The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(37)

It’s more than Zombie can handle. He falls against the side of the barricade, gulping air, his face lifted up to the sky. Lost, found, dead, alive, the cycle repeats; there’s no escape, there’s no reprieve. Zombie closes his eyes and waits for his breath to slow, his heart to steady. A small break before it begins again: the next loss, the next death.

It’s always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.

I scooch next to Dumbo and lift up his shirt. The bandage is soaked. The packing beneath the bandage is saturated. If he wasn’t bleeding out before, he is now. I press my hand onto his ashen cheek. His skin is cool, but I am going deeper than the skin. I am going into him. Beside me, Constance watches; she knows what I’m doing.

“Is it too late?” she whispers.

Dumbo feels me inside him. His eyelids flutter, his lips part, and breath roils from his open mouth. In the dwindling twilight of his consciousness, a question, an aching need. I go where you go.

“Zombie,” I murmur. “Say something to him.”

To live, Dumbo would need a massive blood transfusion. He won’t get one.

But he didn’t crawl ten blocks in blistering pain for that. That isn’t why he held on.

“Tell him he made it, Zombie. Tell him he found you.”

There is a light that glimmers along the darkening edge of an infinite horizon. In that light the heart finds what the heart seeks. In that light, Dumbo goes where his beloved Zombie goes. In that light, a boy named Ben Parish finds his baby sister. In that light, Marika saves a little girl called Teacup. In that light are promises kept, dreams realized, time redeemed.

And Zombie’s voice, speeding Dumbo toward the light: “You made it, Private. You found me.”

No darkness slamming down. No endless fall into lightlessness. All was light when I felt Dumbo’s soul break the horizon.

Lost, found, and all was light.





35


ZOMBIE

I WON’T LEAVE Dumbo to rot where he fell. I won’t leave him for the rats and the crows and the blowflies. I will not burn him, either. I will not abandon his bones to be picked over and scattered by vultures and vermin.

I will dig a grave for him in the cold, stubborn earth. I will bury his med kit with him, but no rifle. Dumbo was not a killer; he was a healer. He saved my life twice. No, three times. I have to count his telling Ringer where to shoot me that night in Dayton.

There are dozens of faded flags stuck throughout the barricade. I will mark his grave with them. The fabric will fade to white. The wooden dowels will fall and slowly decay. Or, if Walker fails to blow up the mothership, the bombs that are coming will leave nothing behind—no flags, no grave, no Dumbo.

Then the earth will settle and grass will grow over my friend, covering him in a blanket of vivid green.

“Zombie, there’s no time,” Ringer informs me.

“There’s time for this.”

She doesn’t put up another argument. I’m sure there are about twelve she could whip out, but she holds back.

It’s past noon by the time I’m finished. Dear Christ, it’s turned into a beautiful goddamned day. We sit by the mound of freshly turned dirt and I pull out the rest of my power bars to share. Ringer takes a few tiny bites, then shoves the rest into her jacket pocket.

“The rabbit?” I ask.

She grunts a nonanswer. The woman named Constance gobbles down her bar. Speaking of rabbits: Her eyes dart around like one’s, nose twitching as if she’s sniffing the air for danger. Dumbo’s rifle lies on the ground beside her. She refused to take it at first. Said she had a problem with guns. Like, for real? How’d she live this long?

The other odd thing: Father Silencer had said something very similar about guns—right before Constance blew his head off with mine.

“Anybody want to say something?” I ask.

“I hardly knew him,” Ringer answers.

“I didn’t know him at all,” Constance says. Maybe she thinks that sounded harsh, because she adds, “Poor thing.”

“He was from Pittsburgh. He loved the Packers. Video games. He was a gamer.” I took a breath. Damn. Didn’t seem like much. Nothing, really. “Call of Duty. Borderline MLG.”

And Ringer goes, “Irony.”

“I’m sure he was a very sweet boy,” Constance chimes in.

I shake my head. “I didn’t even know his real name.” Then to Ringer: “It’s just you and me now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Squad 53. We’re the last.” I snap my fingers. “Christ, I forgot Nugget. Three, then. Who would have thought it, huh, back in the day? That it’d be down to the three of us. Well, I would have put my money on you. Not that money means anything anymore. Or my judgment. Nugget, Jesus, that kid’s indestructible. But me? Never. Never in a million years. I should have died so many times, I’ve lost count.”

“You’re here for a purpose.” Constance leans toward me and points at my chest. “There’s a special place in his plan for you.”

“Whose plan? Vosch’s?”

“God’s!” She looks at Ringer, then back at me. “A place for all of us.”

I’m looking at the mound of dirt at my feet. “What was his place? What purpose did God have for Dumbo? Take the bullet for me so I could get on to my purpose, whatever the hell that is?”