The Last Star (The 5th Wave, #3)(83)

Breast pocket. Right where he always kept it. The display screen swarms with green dots, a three-squad cluster’s worth heading straight toward me. I highlight all of them—every recruit on the base, over five thousand people, and the green button beneath my thumb flashes, and this is why I didn’t want to come back. I knew what would happen. I knew:

I’ll kill until I lose count. I’ll kill until counting doesn’t matter.

I’m staring at the screen lit up with five thousand tiny pulsing lights, each a hapless victim, each a human being.

Telling myself I don’t have a choice.

Telling myself I’m not his creation. I’m not what he has made me.


ZOMBIE

ON OUR SEVENTEENTH PASS around the perimeter—or maybe the eighteenth; I’ve lost count—the lights of the air base abruptly blaze back on, and across from me, Sergeant Sprinter barks into her headset, “Status?”

We’ve been circling for over an hour and our fuel must be low. We’ll have to set down soon; the only question is where, inside the base or out. Right now we’re approaching the river again. I expect the pilot to change course, bring us over some land, but she doesn’t.

Megan is nestled under my arm, her head tucked beneath my chin. Nugget presses against the other arm, watching the base below. His sister is down there somewhere. Possibly alive, probably dead. The restoration of the lights is a bad sign.

We bank over the river, keeping the base on our left, and I can see other choppers circling over it, too, waiting for the all clear to land. Their spotlights cut through the predawn mist, pillars of glistening white. We’re over the river now, swollen from an early spring thaw.

Above us, the sky lightens to gray and the stars begin to fade.

This is it. Green Day. The day the bombs fall. I look for the mothership but can’t spot it in the brightening sky.

Conversation with the ground over, the sergeant pulls off her headset. Her eyes on my face, her hand resting on the butt of her sidearm. Nugget stiffens beside me; he knows what’s coming before I do; his hands claw at his harness, though there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

The orders have changed. She draws her weapon and levels it at his head.

I throw myself in front of him. Finally the circle comes round. Time to pay the debt.


CASSIE

THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR behind me, soldiers flood into the room. They quickly spread out shoulder to shoulder from wall to wall, in two rows, the closest one kneeling, two dozen rifles aimed at a single curly-headed, crooked-nosed target. I turn and face them. They don’t know me, but I know them. I recognize each and every face of the ones who have come to kill me.

I know what they remember and what they can’t. I hold them inside me. It’s like I’m about to be murdered by a human mosaic of myself. Makes you wonder: Is this murder? Or suicide?

I close my eyes. I’m sorry, Sams. I tried.

He is with me now, my brother; I feel him.

And that’s good. At least when I die, I will not be alone.


RINGER

THE STAIRWAY DOOR slams open and they pound into the hall, weapons drawn. Fingers tighten on triggers.

Too late for them.

Too late for me.

I press the button.


ZOMBIE

ACROSS THE AISLE, the sergeant jerks in her seat; her beautiful dark eyes roll back; her skull pops against the bulkhead; and then she slumps against her harness. Megan bolts upright with a startled cry. Every recruit in the hold has followed the sergeant’s lead.

Including the pilot.

The chopper’s nose dips, whipping hard to the right and slamming me into Nugget, who’s not wasting any time unbuckling himself. The damn kid gets everything before I do. I play a fast, desperate game of slappies with Megan, struggling to free her first. Nugget’s hurled from his seat—I catch hold of his sleeve and yank him into my chest. Then Megan’s loose but I’m not, holding on to her with one hand and Nugget with the other.

“The river!” I scream at him.

He nods. He’s the coolest one among us. His little fingers fly over the buckles to set me free.

The chopper barrels toward the water. “Hang on to me!” I shout. “Don’t let go!”

We’re falling sideways. The river is a featureless black wall rushing toward the open hatch on Nugget’s side.

“ONE!”

Nugget closes his eyes.

“TWO!”

Megan screams.

“THREE!”

I swivel out of the seat, a kid under each arm, and drop feetfirst toward the opening.


CASSIE

THE SOLDIERS FALL to the ground. One second they’re up, the next they’re down. Somebody’s fried their brains. I’m not sure how, but I’m pretty sure who.

I turn away. I’ve seen enough bodies to last my ten thousand lifetimes, from my mother drowning in her own blood to my father writhing gut-shot in the dirt, from the ones before and the ones after and the ones in between, my dead and their dead, our dead.

Yeah, I’ve seen enough.

Plus, those kids who just fell, they’re my bodies, too, in a way. It’s like looking down at your own corpse. Times twelve.

I step inside the pod. I lower myself into the chair. I buckle myself in, pulling tight the straps that cross my chest. In my hand a dead man’s thumb. In my pocket a green capsule encased in plastic. In my head ten thousand voices that strangely sing as one. And in my heart, a stillness, a quiet place untouched by anything, beyond space, unbounded by time.