The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(51)

There’s a knife twisting in my gut. The pain makes the bullet wound feel like a mosquito bite. For whatever reason, whenever I’m around this girl, pain follows, and not just the physical variety. Being intimately acquainted with both kinds, I’d rather be shot a dozen times than have my heart torn in half.

“You’re a prick,” she informs me. She pulls the jug from my hands. “I always thought so.” She unscrews the cap and fills it halfway to the lip. The liquid shimmers a neon green. Their color.

“This is what they’ve done, Zombie. This is the world they’ve made, where giving life is crueler than taking it. I am being kind. I am being wise.”

She raises the cup toward her lips. Her hand shakes; the bright green fluid sloshes over the edge and runs over her fingers. And in her eyes the same darkness that floods my core.

She doesn’t pull away when I wrap my fingers around her wrist. She doesn’t unleash her enhancement upon me and tear my head off my shoulders. She offers hardly any resistance when I force her hand down.

“I’m lost, Zombie.”

“I’ll find you.”

“I can’t move.”

“I’ll carry you.”

She topples sideways into me. I wrap my arms around her. I cup her face; I run my fingers through her hair.

The darkness slips; it cannot hold.





53


WE’RE HEADING BACK to the hole when Cassie and the kids emerge from the basement of the demolished safe house, loaded down with blankets.

“Zombie,” Nugget calls out. He races over, the stack of blankets in his arms bopping up and down as he runs. He pulls up when he gets a close look at Ringer’s face. Right away he knows something’s wrong; only dogs read faces better than little kids.

“What is it, Private?” I ask.

“Cassie won’t let me have a gun.”

“I’m working on that.”

His face screws up. He’s dubious.

I poke him in the arm with a loose fist and add, “Lemme bury Ringer first. Then we’ll talk about weapons.”

Cassie comes up, half leading, half dragging Megan by the wrist. I hope she hangs on tight. I have a feeling if she lets go, that girl’s taking off. Ringer jerks her head toward the garage, in there, and says, “Ten minutes till the chopper.”

“How do you know?” Sullivan asks.

“I can hear it.”

Cassie shoots me a look accompanied by a raised eyebrow. Get that? She says she can hear it. While all anyone else can hear is the wind driving over the barren fields.

“What’s the hose for?” she asks me.

“So I don’t black out or suffocate,” Ringer answers.

“I thought you were—what did you call it?—enhanced.”

“I am. But I still need oxygen.”

“Like a shark,” Cassie says.

Ringer nods. “Like that.”

Sullivan leads the kids into the garage. Ringer drops into the hole and lies flat on her back in the dirt. I pick up the rifle where she dropped it and lower it toward her. She shakes her head. “Leave it up there.”

“You sure?”

She nods. Her face is bathed in starlight. I catch my breath.

“What?” she asks.

I look away. “Nothing.”

“Zombie.”

I clear my throat. “It’s not important. I just thought—for a minute there—flashed across my mind . . .”

“Zombie.”

“Okay. You’re beautiful. That’s all. I mean—you wanted to know . . .”

“You get sentimental at the weirdest times. Hose.”

I drop one end down. She closes her mouth over the opening and gives me the thumbs-up.

I can hear the chopper now, faint but growing louder. I shovel the dirt over her, sweeping it into the hole with my right hand while I hang on to the hose with my left. She doesn’t need to say the words; I can read them in her eyes. Hurry, Zombie.

The sickening sound of the dirt hitting her body. I decide not to look. I watch the sky as I bury her, gripping the end of the hose so hard, my knuckles turn white. The nearly endless number of ways this can go wrong races through my mind. What if there’s a full squad on board that chopper? What if it isn’t just one Black Hawk but two? Or three, or four? What if, what if, what if, what if, whatever.

I’m not going to make it back to the garage in time. Ringer is completely covered now, but I’m out in the open with a shot-up leg and a hundred yards to cross before the chopper—which I can see silhouetted against the backdrop of stars, a black naught against the glittering white—is in range. Never tried to run with a bullet in my leg. Never had to. Guess there’s a first time for everything.

I don’t make it very far. Maybe forty-five, fifty yards. I pitch forward, landing face-first in the dirt. Why the hell didn’t Cassie bury Ringer? Would make more sense for me to hunker down with the kids, and besides, Sullivan would probably leap at the chance.

I heave myself upright. I’m vertical maybe five seconds, and then I’m down again. It’s too late. I have to be within range of their infrared by now.

A pair of boots pounds toward me. A pair of hands haul me up. Cassie throws my arm around her neck and pulls me forward as I swing my bad leg around, hop with my good one, swing the bad one, but she bears most of the load. Who needs a 12th System when you have a heart like Cassie Sullivan’s?