Текст книги "The 5th Wave"

Автор книги: Rick Yancey

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

47

THE SENIOR DRILL INSTRUCTOR agrees with me, and the next morning Tank is gone, taken to the hospital for a full psych eval. His bunk remains empty for a week, while our squad, one man short, falls further and further behind in points. We’ll never graduate, never trade in our blue jumpsuits for real uniforms, never venture beyond the electric fence and razor wire to prove ourselves, to pay back a fraction of what we’ve lost.

We don’t talk about Tank. It’s as if Tank never existed. We have to believe the system is perfect, and Tank is a flaw in the system.

Then one morning in the P&D hangar, Dumbo motions me over to his table. Dumbo is training to be the squad medic, so he has to dissect designated corpses, usually Teds, to learn about human anatomy. When I come over, he doesn’t say anything, but nods at the body lying in front of him.

It’s Tank.

We stare at his face for a long moment. His eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. He’s so fresh, it’s unnerving. Dumbo glances around the hangar to make sure no one can overhear us, and then whispers, “Don’t tell Flint.”

I nod. “What happened?”

Dumbo shakes his head. He’s sweating badly under the protective hood. “That’s the really freaky thing, Zombie. I can’t find anything.”

I look back down at Tank. He isn’t pale. His skin is slightly pink without a mark on it. How did Tank die? Did he go Dorothy in the psych ward, maybe overdose himself on some drugs?

“What if you cut him open?” I ask.

“I’m not cutting Tank open,” he says. He’s looking at me as if I just told him to jump off a cliff.

I nod. Stupid idea. Dumbo is no doctor; he’s a twelve-year-old kid. I glance around the hangar again. “Get him off this table,” I say. “I don’t want anyone else to see him.” Including me.

Tank’s body is stacked with the others by the hangar doors to be disposed. He’s loaded onto the transport for the final leg of his journey to the incinerators, where he will be consumed in fire, his ashes mixing with the gray smoke and carried aloft in a column of superheated air, eventually to settle over us in particles too fine to see or feel. He’ll stay with us—on us—until we shower that night, washing what’s left of Tank into the drains connected to the pipes connected to the septic tanks, where he will mix with our excrement before leaching into the ground.

48

TANK’S REPLACEMENT ARRIVES two days later. We know he’s coming, because the night before Reznik announces it during Q&A. He won’t tell us anything about him, except the name: Ringer. After he leaves, everybody in the squad is jacked up; Reznik must have named him Ringer for a reason.

Nugget comes over to my bunk and asks, “What’s a ringer?”

“Someone who you slip into a team to give it an edge,” I explain. “Somebody who’s really good.”

“Marksmanship,” Flintstone guesses. “That’s where we’re weakest. Poundcake’s our best, and I’m okay, but you and Dumbo and Teacup suck. And Nugget can’t even shoot.”

“Come over here and say I suck,” Teacup shouts. Always looking for a fight. If I were in charge, I’d give Teacup a rifle and a couple of clips and let her loose on every Ted in a hundred-mile radius.

After the prayer, Nugget twists and squirms against my back until I can’t take it anymore and hiss at him to go back to his bunk.

“Zombie, it’s her.”

“What’s her?”

“Ringer! Cassie is Ringer!”

It takes me a couple of seconds to remember who Cassie is. Oh, God, not this shit again.

“I don’t think Ringer is your sister.”

“You don’t know she isn’t, either.”

It almost comes out of me: Don’t be a dumbass, kid. Your sister isn’t coming for you because she’s dead. But I hold it in. Cassie is Nugget’s silver locket. What he clings to because if he lets go, there’s nothing to keep the tornado from taking him off to Oz like the other Dorothys in camp. It’s why a kid army makes sense. Adults don’t waste their time on magical thinking. They dwell on the same inconvenient truths that landed Tank on the dissection table.

Ringer isn’t at roll call the next morning. And he isn’t on the morning run or at chow. We gear up for the range, check our weapons, head out across the yard. It’s a clear day, but very cold. Nobody says much. We’re all wondering where the new kid is.

Nugget sees Ringer first, standing off in the distance on the firing range, and right away we can see Flintstone was right: Ringer is a hell of a marksman. The target pops out of the tall brown grass and pop-pop! the head of the target explodes. Then a different target, but the same result. Reznik is standing off to one side, operating the controls on the targets. He sees us coming and starts hitting buttons fast. The targets rocket out of the grass, one right after the other, and this Ringer kid takes them out before they can get upright with one shot. Beside me, Flintstone gives a long, appreciative whistle.

“He’s good.”

Nugget gets it before the rest of us. Something about the shoulders or maybe the hips, but he goes, “It’s not a he,” before he takes off across the field toward the solitary figure cradling the rifle that smokes in the freezing air.

She turns before he reaches her, and Nugget pulls up, first confused, then disappointed. Apparently, Ringer is not his sister.

Weird that she looked taller from a distance. Around Dumbo’s height, but thinner than Dumbo—and older. I’m guessing fifteen or sixteen, with a pixie face and dark, deep-set eyes, flawless pale skin, and straight black hair. It’s the eyes that get you first. The kind of eyes you search to find something there and you come away with only two possibilities: Either what’s there is so deep you can’t see it, or there’s nothing there at all.

It’s the girl from the yard, the one who caught me outside the P&D hangar with Nugget.

“Ringer is a girl,” Teacup whispers, wrinkling her nose like she’s caught a whiff of something rotten. Not only is she not the baby of the squad anymore, now she’s not the only girl.

“What’re we going to do with her?” Dumbo is on the edge of panic.

I’m grinning. Can’t help it. “We’re going to be the first squad to graduate,” I say.

And I’m right.

49

RINGER’S FIRST NIGHT in Barracks 10 in one word: awkward.

No banter. No dirty jokes. No macho bluster. We count the minutes ticking down to lights-out like a bunch of nervous geeks on a first date. Other squads might have girls her age; we have Teacup. Ringer seems oblivious to our discomfort. She sits on the edge of Tank’s old bunk, disassembling and cleaning her rifle. Ringer likes her rifle. A lot. You can tell by the way she lovingly runs the oily rag up and down the length of its barrel, shining it until the cold metal gleams under the fluorescents. We are trying so hard not to stare at her, it’s painful. She reassembles her weapon, places it carefully in the locker beside the bed, and comes over to my bunk. I feel something tighten in my chest. I haven’t spoken to a girl my age since…when? Before the plague. And I don’t think about my life before the plague. That was Ben’s life, not Zombie’s.

“You’re the squad leader,” she says. Her voice is flat, no emotion, like her eyes. “Why?”

I answer the challenge in her question with one of my own. “Why not?”

Stripped down to her skivvies and the standard-issue sleeveless T-shirt, her bangs stopping just short of her dark eyebrows, looking down at me. Dumbo and Oompa stop their card game to watch. Teacup is smiling, sensing a fight brewing. Flintstone, who’s been folding laundry, drops a clean jumpsuit on top of the pile.

“You’re a terrible shot,” Ringer says.

“I have other skills,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “You should see me with a potato peeler.”

“You’ve got a good body.” Somebody laughs under his breath; I think it’s Flint. “Are you an athlete?”

“I used to be.”

She’s standing over me with her fists on her hips, bare feet planted firmly on the floor. It’s her eyes that get to me. The deep dark of them. Is nothing there—or nearly everything? “Football.”

“Good guess.”

“And baseball, probably.”

“When I was younger.”

She changes the subject abruptly. “The guy I replaced went Dorothy.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “Does it matter?”

She nods. It doesn’t. “I was the leader of my squad.”

“No doubt.”

“Just because you’re leader doesn’t mean you’ll make sergeant after graduation.”

“I sure hope that’s true.”

“I know it’s true. I asked.”

She turns on her bare heel and goes back to her bunk. I look down at my feet and notice my nails need trimming. Ringer’s feet are very small, with nubby-type toes. When I look up again, she’s heading for the showers with a towel thrown over her shoulder. She pauses at the door. “If anybody in this squad touches me, I’ll kill them.”

There’s nothing menacing or funny about the way she says it. As if she’s stating a fact, like it’s cold outside.

“I’ll spread the word,” I say.

“And when I’m in the shower, off limits. Total privacy.”

“Roger that. Anything else?”

She pauses, staring at me from across the room. I feel myself tense up. What next? “I like to play chess. Do you play?”

I shake my head. Holler at the boys, “Any of you pervs play chess?”

“No,” Flint calls back. “But if she’s in the mood for some strip poker—”

It happens before I can get two inches off the mattress: Flint on the ground, holding his throat, kicking his legs like a stomped-on bug, Ringer standing over him.

“Also, no demeaning, sexist, pseudo-macho remarks.”

“You’re cool!” Teacup blurts out, and she means it. Maybe she needs to rethink this whole Ringer thing. Might not be such a bad arrangement having another girl around.

“That’s ten days half rations for what you just did,” I tell her. Maybe Flint had it coming, but I’m still the boss when Reznik’s not around, and Ringer needs to know it.

“Are you writing me up?” No fear in her voice. No anger. No anything.

“I’m giving you a warning.”

She nods, steps away from Flint, brushes past me on the way to fetch her toiletry kit. She smells—well, she smells like a girl, and for a second I’m a little light-headed.

“I’ll remember you going easy on me,” she says with a flip of her bangs, “when they make me Fifty-three’s new squad leader.”

50

A WEEK AFTER Ringer arrived, Squad 53 moved up from tenth to seventh place. By week three, we had edged past Squad 19 to take fifth. Then, with only two weeks to go, we hit a wall, falling sixteen points back from fourth place, a nearly insurmountable deficit.

Poundcake, who isn’t much for words but is a boss with numbers, breaks down the spread. In every category except one, there’s very little room for improvement: We’re second in obstacle course, third in air raid and the run, and first in “other duties as assigned,” a catchall that includes points for morning inspection and “conduct befitting a unit of the armed forces.” Our downfall is marksmanship, where we rank sixteenth, despite kickass shooters like Ringer and Poundcake. Unless we can pull up that score in the next two weeks, we’re doomed.

Of course, you don’t have to be a boss with numbers to know why our score is so low. The squad leader sucks at shooting. So the sucky-shooting squad leader goes to the senior drill instructor and requests extra practice time, but his scores don’t budge. My technique isn’t bad; I do all the right things in the right order; still, if I score one head shot out of a thirty-round clip, I’m lucky. Ringer agrees it’s just dumb luck. She says even Nugget could score one out of thirty. She tries hard not to show it, but my ineptitude with a gun pisses her off. Her former squad ranks second. If she hadn’t been reassigned, she’d be guaranteed to graduate with the first class and be first in line for a pair of sergeant stripes.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” she says one morning as we hit the yard for the morning run. She’s wearing a headband to hold back her silky bangs. Not that I notice their silkiness. “I’ll help you, on one condition.”

“Does it have anything to do with chess?”

“Resign as squad leader.”

I glance at her. The cold has painted her ivory cheeks a bright red. Ringer is a quiet person—not Poundcake quiet, but quiet in an intense, unnerving way, with eyes that seem to dissect you with the sharpness of one of Dumbo’s surgical knives.

“You didn’t ask for it, you don’t care about it, why not let me have it?” she asks, keeping her eyes on the path.

“Why do you want it so bad?”

“Giving the orders is my best chance to stay alive.”

I laugh. I want to tell her what I’ve learned. Vosch said it; I knew it to the bottom of my soul: You’re going to die. This wasn’t about survival. It was about payback.

Following the path that snakes out of the yard and across the hospital parking lot to the airfield access road. In front of us now the power plant barfing its black and gray smoke.

“How ’bout this,” I suggest. “You help me, we win, I step down.”

It’s a meaningless offer. We’re recruits. It isn’t our call who’s squad leader; it’s Reznik’s. And I know this really isn’t about who’s squad leader anyway. It’s about who makes sergeant when we’re activated for field duty. Being squad leader doesn’t guarantee a promotion, but it can’t hurt.

A Black Hawk thunders overhead, returning from night patrol.

“Ever wonder how they did it?” she asks, watching the chopper swing off to our right toward the landing zone. “Got everything running again after the EMP strike?”

“No,” I answer honestly. “What do you think?”

Her breaths tiny white explosions in the frigid air. “Underground bunkers, it has to be. That or…”

“Or what?”

She shakes her head, puffing out her cold-pinched cheeks, and her black hair swings back and forth as she runs, kissed by the bright morning sun.

“Too crazy, Zombie,” she says finally. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got, football star.”

I’m four inches taller than she is. For every one stride I take, she has to take two. So I beat her.

Barely.

That afternoon we hit the range, bringing Oompa along to operate the targets. Ringer watches me fire off a few rounds, then offers her expert opinion: “You’re horrible.”

“That’s the problem. My horribleness.” I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove: It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn’t squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn’t even blink.

“Your technique is good. What’s going on when you shoot?”

“Generally speaking, I miss.”

She shakes her head. Speaking of smiles, I’ve yet to see so much as a thin-lipped grin from her. I decide to make it my mission to coax one out of her. More a Ben thought than a Zombie one, but old habits die hard.

“I mean between you and the target,” she says.

Huh? “Well, when it pops up—”

“No. I’m talking about what happens between here,” fingertips on my right hand, “and there,” pointing at the target twenty yards away.

“You’ve lost me, Ringer.”

“You have to think of your weapon as a part of you. Not the M16 firing; you firing. It’s like blowing on a dandelion. You breathe the bullet out.”

She swings her rifle off her shoulder and nods to Oompa. She doesn’t know where it’ll pop up, but the head of the target explodes in a shower of splinters before it even gets upright.

“It’s like there’s no space, nothing that isn’t you. The rifle is you. The bullet is you. The target is you. There’s nothing that’s not you.”

“So basically what you’re saying is I’m blowing my own head off.”

I almost got a smile with that one. The left corner of her mouth twitches.

“That’s very Zenlike,” I try again.

Her eyebrows come together. Strike three. “It’s more like quantum mechanics.”

I nod seriously. “Oh, sure. That’s what I meant to say. Quantum mechanics.”

She turns her head away. To hide a smile? So I don’t see an exasperated eye roll? When she turns back, all I get is that intense, stomach-tightening stare.

“Do you want to graduate?”

“I want to get the hell away from Reznik.”

“That isn’t enough.” She points across the field at one of the cutouts. The wind plays with her bangs. “What do you see when you sight a target?”

“I see a plywood cutout of a person.”

“Okay, but who do you see?”

“I know what you meant. Sometimes I picture Reznik’s face.”

“Does it help?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s about connection,” she says. She motions for me to sit down. She sits in front of me, takes my hands. Hers are freezing, cold as the bodies in P&D. “Close your eyes. Oh, come on, Zombie. How’s your way been working for you? Good. Okay, remember, it’s not you and the target. It’s not what’s between you, but what connects you. Think about the lion and the gazelle. What connects them?”

“Um. Hunger?”

“That’s the lion. I’m asking what they share.”

This is heavy stuff. Maybe it was a bad idea, accepting her offer. Not only do I have her thoroughly convinced I’m a lousy soldier, now there’s a real possibility that I’m also a moron.

“Fear,” she whispers in my ear, as if she’s sharing a secret. “For the gazelle, fear of being eaten. For the lion, fear of starvation. Fear is the chain that binds them together.”

The chain. I carry one in my pocket attached to a silver locket. The night my sister died was a thousand years ago; that night was last night. It’s over. It’s never over. It isn’t a line from that night to this day; it’s a circle. My fingers tighten around hers.

“I don’t know what your chain is,” she goes on, warm breath in my ear. “It’s different for everyone. They know. Wonderland tells them. It’s the thing that made them put a gun in your hand, and it’s the same thing that chains you to the target.” Then, as if she’s read my mind: “It isn’t a line, Zombie. It’s a circle.”

I open my eyes. The setting sun creates a halo of golden light around her. “There is no distance.”

She nods and urges me to my feet. “It’s almost dark.”

I bring up my rifle and tuck the butt against my shoulder. You don’t know where the target will rise—you only know that it will. Ringer signals Oompa, and the tall, dead grass rustles to my right a millisecond before the target pops, but that’s more than enough time; it’s an eternity.

There is no distance. Nothing between me and the not-me.

The target’s head disintegrates with a satisfying crack! Oompa gives a shout and pumps his fist in the air. I forget myself and grab Ringer around the waist, swinging her off the ground and twirling her around. I’m one very dangerous second away from kissing her. When I set her down, she takes a couple of steps back and tucks her hair carefully behind her ears.

“That was out of line,” I say. I don’t know who’s more embarrassed. We’re both trying to catch our breaths. Maybe for different reasons.

“Do it again,” she says.

“Shoot or twirl, which one?”

Her mouth twitches. Oh, I’m so close.

“The one that means something.”

51

GRADUATION DAY.

Our new uniforms were waiting for us when we returned from morning chow, pressed and starched and neatly folded on our bunks. And an extra special bonus surprise: headbands equipped with the latest in alien detection technology, a clear, quarter-size disk that slips over your left eye. Infested humans will light up through the lens. Or so we’re told. Later that day, when I asked the tech exactly how it worked, his answer was simple: Unclean glows green. When I politely asked for a brief demo, he laughed. “You’ll get your demo in the field, soldier.”

For the first time since coming to Camp Haven—and probably for the last time in our lives—we are kids again. Whooping it up and jumping from bunk to bunk, throwing high fives. Ringer’s the only one who ducks into the latrine to change. The rest of us strip where we stand, throwing the hated blue jumpsuits into a pile in the middle of the floor. Teacup has the bright idea to set them on fire and would have if Dumbo didn’t snatch the lit match from her hand at the last second.

The only one without a uniform is sitting on his bunk in his white jumpsuit, legs swinging back and forth, arms folded over his chest, bottom lip stuck out a mile. I’m not oblivious. I get it. After I’m dressed, I sit beside him and slap him on the leg.

“You’ll get your turn, Private. Hang in there.”

“Two years, Zombie.”

“So? Think what a hardass you’ll be in two years. Put all of us to shame.”

Nugget’s being assigned to another training squad after we deploy. I promised him he could bunk with me whenever I’m on base, though I have no idea when—or if—I’m ever coming back. Our mission is still top secret, known only to Central Command. I’m not sure even Reznik knows where we’re going. I don’t really care, as long as Reznik stays here.

“Come on, soldier. You’re supposed to be happy for me,” I tease him.

“You’re not coming back.” He says it with so much angry conviction that I don’t know what to say. “I’ll never see you again.”

“Of course you’re going to see me again, Nugget. I promise.”

He hits me as hard as he can. Again and again, right over my heart. I grab his wrist, and he lays into me with his other hand. I grab that one and order him to stand down.

“Don’t promise, don’t promise, don’t promise! Don’t promise anything ever, ever, ever!” His little face screwed up with rage.

“Hey, Nugget, hey.” I fold his arms over his chest and bend down to look him in the eye. “Some things you don’t have to promise. You just do.”

I reach into my pocket and pull out Sissy’s locket. Undo the clasp. I haven’t done that since I fixed it at Tent City. Circle broken. I draw it around his neck and hook the ends together. Circle complete.

“No matter what happens out there, I’ll come back for you,” I promise him.

Over his shoulder, I see Ringer come out of the bathroom, tucking her hair beneath her new cap. I stand at attention and snap off a salute.

“Private Zombie reporting for duty, squad leader!”

“My one day of glory,” she says, returning the salute. “Everybody knows who’s making sergeant.”

I shrug modestly. “I don’t listen to rumors.”

“You made a promise you knew you couldn’t keep,” she says matter-of-factly—which is pretty much the way she says everything. The unfortunate thing is she says it right in front of Nugget. “Sure you don’t want to take up chess, Zombie? You’d be very good at it.”

Since laughing seems like the least dangerous thing to do at that moment, I laugh.

The door flies open, and Dumbo shouts, “Sir! Good morning, sir!”

We rush to the ends of our bunks and stand at attention as Reznik moves down the line for what will be our final inspection. He’s subdued, for Reznik. He doesn’t call us maggots or scumbags. He’s nitpicky as ever, though. Flintstone’s shirt is untucked on one side. Oompa’s hat is crooked. He brushes off a speck of lint that only he can see from Teacup’s collar. He lingers over Teacup for a long moment, staring down into her face, almost comical in its seriousness.

“Well, Private. Are you ready to die?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Teacup shouts in her loudest warrior voice.

Reznik turns to the rest of us. “How about you? Are you ready?”

Our voices thunder as one: “Sir! Yes, sir!”

Before he leaves, Reznik orders me front and center. “Come with me, Private.” A final salute to the troops, then: “See you at the party, children.”

On my way out, Ringer gives me a knowing look, as if to say, Told you so.

I follow two paces behind the drill sergeant as he marches across the yard. Blue-suited recruits are putting the finishing touches on the speaker’s platform, hanging bunting, setting up chairs for the high brass, unrolling a red carpet. A huge banner has been hung across the barracks on the far side: WE ARE HUMANITY. And on the opposite side: WE ARE ONE.

Into a nondescript one-story building on the western side of the compound, passing through a security door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Through a metal detector manned by heavily armed, stone-faced soldiers. Into an elevator that carries us four stories beneath the earth. Reznik doesn’t talk. He doesn’t even look at me. I have a pretty good idea where we’re going, but no idea why. I nervously pick at the front of my new uniform.

Down a long corridor awash in fluorescent lighting. Passing through another security checkpoint. More stone-faced, heavily armed soldiers. Reznik stops at an unmarked door and swipes his key card through the lock. We step inside a small room. A man in a lieutenant’s uniform greets us at the door, and we follow him down another hallway and into a large private office. A man sits behind the desk, leafing through a stack of computer printouts.

Vosch.

He dismisses Reznik and the lieutenant, and we’re alone.

“At ease, Private.”

I spread my feet, put my hands behind my back, right hand loosely gripping my left wrist. Standing in front of the big desk, eyes forward, chest out. He is the supreme commander. I’m a private, a lowly recruit, not even a real soldier yet. My heart is threatening to pop the buttons on my brand-new shirt.

“So, Ben, how are you?”

He’s smiling warmly at me. I don’t even know how to begin to answer his question. Plus I’m thrown by his calling me Ben. It sounds strange to my own ears after being Zombie for so many months.

He’s expecting an answer, and for some stupid reason I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. “Sir! The private is ready to die, sir!”

He nods, still smiling, and then he gets up, comes around the desk, and says, “Let’s speak freely, soldier to soldier. After all, that’s what you are now, Sergeant Parish.”

I see them then: the sergeant’s stripes in his hand. So Ringer was right. I snap back to attention while he pins them on my collar. He claps me on the shoulder, his blue eyes boring into mine.

Hard to look him in the eye. The way he looks at you makes you feel naked, totally exposed.

“You lost a man,” he says.

“Yes, sir.”

“Terrible thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

He leans back against the desk, crosses his arms. “His profile was excellent. Not as good as yours, but…The lesson here, Ben, is that we all have a breaking point. We’re all human, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

He’s smiling. Why is he smiling? It’s cool in the underground bunker, but I’m beginning to sweat.

“You may ask,” he says with an inviting wave of his hand.

“Sir?”

“The question you must be thinking. The one you’ve had since Tank showed up in processing and disposal.”

“How did he die?”

“Overdose, as you no doubt suspected. One day after being taken off suicide watch.” He motions to the chair beside me. “Have a seat, Ben. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

I sink into the chair, sitting on its edge, back straight, chin up. If it’s possible to be at attention while seated, I’m doing it.

“We all have our breaking points,” he says, blue eyes bearing down on me. “I’ll tell you about mine. Two weeks after the 4th Wave, gathering survivors at a refugee camp about six kilometers from here. Well, not every survivor. Just the children. Although we hadn’t detected the infestations yet, we were fairly confident whatever was going on didn’t involve children. Since we couldn’t know who was the enemy and who wasn’t, it was command’s decision to terminate any and all personnel over the age of fifteen.”

His face goes dark. His eyes cut away. Leaning back on the desk, gripping its edge so hard, his knuckles turn white.

“I mean, my decision.” Deep breath. “We killed them, Ben. After we loaded up the children, we killed every single one of them. And after we were done, we incinerated their camp. Wiped it off the face of the Earth.”

He looks back at me. Incredibly, I see tears in his eyes. “That was my breaking point. Afterward I realized, to my horror, that I was falling into their trap. I was an instrument for the enemy. For every infested person I murdered, three innocent people died. I will have to live with that—because I have to live. Do you understand what I mean?”

I nod. He smiles sadly. “Of course you do. We both have the blood of innocents on our hands, don’t we?”

He pushes himself upright, all business now. The tears are gone.

“Sergeant Parish, today we will graduate the top four squads of your battalion. As commander of the winning squad, you have first pick of assignments. Two squads will be deployed as perimeter patrols to protect this base. The other two will be deployed into enemy territory.”

This takes me a couple minutes to absorb. He lets me have them. He picks up one of the computer printouts and holds it in front of me. There’s a lot of numbers and squiggly lines and strange symbols that mean absolutely nothing to me.

“I don’t expect you to be able to read it,” he says. “But would you like to guess what this is?”

“That’s all it would be, sir,” I answer. “A guess.”

“It’s the Wonderland analytics of an infested human being.”

I nod. Why the hell am I nodding? It’s not like I understand: Ah, yes, Commander, an analytic! Please, go on.

“We’ve been running them through Wonderland, of course, but we haven’t been able to untangle the infestation’s map from the victim’s—or clone or whatever it is. Until now.” He holds up the readout. “This, Sergeant Parish, is what an alien consciousness looks like.”

Again, I’m nodding. But this time because I’m starting to get it. “You know what they’re thinking.”

“Exactly!” Beaming at me, the star pupil. “The key to winning this war isn’t tactics or strategy or even imbalances in technology. The real key to winning this war, or any war, is understanding how your enemy thinks. And now we do.”

I wait for him to break it to me gently. How does the enemy think?

“Much of what we assumed is correct. They have been watching us for some time. Infestations were embedded in key individuals around the world, sleeper agents, if you will, waiting for the signal to launch a coordinated attack after our population had been whittled down to a manageable number. We know how that attack turned out here at Camp Haven, and we strongly suspect that other military installations were not as fortunate.”

He slaps the paper on his thigh. I must have flinched, because he gives me a reassuring smile.

“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.”