“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?”