The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(19)

“You dig this big hole. Put a warhead at the bottom. Fill the hole with water and cap it off with a few hundred tons of steel. The explosion turns the water instantly into steam, which shoots the steel into space at six times the speed of sound.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Somebody should definitely do that. Is that why you’re stalking me? You want me to help you build a nuclear steam cannon?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“No.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“If you had twenty minutes to live, what would you do?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But it wouldn’t have anything to do with you.”

“How come?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He probably figured it wasn’t something he wanted to hear. “What if I was the last person on Earth?”

“If you were the last person on Earth, I wouldn’t be here to do anything with you.”

“Okay. What if we were the last two people on Earth?”

“Then you’d still end up being the last, because I’d kill myself.”

“You don’t like me.”

“Really, Crisco? What was your first clue?”

“Say we saw them, right here, right now, coming down to finish us off. What would you do?”

“I don’t know. Ask them to kill you first. What’s the point, Crisco?”

“Are you a virgin?” he asked suddenly.

I stared at him. He was totally serious. But most thirteen-year-old boys are when it comes to hormonal issues.

“Screw you,” I said, and brushed past him, heading back toward the camp.

Bad choice of words. He trotted after me and not one strand of plastered-down hair moved as he ran. It was like a shiny black helmet.

“I’m serious, Cassie,” he puffed. “These are the times when any night could be your last night.”

“Dork, it was that way before they came, too.”

He grabbed my wrist. Tugged me around. Pushed his wide, greasy face close to mine. I had an inch on him, but he had twenty pounds on me.

“Do you really want to die without knowing what it’s like?”

“How do you know I don’t?” I said, yanking free. “Don’t ever touch me again.” Changing the subject.

“Nobody’s gonna know,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

He tried to grab me again. I slapped his hand away with my left and popped him hard in the nose with the open palm of my right. It opened up a faucet of bright red blood. It ran into his mouth, and he gagged.

“Bitch,” he gasped. “At least you’ve got someone. At least everybody you ever frigging knew in your life isn’t dead.”

He busted out in tears. Fell onto the path and gave in to it, the bigness of it, the big Buick that’s parked over you, the horrible feeling that, as bad as it’s been, it’s going to get worse.

Ah, crap.

I sat on the path next to him. Told him to lean his head back. He complained that made the blood run down his throat.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he begged. “I’ll lose my cred.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked.

“Girl Scouts.”

“There’s badges for that?”

“There’s badges for everything.”

Actually, it was seven years of karate classes. I dropped karate last year. Don’t remember my reasons now. They seemed like good ones at the time.

“I’m one, too,” he said.

“What?”

He spat a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. “A virgin.”

What a shock.

“What makes you think I’m a virgin?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t have hit me if you weren’t.”

14

ON OUR SIXTH DAY in camp, I saw a drone for the first time.

Glittering gray in the bright afternoon sky.

There was a lot of shouting and running around, people grabbing guns, waving their hats and shirts or just spazzing in general: crying, jumping, hugging, high-fiving one another. They thought they were rescued. Hutchfield and Brogden tried to calm everybody down, but weren’t very successful. The drone zipped across the sky, disappeared behind the trees, then came back, slower this time. From the ground, it looked like a blimp. Hutchfield and Dad huddled in the doorway of the barracks, watching it, swapping a pair of binoculars back and forth.

“No wings. No markings. And did you see that first pass? Mach 2 at least. Unless we’ve launched some kind of classified aircraft, no way this thing is terrestrial.” As he spoke, Hutchfield was popping his fist up and down in the dirt, beating out a rhythm to match the words.

Dad agreed. We were herded into the barracks. Dad and Hutchfield hovered in the doorway, still swapping the binoculars back and forth.

“Is it the aliens?” Sammy asked. “Are they coming, Cassie?”

“Shhh.”

I looked over and saw Crisco watching me. Twenty minutes, he mouthed.

“If they come, I’m going to beat them up,” Sammy whispered. “I’m going to karate kick them and I’m going to kill them all!”