The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(65)

We don’t talk about Tank. It’s as if Tank never existed. We have to believe the system is perfect, and Tank is a flaw in the system.

Then one morning in the P&D hangar, Dumbo motions me over to his table. Dumbo is training to be the squad medic, so he has to dissect designated corpses, usually Teds, to learn about human anatomy. When I come over, he doesn’t say anything, but nods at the body lying in front of him.

It’s Tank.

We stare at his face for a long moment. His eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He’s so fresh, it’s unnerving. Dumbo glances around the hangar to make sure no one can overhear us, and then whispers, “Don’t tell Flint.”

I nod. “What happened?”

Dumbo shakes his head. He’s sweating badly under the protective hood. “That’s the really freaky thing, Zombie. I can’t find anything.”

I look back down at Tank. He isn’t pale. His skin is slightly pink without a mark on it. How did Tank die? Did he go Dorothy in the psych ward, maybe overdose himself on some drugs?

“What if you cut him open?” I ask.

“I’m not cutting Tank open,” he says. He’s looking at me as if I just told him to jump off a cliff.

I nod. Stupid idea. Dumbo is no doctor; he’s a twelve-year-old kid. I glance around the hangar again. “Get him off this table,” I say. “I don’t want anyone else to see him.” Including me.

Tank’s body is stacked with the others by the hangar doors to be disposed. He’s loaded onto the transport for the final leg of his journey to the incinerators, where he will be consumed in fire, his ashes mixing with the gray smoke and carried aloft in a column of superheated air, eventually to settle over us in particles too fine to see or feel. He’ll stay with us—on us—until we shower that night, washing what’s left of Tank into the drains connected to the pipes connected to the septic tanks, where he will mix with our excrement before leaching into the ground.

48

TANK’S REPLACEMENT ARRIVES two days later. We know he’s coming, because the night before Reznik announces it during Q&A. He won’t tell us anything about him, except the name: Ringer. After he leaves, everybody in the squad is jacked up; Reznik must have named him Ringer for a reason.

Nugget comes over to my bunk and asks, “What’s a ringer?”

“Someone who you slip into a team to give it an edge,” I explain. “Somebody who’s really good.”

“Marksmanship,” Flintstone guesses. “That’s where we’re weakest. Poundcake’s our best, and I’m okay, but you and Dumbo and Teacup suck. And Nugget can’t even shoot.”

“Come over here and say I suck,” Teacup shouts. Always looking for a fight. If I were in charge, I’d give Teacup a rifle and a couple of clips and let her loose on every Ted in a hundred-mile radius.

After the prayer, Nugget twists and squirms against my back until I can’t take it anymore and hiss at him to go back to his bunk.

“Zombie, it’s her.”

“What’s her?”

“Ringer! Cassie is Ringer!”

It takes me a couple of seconds to remember who Cassie is. Oh, God, not this shit again.

“I don’t think Ringer is your sister.”

“You don’t know she isn’t, either.”

It almost comes out of me: Don’t be a dumbass, kid. Your sister isn’t coming for you because she’s dead. But I hold it in. Cassie is Nugget’s silver locket. What he clings to because if he lets go, there’s nothing to keep the tornado from taking him off to Oz like the other Dorothys in camp. It’s why a kid army makes sense. Adults don’t waste their time on magical thinking. They dwell on the same inconvenient truths that landed Tank on the dissection table.

Ringer isn’t at roll call the next morning. And he isn’t on the morning run or at chow. We gear up for the range, check our weapons, head out across the yard. It’s a clear day, but very cold. Nobody says much. We’re all wondering where the new kid is.

Nugget sees Ringer first, standing off in the distance on the firing range, and right away we can see Flintstone was right: Ringer is a hell of a marksman. The target pops out of the tall brown grass and pop-pop! the head of the target explodes. Then a different target, but the same result. Reznik is standing off to one side, operating the controls on the targets. He sees us coming and starts hitting buttons fast. The targets rocket out of the grass, one right after the other, and this Ringer kid takes them out before they can get upright with one shot. Beside me, Flintstone gives a long, appreciative whistle.

“He’s good.”

Nugget gets it before the rest of us. Something about the shoulders or maybe the hips, but he goes, “It’s not a he,” before he takes off across the field toward the solitary figure cradling the rifle that smokes in the freezing air.

She turns before he reaches her, and Nugget pulls up, first confused, then disappointed. Apparently, Ringer is not his sister.

Weird that she looked taller from a distance. Around Dumbo’s height, but thinner than Dumbo—and older. I’m guessing fifteen or sixteen, with a pixie face and dark, deep-set eyes, flawless pale skin, and straight black hair. It’s the eyes that get you first. The kind of eyes you search to find something there and you come away with only two possibilities: Either what’s there is so deep you can’t see it, or there’s nothing there at all.