The Infinite Sea (7 page)

Our parting words were a perfect example.

“You know, Dumbo I get,” I told her. “The big ears. And Nugget, because Sam is so small. Teacup, too. Zombie I don’t get so much—Ben won’t say—and I’m guessing Poundcake has something to do with his roly-poly-ness. But why Ringer?”

Her answer was an icy stare.

“It makes me feel a little left out. You know, the only gang member without a street name.”

“Nom de guerre,” she said.

I looked at her for a minute. “Let me guess, National Merit Scholar, chess club, math team, top of your class? And you play an instrument, maybe a violin or cello, something with strings. Your dad worked in Silicon Valley and your mom was a college professor, I’m thinking physics or chemistry.”

She didn’t say anything for a couple thousand years. Then she said, “Anything else?”

I knew I should stop. But I was in now, and when I go in, I go all the way in. That’s the Sullivan way. “You’re the oldest—no, an only child. Your dad is a Buddhist, but your mom is an atheist. You were walking at ten months. Your grandmother raised you because your parents worked all the time. She taught you tai chi. You never played with dolls. You speak three languages. One of them is French. You were on the Olympic development team. Gymnastics. You brought home a B once and your parents took away your chemistry set and locked you in your room for a week, during which time you read the complete works of William Shakespeare.” She was shaking her head. “Okay, not the comedies. You just couldn’t get the humor.”

“Perfect,” she said. “That’s amazing.” Her voice was as flat and thin as a piece of aluminum foil fresh from the roller. “Can I try you?”

I stiffened up a little, bracing myself. “You can
try.
”

“You’ve always been self-conscious about your looks, especially your hair. The freckles are a close second. You’re socially awkward, so you read a lot and you’ve kept a journal since middle school. You had only one close friend and your relationship was codependent, which means every time you fought with her, you slid into a deep depression. You’re a daddy’s girl, never that close to your mother, who always made you feel like no matter what you did, it wasn’t good enough. It didn’t help that she was prettier than you. When she died, you felt guilty for secretly hating her and for being secretly relieved that she was gone. You’re stubborn and impulsive and a little hyper, so your parents enrolled you in something to help with your coordination and concentration, like ballet or karate, probably karate. You want me to go on?”

Well, what was I going to do? I saw only two options: laugh or punch her in the face. Okay, three: laugh, punch her in the face, or give back one of her own stoic stares. I opted for number three.

Bad idea.

“Okay,” Ringer said. “You’re not a tomboy and you’re not a girly girl. You’re in that gray area in between. Being an in-between meant you always secretly envied the ones who weren’t, but you saved most of your resentment for the pretty girls. You’ve had crushes but never a boyfriend. You pretend you hate boys you like and like boys you hate. Whenever you’re around someone who’s prettier or smarter or better than you in any way, you get angry and sarcastic, because they remind you of how ordinary you feel inside. Go on?”

And tiny-voiced me: “Sure. Whatever.”

“Until Evan Walker came along, you had never even held a boy’s hand, except on elementary school field trips. Evan was kind and undemanding and, as an added bonus, almost too beautiful to look at. He made himself an empty canvas you could paint with your longing for a perfect relationship with the perfect guy who would ease your fear by never hurting you. He gave you all those things you imagined the pretty girls had that you never did, so being with him—or the
idea
of him—was mostly about revenge.”

I was biting my lower lip. My eyes burned. I clenched my fists so hard, my nails were biting into my palms. Why, oh, why didn’t I go with option two?

She said, “You want me to stop now.” Not a question.

I lifted my chin.
And
Defiance
shall be my nom de guerre!
“What’s my favorite color?”

“Green.”

“Wrong. It’s yellow,” I lied.

She shrugged. She knew I was lying. Ringer: the human Wonderland.

“Seriously, though, why ‘Ringer’?” That’s it. Put her back on the defensive. Well, she never actually was on the defensive. That would be me.

“I’m human,” she said.

“Yeah.” I peeked through the crack in the curtains to the parking lot two stories below. Why did I do that? Did I really think I’d see him standing there, lurker that he was, smiling up at me?
See? I said I’d find you.
“Someone else told me that, too. And, like a dummy, I believed him.”

“Not so dumb, given the circumstances.”

Oh, now she was being kind? Now she was cutting me some slack? I didn’t know which was worse: ice maiden Ringer or compassionate queen Ringer.

“Don’t pretend,” I snapped. “I know you don’t believe me about Evan.”

“I believe
you.
It’s his story that doesn’t make sense.”

Then she walked out of the room. Just like that. Right in the middle, before anything was resolved. Who, besides every male person ever born,
does
that?

A virtual existence doesn’t require a physical planet . . .

Who was Evan Walker? Shifting my eyes from the highway to my baby brother and back again. Who were you, Evan Walker?

I was an idiot for trusting him, but I was hurt and alone (
alone
as in thinking I was the last human being in the freaking universe) and majorly mind screwed because I had already killed one innocent person, and
this
person, this Evan Walker, didn’t end my life when he could have; he saved it. So when the bells went off, I ignored them. Plus it didn’t hurt (help?) that he was impossibly gorgeous and equally impossibly obsessed with making me feel like I mattered more to him than he did to himself, from bathing me to feeding me to teaching me how to kill to telling me I was the one thing he had left worth dying for to proving it all by dying for me.

He began as Evan, woke up thirteen years later to find out he wasn’t, then woke again, he told me, when he saw himself through my eyes. He found himself in me, and then I found him in me and I was in him and there was no space between us. He began by telling me everything I wanted to hear and ended telling me the things I needed to: The principal weapon to eradicate the human hangers-on were the humans themselves. And when the last of the “infested” were dead, Vosch and company would pull the plug on the 5th Wave. Purge over. House clean and ready to move in.

When I told Ben and Ringer all this—minus the part about Evan being inside me, a bit too nuanced for Parish—there was a lot of dubious staring and significant looks from which I was painfully excluded.

“One of them was in
love
with you?” Ringer asked when I finished. “Wouldn’t that be like us falling in love with a cockroach?”

“Or a mayfly,” I shot back. “Maybe they have a thing for insects.”

We were meeting in Ben’s room. Our first night at the Walker Hotel, as Ringer dubbed it, mostly, I think, to get under my skin.

“What else did he tell you?” Ben asked. He was sprawled on the bed. Four miles from Camp Haven to the hotel, and he looked like he’d just sprinted a marathon. The kid who patched me and Sam up, Dumbo, wouldn’t commit when I asked him about Ben. Wouldn’t say if he’d get better. Wouldn’t say if he’d get worse. Of course, Dumbo was only twelve. “Capabilities? Weaknesses?”

“They have no bodies anymore,” I said. “Evan told me that it was the only way they could make the journey. Some were downloaded—him, Vosch, the other Silencers—some are still on the mothership, waiting for us to be gone.”

Ben rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “The camps were set up to winnow out the best candidates for brainwashing . . .”

“And to dispose of the ones who weren’t,” I finished. “Once the 5th Wave was rolled out, all they had to do was sit back and let the stupid humans do their dirty work.”

Ringer was sitting by the window, silent as a shadow.

“But why use us at all?” Ben wondered. “Why not download enough of their troops into human bodies to finish us off?”

“Not enough of them, maybe,” I guessed. “Or setting up the 5th Wave posed the least risk.”

“What risk?” Shadow-Ringer said, breaking her silence.

I decided to ignore her. For a lot of reasons, the main one being you engaged with Ringer at your own peril. She could humiliate you with a single word.

“You were there,” I reminded Ben. “You heard Vosch. They’d been watching us for centuries. But Evan proved that, even with thousands of years to plan, something can still go wrong. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that by becoming us, they might actually
become
us.”

“Right,” Ben said. “So how can we use that?”

“We can’t,” Ringer answered. “There’s nothing Sullivan’s told us that will help, unless this Evan person somehow survived the blast and can fill in the blanks.”

Ben was shaking his head. “Nothing could have survived that.”

“There were escape pods,” I said, grasping at the same straw I’d been reaching for since he said good-bye.

“Really?” Ringer didn’t sound like she believed me. “Then why didn’t he put you in one?”

I told her, “Look, I probably shouldn’t tell someone holding a high-powered semiautomatic rifle this, but you’re really starting to get on my nerves.”

She acted surprised. “Why?”

“We’ve got to get a handle on this,” Ben said sharply, cutting off my answer, which was a good thing: Ringer
was
holding an M16 and Ben had told me she was the best shot in the camp. “What’s the plan? Wait for Evan to show up or run? And if we run, where to?” Cheeks flaming with fever, eyes shining. It’s fourth and long with four seconds left. “Is there anything else Evan told you that might help? What are they going to do with the cities?”

“They’re not going to blow them up,” Ringer said. She didn’t wait for me to answer. Then she didn’t wait for me to ask how the hell she would know that. “If that was the plan, they would’ve blown them up first. Over half the world’s population lived in urban areas.”

“So they plan to use them,” Ben said. “Because they’re using human bodies?”

“We can’t hide in a city, Zombie,” Ringer said. “Any city.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t safe. Fires, sewage, disease from all the rotting corpses, other survivors who must know by now they’re using human bodies. If we want to stay alive as long as possible, we have to keep moving. Keep moving and stay alone as long as possible.”

Oh, boy. Where did I hear
that
rule before? My head felt light. My knee was killing me. The knee shot by a Silencer.
My
Silencer.
I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you?
Not this time, Evan. I don’t think so. I sat on the bed next to Ben.

“She’s right,” I said to him. “Staying anywhere for more than a few days is not a good idea.”

“Or staying together.”

Ringer’s words hung in the icy air. Beside me, Ben stiffened. I closed my eyes. Heard that rule, too:
Trust no one.

“Not going to happen, Ringer,” Ben said.

“I take Teacup and Poundcake. You take the rest. Our chances double.”

“Why stop there?” I asked her. “Why don’t we all split up? Our chances quadruple.”

“Septuple,” she corrected me.

“Well, I’m no math whiz,” Ben said. “But it seems to me splitting up plays right into their strategy. Isolate, then exterminate.” He gave Ringer a hard look. “Personally, I like the idea of someone having my back.”

He pushed himself from the bed and swayed for a second. Ringer told him to lie back down. He ignored her.

“We can’t stay, but we have nowhere to go. You can’t get to nowhere from here, so where do we go?” he asked.

“South,” Ringer said. “As far south as possible.” She was looking out the window. I understood—a decent snow and you’re trapped until it thaws. Ergo, get somewhere where it doesn’t snow.

“Texas?” Ben said.

“Mexico,” Ringer answered. “Or Central America, once the water recedes. You could hide in the rain forest for years.”

“I like it,” Ben said. “Back to nature. There’s just one little flaw.” He spread his hands. “We don’t have passports.”

He watched her, holding the gesture, like he was waiting for something. Ringer looked back at him, expressionless. Ben dropped his hands with a shrug.

“You’re not serious,” I said. This was getting ridiculous. “Central America? In the middle of winter, on foot, with Ben hurt and two little kids. We’ll be lucky to make it to Kentucky.”

“Beats hanging around here waiting for your alien prince to come.”

That did it. I didn’t care if she was holding an M16. I was grabbing a handful of those silky locks and slinging her out that window. Ben saw it coming and stepped between us.

“We’re all on the same team here, Sullivan. Let’s keep it together, okay?” He turned to Ringer. “You’re right. He probably didn’t make it, but we’re gonna give Evan a chance to keep his promise. I’m in no shape for a road trip anyway.”

“I didn’t come back for you and Nugget so we could be the featured guests at a turkey shoot, Zombie,” Ringer said. “Do what you think is right, but if things get hot, I’m out of here.”

I said to Ben, “Team player.”

“Maybe you’re forgetting who saved your life,” Ringer said.

“Oh, kiss my ass.”

“That does it!” Ben boomed in his best quarterback, I’m-the-guy-in-charge-here voice. “I don’t know how we’re making it through this unholy mess, but I do know that
this is not the way.
Stow the crap, both of you. That’s an order.”

He fell back onto the bed, gasping for air, a hand pressed against his side. Ringer left to find Dumbo, which left Ben and me alone for the first time since our reunion deep in the bowels of Camp Haven.

“Something weird,” Ben said. “You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better.”

Um, that would be one percent, Parish.
I started to point that out and then saw him smiling, waiting for me to correct his math, knowing it would nearly impossible for me to resist. He played with the stereotype of the dumb jock the way someone Sammy’s age played with sidewalk chalk: in broad, clumsy strokes.