharp report of the sniper’s rifle, but can’t see him. Hand signals are useless in the dark, so I pull Ringer close and press my lips against her ear.

“Sounds like he’s straight ahead.” She nods. Her hair tickles my nose. “We go in hard.”

She’s the better shooter; Ringer will go first. I’ll take the second shot if she misses or goes down. We’ve drilled this a hundred times, but we always practiced eliminating the target, not disabling it. And the target never fired back at us. She steps up to the door. I’m standing right behind her, hand on her shoulder. The wind whistles through the crack like the mewling of a dying animal. Ringer waits for my signal with her head bowed, breathing evenly and deeply, and I wonder if she’s praying and, if she is, if she prays to the same God I do. Somehow I don’t think so. I pat her once on the shoulder and she kicks open the door and it’s like she’s been shot out of a cannon, disappearing in the swirl of snow before I’m two steps onto the roof, and I hear the sharp pop-pop-pop of her weapon before I almost trip over her kneeling in the wet, white carpet of snow. Ten feet in front of her, the sniper lies on his side, clutching his leg with one hand while he reaches for his rifle with the other. It must have flown from his grip when she popped him. Ringer fires again, this time at the reaching hand. It’s three inches across, and she scores a direct hit. In the murky dark. Through heavy snow. He pulls his hand back to his chest with a startled scream. I tap Ringer on the top of her head and signal her to pull up.

“Lie still!” I yell at him. “Don’t move!”

He sits up, pressing his shattered hand against his chest, facing the street, hunched over, and we can’t see what his other hand is doing, but I see a flash of silver and hear him growl, “Maggots,” and something inside me goes cold. I know that voice.

It has screamed at me, mocked me, belittled me, threatened me, cursed me. It followed me from the minute I woke to the minute I went to bed. It’s hissed, hollered, snarled, and spat at me, at all of us.

Reznik.

We both hear it. And it nails down our feet. It stops our breath. It freezes our thoughts.

And it buys him time.

Time that grinds down as he comes up, slowing as if the universal clock set in motion by the big bang is running out of steam.

Pushing himself to his feet. That takes about seven or eight minutes.

Turning to face us. That takes at least ten.

Holding something in his good hand. Punching at it with his bloody one. That lasts a good twenty minutes.

And then Ringer comes alive. The round slams into his chest. Reznik falls to his knees. His mouth comes open. He pitches forward and lands facedown in front of us.

The clock resets. No one moves. No one says anything.

Snow. Wind. Like we’re standing alone on the summit of an icy mountaintop. Ringer goes over to him, rolls him onto his back. Pulls the silver device from his hand. I’m looking down at that pasty, pockmarked, rat-eyed face, and somehow I’m surprised and not surprised.

“Spend months training us so he can kill us,” I say.

Ringer shakes her head. She’s looking at the display of the silver device. Its light shines on her face, playing up the contrast between her fair skin and jet-black hair. She looks beautiful in its light, not angelic-beautiful, more like avenging angel–beautiful.

“He wasn’t going to kill us, Zombie. Until we surprised him and gave him no choice. And then not with the rifle.” She holds up the device so I can see the display. “I think he was going to kill us with this.”

A grid occupies the top half of the display. There’s a cluster of green dots on the far left-hand corner. Another green dot closer to the middle.

“The squad,” I say.

“And this lone dot here must be Poundcake.”

“Which means if we hadn’t cut out our implants—”

“He’d have known exactly where we were,” Ringer says. “He’d be waiting for us, and we’d be screwed.”

She points out the two highlighted numbers on the bottom of the screen. One of them is the number I was assigned when Dr. Pam tagged and bagged me. I’m guessing the other one is Ringer’s. Beneath the numbers is a flashing green button.

“What happens if you press that button?” I ask.

“My guess is nothing.” And she presses it.

I flinch, but her guess is right.

“It’s a kill switch,” she says. “Has to be. Linked to our implants.”

He could have fried all of us anytime he wanted. Killing us wasn’t the goal, so what was? Ringer sees the question in my eyes. “The three ‘infesteds’—that’s why he fired the opening shot,” she says. “We’re the first squad out of the camp. It makes sense they’d monitor us closely to see how we perform in actual combat. Or what we think is actual combat. To make sure we react to the green bait like good little rats. They must have dropped him in before us—to pull the trigger in case we didn’t. And when we didn’t, he gave us a little incentive.”

“And he kept firing at us because…?”

“Kept us hyped and ready to blow away any damn green shiny thing that glowed.”

In the snow, it’s as if she’s looking at me through a gauzy white curtain. Flakes dust her eyebrows, sparkle in her hair.

“Awful big risk to take,” I point out.

“Not really. He had us on this little radar. Worst-case scenario, all he had to do was hit the button. He just didn’t consider the worst-worst case.”

“That we’d cut out the implants.”

Ringer nods. She wipes away the snow clinging to her face. “I don’t think the dumb bastard expected us to turn and fight.”

She hands the device to me. I close the cover, slip it into my pocket.

“It’s our move, Sergeant,” she says quietly, or maybe it’s the snow tamping down her voice. “What’s the call?”

I suck down a lungful of air, let it out slowly. “Get back to the squad. Pull everyone’s implant…”

“And?”

“Hope like hell there isn’t a battalion of Rezniks on its way right now.”

I turn to go. She grabs my arm. “Wait! We can’t go back without implants.”

It takes me a second to get it. Then I nod, rubbing the back of my hand across my numb lips. We’ll light up in their eyepieces without the implants. “Poundcake will drop us before we’re halfway across the street.”

“Hold them in our mouths?”

I shake my head. What if we accidently swallow them? “We have to stick them back where they came from, bandage the wounds up tight, and….”

“Hope like hell they don’t fall out?”

“And hope pulling them out didn’t deactivate them… What?” I ask. “Too much hope?”

The side of her mouth twitches. “Maybe that’s our secret weapon.”

62

“THIS IS SERIOUSLY, seriously messed up,” Flintstone says to me. “Reznik was sniping us?”

We’re sitting against the concrete half wall of the garage, Ringer and Poundcake on the flanks, watching the street below. Dumbo is on one side of me, Flint on the other, Teacup between them, pressing her head against my chest.

“Reznik is a Ted,” I tell him for the third time. “Camp Haven is theirs. They’ve been using us to—”

“Stow it, Zombie! That’s the craziest, most paranoid load of crap I’ve ever heard!” Flintstone’s wide face is beet red. His unibrow jumps and twitches. “You wasted our drill instructor! Who was trying to waste us! On a mission to waste Teds! You guys can do what you want, but this is it for me. This is it.”

He pushes himself to his feet and shakes his fist at me. “I’m going back to the rendezvous point to wait for the evac. This is…” He searches for the right word, then settles for, “Bullshit.”

“Flint,” I say, keeping my voice low and steady. “Stand down.”

“Unbelievable. You’ve gone Dorothy. Dumbo, Cake, are you buying this? You can’t be buying this.”

I pull the silver device from my pocket. Flip it open. Shove it toward his face. “See that green dot right there? That’s you.” I scroll down to his number and highlight with a jab of my thumb. The green button flashes. “Know what happens when you hit the green button?”

It’s one of those things you lie awake at night for the rest of your life and wish you could take back.

Flintstone jumps forward and snatches the device from my hand. I might have gotten to him in time, but Teacup’s in my lap and it slows me down. All that happens before he hits the button is my shout of “No!”

Flintstone’s head snaps back violently as if someone has smacked him hard in the forehead. His mouth flies open, his eyes roll toward the ceiling.

Then he drops, straight down and loose-limbed, like a puppet whose strings have lost their tension.

Teacup is screaming. Ringer pulls her off me, and I kneel beside Flint. Though I do it anyway, I don’t have to check his pulse to know he’s dead. All I have to do is look at the display of the device clutched in his hand, at the red dot where the green one used to be.

“Guess you were right, Ringer,” I say over my shoulder.

I ease the control pad out of Flintstone’s lifeless hand. My own hand is shaking. Panic. Confusion. But mostly anger: I’m furious at Flint. I am seriously tempted to smash my fist into his big, fat face.

Behind me, Dumbo says, “What are we going to do now, Sarge?” He’s panicking, too.

“Right now you’re going to cut out Poundcake’s and Teacup’s implants.”

His voice goes up an octave. “Me?”

Mine goes down one. “You’re the medic, right? Ringer will do yours.”

“Okay, but then what are we going to do? We can’t go back. We can’t—where’re we supposed to go now?”

Ringer is looking at me. I’m getting better at reading her expressions. That slight downturn of her mouth means she’s bracing herself, like she already knows what I’m about to say. Who knows? She probably does.

“You’re not going back, Dumbo.”

“You mean we aren’t going back,” Ringer corrects me. “We, Zombie.”

I stand up. It seems to take me forever to get upright. I step over to her. The wind whips her hair to one side, a black banner flying.

“We left one behind,” I say.

She shakes her head sharply. Her bangs swing back and forth in a pleasant way. “Nugget? Zombie, you can’t go back for him. It’s suicide.”

“I can’t leave him. I made a promise.” I start to explain it, but I don’t even know how to begin. How do I put it into words? It isn’t possible. It’s like locating the starting point of a circle.

Or finding the first link in a silver chain.

“I ran one time,” I finally say. “I’m not running again.”

63

THERE IS THE SNOW, tiny pinpricks of white, spinning down.

There is the river reeking of human waste and human remains, black and swift and silent beneath the clouds that hide the glowing green eye of the mothership.

And there’s the seventeen-year-old high school football jock dressed up like a soldier with a high-powered semiautomatic rifle that the ones from the glowing green eye gave him, crouching by the statue of a real soldier who fought and died with clear mind and clean heart, uncorrupted by the lies of an enemy who knows how he thinks, who twists everything good in him to evil, who uses his hope and trust to turn him into a weapon against his own kind. The kid who didn’t go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn’t. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over—not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart.

Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.

In the park by the river in the snow spinning down.

I feel the chopper before I hear it. A change in pressure, a thrumming against my exposed skin. Then the rhythmic percussion of the blades, and I rise unsteadily, pressing my hand into the bullet wound in my side.

“Where should I shoot you?” Ringer asked.

“I don’t know, but it can’t be the legs or the arms.”

And Dumbo, who had plenty of experience with human anatomy from processing duty: “Shoot him in the side. Close range. And angled this way, or you’ll puncture his intestines.”

And Ringer: “What do we do if I puncture your intestines?”

“Bury me, because I’ll be dead.”

A smile? No. Damn.

And afterward, as Dumbo examined the wound, she asked, “How long do we wait for you?”

“No more than a day.”

“A day?”

“Okay. Two days. If we aren’t back in forty-eight hours, we aren’t coming back.”

She didn’t argue with me. But she said, “If you aren’t back in forty-eight hours, I’m coming back for you.”

“Dumb move, chess player.”

“This isn’t chess.”

Black shadow roaring over the bare branches of the trees ringing the park, and the heavy pulsing beat of the rotors like an enormous racing heart, and the icy wind blasting down, pressing on my shoulders as I hoof it toward the open hatch.

The pilot whips his head around as I dive inside. “Where’s your unit?”

Falling into the empty seat. “Go! Go!”

And the pilot: “Soldier, where’s your unit?”

From the trees my unit answers, opening up a barrage of continuous fire, and the rounds slam and pop into the reinforced hull of the Black Hawk, and I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, “Go, go, go!” Which costs me: With every “Go!” blood is forced through the wound and dribbles through my fingers.

The pilot lifts off, shoots forward, then banks hard to the left. I close my eyes. Go, Ringer. Go.

The Black Hawk lays down strafing fire, pulverizing the trees, and the pilot is shouting something at the copilot, and the chopper is over the trees now, but Ringer and my crew should be long gone, down on the walking trail that borders the dark banks of the river. We circle the trees several times, firing until the trees are shattered stubs of their former selves. The pilot glances into the hold, sees me lying across two seats, holding my bloody side. He pulls up and hits the gas. The chopper shoots toward the clouds; the park is swallowed up by the white nothing of the snow.

I’m losing consciousness. Too much blood. Too much. There’s Ringer’s face, and damn if she isn’t just smiling, she’s laughing, and good for me, good for me that I made her laugh.

And there’s Nugget, and he definitely isn’t smiling.

Don’t promise, don’t promise, don’t promise! Don’t promise anything ever, ever, ever!

“I’m coming. I promise.”

64

I WAKE UP where it began, in a hospital bed, bandaged up and floating on a sea of painkillers, circle complete.

It takes me several minutes to realize I’m not alone. There’s someone sitting in the chair on the other side of the IV drip. I turn my head and see his boots first, black, shined to a mirror finish. The faultless uniform, starched and pressed. The chiseled face, the piercing blue eyes that bore down to the bottom of me.

“And so here you are,” Vosch says softly. “Safe if not entirely sound. The doctors tell me you’re extraordinarily lucky to have survived. No major damage; the bullet passed clean through. Amazing, really, given that you were shot at such close range.”

What are you going to tell him?

I’m going to tell him the truth.

“It was Ringer,” I tell him. You bastard. You son of a bitch. For months I saw him as my savior—as humanity’s savior, even. His promises gave me the cruelest gift: hope.

He cocks his head to one side, reminding me of some bright-eyed bird eyeing a tasty morsel.

“And why did Private Ringer shoot you, Ben?”

You can’t tell him the truth.

Okay. Screw the truth. I’ll give him facts instead.

“Because of Reznik.”

“Reznik?”

“Sir, Private Ringer shot me because I defended Reznik’s being there.”

“And why would you need to defend Reznik’s being there, Sergeant?” Crossing his legs and cupping his upraised knee with his hands. It’s hard to maintain eye contact with him for more than three or four seconds at a time.

“They turned on us, sir. Well, not all of them. Flintstone and Ringer—and Teacup, but only because Ringer did. They said Reznik’s being there proved that this was all a lie, and that you—”

He holds up a hand. “‘This’?”

“The camp, the infesteds. That we weren’t being trained to kill the aliens. The aliens were training us to kill one another.”

He doesn’t say anything at first. I almost wish he would laugh or smile or shake his head. If he did anything like that, I might have some doubt; I might rethink the whole this-is-an-alien-head-fake thing and conclude I am suffering from paranoia and battle-induced hysteria.

Instead he just stares back at me with no expression, with those bird-bright eyes.

“And you wanted no part of their little conspiracy theory?”

I nod. A good, strong, confident nod—I hope. “They went Dorothy on me, sir. Turned the whole squad against me.” I smile. A grim, tough, soldiery grin—I hope. “But not before I took care of Flint.”

“We recovered his body,” Vosch tells me. “Like you, he was shot at very close range. Unlike you, the target was a little higher up in the anatomy.”

Are you sure about this, Zombie? Why do you need to shoot him in the head?

They can’t know he’s been zapped. Maybe if I do enough damage, it’ll destroy the evidence. Stand back, Ringer. You know I don’t have the best aim in the world.

“I would have wasted the rest of them, but I was outnumbered, sir. I decided the best thing to do was get my ass back to base and report.”

Again he doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just stares. What are you? I wonder. Are you human? Are you a Ted? Or are you… something else? What the hell are you?

“They’ve vanished, you know,” he finally says. Then waits for my answer. Luckily, I’ve thought of one. Or Ringer did. Credit where credit is due.

“They cut out their trackers.”

“Yours too,” he points out. And waits. Over his shoulder, I see orderlies in their green scrubs moving along the row of beds and hear the squeak of their shoes along the linoleum floor. Just another day in the hospital of the damned.

I’m ready for his question. “I was playing along. Waiting for an opening. Dumbo did Ringer next, after me, and that’s when I made my move.”

“Shooting Flintstone…”

“And then Ringer shot me.”

“And then…” Arms crossed over his chest now. Chin lowered. Studying me with hooded eyes. The way a bird of prey might its supper.

“And then I ran. Sir.”

So I’m able to take Reznik down in the dark in the middle of a snowstorm, but I can’t pop you from two feet away? He won’t buy it, Zombie.

I don’t need him to buy it. Just rent it for a few hours.

He clears his throat. Scratches beneath his chin. Studies the ceiling tiles for a little while before looking back at me. “How fortunate for you, Ben, that you made it to the evac point before bleeding to death.”

Oh, you bet, you whatever-you-are. Fortunate as hell.

A silence slams down. Blue eyes. Tight mouth. Folded arms.

“You haven’t told me everything.”

“Sir?”

“You’re leaving something out.”

I slowly shake my head. The room sways like a ship in a storm. How much painkiller did they give me?

“Your former drill sergeant. Someone in your unit must have searched him. And found one of these in his possession.” Holding up a silver device identical to Reznik’s. “At which point someone—I would think you, being the ranking officer—would wonder what Reznik was doing with a mechanism capable of terminating your lives with a touch of a button.”

I’m nodding. Ringer and I figured he’d go there, and I’m ready with an answer. Whether he buys it or not, that’s the question.

“There’s only one explanation that makes any sense, sir. It was our first mission, our first real combat. We needed to be monitored. And you needed a fail-safe in case any of us went Dorothy—turned on the others…”

I trail off, out of breath and glad that I am, because I don’t trust myself on the dope. My thinking isn’t crystal clear. I’m walking through a minefield in some very dense fog. Ringer anticipated this. She made me practice this part over and over as we waited in the park for the chopper to return, right before she pressed her sidearm against my stomach and pulled the trigger.

The chair scrapes against the floor, and suddenly Vosch’s lean, hard face fills my vision.

“It really is extraordinary, Ben. For you to resist the group dynamics of combat, the enormous pressure to follow the herd. It’s almost—well, inhuman, for lack of a better word.”

“I’m human,” I whisper, heart beating in my chest so hard, for a second I’m sure he can see it beating through my thin gown.

“Are you? Because that’s the crux of it, isn’t it, Ben? That’s the whole ballgame! Who is human—and who is not. Have we not eyes, Ben? Hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

The hard angle of the jaw. The severity of the blue eyes. The thin lips pale against the flushed face.

“Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice. Spoken by a member of a despised and persecuted race. Like our race, Ben. The human race.”

“I don’t think they hate us, sir.” Trying to keep my cool in this strange and unexpected turn in the minefield. My head is spinning. Gut-shot, doped up, discussing Shakespeare with the commandant of one of the most efficient death camps in the history of the world.

“They have a strange way of showing their affection.”

“They don’t love or hate us. We’re just in the way. Maybe to them, we’re the infestation.”

“Periplaneta americana to their Homo sapiens? In that contest, I’ll take the cockroach. Very difficult to eradicate.”

He pats me on the shoulder. Gets very serious. We’ve come to the real meat of it, do or die time, pass or fail; I can feel it. He’s turning the sleek silver device over and over in his hand.

Your plan sucks, Zombie. You know that.

Okay. Let’s hear yours.

We stay together. Take our chances with whoever’s holed up in the courthouse.

And Nugget?

They won’t hurt him. Why are you so worried about Nugget? God, Zombie, there are hundreds of kids—

Yeah, there are. But I made a promise to one.

“This is a very grave development, Ben. Very grave. Ringer’s delusion will drive her to seek shelter with the very things she was tasked to destroy. She will share with them everything she knows about our operations. We’ve dispatched three more squads to preempt her, but I’m afraid it may be too late. If it is too late, we’ll have no choice but to execute the option of last resort.”

His eyes burn with their own pale blue fire. I actually shiver when he turns away, cold all of a sudden, and very, very scared.

What is the option of last resort?

He may not have bought it, but he did rent it. I’m still alive. And as long as I’m alive, Nugget has a chance.

He turns back as if he’s just remembered something.

Crap. Here it comes.

“Oh, one more thing. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we’re pulling you off the pain meds so we can run a full debriefing on you.”

“Debriefing, sir?”

“Combat is a funny thing, Ben. It plays tricks on your memory. And we’ve found that the meds interfere with the program. It should take about six hours for your system to be clear.”

I still don’t get it, Zombie. Why do I have to shoot you? Why can’t the story be you gave us the slip? It’s a little over-the-top, if you ask me.

I have to be injured, Ringer.

Why?

So they’ll put me on meds.

Why?

To buy me time. So they don’t take me straight there from the chopper.

Take you where?

So I don’t have to ask what Vosch is talking about, but I ask anyway: “You’re plugging me in to Wonderland?”

He crooks his finger at an orderly, who comes forward holding a tray. A tray with a syringe and a tiny silver pellet.

“We’re plugging you in to Wonderland.”