The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey Read Free Book Online Page A

of purple
     in her short-cropped hair. A skull ring on her left index finger. Black nail polish,
     badly chipped. And a bullet hole in the back of her head.
    Another few feet and there’s the third. A kid around eleven or twelve. Brand-new white
     basketball high-tops. Black sweatshirt. Hard to tell what his face used to look like.
    I leave the kid and go back to the woman. Kneel in the tall brown grass beside her.
     Touch her pale neck. Still warm.
    Oh no. No, no, no.
    I trot back to the first guy. Kneel. Touch the palm of his outstretched hand. Look
     over at the bloody hole between his ears. Shiny. Still wet.
    I freeze. Behind me, the road. In front of me, more road. To my right, trees. To my
     left, more trees. Clumps of cars on the southbound lane, the nearest grouping about
     a hundred feet away. Something tells me to look up. Straight up.
    A fleck of dull gray against the backdrop of dazzling autumnal blue.
    Motionless.
    Hello, Cassie. My name is Mr. Drone. Nice to meet you!
    I stand up, and when I stand up—the moment I stand up; if I had stayed frozen there
     a millisecond longer, Mr. Bengals and I would be sporting matching holes—something
     slams into my leg, a hot punch just above my knee that knocks me off balance, sending
     me sprawling backward onto my butt.
    I didn’t hear the shot. There was the cool wind in the grass and my own hot breath
     under the rag and the blood rushing in my ears—that’s all there was before the bullet
     struck.
    Silencer.
    That makes sense. Of course they’d use silencers. And now I have the perfect name
     for them: Silencers. A name that fits the job description.
    Something takes over when you’re facing death. The front part of your brain lets go,
     gives up control to the oldest part of you, the part that takes care of your heartbeat
     and breathing and the blinking of your eyes. The part nature built first to keep your
     ass alive. The part that stretches time like a gigantic piece of toffee, making a
     second seem like an hour and a minute longer than a summer afternoon.
    I lunge forward for my rifle—I had dropped the M16 when the round punched home—and
     the ground in front of me explodes, showering me with shredded grass and hunks of
     dirt and gravel.
    Okay, forget the M16.
    I yank the Luger from my waistband and do a sort of running hop—or a hopping run—toward
     the closest car. There isn’t much pain—although my guess is that we’re going to get
     very intimate later—but I can feel the blood soaking into my jeans by the time I reach
     the car, an older model Buick sedan.
    The rear windshield shatters as I dive down. I scoot on my back till I’m all the way
     under the car. I’m not a big girl by anystretch, but it’s a tight fit, no room to roll over, no way to turn if he shows up
     on the left side.
    Cornered.
    Smart, Cassie, real smart. Straight As last semester? Honor roll? Riiiiiight.
    You should have stayed in your little stretch of woods in your little tent with your
     little books and your cute little mementos. At least when they came for you, there’d
     be room to run.
    The minutes spin out. I lie on my back and bleed onto the cold concrete. Rolling my
     head to the right, to the left, raising it a half inch to look past my feet toward
     the back of the car. Where the hell is he? What’s taking so long? Then it hits me:
    He’s using a high-powered sniper rifle. Has to be. Which means he could have been
     over a half mile away when he shot me.
    Which also means I have more time than I first thought. Time to come up with something
     besides a blubbery, desperate, disjointed prayer.
    Make him go away. Make him be quick. Let me live. Let him end it…
    Shaking uncontrollably. I’m sweating; I’m freezing cold.
    You’re going into shock. Think, Cassie.
    Think.
    It’s what we’re made for. It’s what got us here. It’s the reason I have this car to
     hide under. We are human.
    And humans think. They plan. They dream, and then they make