“I can’t,” he said.
“Other hand.”
“If I move this hand, I’m afraid my stomach will fall out.”
I adjusted the butt of the rifle against my shoulder. I was sweating, shaking, trying to think. Either/or, Cassie. What are you going to do, either/or?
“I’m dying,” he said matter-of-factly. From this distance, his eyes were just pinpricks of reflected light. “So you can either finish me off or help me. I know you’re human—”
“How do you know?” I asked quickly, before he could die on me. If he was a real soldier, he might know how to tell the difference. It would be an extremely useful bit of information.
“Because if you weren’t, you would have shot me already.” He smiled again, his cheeks dimpled, and that’s when it hit me how young he was. Only a couple years older than me.
“See?” he said softly. “That’s how you know, too.”
“How I know what?” My eyes were tearing up. His crumpled-up body wiggled in my vision like an image in a fun-house mirror. But I didn’t dare release my grip on the rifle to rub my eyes.
“That I’m human. If I wasn’t, I would have shot you.”
That made sense. Or did it make sense because I wanted it to make sense? Maybe he dropped the gun to get me to drop mine, and once I did, the second gun he was hiding under his fatigues would come out and the bullet would say hello to my brain.
This is what the Others have done to us. You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope.
How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.
“I have to see your other hand,” I said.
“I told you—”
“I have to see your other hand!” My voice cracked then. Couldn’t help it.
He lost it. “Then you’re just going to have to shoot me, bitch! Just shoot me and get it over with!”
His head fell back against the wall, his mouth came open, and a terrible howl of anguish tumbled out and bounced from wall to wall and floor to ceiling and pounded against my ears. I didn’t know if he was screaming from the pain or the realization that I wasn’t going to save him. He had given in to hope, and that will kill you. It kills you before you die. Long before you die.
“If I show you,” he gasped, rocking back and forth against the bloody concrete, “if I show you, will you help me?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer because I didn’t have an answer. I was playing this one nanosecond at a time.
So he decided for me. He wasn’t going to let them win, that’s what I think now. He wasn’t going to stop hoping. If it killed him, at least he would die with a sliver of his humanity intact.
Grimacing, he slowly pulled out his left hand. Not much day left now, hardly any light at all, and what light there was seemed to be flowing away from its source, from him, past me and out the half-open door.
His hand was caked in half-dried blood. It looked like he was wearing a crimson glove.
The stunted light kissed his bloody hand and flicked along the length of something long and thin and metallic, and my finger yanked back on the trigger, and the rifle kicked against my shoulder hard, and the barrel bucked in my hand as I emptied the clip, and from a great distance I heard someone screaming, but it wasn’t him screaming, it was me screaming, me and everybody else who was left, if there was anybody left, all of us helpless, hopeless, stupid humans screaming, because we got it wrong, we got it all wrong, there was no alien swarm descending from the sky in their flying saucers or big metal walkers like something out of Star Wars or cute little wrinkly E.T.s who just wanted to pluck a couple of leaves, eat some Reese’s Pieces, and go home. That’s not how it ends.
That’s not how it ends at all.
It ends with us killing each other behind rows of empty beer coolers in the dying light of a late-summer day.
I went up to him before the last of the light was gone. Not to see if he was dead. I knew he was dead. I wanted to see what he was still holding in his bloody hand.
It was a crucifix.
THAT WAS THE LAST PERSON I’ve seen.
The leaves are falling heavy now, and the nights have turned cold. I can’t stay in these woods. No leaves for cover from the drones, can’t risk a campfire—I gotta get out of here.
I know where I have to go. I’ve known for a long time. I made a promise. The kind of promise you don’t break because, if you break it, you’ve broken part of yourself, maybe the most important part.
But you tell yourself things. Things like, I need to come up with something first. I can’t just walk into the lion’s den without a plan. Or, It’s hopeless, there’s no point anymore. You’ve waited too long.
Whatever the reason I didn’t leave before, I should have left the night I killed him. I don’t know how he was wounded; I didn’t examine his body or anything, and I should have, no matter how freaked out I was. I guess he could have gotten hurt in an accident, but the odds were better that someone—or something—had shot him. And if someone or something had shot him, that someone or something was still out there…unless the Crucifix Soldier had offed her/him/them/it. Or he was one of them and the crucifix was a trick…
Another way the Others mess with your head: the uncertain circumstances of your certain destruction. Maybe that will be the 5th Wave, attacking us from the inside, turning our own minds into weapons.
Maybe the last human being on Earth won’t die of starvation or exposure or as a meal for wild animals.
Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive.
Okay, that’s not someplace you want to go, Cassie.
Honestly, even though it’s suicide to stay here and I have a promise to keep, I don’t want to leave. These woods have been home for a long time. I know every path, every tree, every vine and bush. I lived in the same house for sixteen years and I can’t tell you exactly what my backyard looked like, but I can describe in detail every leaf and twig in this stretch of forest. I have no clue what’s out there beyond these woods and the two-mile stretch of interstate I hike every week to forage for supplies. I’m guessing a lot more of the same: abandoned towns reeking of sewage and rotting corpses, burned-out shells of houses, feral dogs and cats, pileups that stretch for miles on the highway. And bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.
I pack up. This tent has been my home for a long time, but it’s too bulky and I need to travel light. Just the essentials, with the Luger, the M16, the ammo, and my trusty bowie knife topping the list. Sleeping bag, first aid kit, five bottles of water, three boxes of Slim Jims, and some tins of sardines. I hated sardines before the Arrival. Now I’ve developed a real taste for them. First thing I look for when I hit a grocery store? Sardines.
Books? They’re heavy and take up room in my already bulging backpack. But I have a thing about books. So did my father. Our house was stacked floor to ceiling with every book he could find after the 3rd Wave took out more than 3.5 billion people. While the rest of us scrounged for potable water and food and stocked up on the weaponry for the last stand we were sure was coming, Daddy was out with my little brother’s Radio Flyer carting home the books.
The mind-blowing numbers didn’t faze him. The fact that we’d gone from seven billion strong to a couple hundred thousand in four months didn’t shake his confidence that our race would survive.
“We have to think about the future,” he insisted. “When this is over, we’ll have to rebuild nearly every aspect of civilization.”
Solar flashlight.
Toothbrush and paste. I’m determined, when the time comes, to at least go out with clean teeth.