The 5th Wave Read Free

about
     everything. It doesn’t matter if they look the right way and say the right things
     and act exactly like you expect them to act. Didn’t my father’s death prove that?
     Even if the stranger is a little old lady sweeter than your great-aunt Tilly, hugging
     a helpless kitten, you can’t know for certain—you can never know—that she isn’t one
     of them, and that there isn’t a loaded .45 behind that kitten.
    It isn’t unthinkable. And the more you think about it, the more thinkable it becomes.
     Little old lady has to go.
    That’s the hard part, the part that, if I thought about it too much,would make me crawl into my sleeping bag, zip myself up, and die of slow starvation.
     If you can’t trust anyone, then you can trust no one. Better to take the chance that
     Aunty Tilly is one of them than play the odds that you’ve stumbled across a fellow
     survivor.
    That’s friggin’ diabolical.
    It tears us apart. It makes us that much easier to hunt down and eradicate. The 4th
     Wave forces us into solitude, where there’s no strength in numbers, where we slowly
     go crazy from the isolation and fear and terrible anticipation of the inevitable.
    So I didn’t run. I couldn’t. Whether it was one of them or an Aunt Tilly, I had to
     defend my turf. The only way to stay alive is to stay alone. That’s rule number two.
    I followed the sobbing coughs or coughing sobs or whatever you want to call them till
     I reached the door that opened to the back room. Hardly breathing, on the balls of
     my feet.
    The door was ajar, the space just wide enough for me to slip through sideways. A metal
     rack on the wall directly in front of me and, to the right, the long narrow hallway
     that ran the length of the coolers. There were no windows back here. The only light
     was the sickly orange of the dying day behind me, still bright enough to hurl my shadow
     onto the sticky floor. I crouched down; my shadow crouched with me.
    I couldn’t see around the edge of the cooler into the hall. But I could hear whoever—or
     whatever—it was at the far end, coughing, moaning, and that gurgling sob.
    Either hurt badly or acting hurt badly,
I thought.
Either needs help or it’s a trap.
    This is what life on Earth has become since the Arrival. It’s an either/or world.
    Either it’s one of them and it knows you’re here or it’s not one of them and he needs
     your help.
    Either way, I had to get up and turn that corner.
    So I got up.
    And I turned the corner.

4
    HE LAY SPRAWLED against the back wall twenty feet away, long legs spread out in front
     of him, clutching his stomach with one hand. He was wearing fatigues and black boots
     and he was covered in grime and shimmering with blood. There was blood everywhere.
     On the wall behind him. Pooling on the cold concrete beneath him. Coating his uniform.
     Matted in his hair. The blood glittered darkly, black as tar in the semidarkness.
    In his other hand was a gun, and that gun was pointed at my head.
    I mirrored him. His handgun to my rifle. Fingers flexing on the triggers: his, mine.
    It didn’t prove anything, his pointing a gun at me. Maybe he really was a wounded
     soldier and thought I was one of them.
    Or maybe not.
    “Drop your weapon,” he sputtered at me.
    Like hell.
    “Drop your weapon!” he shouted, or tried to shout. The words came out all cracked
     and crumbly, beaten up by the blood risingfrom his gut. Blood dribbled over his bottom lip and hung quivering from his stubbly
     chin. His teeth shone with blood.
    I shook my head. My back was to the light, and I prayed he couldn’t see how badly
     I was shaking or the fear in my eyes. This wasn’t some damn rabbit that was stupid
     enough to hop into my camp one sunny morning. This was a person. Or, if it wasn’t,
     it looked just like one.
    The thing about killing is you don’t know if you can actually do it until you actually
     do it.
    He said it a third time, not as loud as the second. It came out like a