The 5th Wave

Chapter 9

THERE ARE THREE OF THEM, not in a clump like city folk, but spaced out in the median strip. The first one is an older guy, around my dad's age, I guess. Wearing blue jeans and a Bengals warm-up. Facedown, arms outstretched. He was shot in the back of the head.

The second, about a dozen feet away, is a young woman, a little older than I am and dressed in a pair of men's pajama pants and Victoria's Secret tee. A streak of purple in her short-cropped hair. A skull ring on her left index finger. Black nail polish, badly chipped. And a bullet hole in the back of her head.

Another few feet and there's the third. A kid around eleven or twelve. Brand-new white basketball high-tops. Black sweatshirt. Hard to tell what his face used to look like.

I leave the kid and go back to the woman. Kneel in the tall brown grass beside her. Touch her pale neck. Still warm.

Oh no. No, no, no.

I trot back to the first guy. Kneel. Touch the palm of his out- stretched hand. Look over at the bloody hole between his ears. Shiny. Still wet.

I freeze. Behind me, the road. In front of me, more road. To my right, trees. To my left, more trees. Clumps of cars on the south- bound lane, the nearest grouping about a hundred feet away. Something tells me to look up. Straight up.

A fleck of dull gray against the backdrop of dazzling autumnal blue.

Motionless.

Hello, Cassie. My name is Mr. Drone. Nice to meet you!

I stand up, and when I stand up—the moment I stand up; if I had stayed frozen there a millisecond longer, Mr. Bengals and I would be sporting matching holes—something slams into my leg, a hot punch just above my knee that knocks me off balance, send- ing me sprawling backward onto my butt.

I didn't hear the shot. There was the cool wind in the grass and my own hot breath under the rag and the blood rushing in my ears—that's all there was before the bullet struck.

Silencer.

That makes sense. Of course they'd use silencers. And now I have the perfect name for them: Silencers. A name that fits the job description.

Something takes over when you're facing death. The front part of your brain lets go, gives up control to the oldest part of you, the part that takes care of your heartbeat and breathing and the blinking of your eyes. The part nature built first to keep your ass alive. The part that stretches time like a gigantic piece of toffee, making a second seem like an hour and a minute longer than a summer afternoon.

I lunge forward for my rifle—I had dropped the M16 when the round punched home—and the ground in front of me explodes, showering me with shredded grass and hunks of dirt and gravel.

Okay, forget the M16.

I yank the Luger from my waistband and do a sort of running hop—or a hopping run—toward the closest car. There isn't much pain—although my guess is that we're going to get very intimate later—but I can feel the blood soaking into my jeans by the time I reach the car, an older model Buick sedan.