G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2013 by Rick Yancey.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yancey, Richard. The 5th Wave / Rick Yancey. pages cm
Summary: “Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them”—Provided by publisher.
[1. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. War—Fiction. 4. Science fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Fifth Wave. PZ7.Y19197Aah 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012047622
ISBN: 978-1-101-59896-2
For Sandy,
whose dreams inspire
and whose love endures
IF ALIENS EVER VISIT US, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.
—Stephen Hawking
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Intrusion: 1995
I: The Last Historian
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
II: Wonderland
25
26
27
28
29
30
III: Silencer
31
IV: Mayfly
32
33
34
35
36
V: The Winnowing
37
38
39
40
41
VI: The Human Clay
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
VII: The Heart to Kill
53
54
55
VIII: The Spirit of Vengeance
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
IX: A Flower to the Rain
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
X: A Thousand Ways
78
79
XI: The Infinite Sea
80
XII: Because of Kistner
81
82
XIII: The Black Hole
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
Acknowledgments
The Monstrumologist
THERE WILL BE NO AWAKENING.
The sleeping woman will feel nothing the next morning, only a vague sense of unease and the unshakable feeling that someone is watching her. Her anxiety will fade in less than a day and will soon be forgotten.
The memory of the dream will linger a little longer.
In her dream, a large owl perches outside the window, staring at her through the glass with huge, white-rimmed eyes.
She will not awaken. Neither will her husband beside her. The shadow falling over them will not disturb their sleep. And what the shadow has come for—the baby within the sleeping woman—will feel nothing. The intrusion breaks no skin, violates not a single cell of her or the baby’s body.
It is over in less than a minute. The shadow withdraws.
Now it is only the man, the woman, the baby inside her, and the intruder inside the baby, sleeping.
The woman and man will awaken in the morning, the baby a few months later when he is born.
The intruder inside him will sleep on and not wake for several years, when the unease of the child’s mother and the memory of that dream have long since faded.
Five years later, at a visit to the zoo with her child, the woman will see an owl identical to the one in the dream. Seeing the owl is unsettling for reasons she cannot understand.
She is not the first to dream of owls in the dark.
She will not be the last.
ALIENS ARE STUPID.
I’m not talking about real aliens. The Others aren’t stupid. The Others are so far ahead of us, it’s like comparing the dumbest human to the smartest dog. No contest.
No, I’m talking about the aliens inside our own heads.
The ones we made up, the ones we’ve been making up since we realized those glittering lights in the sky were suns like ours and probably had planets like ours spinning around them. You know, the aliens we imagine, the kind of aliens we’d like to attack us, human aliens. You’ve seen them a million times. They swoop down from the sky in their flying saucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they march across the countryside in huge machines that look like mechanical spiders, ray guns blasting away, and always, always, humanity sets aside its differences and bands together to defeat the alien horde. David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy.