The 5th Wave (37 page)

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.”

After he leaves, I strip off my clothes and slip on one of his plaid lumberjack shirts.
Val had been into the frilly sleepwear. Not my style.

I climb back into bed and pull the covers up to my chin. Dang, it’s cold. I listen
to the quiet. Of the Evanless house, that is. Outside are the sounds of nature unleashed.
The distant barking of wild dogs. The howl of a wolf. The screech of owls. It’s winter,
the time of year when nature whispers. I expect a symphony of wild things once spring
arrives.

I wait for him to come back. An hour goes by. Then two.

I hear the telltale creak again and hold my breath. I usually hear him come in at
night. The kitchen door slamming. The heavy tread of his boots coming up the stairs.
Now I hear nothing but the creaking on the other side of the door.

I reach over and pick up the Luger from the bedside table. I always keep it near me.

He’s dead
was my first thought.
It isn’t Evan outside that door; it’s a Silencer.

I slide out of bed and tiptoe to the door. Press my ear against
the wood. Close my eyes to focus. Holding the gun in the proper two-handed grip, the
way he taught me. Rehearsing every step in my head, like he taught me.

Left hand on knob. Turn, pull, two steps back, gun up. Turn, pull, two steps back,
gun up…

Creeaaaaaak.

Okay, that’s it.

I fling open the door, take just one step back—so much for rehearsal—and bring up
the gun. Evan jumps back and smacks against the wall, his hands flying up reflexively
when he sees the muzzle glinting in front of his face.

“Hey!” he shouts. Eyes wide, hands up, like he’s been jumped by a mugger.

“What the hell are you doing?” I’m shaking with anger.

“I was coming back to—to check on you. Can you put the gun down, please?”

“You know I didn’t have to open it,” I snarl at him, lowering the gun. “I could have
shot you through the door.”

“Next time I’ll definitely knock.” He gives me his trademark lopsided smile.

“Let’s establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means
you’d like to come in. Two means you’re just stopping by to spy on me while I sleep.”
His eyes travel from my face to my shirt (which happens to be his shirt) to my bare
legs, lingering a breath too long before returning to my face. His gaze is warm. My
legs are cold.

Then he knocks once on the jamb. But it’s the smile that gets him in.

We sit on the bed. I try to ignore the fact that I’m wearing his shirt and that shirt
smells like him and he’s sitting about a foot
away also smelling like him and also that there’s a hard little knot in the pit of
my stomach like a smoldering lump of coal.

I want him to touch me again. I want to feel his hands, as soft as clouds. But I’m
afraid if he touches me, all seven billion billion billion atoms that make up my body
will blow apart and scatter across the universe.

“Is he alive?” he whispers. That sad, desperate look is back. What happened out there?
Why is he thinking about Sams?

I shrug. How can I know the answer to that?

“I knew when Lauren was. I mean, I knew when she wasn’t.” Picking at the quilt, running
his fingers over the stitching, tracing the borders of the patches like he’s tracing
the path on a treasure map. “I felt it. It was just me and Val then. Val was pretty
sick, and I knew she didn’t have much time. I knew the timing, almost down to the
hour: I’d been through it six times.”

It takes him a minute to go on. Something’s really spooked him. His eyes won’t stay
still. They dart about the room, as if trying to find something to distract him—or
maybe the opposite, something to ground him in the moment. This moment with me. Not
the moment he can’t stop thinking about.

“One day I was outside,” he says, “hanging up some sheets to dry on the clothesline,
and this weird feeling came over me. Like something had popped me in the chest. I
mean, it was totally physical, not mental, not a little voice inside my head telling
me…telling me that Lauren was gone. It felt like someone had punched me hard. And
I knew. So I dropped the sheet and hauled ass to her house…”

He shakes his head. I touch his knee, then pull my hand back quickly. After the first
touch, touching becomes too easy.

“How’d she do it?” I ask. I don’t want to make him go
someplace he’s not ready to go. So far he’s been an emotional iceberg, two-thirds
hidden beneath the surface, listening more than he talks, asking more than he answers.

“Hung herself,” he says. “I took her down.” He looks away. Here with me, there with
her. “Then I buried her.”

I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything. Too many people say something when
they really have nothing to say.

“I think that’s the way it is,” he says after a minute. “When you love someone. Something
happens to them, and it’s a punch in the heart. Not
like
a punch in the heart; a
real
punch in the heart.” He shrugs and laughs softly to himself. “Anyway, that’s what
I felt.”

“And you think since I haven’t felt it, Sammy must be alive?”

“I know.” He shrugs and gives an embarrassed laugh. “It’s stupid. I’m sorry I brought
it up.”

“You really loved her, didn’t you?”

“We grew up together.” His eyes glow at the memory. “She was over here or I was over
at her house. Then we got older and she was
always
over here or I was
always
over there. When I could sneak away. I was supposed to be helping my dad on the farm.”

“That’s where you went tonight, isn’t it? Lauren’s house.”

A tear falls onto his cheek. I wipe it away with my thumb, the way he wiped my tears
away on the night I asked him if he believed in God.

He leans forward suddenly and kisses me. Just like that.

“Why did you kiss me, Evan?” Talking about Lauren, then kissing me. It feels weird.

“I don’t know.” He ducks his head. There’s enigmatic Evan, taciturn Evan, passionate
Evan, and now shy little boy Evan.

“The next time you better have a good reason,” I tease him.

“Okay.” He kisses me again.

“Reason?” I ask softly.

“Um. You’re really pretty?”

“That’s a good one. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s good.”

He cups my face in his soft hands, and then leans in for a third kiss that lingers,
igniting the simmering lump in my belly, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand
up and do a little happy dance.

“It is true,” he whispers, our lips brushing.

We fall asleep in the same spooning position we were in a few hours before, the palm
of his hand pressing just below my neck. I wake in the dead hours of the night, and
for a second I’m back in the woods inside my sleeping bag, just me, my teddy bear,
and my M16—and some stranger pressing his body into mine.

No, it’s okay, Cassie. It’s Evan, the one who saved you, the one who nursed you back
to health, and the one who’s willing to risk his life so you can keep some ridiculous
promise. Evan, the noticer who noticed you. Evan, the simple farm boy of the warm,
gentle, soft hands.

My heart skips a beat. What kind of farm boy has soft hands?

I ease his hand away from my chest. He stirs, sighing against my neck. Now the hairs
tickled by his lips dance a different kind of jig. I lightly brush my fingertips over
his palm. Soft as a baby’s bottom.

Okay, don’t panic. It’s been a few months since he did any farm work. And you know
how nice his cuticles are…but can years of calluses be wiped away by a few months
off hunting in the woods?

Hunting in the woods…

I dip my head slightly to sniff his fingers. It’s probably my overactive imagination,
but do I detect the acrid, metallic smell
of gunpowder? When did he fire a gun? He hadn’t gone hunting tonight, just to visit
Lauren’s grave.

Lying wide awake in his arms as dawn breaks, feeling his heart beating against my
back while my own heart pushes against his hand.

You must be a lousy hunter. You hardly ever come back with anything.

I’m actually very good.

You just don’t have the heart to kill?

I have the heart to do what I have to do.

What do you have the heart to do, Evan Walker?

54

THE NEXT DAY is agony.

I know I can’t confront him. Way too risky. What if the worst is true? That there
is no Evan Walker farm boy, only Evan Walker human traitor—or the unthinkable (one
word that pretty much sums up this alien invasion): Evan Walker, Silencer. I tell
myself this last possibility is ridiculous. A Silencer wouldn’t nurse me back to health—much
less give me nicknames and play snuggles in the dark. A Silencer would just—well,
silence me.

Once I take that irreversible step of confronting him, it’s pretty much game over.
If he isn’t who he claims to be, I’d be giving him no choice. Whatever his reason
for keeping me alive, I don’t think I’d stay alive very long if he thought I knew
the truth.

Go slow. Work it out. Don’t tear through it like you always do,
Sullivan. Not your style, but you gotta be methodical for once in your life.

So I pretend nothing’s wrong. Over breakfast, though, I work the conversation around
to his pre-Arrival days. What kind of work did he do around the farm? Name it, he
says. Drove the tractor, baled hay, fed the animals, repaired equipment, strung barbed
wire. My eyes on his hands while my mind makes excuses for him. He always wore gloves
is the best one, but I can’t think of a natural-sounding way to ask.
So, Evan, you have such soft hands to have grown up on a farm. You must have worn
gloves all the time and been even more into hand lotion than most guys, huh?

He doesn’t want to talk about the past; it’s the future he’s worried about. He wants
details about the mission. Like every footstep between the farmhouse and Wright-Patterson
has to be mapped out, every contingency considered. What if we don’t wait till spring
and another blizzard hits? What if we find the base abandoned? How do we pick up Sammy’s
trail then? When do we say enough is enough and give up?

“I’ll never give up,” I tell him.

I wait for nightfall. I was never very good at waiting, and he notices my restlessness.

“You’re going to be okay?” Standing by the kitchen door, rifle dangling from his shoulder.
Cupping my face tenderly in those soft hands. And me gazing upward into those puppy-dog
eyes, brave Cassie, trusting Cassie, mayfly Cassie.
Sure, I’ll be fine. You go out and bag a few people, and I’ll pop some corn.

Then locking the door behind him. Watching him step lightly off the back porch and
trot toward the trees, heading west, toward the highway, where, as everyone knows,
fresh game like deer and rabbit and
Homo sapiens
like to congregate.

I tear through every room. Four weeks locked up inside it like someone under house
arrest, you think I would have poked around a little.

What do I find? Nothing. And a lot.

Family photo albums. There’s baby Evan in the hospital wearing the striped newborn
hat. Toddler Evan pushing a plastic lawnmower. Five-year-old Evan sitting on a pony.
Ten-year-old Evan on the tractor. Twelve-year-old Evan in a baseball uniform…

And the rest of his family, including Val—I pick her out right away, and seeing the
face of the girl who died in his arms and whose clothes I’ve taken brings the whole
shitty thing back to me, and suddenly I’m like the lowest person left on Earth. Seeing
his family in front of the Christmas tree, gathered around birthday cakes, hiking
along a mountain trail, forces it down my throat: the end of Christmas trees and birthday
cakes and family vacations and the ten thousand other taken-for-granted things. Each
photograph the tolling of a bell, a timer clicking down to the end of normal.