The Last Star (30 page)

77

DUMBO DIDN’T THINK TWICE
in Urbana. I don’t now.

I dive into Nugget’s chest, hurling him to the ground. The round slams into the rockfall behind us. A second later I hear the report of the sharpshooter’s rifle. The shot came from the right, in the direction of the copse of trees by the main road.

Nugget starts to get up. I grab his ankle and yank him back down.

“
Low crawl,
” I whisper in his ear. “Like they taught us in camp, remember?”

He starts to rotate a one-eighty—back toward the hole and the false security of the cave with its provisions and weapons. I don’t blame him; it’s my first instinct, too. Going back, though, only puts off the inevitable. If smoking us out and picking us off fails, they’ll just call in the bunker-busters.

“Follow me, Nugget.” I scuttle toward the welcome center. The roof is a perfect vantage point for a sharpshooter, but our best option is to head away from the shooter we know about.

“Megan . . . ,” he gasps. “What about Megan?”

What about Megan?

“She won’t come out,” I whisper.
Please don’t come out, kid.
“She’ll wait.”

“Wait for what?”

For history to repeat itself. For the circle to come round.

Only one place I can think of that’s reasonably safe. I’m not happy about it and I know he sure as hell won’t be. But this kid is anything but soft; he’ll deal. “Past the building, then straight on about twenty yards,” I tell him as we scoot along on our bellies. “Big hole. Full of bodies.”

“Bodies?”

I imagine a red dot shimmering between my shoulder blades or on the back of Nugget’s head. I’ve got eyes on him now, and if I see that red dot, I’m going Dumbo on it again. The ground rises slightly as we near the pit, and then we can smell it, and the stench makes Nugget retch. I lock down on his arm and tug him to the edge. He doesn’t want to look, but he looks.

“It’s just dead people,” I choke out. “Come on, I’ll lower you down.”

He pulls against my grip. “I won’t be able to get back out.”

“It’s safe, Nugget. Perfectly safe.” Unfortunate choice of words. “They’d have taken the shot by now if they knew where we were.”

He nods. Makes sense to him. “But Megan . . .”

“I’m going back for her.”

He looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. I take his wrists and
lower him feetfirst into the hole. “You hear anything, you play dead,” I remind Nugget.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Breathe through your mouth.”

His lips part. I see the tiny pellet glistening inside his mouth. I give him a thumbs-up. He raises his right hand very slowly and puts it against his forehead in salute.

78

CRAWLING AWAY
from the death pit, I know what’s going to happen. I know I’m going to die.

My time’s been borrowed and you can’t cheat death forever. Sooner or later you have to pay up, with interest, only please don’t let Nugget and Megan be the price for my abandoning my sister. So I say to God,
You took Dumbo for the debt, Poundcake and Teacup, that’s enough, let that be enough. Take me but let them live.

The ground explodes in front of me. Clods of dirt and stone fly into my face.
Well, shit, crawling’s pointless now.
I heave myself up, but the bad leg buckles, and down I go. The next shot rips into my sleeve, nicking my biceps before exiting the opposite side; I hardly feel it. Instinctively I curl into a ball and wait for the finishing round. I know what’s happening. These are soldiers of the 5th Wave. Their hearts have been filled with hate, their minds conditioned for cruelty. They’re playing with me.
Gonna make it last, you infested sonofabitch. Gonna make it fun!

And my sister’s face before me, then Bo’s and Cake’s and Cup’s, then more faces than I can count, faces I recognize and faces I don’t, there’s Nugget and Megan, Cassie and Ringer, there’s the recruits in camp and the bodies in the processing hangar laid end to end, hundreds of faces, thousands, tens of thousands, living and dead but mostly dead. In the pit behind me, one living face among hundreds that aren’t, and Vosch’s rule applies to him, too.

Hand raised in salute. Mouth open and the tiny pellet that glistens inside.

Holy shit, Parish,
the tracker.
That’s what you forgot.

I jam my hand into the pocket, pull out the pellet, and stuff it into my mouth. In the cluster of trees across the road, on the rooftop of the welcome center, and from wherever the hell else they might be, the shooters hold their fire when the green inferno that surrounds my head winks out.

79

CALL ME ZOMBIE.

Everything hurts. Even blinking hurts. But I’m getting up. That’s what zombies do.

We rise.

Maybe the shooters don’t notice at first. Maybe they’ve turned their attention elsewhere, looking for green targets. Whatever the reason, when I get up, nobody takes me down. No hobbling this time, no dragging my wounded leg, no shuffling in the dirt like a damned zombie. I run full out through the pain, calling
Megan’s name now, fingers clawing in the dark until they wrap around her wrist.

Then I’ve got her outside. Her arm around my neck. Her breath in my ear.

I know the circle’s complete. I know the bill’s come due. Just let me save her first, dear Christ, suffer her not to die.

I don’t see it coming. Megan does. The teddy bear falls to the ground. Her mouth flies open in a silent scream.

Something smashes into the base of my skull. The world goes white, then there’s nothing, nothing at all.

80

CASSIE

YOU CAN SEE IT
from miles away: The air base is an island of blazing light in a dark, horizonless sea, a white-hot ember of civilization glowing in the middle of a wasteland of black, though
civilization
is too nice a word for what it is. After all we dreamed and all those dreams we made real, all that’s left of us are these bases, the lighted fools to guide humanity’s way to dusty death.

Macbeth
was never my favorite, but there you go.

The chopper banks to the left, bringing us toward the base from the east. We pass over a river, black water reflecting the conflagration of stars above it. Then the treeless buffer zone surrounding the camp that’s laced with trenches and razor wire and booby-trapped with land mines, protection against an enemy who
will never come, who isn’t even here and maybe not even
there
—in the mothership that swings into view when we turn for the final approach. I look at it. It looks back at me.

What are you?
What
are
you? The Others, my father called you, but aren’t we also that to you?
Other-than-us,
therefore
not-worthy-of-us.
Not worthy of life.

What are you? The shepherd culls the herd. The homemaker buys the bug spray. The blood of the lamb on its knees, the herky-jerky of the cockroach on its back. Neither has an inkling of the knife or the poison. The shepherd and the homemaker will lose no sleep. There’s nothing immoral about it. It’s murder without crime, killing without sin.

That’s what they’ve done. That’s the lesson they’ve brought home. We’ve been reminded who we are—not much—and what we were—too many. Roaches can scurry, sheep can run, it’s no matter. We’ll never get too big for our britches again; they’ll see to that. I’m looking at an object in our sky that will be there until our sky is gone.

Our escorts peel off as we shoot straight toward the landing zone. They’ll stay in the air to monitor the situation after we land. There’s a swarm of activity beneath us, trucks and armored Humvees racing toward the strip, troops swarming like ants from a kicked-over mound. Sirens blare, searchlights stab into the sky, antiaircraft guns swing into position. This should be fun.

Ringer pats Bob on the shoulder. “Good job, Bob.”

“Fuck you!”

Oh, Bob. Gonna miss you. Gonna miss you so bad.

Ringer climbs back into the hold with me, grabs the bag of Sammy-bombs, and plops into the seat across the aisle. Her dark eyes shine. She’s the bullet in the chamber, the powder in the
hole. You can’t blame her. Evan pointed it out a long time ago: For any of this shit to mean anything, you gotta live long enough for your death to matter. Not necessarily make a difference—neither her death nor mine will—just to
matter.

Suddenly I need to pee.

“VQP, Sullivan!” she shouts. We’ve taken off our headsets.

I nod. Give her the thumbs-up.
VQP, you bet.

Our descent begins. The hold is lit up by searchlights. Motes of dust sparkle and spin around her head: Saint Ringer, the raven-haired angel of death. Outside the blue circle upon which Bob puts us down, a ring of soldiers inside a barricade of armored vehicles, surrounded by watchtowers manned by snipers, beneath four attack helicopters patrolling overhead.

We are so doomed.