MARIKA.

FIRST I TOLD HIM it was a dumb idea. Then, when he insisted, I told him to wait till tomorrow. It was late afternoon and the store was over three miles away. They didn't have time to get back before dark. He went anyway.

"Tomorrow's Christmas," Ben reminded me. "We missed last Christmas and that's the last Christmas I'm going to miss."

"What's the big deal about Christmas?" I asked him.

"Everything." And he smiled, like that had any power over me.

"Don't take Sam."

"Sam's the reason I'm going." He looked over my shoulder at Megan playing by the fireplace. "And her." Then he added, "And Cassie. Most of all."

He promised they'd be back soon. I watched them from the porch that overlooked the river as they headed for the bridge, Sam pulling the empty wagon, Ben favoring his bad leg, and the sun cast down their shadows, one long and one short, like the hands of a clock.

The crying came with the dark. It always did. I sat in the rocker, holding her in my lap. She had just fed, so I knew she wasn't hungry. I cupped her cheek and gently curled into her, discerning her need. Ben. She wanted Ben. "Don't worry," I told her. "He's coming back. He promised."

Why did he have to go all the way to that store? There had to be dozens of houses on this side of the river with Christmas trees in their attics. But no, he wanted a "new" tree and it had to be artificial. Nothing that will die, he insisted.

I drew the blanket tighter around her. The night was cloudy and the wind was cold off the river. The light from the fireplace flowed through the windows behind me and lay gleaming on the boards.

Evan Walker stepped onto the porch and leaned his rifle against the railing. His eyes followed mine into the dark, across the river, scanning the bridge and the buildings on the other side.

"Still not back?" he asked.

"No."

He glanced at me and smiled. "They'll come."

He saw them first, approaching the bridge, pulling the little red wagon with its green cargo behind them. He smiled. "Looks like they hit pay dirt."

He shouldered the weapon and went back inside. The wind shifted. I could smell gunpowder. Damn it, Ben. When he came up the walk, grinning from ear to ear like a triumphant hunter dragging the kill back to the cave, I had an urge to slap him upside the head. Stupid risk for a damn plastic Christmas tree.

I stood up. He saw the look on my face and stopped. Sam hovered behind him as if he were trying to hide.

"What?" Ben asked.

"Who fired their sidearm and why?"

"Did you hear it or did you smell it?" He sighed. "Sometimes I really hate the 12th System."

"Straight answer, Parish."

"I love it when you call me Parish. Did I ever tell you that? So sexy." He kisses me, then says, "It wasn't us, and the rest is a long story. Let's go inside. It's freezing out here."

"It's not freezing."

"Well, it's cold. Come on, Sullivan, let's get this party started!"

I followed them into the house. Megan jumped up from her dolls and squealed with delight. That plastic tree touched something deep. Walker came out of the kitchen to help set it up. I stood by the door, bouncing the baby on my hip as she bawled. Ben finally noticed and abandoned the tree to take her from my arms.

"What's up, little mayfly, huh? What's the matter?"

She popped her tiny fist against the side of his nose, and Ben laughed. He always laughed when she swatted him or did anything that shouldn't be encouraged, like demanding to be held every waking second. From the moment she was born, she had him wrapped around her inch-long finger.

On the other side of the room, Evan Walker flinched. Mayfly. A word that resonated, a word that would never be just a word. Sometimes I wondered if we should have left him in Canada, if returning his memories wasn't a particular cruelty, a kind of psychological torture. The alternatives were unthinkable, though: Kill him, or empty him completely, leaving him a human shell with no memory of her at all. Both of those possibilities were painless; we opted for the pain.

Pain is necessary. Pain is life. Without pain, there can be no joy. Cassie Sullivan taught me that.

The crying went on. Even Ben with all his special Parish powers couldn't calm her down.

"What's wrong?" he asked me, as if I knew.

I took a stab at it anyway. "You left. Broke her routine. She hates that."

So much like her namesake: crying, punching, demanding, needing. Maybe there is something to the idea of reincarnation. Restless, never satisfied, quick to anger, stubborn, and ruthlessly curious. Cassie called it. She labeled herself long ago. I am humanity.

Sam scampered down the hall to his bedroom. I guessed he couldn't take the wailing anymore. I was wrong. He returned with something behind his back.

"I was going to wait till tomorrow, but . . ." He shrugged.

That bear had seen better days. Missing an ear, fur that had gone from brown to a splotchy gray, patched and repatched and patched again, more sutures than Frankenstein's monster. Messed up, beaten up, but still hanging around. Still here.

Ben took the bear from him and made it dance for Cassie. Stubby bear arms flapped. Uneven bear legs-one was shorter than the other-twisted and twirled. The baby cried for a couple more minutes, clinging to the rage and discomfort until they slipped through her fingers, as insubstantial as the wind. She reached for the toy. Gimme, gimme, I wanna, I wanna.

"Well, what do you know?" Ben said. He looked over at me, and his smile was so genuine-no calculation, no vanity, desiring nothing but expressing everything-that I couldn't help myself and really didn't want to.

I smiled.

EVAN WALKER.

EACH NIGHT from dusk to dawn he kept watch from the porch that overlooked the river. On the half hour, he left the porch to patrol the block. Then back to the porch to watch while the others slept. His sleep was rare, usually an hour or two in the afternoons, and afterward always jerking awake, disoriented, panicky, like a drowning man breaking the surface of the water that would bear him down, the remorseless medium that would kill him.

If he had dreams, he could not remember them.

Alone in the darkness, awake while everyone else slept, he felt the most at peace. He supposed it was in his nature, passed down from his father and his father's father, farmers who tended the land and cared for their livestock. Nurturers, guardians, watchmen for the harvest. That was to be Evan Walker's inheritance. Instead, he became the opposite. The silent hunter in the woods. The deadly assassin stalking human prey. How many did he kill before he found her hiding in the woods that autumn afternoon? He couldn't remember. He felt no absolution in knowing he'd been used, no redemption in understanding he was as much a victim as the people he killed-from a distance, always from a distance. Forgiveness is not born out of innocence or ignorance. Forgiveness is born of love.

At dawn, he left the porch and went inside to his room. The time had come. He'd lingered here too long already. He was stuffing an extra jacket into the duffel bag-the bowling jacket he'd taken from Grace's house that Cassie had hated so much-when Ben appeared in the doorway, shirtless, bleary-eyed, scruffy-chinned.

"You're leaving," he said.

"I'm leaving."

"Marika said you would. I didn't believe her."

"Why not?"

Ben shrugged. "She isn't always right. One half of one percent of the time, she's only half right." He rubbed his eyes and yawned. "And you're not coming back," Ben went on. "Ever. Is she right about that, too?"

Evan nodded. "Yes."

"Well." Ben looked away, scratching his shoulder slowly. "Where are you going?"

"To look for lights in the dark."

"Lights," Ben echoed. "Like, literal lights, or . . . ?"

"I mean bases. Military compounds. The closest one is about a hundred miles away. I'll start there."

"And do what?"

"What I've been gifted to do."

"You're going to blow up every military base in North America?"

"South America, too, if I live that long."

"That's ambitious."

"I don't think I'll be working alone."

Ben took a moment to think. "The Silencers."

"Where else would they go? They know where their enemies are. They know each base has an arsenal of alien ordnance like Camp Haven's. They believe there's no choice now that the mothership's gone but to blow up the 5th Wave bases. Well, I believe that's what they believe. It's what I would believe if I still believed. We'll see."

He shouldered the duffel bag and walked to the door. Ben blocked the way. His face was flushed with anger.

"You're talking about murdering thousands of innocent people."

"What do you suggest I do, Ben?"

"Stay here. Help us. We-" He took a deep breath. This was hard for him to say. "We need you."

"For what? You can take the night watch and tend the garden and pick up my slack on the hunts."

"Goddamn it, Walker, what's this about, huh?" Ben exploded in fury. "What's this really about? Is it about ending a war or taking revenge? You can blow up half the world and it won't make it right, it won't bring her back."

Evan remained calm. He'd heard all the arguments, many times. He'd fought these battles for months, alone, in the quiet tumult of his heart. "Two will be saved for each one I kill. That's the math. What's the alternative? Stay here until staying here is too dangerous, then move to another place, then another, and another, hiding, running, using the gifts they gave me to keep myself alive-for what? Cassie didn't die so I could live. She died for something much bigger than that."

Ben was shaking his head. "Right, so how about I kill you now and save tens of thousands of lives? How's that math work for you?"

"You have a point." Evan smiled. "The problem is you're no killer, Ben. You never were."

SAM.

EVAN WALKER on the bridge crossing the river. Evan Walker with a bag over one shoulder and a rifle over the other, shrinking.

"Where is he going?" Megan asked. Sam shook his head; he didn't know.

They watched until they couldn't see him anymore.

"Let's play something," Megan said.

"I have to finish my bunker."

"You dig more than a mole."

"You are a mole."

"You gave Captain away."

Sam sighed. This again. "His name isn't Captain. And he wasn't yours. He was mine."

"You didn't even ask." Then she said, "I don't care. Cassie can keep him. He smelled."

"You smell."

He left the front window and went into the kitchen. He was hungry. He grabbed his favorite book to read while he ate. Where the Sidewalk Ends. Evan Walker told him it was Cassie's favorite book of all time.

If you are a dreamer, come in . . .

Evan Walker was gone. Forever, Zombie said. Sam didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about Cassie being gone or Dumbo or Poundcake or anyone from his old squad or his father or his mother or anyone he knew before he came here to the great big house by the river. He was pretty good at not thinking about them most of the time. Sometimes Cassie would come into his dreams, and she would fuss at him about everything. He wasn't clean enough. He wasn't nice enough. He couldn't remember things that she thought were important. In his dreams, her nose was straight and her hair longer and her clothes cleaner. In his dreams, she was the before-Cassie.

Are you being good, Sam? Are you saying your prayers every night?

One night he woke up Zombie-in his head, Sam still called him Zombie-and Zombie took him into the bathroom and washed the tears from his face and told him that he missed her, too, and then he walked Sam outside and he pointed at the sky. See those stars up there, the ones that kind of look like a sideways W? You know what that is?

They sat on the back porch and looked at the stars while Zombie told the story of a queen named Cassiopeia who lived forever on a throne in the sky.

"But her throne's tilted down," Sam said, looking at the constellation. "Won't she fall out?"

Zombie cleared his throat. "She won't fall. Her throne is turned that way so she can keep watch over her realm."

"What's a realm?"

Zombie pressed his hand against Sam's chest.

"This is." Zombie's hand to Sam's heart. "Here."

ALSO BY RICK YANCEY.

The 5th Wave.

The Infinite Sea.