The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(64)

“You should have left him behind,” he says. His thin face is flushed with rage.

“There’s a reason we drill, Tank,” I remind him. “What if this had been the real thing?”

“Then I guess he’d be dead.”

“He’s a member of this squad, same as the rest of us.”

“You still don’t get it, do you, Zombie? It’s freakin’ nature. Whoever’s too sick or weak has to go.” He yanks off his boots, hurls them into his locker at the foot of the bunk. “If it was up to me, we’d throw all of ’em into the incinerator with the Teds.”

“Killing humans—isn’t that the aliens’ job?”

His face is beet red. He pounds the air with his fist. Flintstone makes a move to calm him down, but Tank waves him away.

“Whoever’s too weak, too sick, too old, too slow, too stupid, or too little—they GO!” Tank yells. “Anybody and everybody who can’t fight or support the fight—they’ll just drag us down.”

“They’re expendable,” I shoot back sarcastically.

“The chain is only as strong as the weakest link,” Tank roars. “It’s frickin’ nature, Zombie. Only the strong survive!”

“Hey, come on, man,” Flintstone says to him. “Zombie’s right. Nugget’s one of the crew.”

“You get off my case, Flint,” Tank shouts. “All of you! Like it’s my fault. Like I’m responsible for this shit!”

“Zombie, do something,” Dumbo begs me. “He’s going Dorothy.”

Dumbo’s referring to the recruit who snapped on the rifle range one day, turning her weapon on her own squad members. Two people were killed and three seriously injured before the drill sergeant popped her in the back of the head with his sidearm. Every week there’s a story about someone “going Dorothy,” or sometimes we say “off to see the wizard.” The pressure gets to be too much, and you break. Sometimes you turn on others. Sometimes you turn on yourself. Sometimes I question the wisdom of Central Command, putting high-powered automatic weapons into the hands of some seriously effed-up children.

“Oh, go screw yourself,” Tank snarls at Dumbo. “Like you know anything. Like anybody knows anything. What the hell are we doing here? You want to tell me, Dumbo? How about you, squad leader? Can you tell me? Somebody better tell me and they better tell me right now, or I’m taking this place out. I’m taking all of it and all of you out, because this is seriously messed up, man. We’re going to take them on, the things that killed seven billion of us? With what? With what?” Pointing the end of his rifle at Nugget, who’s clinging to my leg. “With that?” Laughing hysterically.

Everybody goes stiff when the gun comes up. I hold up my empty hands and say as calmly as I can, “Private, lower that weapon right now.”

“You’re not the boss of me! Nobody’s the boss of me!” Standing beside his bunk, the rifle at his hip. On the yellow brick road, all right.

My eyes slide over to Flintstone, who’s the closest to Tank, standing a couple of feet to his right. Flint answers with the tiniest of nods.

“Don’t you dumbasses ever wonder why they haven’t hit us yet?” Tank says. He’s not laughing now. He’s crying. “You know they can. You know they know we’re here, and you know they know what we’re doing here, so why are they letting us do it?”

“I don’t know, Tank,” I say evenly. “Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter anymore what the hell we do! It’s over, man. It’s done!” Swinging his gun around wildly. If it goes off…“And you and me and everybody else on this damn base are history! We’re—”

Flint’s on him, ripping the rifle from his hand and shoving him down hard. Tank’s head catches the edge of his bunk when he falls. He curls into a ball, holding his head in both hands, screaming at the top of his lungs, and when his lungs are empty, he fills them and lets loose again. Somehow it’s worse than waving around the loaded M16. Poundcake races into the latrine to hide in one of the stalls. Dumbo covers his big ears and scoots to the head of his bunk. Oompa has sidled closer to me, right next to Nugget, who’s holding on to my legs with both hands now and peeking around my hip at Tank writhing on the barracks floor. The only one unaffected by Tank’s meltdown is Teacup, the seven-year-old. She’s sitting on her bunk staring stoically at him, like every night Tank falls to the floor and screams as if he’s being murdered.

And it hits me: This is murder, what they’re doing to us. A very slow, very cruel murder, killing us from our souls outward, and I remember the commander’s words: It isn’t about destroying our capability to fight so much as crushing our will to fight.

It is hopeless. It is crazy. Tank is the sane one because he sees it clearly.

Which is why he has to go.

47

THE SENIOR DRILL INSTRUCTOR agrees with me, and the next morning Tank is gone, taken to the hospital for a full psych eval. His bunk remains empty for a week, while our squad, one man short, falls further and further behind in points. We’ll never graduate, never trade in our blue jumpsuits for real uniforms, never venture beyond the electric fence and razor wire to prove ourselves, to pay back a fraction of what we’ve lost.