The 5th Wave Read Online Free PDF Page B

night to worry about besides drones. Wild dogs, coyotes,
     bears, and wolves coming down from Canada, maybe even an escaped lion or tiger from
     a zoo. I know, I know, there’s a
Wizard of Oz
joke buried in there. Shoot me.
    And though it wouldn’t be
much
better, I do think I’d have a better chance against one of them in the daylight.
     Or even against one of my own, if I’m not the last one. What if I stumble onto another
     survivor who decides the best course of action is to go all Crucifix Soldier on anyone
     they come across?
    That brings up the problem of my best course of action. Do I shoot on sight? Do I
     wait for them to make the first move and risk it being a deadly one? I wonder, not
     for the first time, why the hell we didn’t come up with some kind of code or secret
     handshake or something before they showed up—something that would identify us as the
     good guys. We had no way of knowing they would show up, but we were pretty sure something
     would sooner or later.
    It’s hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned
     for.
    Try to spot them first, I decided. Take cover. No showdowns. No more Crucifix Soldiers!
    The day is bright and windless but cold. The sky cloudless. Walking along, bobbing
     my head up and down, swinging it from side to side, backpack popping against one shoulder
     blade, the rifle against the other, walking on the outside edge of the median that
     separates the southbound from the northbound lanes, stopping every few strides to
     whip around and scan the terrain behind me. An hour. Two. And I’ve traveled no more
     than a mile.
    The creepiest thing, creepier than the abandoned cars and the snarl of crumpled metal
     and the broken glass sparkling in theOctober sunlight, creepier than all the trash and discarded crap littering the median,
     most of it hidden by the knee-high grass so the strip of land looks lumpy, covered
     in boils, the creepiest thing is the silence.
    The Hum is gone.
    You remember the Hum.
    Unless you grew up on top of a mountain or lived in a cave your whole life, the Hum
     was always around you. That’s what life was. It was the sea we swam in. The constant
     sound of all the things we built to make life easy and a little less boring. The mechanical
     song. The electronic symphony. The Hum of all our things and all of us. Gone.
    This is the sound of the Earth before we conquered it.
    Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against
     the sky. That’s how quiet it is. After a while it’s almost more than I can stand.
     I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to sing, shout, stamp my feet, clap
     my hands, anything to declare my presence. My conversation with the soldier had been
     the first words I’d said aloud in weeks.
    The Hum died on the tenth day after the Arrival. I was sitting in third period texting
     Lizbeth the last text I will ever send. I don’t remember exactly what it said.
    Eleven A.M. A warm, sunny day in early spring. A day for doodling and dreaming and wishing you
     were anywhere but Ms. Paulson’s calculus class.
    The 1st Wave rolled in without much fanfare. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no shock
     and awe.
    The lights just winked out.
    Ms. Paulson’s overhead died.
    The screen on my phone went black.
    Somebody in the back of the room squealed. Classic. It doesn’t matter what time of
     day it happens—the power goes out, and somebody yelps like the building’s collapsing.
    Ms. Paulson told us to stay in our seats. That’s the other thing people do when the
     power goes out. They jump up to…To what? It’s weird. We’re so used to electricity,
     when it’s gone, we don’t know what to do. So we jump up or squeal or start jabbering
     like idiots. We panic. It’s like someone cut off our oxygen. The Arrival had made
     it worse, though. Ten days on pins and needles waiting for something to happen while
     nothing is happening makes you jumpy.
    So