The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(50)

The soldier reaches the back row. He’s wearing a white band on his sleeve with a big red cross on it.

“Hey, want a snack?” the soldier asks him.

The juice box and the chewy gooey treats in the shape of dinosaurs. The juice is cold. Cold. He hasn’t had a cold drink in forever.

The soldier slides into the seat beside him and stretches his long legs into the aisle. Sammy pushes the thin plastic straw into the juice box and sips, while his eyes fall to the still form of a girl huddled in the seat across from them. Her shorts are torn, her pink top is stained with soot, her shoes caked with mud. She is smiling in her sleep. A good dream.

“Do you know her?” the soldier asks Sammy.

Sammy shakes his head. She had not been in the refugee camp with him.

“Why do you have that big red cross?”

“I’m a medic. I help sick people.”

“Why did you take off your mask?”

“Don’t need it now,” the medic answers. He pops a handful of gummies into his mouth.

“Why not?”

“The plague’s back there.” The soldier jerks his thumb toward the back window, where the dust boiled up and Cassie shrunk to nothing, holding Bear.

“But Daddy said the plague is everywhere.”

The soldier shakes his head. “Not where we’re going,” he says.

“Where are we going?”

“Camp Haven.”

Against the grumbling engine and the whooshing wind through the open windows, it sounded like the soldier said Camp Heaven.

“Where?” Sammy asks.

“You’re going to love it.” The soldier pats his leg. “We’ve got it all fixed up for you.”

“For me?”

“For everyone.”

Cassie on the road, helping Bear wave good-bye.

“Then why didn’t you bring everyone?”

“We will.”

“When?”

“As soon as you guys are safe.” The soldier glances at the girl again. He stands up, pulls off his green jacket, and gently lets it fall over her.

“You’re the most important thing,” the soldier says, and his boyish face is set and serious. “You’re the future.”

The narrow dusty road becomes a wider paved road, and then the buses turn onto an even wider road. Their engines rev up to a guttural roar, and they shoot toward the sun on a highway cleared of wrecks and stalled cars. They’ve been dragged or pushed onto the roadsides to clear the way for the busloads of children.

The freckle-nosed medic comes down the aisle again, and this time he’s handing out bottles of water and telling them to close the windows because some of the children are cold and some are scared by the rush of the wind that sounds like a monster roaring. The air in the bus quickly grows stale and the temperature rises, making the children sleepy.

But Sam gave Bear to Cassie to keep her company, and he’s never slept without Bear, not ever, not since Bear came to him, anyway. He is tired, but he is also Bearless. The more he tries to forget Bear, the more he remembers him, the more he misses him, and the more he wishes he hadn’t left him behind.

The soldier offers him a bottle of water. He sees something is wrong, though Sammy smiles and pretends he doesn’t feel so empty and Bearless. The soldier sits beside him again, asks his name, and says his name is Parker.

“How much farther?” Sammy asks. It will be dark soon, and the dark is the worst time. Nobody told him, but he just knows that when they finally come it will be in the dark and it will be without warning, like the other waves, and there will be nothing you can do about it, it will just happen, like the TV winking out and the cars dying and the planes falling and the plague, the Pesky Ants, Cassie and Daddy called it, and his mommy wrapped in bloody sheets.

When the Others first came, his father told him the world had changed and nothing would be like before, and maybe they’d take him inside the mothership, maybe even take him on adventures in outer space. And Sammy couldn’t wait to go inside the mothership and blast off into space just like Luke Skywalker in his X-wing starfighter. It made every night feel like Christmas Eve. When morning came, he thought he would wake up and all the wonderful presents the Others had brought would be there.

But the only thing the Others brought was death.

They hadn’t come to give him anything. They had come to take everything away.

When would it—when would they—stop? Maybe never. Maybe the aliens wouldn’t stop until they had taken everything away, until the whole world was like Sammy, empty and alone and Bearless.

So he asks the soldier, “How much farther?”

“Not far at all,” the soldier called Parker answers. “You want me to stay here with you?”

“I’m not afraid,” Sammy says. You have to be brave now, Cassie told him the day his mother died. When he saw the empty bed and knew without asking that she was gone with Nan-Nan and all the others, the ones he knew and the ones he didn’t know, the ones they piled up and burned at the edge of town.

“You shouldn’t be,” the soldier says. “You’re perfectly safe now.”

That’s exactly what Daddy said on a night after the power died, after he boarded the windows and blocked off the doors, when the bad men with guns came out to steal things.