The Last Star (9 page)

“Drop the spoon.”

“You want me to drop my spoon?”

“Drop it.”

“It’s just a spoon . . .”

“Drop the damn spoon!”

She drops the damn spoon. I tell her to face the wall and put her hands on top of her head. She swallows back a sob. I step up behind her, place one hand on top of hers—they’re cold as a corpse’s—and pat her down.
Okay, Zombie, she’s clean. Now what? Time to fish or cut bait.

Maybe she didn’t hear the shot. Her hearing may be bad. She is an old lady, after all. Maybe the shooter knows she’s here but doesn’t bother with her because, after all, she’s an old cat lady, what threat can she really pose?

“Who else is here?” I say to the back of her head.

“No one, no one, I swear, no one. I haven’t seen a living soul in months. Just me and my babies. Just me and my babies . . . !”

“Turn around. Keep your hands on top of your head.”

She executes a one-eighty, and now I’m looking down into a pair of bright green eyes nearly lost in folds of withered skin. The mounds of clothes hide how thin she is, but you can see the signs of slow starvation in her face, the cheekbones poking out, the hollows at her temples, the eyes sunken and ringed in black. Her mouth hangs open a little—she has no teeth.

Oh Christ. The last human generation has been forged into killing machines by false hope and lies, and come spring, the 5th Wave will roll across the world, slaughtering everyone in its path, including the wounded boys who hide in coolers holding their crucifixes and old cat ladies clutching their wooden spoons.

Pull the trigger, Zombie. Everybody’s luck runs out. If you don’t kill her, someone else will.

I raise my pistol to the level of her eyes.

17

SHE FALLS TO
her knees at my feet, and she raises her empty hands toward me, and she doesn’t say anything because there isn’t anything to say: She’s sure she’s going to die.

They trained me to do this, prepared me for it, emptied me and filled me up again with hate, but I’ve never shot anyone—not in all this time. Cassie Sullivan’s hands are bloodier than mine.

The first time’s the hardest,
she told me.
By the time I shot that last soldier at Camp Haven, I felt nothing. I can’t even remember what he looked like.

“My friend’s been shot.” My voice breaks. “Either you shot him or someone you know did. Play straight with me.”

“I don’t leave this room. I haven’t in weeks. It isn’t safe out there,” she whispers back. “I stay in here with my babies and wait . . .”

“Wait? Wait for what?”

She’s stalling. And I’m stalling, too. I don’t want to be wrong—
or right. I don’t want to step over that line and be the person the Others have made me. I don’t want to kill another human being—innocent or not.

“The Lamb of God,” she answers. “He’s coming, you know. Any day now, and the wheat shall be separated from the chaff, the goats from the sheep, and he will come in his glory to judge the living and the dead.”

“Oh, sure,” I choke out. “Everybody knows that.”

She senses it before I do: I’m not pulling the trigger. I can’t. A sweet, childlike smile spreads across the furrowed landscape of her face like the morning sun breaking over the horizon.

I shuffle backward, knocking into the little table by the window. The stew sloshes over the rim of the pot, and the small can of fire beneath it hisses angrily.

“My soup!” she cries, struggling to her feet, and I back farther away, keeping the gun on her, but it’s a hollow threat; we both know it. The old lady scoops the spoon from the floor and hobbles over to the bubbling pot. The sound of the wood knocking against the metal sides of the pot draws a dozen cats from their hiding places. My stomach tightens. I have eaten nothing but a power bar in over twelve hours.

Grandma gives me a sideways look that borders on sly, and asks if I’d like a taste.

“I don’t have time,” I tell her. “I have to get back to my friend.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “Five minutes, please? I’ve been so lonely.” She stirs the soup. “Ran out of the cans a month ago, but one makes do.” Glancing over again. A shy smile. “You could bring your friend here. I have medicines and we can pray for him. The Lord heals all who ask with a pure heart.”

My lips are dry, though my mouth is watering. The blood pounds
in my ears. A cat rubs against my calf, having decided I’m not such a bad guy after all.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” I tell her. “It isn’t safe here.”

She gives me a startled look. “And there’s a place that is?”

I almost laugh. She’s old, but sharp. And tough. And fearless. And full of faith. She’d have to be to survive this long. Whoever’s left now will have her kind of spirit—what did Cassie call them? The bent but unbroken ones. For a desperate instant I consider taking her up on the offer, leaving Dumbo with her while I race to the caverns to find Cup and Ringer. It might be his best chance—no, his
only
chance.

I clear my throat. “You ran out of cans? So what’s in the soup?”

She raises the spoon to her lips, closes her eyes, sips the brownish broth. The cat at my feet lifts its mangy head and stares up at me with huge yellow eyes.

I know what she’s going to say a microsecond before she says it.

“Cat.”

In one fluid motion, she hurls the scalding liquid toward my face. I stumble backward, knock against a stack of magazines, and lose my balance. She’s on me before I hit the floor, her fingers locking around a fistful of my jacket, which she uses to hurl me across the room as easily as a kid throws a stuffed animal. The rifle falls from my shoulder when I hit the far wall. Lying on my side, I point my sidearm at the shimmering blob hurtling toward me.

She’s too fast or I’m too slow—she knocks the gun out of my hand. Her fingers lock around my throat. She yanks me upright, shoves my head against the wall and brings her face close to mine, her deep green eyes sparking with infinite malice.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she hisses. “It’s too soon.”

Her face swims into and out of focus.
Too soon?
Then I
understand: She saw the eyepiece. She thinks I’m part of the 5th Wave, which won’t be launched for another week,
after
she returns to the mothership,
after
Urbana and every other city on Earth is gone.

I’ve found the Urbana Silencer.

18

“CHANGE OF PLANS,”
I gasp. She’s allowing me just enough air. The grip of her icy fingers is so hard, the strength behind it so obvious, I’m sure she could snap my neck with a flick of her bony wrist. That would be bad. Bad for Dumbo, bad for Ringer and Teacup, and especially bad for me. The only thing that’s kept me alive is her surprise that I’m here, miles from the nearest base and in a place that won’t exist at week’s end.

Your fault, Zombie. You had the chance to neutralize her and you blew it.

Well. She reminded me of my grandmother.

Grandma Silencer cocks her head at my response, like a curious bird spying a tasty morsel. “Change of plans? That isn’t possible.”

“Air support’s already been called in,” I gasp, desperate to buy time. “Didn’t you hear the plane?” Each second I keep her off balance is another second of life. On the other hand, telling her that bombers are on their way may be the shortest path to the quickest death.

“I don’t believe that,” she tells me. “I think you’re a filthy little liar.”

My rifle lies a couple of feet away. Very close. Too far. Again she reminds me of a bird, the way she cocks her head when she looks at me, her head tilted to one side like a damned green-eyed crow, and then I feel it—the violent thrust of an invading consciousness,
her
consciousness, ripping into me like a drill into soft wood. I feel crushed and flayed open at the same time. There’s no part of me hidden from her, nothing safe or sacred. It’s like the Wonderland program, only it’s not my memories she’s mining, it’s
me.

“So much pain,” she murmurs. “So much loss.” Her fingers tighten on my throat. “Who are you looking for?”

When I refuse to answer, she cuts off my air. Black stars begin to bloom within my sight. Out of the darkness, my sister calls my name. And I think,
Christ, Sullivan, you were right.
This she-witch wouldn’t have me in a chokehold if I hadn’t answered that call. My sister brought me here—not Teacup, not Ringer.

My fingertips brush the stock of the rifle. The old cat-eating Silencer is laughing in my face, sour-breathed and tooth-deprived, buzz-sawing into my soul, chewing up my life as she chokes it out of me.

I can still hear my sister, but now I see Dumbo curled up behind the counter in the coffee shop, crying out for me with his eyes because he has no strength left to speak.

I go where you go, Sarge.

I left him, left him like I left my sister, alone and defenseless. Jesus, I even took his gun.

Holy crap. The gun.

19

FIRST SHOT IS
at point-blank range, right into her saggy, cat-filled gut.

The bullet doesn’t break her hold. Unbelievably, she hangs on to my throat, squeezing. I answer with a squeeze of my own: A second shot that lands in the vicinity of her heart. Her rheumy eyes widen slightly, and I’m able to worm my arm between our bodies and push her away. Her crabby fingers around my neck loosen, and I suck in a lungful of the sweetest sour-smelling dander-infested air I’ve ever breathed. Grandma Silencer isn’t down, though. She’s just catching her second wind.

She lunges at me. I roll hard to my right. Her head smacks the wall. I fire again. The round smashes through her rib cage, but still she pushes herself from the wall and crawls toward me, hacking up wads of bright red, oxygen-rich blood. What drives that ancient body is ten thousand years old and contains more hate than the oceans hold water. Plus she’s been augmented by technology that strengthens and sustains her—
psh! What’s a bullet or two? Come here, sonny!
Still, I don’t think it’s the technology that drives her.

It’s the hate.

I back up. She comes on. My heel knocks against a stack of paper and I drop to the floor with a bone-jarring thump. Her ragged claws scratch at my boot. I hold the gun with hands that are bloody at last.

Her back bows like a cat stretching on a windowsill. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out, a lot of blood, but no sound. She makes one last lunge. Her forehead knocks against the muzzle just as I squeeze the trigger.