Rick Yancey - The 5th Wave

THE 1ST WAVE: Lights Out

THE 2ND WAVE: Surfs Up

THE 3RD WAVE: Pestilence

THE 4TH WAVE: Silencer

THERE WILL BE NO AWAKENING.

The sleeping woman will feel nothing the next morning, only a vague sense of unease and the unshakable feeling that someone is watching her. Her anxiety will fade in less than a day and will soon be forgotten.

The memory of the dream will linger a little longer.

In her dream, a large owl perches outside the window, staring at her through the glass with huge, white-rimmed eyes.

She will not awaken. Neither will her husband beside her. The shadow falling over them will not disturb their sleep. And what the shadow has come forthe baby within the sleeping womanwill feel nothing. The intrusion breaks no skin, violates not a single cell of her or the babys body.

It is over in less than a minute. The shadow withdraws.

Now it is only the man, the woman, the baby inside her, and the intruder inside the baby, sleeping.

The woman and man will awaken in the morning, the baby a few months later when he is born.

The intruder inside him will sleep on and not wake for several years, when the unease of the childs mother and the memory of that dream have long since faded.

Five years later, at a visit to the zoo with her child, the woman will see an owl identical to the one in the dream. Seeing the owl is unsettling for reasons she cannot understand.

She is not the first to dream of owls in the dark.

She will not be the last.

ALIENS ARE STUPID.

Im not talking about real aliens. The Others arent stupid. The Others are so far ahead of us, its like comparing the dumbest human to the smartest dog. No contest.

No, Im talking about the aliens inside our own heads.

The ones we made up, the ones weve been making up since we realized those glittering lights in the sky were suns like ours and probably had planets like ours spinning around them. You know, the aliens we imagine, the kind of aliens wed like to attack us, human aliens. Youve seen them a million times. They swoop down from the sky in their flying saucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they march across the countryside in huge machines that look like mechanical spiders, ray guns blasting away, and always, always, humanity sets aside its differences and bands together to defeat the alien horde. David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy.

What crap.

Its like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

Theres no way to know for sure, but I bet the Others knew about the human aliens wed imagined. And I bet they thought it was funny as hell. They must have laughed their asses off. If they have a sense of humoror asses. They must have laughed the way we laugh when a dog does something totally cute and dorky. Oh, those cute, dorky humans! They think we think like they do! Isnt that adorable?

Forget about flying saucers and little green men and giant mechanical spiders spitting out death rays. Forget about epic battles with tanks and fighter jets and the final victory of us scrappy, unbroken, intrepid humans over the bug-eyed swarm. Thats about as far from the truth as their dying planet was from our living one.

The truth is, once they found us, we were toast.

SOMETIMES I THINK I might be the last human on Earth.

Which means Im the last human in the universe.

I know thats dumb. They cant have killed everyoneyet. I see how it could happen, though, eventually. And then I think thats exactly what the Others want me to see.

Remember the dinosaurs? Well.

So Im probably not the last human on Earth, but Im one of the last. Totally aloneand likely to stay that wayuntil the 4th Wave rolls over me and carries me down.

Thats one of my night thoughts. You know, the three-in-the-morning, oh-my-God-Im-screwed thoughts. When I curl into a little ball, so scared I cant close my eyes, drowning in fear so intense I have to remind myself to breathe, will my heart to keep beating. When my brain checks out and begins to skip like a scratched CD. Alone, alone, alone, Cassie, youre alone.

Thats my name. Cassie.

Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. Cassie for Cassiopeia, the constellation, the queen tied to her chair in the northern sky, who was beautiful but vain, placed in the heavens by the sea god Poseidon as a punishment for her boasting. In Greek, her name means she whose words excel.

My parents didnt know the first thing about that myth. They just thought the name was pretty.

Even when there were people around to call me anything, no one ever called me Cassiopeia. Just my father, and only when he was teasing me, and always in a very bad Italian accent: Cass-ee-oh-PEE-a. It drove me crazy. I didnt think he was funny or cute, and it made me hate my own name. Im Cassie! Id holler at him. Just Cassie! Now Id give anything to hear him say it just one more time.

When I was turning twelvefour years before the Arrivalmy father gave me a telescope for my birthday. On a crisp, clear fall evening, he set it up in the backyard and showed me the constellation.

See how it looks like a W? he asked.

Why did they name it Cassiopeia if its shaped like a W? I replied. W for what?

WellI dont know that its for anything, he answered with a smile. Mom always told him it was his best feature, so he trotted it out a lot, especially after he started going bald. You know, to drag the other persons eyes downward. So, its for anything you like! How about wonderful? Or winsome? Or wise? He dropped his hand on my shoulder as I squinted through the lens at the five stars burning over fifty light-years from the spot on which we stood. I could feel my fathers breath against my cheek, warm and moist in the cool, dry autumn air. His breath so close, the stars of Cassiopeia so very far away.

The stars seem a lot closer now. Closer than the three hundred trillion miles that separate us. Close enough to touch, for me to touch them, for them to touch me. Theyre as close to me as his breath had been.