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Rick Yancey

Rick Yancey Books

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The 5th Wave

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The Last Star

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“Beyond their immaculate design, the reason sharks rule the ocean is their complete indifference to everything except feeding, procreation, and defending their territory. The shark does not love. It feels no empathy. It trusts nothing. It lives in perfect harmony with its environment because it has no aspirations or desires. And no pity. A shark feels no sorrow, no remorse, hopes for nothing, dreams of nothing, has no illusions about itself or anything beyond itself.”

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Book:The Last Star
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“They made a major mistake," he blurted out, "the dumb bastards, when they didn't start by killing you first." "Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone's ever given me." I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth. "You know," I whispered, "a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that." He shook his head. "Not worth it." And, for one-ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.”

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Book:The Infinite Sea
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“They were afraid the longer we pretended to be human, the more human we would become.” “And who would want that?” “I didn’t think I would,” he admits. “Until I became one.” “When you…‘woke up’ in Evan?” He shakes his head and says simply, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn’t fully human until I saw myself in your eyes.” And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it’s my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes. Somebody might say that I’m not the only one lying in the enemy’s arms. I am humanity, but who is Evan Walker? Human and Other. Both and neither. By loving me, he belongs to no one. He doesn’t see it that way.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“He was a finisher who could not finish. He was the heart of a hunter who lacked the heart to kill. In her journal she had written I am humanity, and something in those three words split him in two. She was the may fly, here for a day, then gone. She was the last star, burning bright in a sea of limitless black. Erase the human. In a burst of blinding light, the star Cassiopeia exploded and the world went black. Evan Walker had been undone.”

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Book:The Last Star
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“That's my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it's not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now. I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you killed, but who live in me. But I am more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me. I am humanity.”

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Book:The Last Star
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“Let’s establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you’d like to come in. Two means you’re just stopping by to spy on me while I sleep.” His eyes travel from my face to my shirt (which happens to be his shirt) to my bare legs, lingering a breath too long before returning to my face. His gaze is warm. My legs are cold. Then he knocks once on the jamb. But it’s the smile that gets him in.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“Do you know a way out of here?” I ask Ben. Sammy’s more trusting than I am, but the idea’s worth exploring. Finding the escape pods—if they even exist—has always been the weakest part of my getaway plan. He nods. “Do you?” “I know a way—I just don’t know the way to the way.” “The way to the way? Okay.” He grins. He looks like hell, but the smile hasn’t changed a bit. It lights up the tunnel like a thousand-watt bulb. “I know the way and the way to the way.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“His other hand finds my cheek, and he wipes away my tears with his thumb. The chocolate scent overwhelms me as he bends over and whispers in my ear, “No, Cassie. No, no, no.” I throw my arm around his neck and press his dry cheek against my wet one. I’m shaking like an epileptic, and for the first time I can feel the weight of the quilts on the top of my toes because the blinding dark sharpens your other senses. I’m a bubbling stew of random thoughts and feelings. I’m worried my hair might smell. I want some chocolate. This guy holding me—well, it’s more like I was holding him—has seen me in all my naked glory. What did he think about my body? What did I think about my body? Does God really care about promises? Do I really care about God? Are miracles something like the Red Sea parting or more like Evan Walker finding me locked in a block of ice in a wilderness of white? “Cassie, it’s going to be okay,” he whispers into my ear, chocolate breath.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“Do you believe in God, Evan?” “Sure I do.” “I don’t. I mean, I don’t know. I did before the Others came. Or thought I did, when I thought about it at all. And then they came and…” I have to stop for a second to collect myself. “Maybe there’s a God. Sammy thinks there is. But he also thinks there’s a Santa Claus. Still, every night I said his prayer with him, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. It was about Sammy and what he believed, and if you could have seen him take that fake soldier’s hand and follow him onto that bus…” I’m losing it, and it doesn’t matter to me much. Crying is always easier in the dark. Suddenly my cold hand is blanketed by Evan’s warmer one, and his palm is as soft and smooth as the pillowcase beneath my cheek. “It kills me,” I sob. “The way he trusted. Like the way we trusted before they came and blew the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ass in the car, drive down the street, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino! Trusted…”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us--you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair." Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away.”

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Book:The Isle of Blood
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“He lays me on the bed. I say, right before he kisses me again, “If you kiss me again, I’m going to knee you in the balls.” His hands are incredibly soft, like a cloud touching me. “I won’t let you just…” He searches for the right word. “…fly away from me, Cassie Sullivan.” He blows out the candle beside the bed. I feel his kiss more intensely now, in the darkness of the room where his sister died. In the quiet of the house where his family died. In the stillness of the world where the life we knew before the Arrival died. He tastes my tears before I can feel them. Where there would be tears, his kiss. “I didn’t save you,” he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. “You saved me.” He repeats it over and over, until we fall asleep pressed against each other, his voice in my ear, my tears in his mouth. “You saved me.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“Aren’t you coming with us?” I feel his hand on my cheek. I know what this means and I slap his hand away. “You’re coming with us, Evan,” I say. “There’s something I have to do.” “That’s right.” My hand flails for his in the dark. I find it and pull hard. “You have to come with us.” “I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you? I—” “Don’t, Evan. You don’t know you’ll be able to find me.” “Cassie.” I don’t like the way he says my name. His voice is too soft, too sad, too much like a good-bye voice. “I was wrong when I said I was both and neither. I can’t be; I know that now. I have to choose.” “Wait a minute,” Ben says. “Cassie, this guy is one of them?” “It’s complicated,” I answer. “We’ll go over it later.” I grab Evan’s hand in both of mine and press it against my chest. “Don’t leave me again.” “You left me, remember?” He spreads his fingers over my heart, like he’s holding it, like it belongs to him, the hard-fought-for territory he’s won fair and square. I give in. What am I going to do, put a gun to his head? He’s gotten this far, I tell myself. He’ll get the rest of the way. “What’s due north?” I ask, pushing against his fingers. “I don’t know. But it’s the shortest path to the farthest spot.” “The farthest spot from what?” “From here. Wait for the plane. When the plane takes off, run. Ben, do you think you can run?” “I think so.” “Run fast?” “Yes.” He doesn’t sound too confident about it, though. “Wait for the plane,” Evan whispers. “Don’t forget.” He kisses me hard on the mouth, and then the stairwell goes all Evanless.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“And, for one– ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.”

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Book:The Infinite Sea
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“I should have asked, I guess,” he says. “I shouldn’t have assumed.” “What?” He rotates around on his butt to face me. Me on the sofa, him on the floor, looking up. “That I was going with you.” “What? We weren’t even talking about that! And why would you want to go with me, Evan? Since you think he’s dead?” “I just don’t want you to be dead, Cassie.”

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Book:The 5th Wave
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“That's my big problem. That's it! Before the Arrival,guys like Evan Walker never looked twice at me, much less shot wild game for me and washed my hair. They never grabbed me by the back of the neck like the airbrushed model on his mother's paperback,abs a-clenching, pecs a-popping. My eyes have never been looked into, or my chin raised to bring my lips within an inch of theirs. I was the girl in the background, the just-friend,or -worse- the friend of a just-friend, the you-sit-next-to-her-in-geometry-but-can't-remember-her-name girl.”

The 5th Wave
Author:Rick Yancey
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