The 5th Wave (The Fifth Wave #1)(95)

None of them are older than fourteen. All of them are wearing these weird silver eye patches. Some kind of night vision technology? If so, it makes Evan’s accomplishment all the more impressive, in a sickening sort of way.

Evan’s awake when I get back. Sitting up against the fallen tree. Pale, shivering, eyes sunk back in his head.

“They were kids,” I tell him. “They were just kids.”

I kick my way into the dead brush behind him and empty out my stomach.

Then I feel better.

I go back to him. I’ve decided not to kill him. Yet. He’s still worth more to me alive. If he is a Silencer, he may know what happened to my brother. So I grab the first aid kit and kneel between his spread legs.

“Okay, time to operate.”

I find a pack of sterile wipes in the kit. Silently, he watches me clean his victim’s blood off the knife.

I swallow hard, tasting the fresh vomit. “I’ve never done this before,” I say. Kind of obvious thing to say, but it feels like I’m talking to a stranger.

He nods, rolls onto his stomach. I pull the shirt away, exposing his bottom half.

I’ve never seen a na**d guy before. Now here I am kneeling between his legs, though I can’t see his total nakedness. Just the back half. Strange, I never thought my first time with a na**d guy would be like this. Well, I guess that isn’t so strange.

“You want another pain pill?” I ask. “It’s cold and my hands are shaking…”

“No pill,” he grunts, face tucked into the crook of his arm.

I work slowly at first, gingerly poking into the wounds with the tip of the knife, but I quickly learn that isn’t the best way to dig metal out of human—or maybe nonhuman—flesh: You just prolong the agony.

His butt takes the longest. Not because I’m lingering. There’s just so much shrapnel. He doesn’t squirm. He barely flinches. Sometimes he goes, “Oooh!” Sometimes he sighs.

I lift the jacket off his back. Not too many wounds here, and mostly concentrated along the lower part. Stiff fingers, sore wrists, I force myself to be quick—quick but careful.

“Hang in there,” I murmur. “Almost done.”

“Me too.”

“We don’t have enough bandages.”

“Just get the worst.”

“Infection…?”

“There’s some penicillin tablets in the kit.”

He rolls back over as I dig out the pills. He takes two with a sip of water. I sit back, sweating, though it isn’t much above freezing.

“Why kids?” I ask.

“I didn’t know they were kids.”

“Maybe not, but they were heavily armed and knew what they were doing. Their problem was, so did you. You must have forgotten to mention your commando training.”

“Cassie, if we can’t trust each other—”

“Evan, we can’t trust each other.” I want to crack him in the head and burst into tears at the same time. I’ve reached the point of being tired of being tired. “That’s the whole problem.”

Overhead, the sun has broken free from the clouds, exposing us to a bright blue sky.

“Alien clone children?” I guess. “America scraping the bottom of the conscription barrel? Seriously, why are kids running around with automatic weapons and grenades?”

He shakes his head. Sips some water. Winces. “Maybe I will take another one of those pain pills.”

“Vosch said just the kids. They’re snatching children to turn them into an army?”

“Maybe Vosch isn’t one of them. Maybe the army took the kids.”

“Then why did he kill everybody else? Why did he put a bullet in my dad’s head? And if he isn’t one of them, where’d he get the Eye? Something’s wrong here, Evan. And you know what’s going on. We both know you do. Why can’t you just tell me? You’ll trust me with a gun and to pull shrapnel out of your ass, but you won’t trust me with the truth?”

He stares at me for a long moment. Then he says, “I wish you hadn’t cut your hair.”

I would have lost it, but I’m too cold, too nauseated, and too strung out. “I swear to God, Evan Walker,” I say in a dead voice, “if I didn’t need you, I would kill you right now.”

“I’m glad you need me, then.”

“And if I find out you’re lying to me about the most important part, I will kill you.”

“What’s the most important part?”

“About being human.”

“I’m as human as you are, Cassie.”

He pulls my hand into his. Both our hands are stained with blood. Mine with his. His with that of a boy not much older than my brother. How many people has this hand killed?

“Is that what we are?” I ask. I’m about to lose it big-time. I can’t trust him. I have to trust him. I can’t believe. I have to believe. Is this the Others’ ultimate goal, the wave to end all waves, stripping our humanity down to its bare, animalistic bones, until we’re nothing but soulless predators doing their dirty work for them, as solitary as sharks and with as much compassion?

He notices the cornered-animal look in my eyes. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to be a shark,” I whisper.