“What is it like, Zombie?” Her voice, too—blank, without inflection, without emotion.
“One of those no way moments in movies. You know what I’m talking about. The thing that makes you shake your head and go no way. The good guys showing up in the nick of time. The bad guys suddenly getting a case of the stupids. Ruins it for you. Wrecks it all to shit. The real world doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s the movies, Zombie,” Ringer says. Holding herself very still. She knows where this is going. She knows. I’ve never met anyone smarter. Or scarier. Something about this girl scares the living crap out of me. Always has, from the first day I saw her in camp, watching me do knuckle push-ups in the yard until the blood pooled beneath my hands. The way she looks at you, flaying you open like a fish on the cutting block. And cold. Not the cold of a walk-in freezer or the cold of this never-ending fucking winter. The cold of dry ice. The cold that burns.
“Oh, the movies!” Constance cries softly. “How I miss the movies!”
I’ve had enough. I am done. I level my sidearm at Constance’s head.
“Touch that rifle and I will kill you. Move one inch and you will die.”
36
THE WOMAN’S MOUTH drops open. Her hands fly to her chest. She starts to say something and I hold up my free hand.
“And no talking. Talking will also get you killed.” To Ringer, but keeping my eye on Constance: “You can come clean now. Who is this person?”
“I told you, Zombie—”
“You’re good at a lot of things, Ringer, but you suck at lying. Something’s seriously twisted here. Tell me what it is and I won’t waste her.”
“I’m being honest. You can trust her.”
“The last person I trusted threw cat stew in my face.”
“Then don’t trust her. Trust me.”
I look at her. Blank face, dead eyes, and the coldness that burns.
“Zombie, I would never lie to you,” Ringer says. “Without Constance, I wouldn’t have made it through the winter.”
“Yeah, tell me how you did that. Tell me how you survived an entire winter in the most obvious hiding place inside a Silencer’s territory without freezing to death, starving to death, or getting knifed to death. Tell me.”
“Because I know what needs to be done.”
“Huh? What the hell does that even mean?”
“I swear to you, Zombie, she’s okay. She’s one of us.”
The gun is shaking. That’s because my hand is. I bring up the other to support my wrist.
Constance is giving Ringer a look. “Marika.”
“Okay, now that’s another thing!” I shout. “You would never tell her your name, not in a million years. Shit, you wouldn’t even tell me.”
Ringer slides into the space between me and Constance. Her eyes are not so dead now, her face not so masklike. I’ve seen the look once before, in Dayton, when she whispered, Ben, we’re the 5th Wave, determined to convince me, desperate for me to believe.
“How do you know she’s one of us, Ringer?” I ask. Well, more like beg. “How can you know?”
“Because I’m alive,” she answers. She holds out her hand.
The safest thing—for me, for her, for the people I left behind in the safe house—is to ignore Ringer and kill the stranger. I have no choice. Which means I have no responsibility. I can’t be blamed for following the rules that the enemy set down.
“Step aside, Ringer.”
She shakes her head. Her dark bangs slide back and forth. “Not going to happen, Sergeant.”
Her dark unblinking eyes, her mouth firmly set, her whole body leaning toward me, and her hand waiting for the weapon that quivers in mine. I risked everything to rescue her and damn if she isn’t risking it to save me.