→ my name is lana snyder and this is my story on what happened at the end of the world. we were invaded and it was a mass instinctive event. but somehow i was one of the survivors.
- the 5th wave
→ started : 12/22/22 - finished : 3/17/23
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it's not a race up the stairs to freedom. we practically crawl up, hanging on to one another as we climb, me in the lead, zombie at the rear, amélie behind me, sammy behind amélie, and cassie behind sammy. the closed space is choked with fine particles of dust, and soon we're all coughing and wheezing loud enough, it seems to me, to be heard by every silencer in a two-mile radius. i move with one hand extended in front of me in the blackness and call out our progress softly.
"first landing!"
a hundred years later we reach the second landing. almost halfway to the top, but we haven't hit the debris evan warned us about.
we're halfway to the third landing when my hand smacks into stone. i turn to cassie and zombie with a whisper, "i'm going to see if i can climb it—there might be room to squeeze through at the top."
i hand my gun to cassie and get a good grip with both hands. i take a deep breath looking up at the rocks. shit.
i'm maybe three feet up when a rock slips beneath my foot and I come back down, smacking my chin hard on the way.
"i'll try," zombie says.
"don't be stupid. you're hurt." i say sternly.
"i'd have to try if you made it, dove," he points out.
he's right, of course. i hold on to amélie while zombie scales the mass of broken concrete and shattered reinforcement rods. i can hear him grunting every time he reaches up for the next handhold. something wet drops onto my nose. blood.
"are you okay?" i call up to him.
"um. define okay."
"okay means you're not bleeding to death."
"i'm okay."
he's weak, vosch said. he's not weak, but wounded. no matter the challenges zombie controlled what happened to our team. but ben, ben may have been weak. and right now he's between the two. zombie and ben are two people in one body, a body that's wounded, zombie was fighting back bens attempt to pour through the seeping wound, that kept overflowing with blood
the weak have been swept away.
that's the flaw in voschs master plan: if you don't kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.
they tested us. and we survived. we are surely not weak. they had put us through hell.
killing us off one by one through stages, or waves of grief. and we survived. we are the strong. and it shows. what kills us makes us stronger.
he may be able to manipulate the earth into turning on us, but he will not manipulate us to turn on the earth.
you're beating plowshares into swords, vosch. you are remaking us.
and we will be the death of you. that's a promise.
you built an army. we will rebel. you killed our families. we will kill you. you took our innocence. we will prove you guilty.
