The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(68)

“Pull back! Pull back! She’s gonna blow! SHE’S GONNA BLOW!”

Ringer goes right, and I go left toward a terraced garden of fatigues identical to the ones I’m wearing, rifles pointed at my head, the front row kneeling, back row standing, and then Ringer hits the detonator and the chopper hops five feet in the air with an emphatic whuuu-uuump. The concussion shoves me right into the line of soldiers, the heat from the blast singeing their faces and burning away the hairs on the back of my neck. I bowl into the pack while the pack reverts to its instincts, just like Ringer said it would, everybody flattening on the tarmac and covering their heads with their hands.

You’ll want to run but you gotta hold, Ringer told me back at the cave. Once the chopper blows, they’ll lose you, so you have to wait for me.

So here I am, just another recruit lying on her belly like the hundred others around her, hands over her head, her cheek pressed against the freezing concrete. Dress just like ’em, look just like ’em, act just like ’em: It’s Vosch’s own game turned against him.

People are screaming orders but nobody can hear them over the sirens. I wait until somebody taps me on the shoulder, but I’m no higher than hands-and-knees when Ringer sets off the IED somewhere in the vicinity of the hangar fifty yards away. That sets off full-panic mode. Any semblance of order breaks down as troops run for the nearest cover. I take off toward the control tower and the cluster of white buildings beyond it.

A hand grabs my shoulder, whips me around, and then I’m face-to-face with some random teenager who, as bad luck would have it, I’m going to kill.

“Who the f*ck are you?” he screams in my face.

His body stiffens, welcoming the bullet. Not my bullet. I don’t even have the gun out of the holster. The kill belongs to Ringer, Vosch’s inhuman human firing from half a football field away. The kid’s dead before he hits the ground. I take off again.

I turn back once, at the base of the control tower. Searchlights crisscrossing the field, the chopper burning, squads running willy-nilly, Humvees screeching in every direction. Chaos is what Ringer promised and chaos is what we got.

I sling the rifle into my hands and sprint toward the white buildings, heading for the command center located in the middle of the complex. There I’ll find (I hope) the key that will open the lock that bars the door that leads to the room that will keep my baby brother safe.

As I fall in behind a cluster of recruits crowding the door into the first building, Ringer sets off the second bomb. Somebody yells Jesus Christ! and the logjam breaks. We all tumble inside like clowns bursting from the car at the circus.

There’s a part of me that hopes I find him first. Not Evan. Ringer’s creator. I’ve invested a lot of time imagining what I’d do to him—how I’d pay him back for the blood of the seven billion. Most of it’s too gross to talk about.

I’m moving through the lobby of the main administration building. Huge banners hang from the ceiling: WE ARE HUMANITY and WE ARE ONE. A sign that says UNITY and another that screams COURAGE. The largest spans the length of an entire wall, VINCIT QUI PATITUR. I run beneath it.

A red light spins in the corridor on the other side of the lobby. I jump when a voice booms from the ceiling: “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. REPEAT: GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA. REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO REPORT . . .”

Through the door at the end of the hall. Up the stairs straight ahead to the next door. Which is locked. With a keypad. I press my back against the wall beside the pad and wait. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three . . . While I’m counting, the third bomb detonates outside, a muffled pop! like someone coughing in another room. Then I hear the pop-pop, pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire. At one thousand eight, the door bursts open and a squad lumbers through. Right past me, not even a backward glance. Now, that’s too easy; I’m using up my quota of good luck way too soon.

I duck through the doorway and jog down another corridor, which is disconcertingly identical to the first corridor. Same spinning red light, same high-pitched UUUH-UHHH of the siren, same annoying Siri-on-dope voice, “GENERAL ORDER FOUR IS NOW IN EFFECT. YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES TO REPORT TO YOUR DESIGNATED SECURITY AREA . . .” It’s like a dream from which you can’t wake up. At the end of this hall is an identical door with an identical keypad. The only difference is the window right beside this door.

I open up with the M16 at full stride. The glass explodes and I dive through the blasted-out opening without missing a step. And Defiance shall be my name! Back outside in the fresh, clean Canadian air, running across the narrow strip of land that separates the buildings. A voice springs from the dark, hollering, “Halt!” I fire in the voice’s general direction. I don’t even look. Then, off to my left, in the vicinity of the newly repaired armory, the fourth bomb detonates. A chopper roars right over my head, sweeping its lights back and forth, and I slam into the side of the building and press my body flat against the steel-reinforced concrete.

The chopper moves off and I move on, around the side of the building to the sliver of a path that cuts down its length, wall on one side, a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire on the other. There should be a padlocked gate at the far end.

So the lock—I shoot it off, I said to Ringer back in the caves.