He leaned against the hood of the car and looked up at the star-encrusted sky, undimmed by human lights, scrubbed clean of contaminants, and these the same stars that shone on the world before humankind walked upon it. For billions of years, these same stars, and what was time to them?
“Mayfly,” Evan whispered. “Mayfly.”
He shouldered the rifle and wormed his way through the pileup back to the backpack of supplies, which he threw over the other shoulder. Tucked the makeshift crutch beneath his arm. The going would be slow, painfully slow, but he would force Grace to choose between letting him go and following him, deserting her assigned territory at the moment when desertion could mean a serious setback in the carefully constructed timetable. He would swing north of the hotel—north toward the nearest base. North where the enemy had fled and retrenched and waited for spring to launch the final, finishing assault.
That’s where hope lay—where all hope had been from the beginning—on the shoulders of the brainwashed child-soldiers of the 5th Wave.
25
LATER THAT EVENING on the day they met, Evan and Grace walked along the midway beneath the lights that beat back the dark, weaving their way through the crowd, past the ring toss and balloon dart game and basketball free throw. Music blared from speakers mounted on the light poles, and bubbling beneath the music was the sound of a thousand conversations, like an undercurrent, and the flow of the crowd was like a river, too, eddying and swirling, swift here, languid there. Tall and lissome and striking in their good looks, Evan and Grace drew attention from the passersby, which made him uncomfortable. He never liked crowds, preferring the solitude of the woods and the fields of the family farm, an inclination that would serve him well when the time of cleansing arrived.
Time. Above them, the stars turned like the points of light on the Ferris wheel that loomed above the fairgrounds, though too slowly for the human eye to register, the hands of the universal clock that was winding down, that had been winding down from the beginning, and the faces that passed marking the time, like the stars themselves, prisoners to it. Evan and Grace were not. They had conquered the unconquerable, denied the undeniable. The last star would die, the universe itself would pass away, but they would go on and on.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“‘My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal.’”
“What?” She was smiling.
“It’s from the Bible.”
She shifted the stuffed tiger to her other hand so she could take his. “Don’t be morbid. It’s a beautiful night and we won’t see each other again until it’s over. Your problem is you don’t know how to live in the moment.”
She tugged him from the main concourse into the shadows between two tents, where she kissed him, pressing her body tightly against his, and something opened inside him. She entered into him and the terrible loneliness he’d felt since his awakening eased.
Grace pulled away. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes burning with a pale fire. “I think about it sometimes. The first kill. What it will be like.”
He nodded. “I think about it, too. Mostly, though, I think about the last one.”
26
HE LEFT THE HIGHWAY, cutting through open fields, crossing lonely country lanes, pausing to refill his canteen with water from an icy stream, navigating as the ancients did, by the North Star. His injuries forced him to rest often, and each time he saw Grace in the distance. She didn’t bother to hide. She wanted him to know she was there, just outside the range of the rifle. By dawn he had reached Highway 68, the major artery connecting Huber Heights and Urbana. In a small stand of trees bordering the road, he gathered wood for a fire. His hands were shaking. He felt feverish. He worried the burns had become infected. His bodily systems had been augmented, but an enhanced body could reach a tipping point from which there was no return. His ankle was swollen to twice its normal size, the skin hot to the touch, and the wound throbbed with each beat of his heart. He decided to spend a day here, maybe two, and keep the fire burning.
A beacon to draw them into the trap. If they were out there. If they could be drawn.
The road before him. The woods behind him. He would remain in the open. Grace would stay in the woods. She would wait with him. Out of her assigned territory, fully committed now, no going back.
He warmed himself by the fire. Grace made no fire. His the light and warmth. Hers the dark and cold. He shrugged out of the jacket, pulled off the sweater, slipped off the shirt. Already the burns were scabbing over, but they had begun to itch horribly. To distract himself, he whittled a new crutch from a tree branch salvaged from the woods.
He wondered if Grace would risk sleep. She knew his strength grew with each passing hour and every hour she delayed, her chances of success waned.
He saw her at midafternoon on the second day, a shadow among shadows, as he gathered more wood for the fire. Fifty yards into the trees, holding a high-powered sniper’s rifle, a bloody bandage wrapped around her hand, another around her neck. In the subzero air, her voice seemed to carry into the infinite.
“Why didn’t you finish me, Evan?”
He didn’t answer at first. He continued gathering kindling for the beacon. Then he said, “I thought I did.”
“No. You couldn’t have thought that.”
“Maybe I’m sick of murder.”
“What does that mean?”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Who is Cassiopeia?”
He rose to his full height. The light was weak in the trees beneath a sheet of iron-gray clouds. Even so, he could see the cynical set of her lips and the pale blue fire of her eyes.
“The one who stood up when anyone else would have stayed down,” Evan said. “The one I couldn’t stop thinking about before I even knew her. The last one, Grace. The last human being on Earth.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. He remained. She remained.
“You’re in love with a human.” Her voice was full of wonder. And then the obvious: “That’s not possible.”
“We used to think the same about immortality.”
“It would be like one of them falling in love with a sea slug.” Smiling now. “You’re mad. You’ve gone insane.”
“Yes.”
He turned his back to her, inviting the bullet. He was mad, after all, and madness came with its own armor.