The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(58)

Reznik doesn’t give a crap about what I think. That’s the other thing it took me a while to understand: They not only don’t care what I think—they don’t want me to think.

His face is so close to mine, I can smell his breath. It smells like spearmint.

“What is it, sweetheart? Are you tired? Do you want nappy-time?”

Do I have at least one push-up left in me? If I can do just one more, I won’t be a total loser. I press my forehead against the asphalt and close my eyes. There is a place I go, a space I found inside me after Commander Vosch showed me the final battlefield, a center of complete stillness that isn’t touched by fatigue or hopelessness or anger or anything brought on by the coming of the Big Green Eye in the Sky. In that place, I have no name. I’m not Ben or Zombie—I just am. Whole, untouchable, unbroken. The last living person in the universe who contains all human potential—including the potential to give the biggest ass**le on Earth just one more.

And I do.

43

NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING special about me.

Reznik is an equal-opportunity sadist. He treats the six other recruits of Squad 53 with the same savage indecency. Flintstone, who’s my age, with his big head and bushy unibrow; Tank, the skinny, quick-tempered farm boy; Dumbo, the twelve-year-old with the big ears and quick smile that disappeared quickly during the first week of basic; Poundcake, the eight-year-old who never talks, but who’s our best shot by far; Oompa, the chubby kid with the crooked teeth who’s last in every drill but first in chow line; and finally the youngest, Teacup, the meanest seven-year-old you’ll ever meet, the most gung ho of all of us, who worships the ground Reznik walks on, no matter how much she’s screamed at or kicked around.

I don’t know their real names. We don’t talk about who we were before or how we came to the camp or what happened to our families. None of that matters. Like Ben Parish, those guys—the pre-Flintstone, pre-Tank, pre-Dumbo, etc.—they’re dead. Tagged, bagged, and told we are the last, best hope for humanity, we are the new wine poured into old skins. We bonded through hatred—hatred of the infesteds and their alien masters, sure, but also our fierce, uncompromising, unadulterated hatred of Sergeant Reznik, our rage made all the more intense by the fact that we could never express it.

Then the kid named Nugget was assigned to Barracks 10, and one of us, like an idiot, couldn’t hold it inside any longer, and all the bottled-up fury exploded free.

I’ll give you one guess who that idiot was.

I couldn’t believe it when that kid showed up at roll call. Five years old tops, lost in his white jumpsuit, shivering in the cold morning air of the yard, looking like he was going to be sick, obviously scared out of his mind. And here comes Reznik with his hat pulled low over his beady eyes and his boots shined to a mirror finish and his voice perpetually hoarse from screaming, shoving his pasty, pockmarked grill down into the poor kid’s face. I don’t know how the little squirt kept from soiling himself.

Reznik always starts out slow and soft and builds to a big finish, the better to lull you into thinking he might be an actual human being.

“Well, what do we have here? What have they sent us from central casting—is this a hobbit? Are you a magical creature from a storybook realm come to enchant me with your dark magic?”

Reznik was just getting warmed up, and already the kid was fighting back tears. Fresh off the bus after going through God-knows-what on the outside, and here’s this crazy middle-aged man pouncing on him. I wondered how he was processing Reznik—or any of this craziness they call Camp Haven. I’m still trying to deal, and I’m a lot older than five.

“Oh, this is cute. This is so precious, I think I might cry! Dear God, I’ve dunked chicken nuggets bigger than you in my little plastic cup of spicy barbecue sauce!”

Ratcheting up the volume as he brought his face closer to the kid’s. And the kid holding up surprisingly well, flinching, eyes darting back and forth, but not moving an inch when I knew he must be thinking about taking off across the yard, just running until he couldn’t run anymore.

“What’s your story, Private Nugget? Have you lost your mommy? Do you want to go home? I know! Let’s close our eyes and make a wish and maybe Mommy will come and take us all home! Wouldn’t that be nice, Private Nugget?”

And the kid nodded eagerly, like Reznik had asked the question he’d been waiting to hear. Finally, somebody got to the point! Lifting up his big teddy-bear eyes into the drill sergeant’s beady ones…it was enough to break your heart. It was enough to make you scream.

But you don’t scream. You stand perfectly still, eyes forward, hands at your sides, chest out, heart breaking, watching it out of the corner of your eye while something comes loose inside you, uncoiling like a rattlesnake striking. Something you’ve been holding in for a long time as the pressure built. You don’t know when it’s going to blow, you can’t predict it, and when it happens there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

“Leave him alone.”

Reznik whipped around. No one made a sound, but you could hear the inward gasp. On the other side of the line, Flintstone’s eyes were wide; he couldn’t believe what I just did. I couldn’t, either.

“Who said that? Which one of you scum-sucking maggots just signed his own death warrant?”

Striding down the line, face red with fury, hands clinched into fists, knuckles bone white.