“A third of the surviving population. Planted here to eradicate those who survived the first three waves. You. Me. Your team members. All of us. If you have any fear, as poor Tank did, that a fifth wave is coming, you can put it aside. There will be no fifth wave. They have no intention of leaving their mothership until the human race is exterminated.”
“Is that why they haven’t…?”
“Attacked us again? We think so. It seems their foremost desire is to preserve the planet for colonization. Now we are in a war of attrition. Our resources are limited; they can’t last forever. We know it. They know it. Cut off from supplies, with no means to marshal any significant fighting force, eventually this camp—and any others out there like it—will wither and die, like a vine cut off from its roots.”
Weird. He’s still smiling. Like something about this doomsday scenario turns him on.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“The only thing we can do, Sergeant. We take the battle to them.”
The way he says it: no doubt, no fear, no hopelessness. We take the battle to them. That’s why he’s the commander. Standing over me, smiling, confident, his chiseled features reminding me of some ancient statue, noble, wise, strong. He is the rock against which the alien waves crash, and he is unbroken. We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We’re pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. He is humanity, the beating, unbeaten, invincible heart of it. In that moment, if Commander Vosch had told me to put a bullet through my head for the cause, I would have. I would have without a second thought.
“Which brings us back to your assignment,” he says quietly. “Our recon flights have identified significant pockets of infested combatants clustered in and around Dayton. A squad will be dropped in—and for the next four hours, it will be on its own. The odds of making it out alive are roughly one in four.”
I clear my throat. “And two squads stay here.”
He nods. Blue eyes boring deep—to the marrow deep. “Your call.”
That same small, secretive smile. He knows what I’m going to say. He knew before I walked through the door. Maybe my Wonderland profile told him, but I don’t think so. He knows me.
I rise from the chair to full attention.
And tell him what he already knows.
AT 0900 the entire battalion musters in the yard, creating a sea of blue jumpsuits headed by the top four squads in their crisp new fatigues. Over a thousand recruits standing in perfect formation, facing east, the direction of new beginnings, toward the speakers’ platform erected the day before. Flags snap in the icy breeze, but we don’t feel the cold. We are lit from within by a fire hotter than the one that turned Tank into ash. The brass of Central Command moves down the first line—the winning line—shaking our hands and congratulating us for a job well done. Then a personal word of gratitude from the drill instructors. I’ve been dreaming of what to say to Reznik when he shakes my hand. Thanks for making my life a living hell…Oh, die. Just die, you son of a bitch… Or my favorite, short and sweet and to the point: Eff you. But when he salutes and offers me his hand, I almost lose it. I want to hit him in the face and hug him at the same time.
“Congratulations, Ben,” he says, which totally throws me off. I had no idea he even knew my name. He gives me a wink and continues down the line.
There’re a couple of short speeches by officers I’ve never seen before. Then the supreme commander is introduced and the troops go crazy, waving our hats, pumping our fists. Our cheers echo off the buildings encircling the yard, making the roar twice as loud and us seem twice as many. Commander Vosch raises his hand very slowly and deliberately to his forehead, and it’s as if he hit a switch: The noise cuts off as we raise our own hands in salute. I can hear quiet snuffling all around me. It’s too much. After what brought us here and what we went through here, after all the blood and death and fire, after being shown the ugly mirror of the past through Wonderland and facing the uglier truth of the future in the execution room, after months of brutal training that pushed some of us past the point of no return, we have arrived. We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth’s final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance.
I don’t hear a word of Vosch’s speech. I watch the sun rising over his shoulder, framed between the twin towers of the power plant, its light glinting off the mothership in orbit, the sole imperfection in the otherwise perfect sky. So small, so insignificant. I feel like I can reach up and pluck it from the sky, throw it to the ground, grind it to dust beneath my heel. The fire in my chest grows white-hot, spreads over every inch of my body. It melts my bones; it incinerates my skin; I am the sun gone supernova.
I was wrong about Ben Parish dying on the day he left the convalescent ward. I’ve been carrying his stinking corpse inside me all through basic. Now the last of him is burned away as I stare up at the solitary figure who lit that fire. The man who showed me the true battlefield. Who emptied me so I might be filled. Who killed me so I might live. And I swear I can see him staring back at me with those icy blue eyes that see down to the bottom of my soul, and I know—I know—what he’s thinking.
We are one, you and I. Brothers in hate, brothers in cunning, brothers in the spirit of vengeance.
YOU SAVED ME.
Lying in his arms that night with those words in my ears, and I’m thinking, Idiot, idiot, idiot. You can’t do this. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.
The first rule: Trust no one. Which leads to the second rule: The only way to stay alive as long as possible is to stay alone as long as possible.
Now I’ve broken both.
Oh, they’re so clever. The harder survival becomes, the more you want to pull together. And the more you want to pull together, the harder survival becomes.
The point is I had my chance and I didn’t do so well on my own. In fact, I sucked. I would have died if Evan hadn’t found me.
His body is pressed against my back, his arm is wrapped protectively around my waist, his breath a delicious tickle against my neck. The room is very cold; it would be nice to climb under the covers, but I don’t want to move. I don’t want him to move. I run my fingers along his bare forearm, remembering the warmth of his lips, the silkiness of his hair between my fingers. The boy who never sleeps, sleeping. Coming to rest upon the Cassiopeian shore, an island in the middle of a sea of blood. You have your promise, and I have you.
I can’t trust him. I have to trust him.
I can’t stay with him. I can’t leave him behind.
You can’t trust luck anymore. The Others have taught me that.
But can you still trust love?
Not that I love him. I don’t even know what love feels like. I know how Ben Parish made me feel, which can’t be put into words, or at least any words I know.
Evan stirs behind me. “It’s late,” he murmurs. “You’d better get some sleep.”
How did he know I’m awake? “What about you?”
He rolls off the bed and pads toward the door. I sit up, my heart racing, not sure exactly why. “Where are you going?”
“Going to look around a little. I won’t be long.”