I shrugged. JoJo ambled forward and hugged my side, even as we kept walking. I laid an arm across her back, careful not to hurt her with the baling hook. She was murmuring to herself, what sounded like a nursery rhyme. After a few steps, she let go and drifted back with her brother.
We walked in silence for a time. The only sound was our boots crunching against the dirt. We emerged from the corn into the scrubby, tree-studded land between our place and the McCaffertys’. As we edged through a row of Gambel oak, the lights of our porch started to resolve.
“Even if they weren’t human anymore,” I said quietly to Patrick, “it still feels like we’ve killed people, you know?”
“If you were like that, would you want to keep living?” Patrick asked. “Would you want to know your body was still running around, terrorizing other people?”
I pictured myself doing awful things without knowing I was doing them. “No,” I said. “No way.”
“These spores float over everything,” Patrick said. “Like a crop dusting.”
“That’s right,” I said. “A dusting.”
“Then why aren’t we Hosts?” Patrick gestured back to Rocky and JoJo. “Or them? We breathed the same air as Mrs. McCafferty and the Franklins. If the spores turn people, why hasn’t it turned us?”
“Maybe we’re immune.”
“Or maybe,” Patrick said, “we’re already infected and it’s just a matter of time.”
I looked down at the backs of my hands, fish-white in the darkness. Was something already creeping beneath my skin, transforming me? I felt each breath, cool in my throat, filling my lungs.
The changing wind brought the barking of the dogs. An angry ruckus, full of snaps and snarls. As we drew nearer, the lights clicked on in our house, our living room lighting up as clear as day, a beacon in the darkness. Relief spread through me, a warmth in my chest. We were about a hundred yards away from home and safety.
Uncle Jim came into view inside, heading for the front door.
“Thank God,” I said.
Uncle Jim opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. I started to jog forward, but Patrick grabbed my arm. “Hang on,” he whispered.
Something in his voice scared me into stillness.
We stopped behind the big old ash tree with the rope swing. I rested my hand on the trunk, feeling beneath my palm the carving that Alex had made last year with Patrick’s folding knife: A.B.+P.R. in a heart. I remembered watching her work the blade into the bark, her brow furrowed with concentration, her teeth pinching that full lower lip. As usual I was the third wheel, grinding a stick into an anthill and doing my best not to notice the way Alex’s shirt rode up when she leaned forward, revealing a strip of tan skin at her lower back.
After all the things that had happened, the memory seemed like a glimpse into another world.
I felt JoJo clutching my side again, but I couldn’t move to comfort her. I was rooted to the ground, my eyes fixed on Uncle Jim.
He stood perfectly still in the middle of the porch, lit from the glow of the house.
“What’s he doing?” Rocky whispered, and Patrick hushed him.
We watched Uncle Jim do nothing.
And then he shuddered.
Not a shiver from the cold but a full-body shudder as if an electric current had passed through him. Then he was still once again.
A few seconds went by.
Fear clawed up my throat, and I swallowed it down.
“I’m gonna go to him,” I whispered to Patrick. “He’s fine.”
I started forward, but Patrick’s hand clamped down on my arm. I shook him loose and stepped into the open.
My brother’s voice came at me quietly from behind. “Chance,” he said. “Wait. Just wait.”
The grief in his voice made my denial melt away, and I halted. The wind blew through my jacket. The bitterness was still in the air, riding the back of my tongue. I felt a pressure behind my face. I didn’t keep on, but I didn’t retreat behind the tree either.
Uncle Jim had no way to see me in the darkness.
He was just standing there, frozen.
Then a blackness crept across his eyes until they looked like two giant pupils filling the space between the lids.
And then the blackness crumbled away like ash. The breeze lifted the bits of residue out of his head.
The lights of the house behind him showed in those two spots.
I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sand. We watched as he stepped off the porch. He walked about fifty feet from the house, then halted. His head lowered, a smooth motion like a security camera autoswiveling. Then he walked a few steps, made a right-angle turn, walked a few more, and did it again. He walked a little bit longer each time, though the turns remained crisp. He seemed to be charting a rectangular grid, spiraling out from the center point. It made no sense at all, and yet there was some terrible cold logic to it, a logic I could not grasp.
Seeing him like that, all stiff as if under a hex, felt worse than if we’d come home and found him split open like Mr. Franklin. I realized I’d cupped my hand over my mouth, maybe to keep from crying out.
Uncle Jim, who’d played marbles with me when I was a kid. Uncle Jim, who made the best paper airplanes and taught me how to sail them across the barn from the hayloft. Uncle Jim, who’d helped me with my algebra homework, puzzling through the equations at my side.
He continued charting his course over the land in front of our house, his vacant eyes lowered. I remembered what Patrick had said about Mr. Franklin, how it seemed he’d been looking for something on the ground. Uncle Jim stumbled over a rock but then righted himself and kept on course.
I turned around and saw that Patrick was breathing hard, his grip firm on the shotgun. JoJo and Rocky had drawn back into the brush behind us, ready to run.
“We have to go to him,” I said to Patrick. “We can’t leave him like that.”
“I know,” Patrick said.
I stepped out and jogged for Uncle Jim, ignoring Patrick’s shouts for me to wait up. As I neared, I sprinted even faster. I had to see up close, to know it was true, because part of me wouldn’t believe it.
I got within talking distance, and Uncle Jim finally halted. His head tilted up, and then I was looking at his face and through it at the same time. Everything else seemed the same—the scuffed cowboy boots, his faded Wranglers, that worn Carhartt jacket. I felt an impulse to run to him and hug him—to shut my eyes and pretend he was okay.
But then his hands went to his buckle. He yanked his belt free of the loops on his jeans and came at me. At first I thought he was going to whip me. Then I remembered Mrs. McCafferty and her hank of long hair, and I realized he was going to restrain me.
And then do what?
My hands whitened around the baling hooks. The curved metal spikes stuck out from between the knuckles of my fists.
“Please don’t,” I said. “Uncle Jim? Please don’t. Don’t make me.”
His face lost to shadow, he kept on, readying the leather strap with his hands.
I raised my weaponed fists. “Please don’t.”
I could hear Patrick running to catch up. He wouldn’t be here in time.
Uncle Jim’s boots kept on, tramping across the mud, closer and closer.
I was crying. “Don’t.”
And then he was on me.
I sidestepped him and swung the baling hook. It embedded itself in his throat. He made a terrible gurgling sound and sank to his knees. I shook the spike free of his neck as Patrick finally arrived, his face flushed from his sprint.
Uncle Jim got one boot under him, then another. He stood, blood streaming from his neck, soaking the front of his jacket. As Patrick raised the shotgun, I turned my head, not wanting to see.
I heard the boom.
I heard the sound of a body hitting the dirt.
Then I heard the creak of our screen door, way over by the house.
I turned back in time to see Sue-Anne glide onto the
porch. She halted beneath the light, a swirl of moths wreathing her head. For a moment she remained there, peaceful and still.
Then that full-body shudder racked her body.
I’d been waiting for it. That made it even worse.
Her chest jerked a few times.
We watched her eyes turn black and disintegrate. We watched those tunnels swivel across the landscape and lock onto us. Her spine curled, and she leapt from the porch, landing on all fours, then springing up onto her bare feet. She sprinted at us faster than she should have been able to, her muscles strained to the breaking point. She was thirty feet away. I blinked, and then it was twenty.
Her hair flew about her face, her lips stretched thin with effort. She had tugged the sash free from her bathrobe, and it flapped wildly behind her.
Patrick chambered another shell.
ENTRY 8
We didn’t want to take the time to dig graves, so we laid Jim and Sue-Anne side by side on their bed in the master upstairs. It was a messy business, but after everything they’d done for us, we owed them that. We set up Rocky and JoJo in the living room watching TV so they wouldn’t have to see the terrible state of our aunt and uncle.
My brother and I stood by the footboard, looking at them lying there. Patrick had draped empty pillowcases over their heads to hide the damage, but already blood was spotting through. It was an awful scene, made more awful by how normal it might have been, the two of them reclining beside each other as if ready for bed.
At least they were together.
Our family had never been big on praying, but Patrick clasped his hands at his belt and cleared his throat. “They were good folks who took care of us when they didn’t have to.” He paused. I heard him breathing wetly but didn’t dare turn to look at him, because I was worried I’d start crying. “And they didn’t just love each other but they liked each other, too, always laughing together and still slow-dancing sometimes. As far as I’ve seen, that’s pretty rare in a couple who’s been married that long. They set a good example for us, and I hope me and Alex are lucky enough to feel that way no matter how long we’re together, and I hope Chance finds that with someone someday, too.” He was quiet for a bit longer, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained. “They were lucky to have each other, and we were lucky to have them.”
I reached out and touched the bump of Sue-Anne’s foot. My chest gave a little, and I bit my lip, hard. Patrick lifted Uncle Jim’s cowboy hat from the bedpost and rested it over the pillowcase-covered head, cocking the brim the way Uncle Jim always did. We turned off the lights and closed the door behind us, not knowing when we’d come back.
Standing in the hall, we could hear the TV playing downstairs. I said, “We’ve been breathing the same spores as Mrs. McCafferty and the Franklins and Jim and Sue-Anne. So some people must be more susceptible to them. Or maybe adults turn quicker and it takes longer for kids to change.”
We looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Either of us could transform at any minute. I was watching my brother for that telltale full-body shudder, and he was watching me for the same.
Patrick broke off the mini-staredown, reaching past me for the phone in the tiny alcove off the hall. He dialed and waited. I could hear the ringing, though the sound was muffled against his cheek, and then I heard Alex’s message.
You’ve reached me, Alex, and my dad, Sheriff Blanton. Dad, say hi.
Hi.
Real personable, Dad. Way to intimidate your constituency. Anyways, leave a message here for us. If it’s an emergency, then you wouldn’t be calling here, would you? You’d be calling Dad at the office. So we’ll just pretend this whole thing never happened.
Alex.
Okay, okay.
Beep.
Patrick hung up and redialed. With the phone wedged between his shoulder and cheek, he drummed his fingers against the wall, his impatience starting to show. His other hand fished his pendant necklace out of his shirt.
It was a sterling silver jigsaw-puzzle piece strung on ball chain like a dog tag. The puzzle piece fit together with the one around Alex’s neck, though hers was on a fancier necklace. She’d bought the set at the mall in Stark Peak. I remember the day she gave Patrick’s to him. I was inside reading Beowulf at my desk. I happened to look up and see them through the window. They were having a picnic outside. She opened the little jewelry box, presenting the fitting pieces to him like an engagement ring. They cracked up a bit about the whole fake proposal, and then she cocked her head like she did.
I could hear her voice through my open window.
“So, Big Rain,” she’d said, “what would you do to prove your love for me?”
Their old game. I’d seen them play it more times than I could count.
Patrick’s cowboy hat shadowed him across the eyes, but I could see his smile at the nickname.
She sidled up close to him, pendant in hand. “Would you cross raging rivers?”
“I would.”
She kept on, joking and dead serious at the same time. “Would you climb mountains?”
The Stetson dipped in a nod. His lips pursed, amused. “If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.”
Her face was flushed, and she was looking at his mouth. “Would you crawl through mud for me?”
“If mud needed crawling through to get to you, I would.”
Finally she reached up and hooked his pendant around his neck. Before she was done, they started kissing.
I closed the blinds. I was embarrassed and guilty to be spying on this private moment between them.
Or maybe it was something else.
Now in the alcove upstairs, waiting for someone to pick up, Patrick pressed the shiny puzzle piece to his lips. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it.
When Alex’s recorded voice came on again, he hung up and called the sheriff’s office. No answer there either. Patrick set down the phone a little harder than necessary.
“Pack a bag with some stuff,” he said. “We’re going to get Alex.”
Alex’s house was in town, a ten-minute drive.
“Why do I need to pack up?” I asked.
“Just in case,” Patrick said.
A few minutes later, with a change of clothes stuffed into my backpack, I met Patrick in the kitchen. He was stuffing cans of food into his heavy-duty hiking pack.
I set my own bag on the counter next to his and loaded in some dog food. He looked across at me, then said, “Good idea.”
“There’s gotta be some … what’s it called?” I reached for the term and finally retrieved it. “Infection radius for the Dusting. Town’s so much farther from the water tower. The spores probably haven’t reached there yet. Sheriff Blanton’s gotta be fine. We’ll round up a bunch of adults who aren’t affected, and they’ll help us.”
I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Patrick or myself.
We pulled Rocky and JoJo from the television and stepped outside again. I tried not to notice the smears on the porch from when we’d dragged Uncle Jim and Sue-Anne inside.
One of the goats tilted his head toward me, a tuft of yellow weed hanging from his mouth. His rectangular pupils stared up at me, asking questions I couldn’t answer. We breezed past him.
The ridgebacks smelled us coming and paced in their big metal crates, rattling the sides. I flipped the latches, and all seven of them poured out, surrounding us with snouts and fur, nuzzling into us and wagging their tails so hard that their rear ends shook. The kids let Cassius and his father, Zeus, lick their palms. With a snap of my fingers, I put the dogs on a sit-stay. Cassius was still a pup, but a big one—seventy pounds at just five months. He was what they called a “black mask” ridgie, with dark coloring across his nose and the band of his eyes. His forehead stayed wrinkled up with concern, and I stroked his head until he relaxed.
I looked to Patrick and said, “We’ll need to take the flatbed to fit the dogs.”
“No,” P
atrick said. “We want to head into town quietly.” He distributed shotgun shells into the various pockets of his jacket. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us.”
We made uneven time, slowing for the kids. After twenty minutes Patrick took my backpack so I could piggyback JoJo. Rocky matched our pace and didn’t complain. I followed Patrick’s lead just like always. He kept us off the main road, cutting through fields and forests, splashing across Hogan’s Creek on the set of boulders behind the Widow Latrell’s. The dogs kept close. Zeus, my biggest boy, forged ahead of us, 110 pounds of muscle on alert.
I noticed that Patrick was steering us around houses as well as roads. In the distance, the lit windows of the Latrell farmhouse flickered into view through the dense pine trunks as we passed.
I wondered about what was happening behind those lit windows and what state Mrs. Latrell was in. I pictured Mrs. McCafferty inside the grain silo, turning slowly to give us her profile over one shoulder, shallow breaths clouding the cold air. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t scrape that image out of my mind.
We continued on for what seemed like forever, keeping to the forest and fields. The Blantons’ house waited at the edge of town. It was nicely kept, with its white picket fence, wraparound porch, and Cape Cod shutters. We drew up to the property, peering around the detached garage. No lights on in the house.
There was something so much cleaner about the houses in town, owned by folks whose jobs didn’t require them to toil in fields or slop hogs. Blanton came from money, or so everyone said. That seemed to be another thing he didn’t like so much about Patrick and me: We didn’t.
He’d never thought Patrick was good enough for his daughter. He wanted a bigger, better future for her. Not with some orphaned kid who worked a ranch and probably would for the rest of his life. More than once we’d overheard him telling Alex, “Rain only goes one direction: down.” But that didn’t discourage her. No, it just gave a Romeo and Juliet gleam to their relationship, like those wedding pictures at the mall they shoot through some kind of filter so the couple looks all dreamy and out of focus.
The house sat still now, with its proud blue-slate paint and white trim, its porch swing swaying gently in the night breeze. Everything just as it might be on another night, on any night.
The Rains Page 4