The Last Star Page 3

  He nodded somberly. “Respect,” he echoed—which made me even angrier. He was handling me.

  “It’s all about respect. Being clean and not stinking like a pig is about respect.”

  “Pigs don’t stink.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “Well, I grew up on a farm, that’s all.”

  I shook my head. “Oh no, that isn’t all. That isn’t half of all. The part of you I slapped didn’t grow up on any goddamned farm.”

  He left his rifle leaning against the railing and limped over to the swing. He sat. He gazed off into the middle distance. “It isn’t my fault Sam needed a bath.”

  “Of course it’s your fault. All of this is your fault.”

  He looked at me, and his tone was controlled. “Cassie, I think you should go back inside now.”

  “What, before you lose your temper? Oh, please lose it for once. I would love to see what that looks like.”

  “You’re cold.”

  “No, I’m not.” As I realized how badly I was shaking, standing in front of him in my wet clothes. Icy water dripped down the back of my neck and traced a path down my spine. I folded my arms over my chest and willed my (freshly brushed, very clean) teeth to stop chattering.

  “Sam’s forgotten his ABCs,” I informed him.

  He stared at me for a long four seconds. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “His ABCs. You know, the alphabet, you intergalactic swineherd.”

  “Well.” His eyes wandered from my face to the empty road across from the empty yard that stretched toward empty horizons over which there were more empty roads and woods and fields and towns and cities, the world one big hollowed-out gourd, a slop bucket of emptiness. Emptied by things like him, the whatever-he-was before he inserted himself into a human body like a hand up a puppet’s ass.

  He leaned forward and shrugged out of his jacket, the same stupid bowling jacket he showed up in at the old hotel (The Urbana Pinheads), and held it out.

  “Please?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it. I mean, the pattern kept repeating itself: I’m cold, he warms me. I’m hurt, he heals me. I’m hungry, he feeds me. I’m down, he picks me up. I’m like the hole at the beach that keeps filling up with water.

  I’m not a big person; the jacket engulfed me. And the warmth from his body, that, too. It steadied me—not necessarily the fact that the warmth came from his body, just the warmth itself.

  “Another thing human beings do is learn their alphabets,” I said. “So they can read. So they can learn things. Things like history and math and science and practically everything else you can name, including the really important things like art and culture and faith and why things happen and why other things don’t and why anything even exists in the first place.”

  My voice broke. Uninvited, there’s that image again, of my father pulling a red wagon loaded with books after the 3rd Wave and his lecture about preserving knowledge and rebuilding civilization once that pesky little alien problem was disposed of. God, how sad, how pitiful: a balding, bent-shouldered man shuffling down deserted streets with a wagonload of scavenged library books behind him. While others looted canned goods and weapons and hardware to fortify their homes against marauders, my father decided the wisest course of action was to hoard reading material.

  “He can learn them again,” Evan tried. “You can teach him.”

  It took everything in me not to give him another smack. There was a time when I thought I was the last living person on Earth, which made me all of humanity. Evan isn’t the only one who owes an unpayable debt. I’m humanity, he’s them, and after what they’ve done to us, humanity should break every bone in their bodies.

  “That’s not the point,” I told him. “The point is, I don’t understand why you did it this way. You could have killed us all without being so goddamn cruel about it. You know what I found out tonight, besides the fact that my little brother hates my guts? It’s not just the ABCs he’s forgotten. He doesn’t remember what our mom looked like. He doesn’t remember his own mother’s face.”

  Then I lost it. I wrapped myself tight in that stupid Pinhead jacket and bawled, because I didn’t care anymore if Evan saw me lose it, because if anyone should have seen, it’s him, the sniper murdering from a distance, comfy in his farmhouse while, two hundred miles over his head, the mothership unleashed three escalating waves of devastation. Five hundred thousand in the first attack, millions in the second, billions in the third. And while the world burned, Evan Walker was smoking deer brisket and taking leisurely walks in the woods and lounging by a cozy fire, buffing his perfect nails.

  He should see the face of human suffering up close. Too long he’s been like the mothership, hovering above the horror, untouchable and remote; he needs to see it, touch it, press it against his perfectly shaped, wholly unbroken nose and smell it.

  The way Sammy has. I felt like running inside and yanking him out of the tub and dragging him naked onto the porch, where Evan Walker could count his bony ribs and feel his tiny wrists and trace the hollowed-out temples and examine the scars and sores of the little boy he’s tortured, the child whose mind he’s emptied of memories and whose heart he’s filled with hate and hopelessness and useless rage.

  Evan started to stand—to pull me into his arms, no doubt, to stroke my hair and dry my tears and murmur that everything was going to be all right, because that’s his MO—but then he thought better of it. He sat back down.

  “I told you, Cassie,” he said softly. “I didn’t want it to happen this way. I fought against it.”

  “Until you went along with it.” Still working to get a grip. Along came out a three-syllable word. “And what do you mean, you didn’t want it to happen ‘this way’?”

  He shifted his weight. The swing creaked. His eyes strayed back to the empty road. “We could have lived among you indefinitely. Hidden, undetectable. We could have inserted ourselves into leading roles in your society. We could have shared our knowledge, exponentially expanding your potential, speeding your evolution. It’s conceivable we could have given you the one thing you’ve always wanted and never had.”

  “What?” I snuffled the snot back into my nose; I didn’t have a tissue and didn’t even care that it was gross. The Arrival had altered the whole definition of gross.

  “Peace,” he answered.

  “Could have. Could have.”

  He nodded. “When that option was rejected, I argued for something . . . quicker.”

  “Quicker?”

  “An asteroid. You didn’t have the technology to stop it or the time even if you did. It was a simple solution, but it wasn’t a clean one. The world wouldn’t have been habitable for a thousand years.”

  “And that matters because why? You’re pure consciousness, immortal like gods. What’s a thousand years to you?”

  Apparently that question had a very complicated answer. Or one he didn’t want to share with me.

  Then he said: “For ten thousand years we had the thing that you only dreamed of for ten thousand years.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “An existence without pain, without hunger, without any physical needs at all. But immortality has a price. Without bodies, we lost the things that come with them. Things like autonomy and benevolence. Compassion.” He opened his hands as if to show me they were empty. “Sam isn’t the only one who’s forgotten his ABCs.”

  “I hate you,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

  “I want to hate you.”

  “I hope you fail.”

  “Don’t lie to yourself, Evan. You don’t love me—you love the idea of me. You’ve messed it all up in your head. You love what I represent.”

  He cocked his head, and his brown eyes were sparkling brighter than the stars. “What do you represent, Cassie?”

  “What you thought you lost. Wha
t you thought you could never have. I’m not that; I’m just me.”

  “And what are you?”

  I knew what he meant. And, of course, I had no clue what he meant. This was it, the thing between us, the thing neither of us could put our fingers on, the unbreakable bond between love and fear. Evan’s the love. I am the fear.

  7

  BEN WAS WAITING to pounce the minute I went back inside. I knew he was waiting to pounce because the minute I went back inside, he pounced.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks and laughed. Sure, Parish, aside from this whole annoying alien apocalypse thing, everything’s great.

  “The more he explains, the less I understand,” I said.

  “I told you something’s not right with that dude,” he said, being very careful not to say I told you so. Okay, not really. He was basically saying it.

  “What would you do if you didn’t have a body for ten thousand years and then all of a sudden you did?” I asked.

  He cocked his head and fought back a smile. “Probably go to the bathroom.”

  Dumbo and Megan had cleared out. We were alone. Ben was standing by the fireplace and golden light danced over his face, which had filled out some in the six weeks we had been holed up in Grace’s safe house. Plenty of rest, food, fresh water, and antibiotics, and Ben was almost back to his pre-invasion self. He’d never get all the way back. There was still a haunted look in his eyes, a wariness to him, like a rabbit in a hawk-patrolled meadow.

  He wasn’t the only one. After we reached the safe house, it took two weeks for me to work up the courage to look in the mirror. The experience was like running into someone you hadn’t seen since middle school—you recognize them, but what you really notice is the ways they’ve changed. They don’t match your memory of how they should look and for a second you’re thrown off, because your memory of them is them. So when I looked in the mirror, I saw a self that didn’t match the memory of myself, particularly the nose, which now veered slightly to the right, thanks to Grace, but I’ve let that go, there’s no hard feelings. My nose may be crooked now, but hers has been vaporized—along with the rest of her.

  “How’s Sam?” I asked.

  Ben jerked his head toward the back of the house. “Hanging with Megan and Dumbo. He’s okay.”

  “He hates my guts.”

  “He doesn’t hate your guts.”

  “He told me he hates my guts.”

  “Kids say things they don’t mean.”

  “Not just kids.”

  He nodded. He looked over my shoulder toward the front door. “Ringer was right, Cassie. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. He kidnaps a human body so he can murder all the unkidnapped human bodies. Then one day he decides he’d rather murder his own kind so he can save all the unkidnapped human bodies. And not just murder one or two of his kind here or there. All of them. He wants to destroy his entire civilization, and for what? For a girl. A girl!”

  Wrong thing to say. He knew it, too. But just in case there was any question, I said, very slowly, “You know, Parish, it may be a little more complicated than that. There is a human part of him, too.” Oh, Jesus, Cass, what’s the matter with you? One minute you’re furious at him, the next you’re defending him.

  His expression hardened. “I’m not worried about the human part. I know you weren’t crazy about her, but Ringer’s pretty damn smart and she made a good point: If they don’t need bodies, they don’t need a planet. And if they don’t need a planet, why did they come for ours?”

  “I don’t know,” I snapped. “Why don’t you ask Ringer, since she’s so damn smart?”

  He took a breath, and then he said, “I’m going to.”

  It took a second for me to understand what he meant. Then another to get that he was serious. A third second to do something about the first two seconds, which was to sit down.

  “I’ve thought a lot about this,” he began. Then he stopped. Like he had to mince words—with me of all people! Like I had a temper or something. “And I think I know what you’re going to say, but before you say it, you need to hear me out. Just hear me out, okay? If Walker’s telling the truth, we’ve got four days until the pod arrives and he leaves to do his thing. That’s more than enough time for me to get there and back.”

  “To get where and back, Ben?”

  “I won’t go alone. I’ll take Dumbo with me.”

  “Okaaaay. With you where?” Then I got it. “The caverns.”

  He nodded quickly, relieved that I understood. “It’s killing me, Cassie. I can’t stop thinking about them. Maybe Cup caught up with Ringer and—well, maybe she didn’t. She might be dead. Ringer might be dead. Oh, hell, they probably are dead—or maybe they’re not. Maybe they made it to the caverns and Ringer came back to the hotel to get us, only there was no us there to get because there was no there to come back to. Anyway, alive or dead, they’re out there. And if they’re alive, they have no clue what’s coming. They’ll die unless someone goes back for them.”

  He took a huge, shuddering breath, the first since he blasted off the verbal launching pad.

  “Go back for them,” I said. “Like you went back for Sam. Like you didn’t go back for—”

  “Yes. No. Oh, shit.” His face was red and it wasn’t from standing too close to the fire. He knew what I was saying. “This has nothing to do with my sister . . .”

  “You ran away and you’ve been trying to go back ever since.”

  He stepped toward me. Away from the firelight, his face plunged into shadow. “You don’t know a damn thing. I know that really bothers you, because Cassie Sullivan knows everything, right?”

  “What do you want from me, Ben? I’m not your mother or commanding officer or whatever. Do what you want.”

  I stood up. Then I sat back down. There was nowhere to go. Well, I could go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, except there was no bread or deli meat or cheese. I don’t know the particulars, but I’m pretty sure there’s a Subway on every corner in heaven. Also Godiva stores. On our second day here, I found Grace’s stash of forty-six boxes of Godiva chocolates. Not that I counted them.

  “I’m having a bad day,” I told him. My little brother hated me, my human-alien personal security guard confessed he doesn’t know compassion from compost, and now my old high school crush informs me he’s embarking on a suicide mission to rescue two missing and probably dead people. Plus I wanted a sandwich that I could never have. Since the Arrival, I’ve been beset by more cravings than a woman pregnant with triplets, and always for things I’ll never taste again. Chocolate ice cream cones. Frozen pizza. Whipped cream in a can. Those cinnamon rolls Mom made every Saturday morning. McDonald’s french fries. Bacon. No, bacon was still a possibility. I would just have to find a hog, slaughter it, butcher it, cure the meat, then fry it up. Thinking about the bacon—the potential of bacon—gives me hope. Not all is lost if bacon isn’t.

  Seriously.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”

  He came over and sat down about two inches too close. I used to fantasize about Ben Parish sitting with me on the sofa at my house while we shared a blanket and watched old horror movies until one A.M., holding a big bowl of popcorn in his lap. It was a Saturday night and he was missing about six killer parties populated by people way cooler than me, but he wouldn’t be anywhere else; the pleasure of my company was enough.

  Now here he was, only there were no killer parties, no TV, no blanket, and no damn popcorn. The world used to contain two Bens—the real Ben, who didn’t know I existed, and the imaginary Ben, who fed me popcorn with buttery fingers. Now there were three. The first two and the one who was sitting two inches too close, wearing a tight black sweater and sporting stubble that made him look like an indie rocker taking a break in the green room between sets. That’s
a lot of Bens to hold in your head at once. I should give them different names to keep them straight: Ben, Has-Ben, and What-Might-Have-Ben.

  “I get it,” I said. “But why do you have to go now? Why can’t you wait? If Evan can pull this off . . .”

  He was shaking his head. “Whether or not he pulls it off won’t make a difference. The danger isn’t the aliens up there. The danger is the humans down here. I need to find Ringer and Cup before the 5th Wave does.”

  He pulled my hand into his, and a little voice rose up from deep inside: Ben. That little voice belonged to the frizzy-haired middle-schooler who refused to die, the freckly-nosed, introverted know-it-all, self-conscious and awkward despite dance lessons and karate lessons and pep talks from her parents, toting around a bulging bag of secrets, the silly, mundane, melodramatic secrets of adolescence that would shock the popular, pretty kids, if only they knew.

  What was up with her? Why wouldn’t she just go away already? Not only was I carrying around too many Bens, there were also too many Cassies. Three Bens, two Cassies, a couple of Sams, and, of course, the literal duality of Evan Walker. Nobody was integrated anymore. Our true selves shimmered like a desert mirage forever receding into the distance.

  Ben touched my face, fingertips brushing my cheek, feather-light. And that little voice in my head, that fading cry: Ben.

  Then my voice: “You’re going to die.”

  “You bet I am,” he said with a smile. “And it’s gonna happen the way it should. Not their way. My way.”

  The front door creaked on its rusty hinges and a voice said, “She’s right, Ben. You should wait.”

  Ben pulled away from me. Evan was leaning in the doorway.

  “Nobody asked you,” Ben said.

  “The ship is central to the next phase,” Evan said slowly and distinctly, like he was talking to a crazy person or a moron. “Blowing it up is the only way we can end this.”

  “I don’t care what you blow up,” Ben said. He turned away like he couldn’t stand to look at Evan. “I don’t even give a shit about ending it. Maybe it’s hard for somebody with a savior complex to understand, but I don’t want to save the world. Just two people.”