Cassius gave a low growl, and a moment later Ben breezed by me, bumping my shoulder. He ran a hand over his bristling crew cut. The rippled flesh from a skin graft at his hairline never ceased to fascinate me, not because it was ugly—it wasn’t—but because it always looked to me like some otherworldly mark. When his drunken older brothers had crashed the Camaro, Ben alone had emerged from the fiery hull, and the scar on his forehead seemed like the thumbprint of an angel or a devil branded into his flesh, marking him to survive.
He crossed his arms, confronting Alex and Patrick. “Phone lines are cut. Internet’s out. Power’s out. We got the emergency generator, but we figure it’s best to use it as little as possible, keep the lights off so we don’t draw the—What’d you call ’em? Hosts? We gotta go through the entire school before we power on the generator, make sure all the light switches and fans are off, anything that’ll alert them. We were just about to get started. So thanks for the quick thinking, Alexandra, but we got it covered.”
“Oh, yeah,” Patrick said, gesturing around. “Looks like you’ve got everything solved, Ben. No need for any new ideas.”
“We’ve managed just fine so far without big bad Patrick Rain. We got a system in place, and that’s the only reason you’re looking at a hundred survivors. We don’t need some blonde waltzing in here giving orders.”
Patrick’s mouth tensed. “I didn’t hear her give any orders.”
“What? She can’t speak up for herself? She needs you to look out for her like you’ve looked out for your kid brother since your parents croaked?”
Patrick set down the shotgun and took a step forward. Ben smiled that twisted smile and raised his fists. “Okay, then.”
Dr. Chatterjee tried to get between Patrick and Ben, but he was too slow; Patrick had already breezed by. “Hang on,” Chatterjee said. “This is the last thing we need right now.”
Patrick and Ben had almost closed in on each other when a scream from outside lofted in through the high windows. The two of them froze. JoJo covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut. It came again, a child’s cry.
And then suddenly it cut off.
Marina Mendez scampered up the bleachers to the top bench and put her face to the window. “They got Angie B.,” she said.
The silence that followed was broken by a few of the younger kids sobbing. Slowly, I became aware of Patrick and Ben close to me, still locked in their standoff. Patrick stepped back from Ben, holding his hands to the sides. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he turned to Dr. Chatterjee and the other kids. “I was being stupid.”
Alex glared at Ben. “Have you tried the TV?” she asked.
“Cable lines are cut,” Ben said.
“How ’bout the crappy old one with the rabbit ears in the teachers’ lounge?” Alex said. “You think of that?”
Ben reddened a little. “Who cares about the TV?”
“I do. Because with a TV we can see how far this thing’s spread.” Alex reached over her shoulder, grabbing the handle of her hockey stick and whipping it free of the backpack. It looked like she was unsheathing a sword. “I’ll go get it,” she said. “You stay here and act important.”
She turned and pushed out through the swinging doors. Patrick started after her, but Britney wiped her face and said, “It’s okay, Patrick. You stay and help figure things out here. I’ll go with her.”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. Britney grabbed a baseball bat and jogged out after her best friend, her ponytail bouncing from side to side, the bright ribbon flashing into view.
“Okay,” Chatterjee said. “Chance, will you come up here and explain to everyone what you explained to me?”
I walked to the front, sensing all those sets of eyes on me, a familiar self-consciousness welling in my chest. I felt better when Cassius padded over and sat next to me. I cleared my throat. “Look, I’m not sure about this, but there’s some stuff I thought might be right, maybe.”
“Chance,” Patrick said. “Just tell them.”
So I did. I went through what we’d managed to work out about the spores and the Hosts. Saying it out loud again, I realized just how much we still didn’t know. I felt like an impostor standing up there acting like I was some kind of expert. It didn’t help that Ben stood in the front, arms crossed. A few times Patrick urged me to speak louder so the kids in the back could hear, too. It was hard, but I got through it.
As soon as I was done, the questions started pouring in.
Eve asked, “Why do some of them swell up and explode and others chase kids around and look at the ground and stuff?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“In some species it’s not uncommon to see differentiated roles,” Dr. Chatterjee said, stepping in to help me. “Like ants and bees have drones, workers, and queens. Or it could be that the first-generation Hosts serve to spread the infection and the second-generation Hosts…” He paused. “Act differently.”
Little Jenny White raised her hand next. “I stabbed Mrs. Johnson through the stomach. And she lived.”
Her cheeks were flushed, and her chin trembled. Nine years old or so, standing there in a bloody dress, talking about putting a knife through her neighbor’s gut. A week ago it would have been unthinkable. A day ago it would have been unthinkable.
When Jenny spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “So how do you kill them?”
“We think it’s their brains that are effected,” I said. “So you gotta shoot them in the head.”
Marina Mendez piped up from her post by the window atop the bleachers. “Just like z—”
“Don’t say it,” Rocky cut in.
Dezi Siegler, one of Ben’s buddies, called out from the back, “But we don’t have any guns. Except your brother. And you.”
“Yeah,” Leonora Rose said. “Does other stuff work? Like if you bash them in the skull?”
Ben tugged the bolt gun from his jeans and held it up over his head. He tugged the trigger. Compressed air hissed, and there came the thunderous smack of the steel rod firing. “This worked just fine,” he said.
The raised gun caught a beam of light from the high window. The end was coated in blood.
“But I thought that was just a stun gun,” Eve said.
“For cattle.” Ben thumbed another air cartridge into place. “But compared to a cow skull, a human’s is like an eggshell. It’ll put a Host on the ground in seconds flat.” A smile blossomed on his face. “Trust me.”
The doors boomed open behind us, making me jump. Alex entered with the small TV tucked under one arm, hockey stick clenched in her other hand. Her hair fell across her face, and she jerked her head, clearing it from her eyes. “Look what the blonde found,” she said.
Britney came in at her heels. I had to say, seeing them up there with their makeshift weapons, they looked pretty tough. Britney might not have been an athlete like Alex, but she was on the cheer team, her muscles shaped from being a base, propping up the pyramids and throwing the fliers. These were Creek’s Cause girls, not the willowy types you saw on TV who looked like they needed a cheeseburger.
Alex walked over, set down the unit on the lowest bleacher bench, and let her bag slip off her shoulder and thud on the floor.
“That’s all well and good,” Ben said. “But what are you gonna plug it into? Like I said, we can’t turn on the generator until—”
From her bag Alex pulled a twelve-volt battery with an outlet plug, the one Mrs. Yee used in physics when she talked about circuits and joules and made a lightbulb glow. Alex plugged in the TV, looked across her shoulder, and gave Ben a smirk.
He sucked his teeth and glanced away.
All the kids gathered in the court, sitting cross-legged, staring hopefully at the screen. Marina alone stayed in her perch high on the bleachers, staring out the window, as if she still couldn’t believe the world she was looking at. Taking a deep breath, Alex pushed the button. The TV went on with a popping sound. The little screen filled with static.
As Alex
fussed with the rabbit ears, I stared across the rows of stressed-out faces. In the dimness of the gym, I could see the TV’s glow flickering in all those sets of eyes like a pilot light. Like hope.
Everyone sat there as if it were some kind of movie night.
A signal caught on the screen, a blurry image scrolling vertically like the self-dumping hoppers in a grain lift machine. Another tweak of the rabbit ears and the image stilled. It was some dumb talk show, the host overseeing a competition between housewives who’d done their own makeovers. Alex started clicking the plastic knob, changing the channels. An ad for a new kind of car wax. A close-up of a weeping woman in soap-opera-soft lighting. A newscaster giving a live early-morning traffic report, the sound fuzzed by the bad signal.
Everything looked to be normal.
When Alex turned off the TV, you could sense the relief in the room, the first stirrings of optimism.
“Okay,” Patrick said. “So we can assume that the spores from McCafferty haven’t spread out of the valley.”
“Not yet,” Eve said.
That sent a ripple of concern across the basketball court.
“Let’s focus first,” Chatterjee said, “on what we know to be true.” He ticked off the first point on his slender forefinger. “The adults are affected, but not the kids. Can we zero in on an age?”
A silence as we all regarded one another. Marina called down from the bleachers, “I see Stevie Saunders and Hanna Everston across the street. How old are they?”
Answers rang out.
“Stevie’s twenty-three,”
“I think Hanna is, too.”
“No, she’s just twenty.”
“Twenty, then,” Dr. Chatterjee said, his voice heavy with dread.
My insides felt heavy, too. I pictured that hipster beanie, the Piggly Wiggly apron. When I spoke, my voice sounded thin against the gym walls. “We saw Eddie Lu. I think he’s just nineteen.”
“He is.” A younger kid raised his hand as if he were in class. Chatterjee nodded at him. “He’s my cousin. His birthday was this summer. We had a pool party.”
“Oh, my God,” Marina said. She covered her mouth, turning away from the window so fast that her pigtails whipped her cheeks.
“What?” Patrick said.
Marina said, “Talia Randall’s out there.”
Britney stiffened at the mention of her cheer captain. “She is? Is she…?”
Marina’s face looked down at us all. She didn’t say anything.
“Oh, my God,” Britney said.
Alex said, “Wasn’t her birthday just last month?”
Britney nodded. Her lips parted in shock. Her face, suddenly wan. Sweat sparkled across her temple. I didn’t understand what was going on.
“How old did she turn?” I asked, trying to catch up.
“Eighteen,” Alex said, keeping her gaze pegged on Britney.
Britney’s trembling hand rose to the back of her head. She tugged the rainbow ribbon free, and her hair fell about her face, crowding her cheeks, her eyes. Her pale, sweaty face stared out from beneath the straggly locks.
“We did a thing in class yesterday,” Britney said faintly. “But today…”
Her fingers loosened, the ribbon unfurling from her fist. The colorful letters running down its length became visible. Even though they were sideways, I could read them clear as day.
PARTY ON, BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!
“Today’s my actual…” Britney’s voice faded away.
Alex stepped forward and took her hand. “It’s gonna be okay. There’s no way it works that precisely. You’re gonna be—”
“Do you know,” Dr. Chatterjee spoke slowly, shaping each word, “what time of day you were born?”
Britney opened her mouth to answer. Her glossy lips stayed like that, wobbling in an oval.
And then she shuddered.
Alex took an unsteady step back. “No,” she said. “No, no, no.”
Patrick came up behind Alex, and she stepped back again, bumping into him. He hugged her with one arm from behind but I noticed he kept his other hand free.
The one holding the shotgun.
Blackness stole across Britney’s eyes, darkening the whites until they looked like giant pupils.
The faintest crackling sound came, like the sound of insects feasting, as Britney’s eyeballs turned to dried bits of ash.
Alex was sobbing, bent forward, her shoulders shaking. She was screaming, but I couldn’t hear her.
The ash fell away, leaving two tunnels through Britney’s head.
ENTRY 14
Britney seemed to hang forward, her weight shifted onto the balls of her feet, hair dangling across her features, an electronic doll waiting to animate.
The kids were all standing now, backing away. A few broke for the doors. Cassius barked once, and I hushed him firmly. Up on the bleachers, Marina screamed. Alex clutched Patrick’s arm, shaking her head, her eyes rimmed red. They were about five feet away from Britney. Sprinting kids strobed across my field of vision, turning the scene into a stop-action—Alex’s hand lurching to cover her mouth, the shotgun jerkily rising in Patrick’s grip. It seemed we were the only four still points in the gym, the kids swarming all around like bees.
“We have to be quiet!” Dr. Chatterjee said. It was the first time I’d ever heard his voice raised. He was staggering away from Alex, nearly tripping over his orthotics. “If we’re too loud, we’ll bring more of them here!”
A ripple coursed beneath the skin of Britney’s face. Nothing moved, but there was a change in the substance of her flesh, as if some invisible spark had been struck. She tilted back more fully onto her feet. She lifted her head.
Those blank tunnels aimed directly at Alex. Best friend facing best friend.
Patrick remained behind Alex, his chest to her back, one arm slung protectively across her. Alex’s head was just in front of his, their bodies aligned so they were both peering down the length of the shotgun at Britney.
Thank God Patrick had thought quickly and grabbed the Winchester off the bleachers at the first sign of trouble.
Alex’s hand pressed over her mouth, holding in a scream. She was still shaking her head—no, no, no.
Britney’s shoulders drew back, her spine straightening. Then her head pulled back, too, twitching. Her body tensed to lunge.
Still Patrick hadn’t fired. Was he afraid the shotgun boom would alert the Hosts?
A loud smack of metal on metal reverberated through the gym. Britney corkscrewed up onto her toes, her spine twisting. She fell away and revealed Ben Braaten standing behind her, stun gun raised, sleek metal rod dripping fresh blood.
Britney crumpled onto the floor.
Only when I heard her limbs hit the shiny floorboards did I realize that the gym had gone completely quiet.
Alex doubled over, clutching her stomach. Her cries came soft and low, as if something had broken open inside her. Patrick held her tighter as she sank to the floor.
A puddle spread beneath Britney’s head.
Ben finally lowered the stun gun, wiped it back and forth on his thigh, and shoved it into the front of his jeans. Remorse flickered across his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But someone had to.”
“Chance,” Dr. Chatterjee said in a voice strained with stress. “Go see if any Hosts are heading toward us.”
I darted up the bleacher steps as quietly as possible and put my face to the window. In the neighborhood across the parking lot, a bunch of male Hosts had stopped, frozen, their heads oriented toward the gym.
I jerked away, my heart pounding. The other kids stared up at me. I put my finger to my lips, and they got even quieter. Cassius put his front paws on the bottom bench of the bleachers, trying to figure out if he could climb up to me. I snapped my fingers, and he hopped down and gave me a hangdog pout.
We all stayed like that for a minute or two. A sneaker chirped on the floor. Someone stifled a cough. It felt weird to be staring down at all those scared face
s. From up here that dark puddle beneath Britney’s head looked like a shiny halo.
I turned again and eased my eyes up over the sill. The men were still looking this way, wolves on alert. All at once, they lowered their heads and continued along, walking their patterns. A breath hissed out through my teeth.
“We’re okay,” I said as I made my way back down.
“I have to clean up Britney,” Alex said. “I have to take her somewhere.”
A clatter of falling objects sounded from the storage room. Ben emerged, carrying an empty duffel bag. I recognized it as the bag that stored the soccer goal nets and spikes during the winter. With his other hand, Ben steered a mop in a yellow bucket on wheels.
He dropped the duffel next to Britney and flopped her limp body into it. Then he rose, lifted the dripping mop from the bucket, and tossed it at Patrick. Patrick caught the handle in front of his chest.
Crouching, Ben hoisted the hefty duffel bag and headed out, muscles straining beneath his shirt. Already the bag had started to spot.
Ben disappeared, and Patrick mopped up. Alex stayed on the floor, her face slack, staring at nothing. Patrick finished, squeezing pink water from the mop. When he wheeled the bucket across to the storage closet, one of the wheels gave off the faintest squeak.
Everyone stayed silent, out of either respect or shock.
A moment later Ben returned, the front of his shirt covered in blood. More blood than made sense. What had he done with Britney’s body? As everyone stared at him, he cuffed his flannel sleeves back from his thick forearms, twice each. “So,” he said. “I guess we figured out the age cutoff.”
I glanced over at Patrick and saw him swallow. Hard. He caught my eye, then looked away fast.
His eighteenth birthday was next week.
The Rains Page 9