The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(82)

“All right.” Very calm now. As cool as I’m hot. “I’ll do it myself.”

She whips the blade around to the back of her neck, bowing her head low. I yank the knife from her hand. Enough.

“Stand down, Private.” I hurl her knife into the deep shadows across the room and get up. I’m shaking, every part of me, voice too. “You want to play the odds, that’s cool. Stay here until I get back. Better yet, just waste me now. Maybe my alien masters have figured out a way to hide my infestation from you. And after you’ve done me, go back across the street and kill them all, put a bullet in Teacup’s head. She could be the enemy, right? So blow her frigging head off! It’s the only answer, right? Kill everyone or risk being killed by anyone.”

Ringer doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything, either, for a very long time. Snow whips through the broken window, the flakes a deep crimson color, reflecting the smoldering crumbs of the tanker.

“Are you sure you don’t play chess?” she asks. She pulls the rifle back into her lap, runs her index finger along the trigger. “Turn your back on me, Zombie.”

We’re at the end of the dark path now, and it’s a dead end. I’m out of anything that passes for a cogent argument, so I come back with the first thing that pops into my head.

“My name is Ben.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Sucky name. Zombie’s better.”

“What your name?” Keeping at it.

“That’s one of the things that doesn’t matter. Hasn’t for a long time, Zombie.” Finger caressing the trigger slowly. Very slowly. It’s hypnotic, dizzying.

“How about this?” Searching for a way out. “I cut out the tracker, and you promise not to waste me.” This way I keep her on my side, because I’d rather take on a dozen snipers than one Dorothied Ringer. In my mind’s eye, I can see my head shattering like one of those plywood people on the firing range.

She cocks her head, and the side of her mouth twitches in an almost-but-not-quite smile. “Check.”

I give her back an honest-to-goodness smile, the old Ben Parish smile, the one that got me practically everything I wanted. Well, not practically; I’m being modest.

“Is that check as in yes, or are you giving me a chess lesson?”

She sets her gun aside and turns her back to me. Bows her head. Pulls her silky black hair away from her neck.

“Both.”

Pop-pop-pop goes Poundcake’s gun. And the sniper answers. Their jam plays in the background as I kneel behind Ringer with my knife. Part of me more than willing to humor her if it keeps me—and the rest of the unit—alive. The other part screaming silently, Aren’t you, like, giving a mouse a cookie? What will she demand next—a physical inspection of my cerebral cortex?

“Relax, Zombie,” she says, quiet and calm, the old Ringer again. “If the trackers aren’t ours, it’s probably not a good idea to have them inside us. If they are ours, Dr. Pam can always implant us again when we get back. Agreed?”

“Checkmate.”

“Check and mate,” she corrects me.

Her neck is long and graceful and very cold beneath my fingers as I explore the area beneath the scar for the lump. My hand shakes. Just humor her. It probably means a court-martial and the rest of your life peeling potatoes, but at least you’ll be alive.

“Be gentle,” she whispers.

I take a deep breath and draw the tip of the blade along the tiny scar. Her blood wells up bright red, shockingly red against her pearly skin. She doesn’t even flinch, but I have to ask: “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I like it a lot.”

I tease the implant from her neck with the tip of the blade. She grunts softly. The pellet clings to the metal, sealed within a droplet of blood.

“So,” she says, turning around. The almost-smile is almost there. “How was it for you?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I’ve lost the ability to talk. The knife falls from my hand. I’m two feet away looking right at her, but her face is gone. I can’t see it through my eyepiece.

Ringer’s entire head is lit up in a blinding green fire.

60

MY FIRST REACTION is to yank off the hardware, but I don’t. I’m paralyzed with shock. A shudder of revulsion next. Then panic. Followed closely by confusion. Ringer’s head has lit up like a Christmas tree, bright enough to be seen a mile away. The green fire sparks and swirls, so intense it burns an afterimage in my left eye.

“What is it?” she demands. “What happened?”

“You lit up. As soon as I pulled out the tracker.”

We stare at each other for a long couple of minutes. Then she says, “Unclean glows green.”

I’m already on my feet, M16 in my hands, backing toward the door. And outside, beneath the sound-deadening snowfall, Poundcake and the sniper, trading barbs. Unclean glows green. Ringer doesn’t make a move for the rifle lying next to her. Through my right eye, she’s normal. Through the left, she burns like a Roman candle.

“Think this through, Zombie,” she says. “Think this through.” Holding up her empty hands, scratched and scuffed from her fall, one caked in dried blood. “I lit up after you pulled out the implant. The eyepieces don’t pick up infestations. They react when there’s no implant.”