All of a sudden, footsteps hammered overhead.
I squinted up to see a figure flying across the roof of the house, backlit by the rising sun.
Between the portable tank rigged onto his back like a scuba tank, the shotgun angled across his chest, and the heavy-duty mask erasing his features, he looked like a superhero.
The shadow took flight off the roof, passing directly over the heads of the Chasers, swinging the shotgun around so it aimed straight down between his legs.
Thunder.
The scattered buckshot blew the Chasers to pieces on the driveway before me.
The form continued overhead, landing on the Airstream with a thump, cratering the metal.
I was on my back, my arm raised against the morning glare.
“Chance.” My brother’s voice was distorted through the mask. “Get up here now.” Leaning over, he stuck his hand out for me.
Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed it, and he hauled me up.
“Back onto the roof of the house,” he said. “Before others come.”
I ran down the length of the Airstream, dodging the open sunroof, gaining momentum to leap across the gap to the top of the carport. I made it easily. I turned to watch my brother.
The weight of the tank pulling down on him, Patrick sprinted across the Airstream after me. Just as he was about to leap, a clawlike hand shot through the sunroof, grabbing for his ankle, tripping him.
He stumbled, kept his feet, his force carrying him to the end of the Airstream. Somehow he managed to jump across the gap, but he landed hard, rolling over his shoulder.
One of the straps snapped, the tank spinning away from him. The mask pulled free of his mouth, yanked down below his chin, exhaling a hiss of oxygen. The tubing popped free. The tank rolled and rolled toward the edge of the carport roof.
Then it went over.
A second later I heard a clang as it hit the driveway below.
Patrick was holding his breath, his cheeks already turning red, veins standing out in his throat. The collision had knocked the air out of him. I was a few feet away, standing over him, paralyzed.
It was all happening so fast.
I saw his lips part.
Then he pulled in a breath.
ENTRY 40
We were frozen there atop the carport, me on my feet, Patrick knocked over.
He breathed the infected air again.
I didn’t know if we had two seconds or two minutes before he transformed.
“It’s okay.” He tugged the mask off over his head and tossed it to the side. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Anger and grief and denial crushed in on me, all mixed together. “But I got Alex,” I said. “I got her home safe.”
He gave a faint, sad smile. I could read the relief in it. And so much more.
“I know how you feel about her,” he said.
He did? I was shocked.
But my surprise was nothing next to what we were facing.
“Take care of her,” he said. “And make sure she takes care of you.”
He flipped the shotgun around, extending the stock to me.
“Now,” he said. “Are you ready?”
No.
I couldn’t get my mouth to answer.
“Chance,” he said, firmly. “This is gonna happen any second now. Are you ready?”
No.
I took the shotgun. He put his fist around the end of the muzzle, held the bore to his forehead, and looked up at me. Our eyes locked. I watched his lungs fill and contract, fill and contract.
I waited for that full-body shudder.
But nothing happened.
A minute passed. And then another.
Patrick let the shotgun bore slip from his face. “This is weird,” he said.
I coughed out something like a laugh. “This is impossible.”
Noises drifted up from below us, and we peered over the edge of the carport. Hosts were moving up the street from the town square, drawn by the blast.
Patrick stood, swiped the shotgun back from me, and hopped onto the roof of the house, heading back toward school. “Either way,” he said, “let’s get the hell out of here while we can.”
* * *
We entered the gym quietly, slipping through the double doors. The kids sat in rows on the basketball courts, the cots cleared to the side for the day. Alex sat on the lowest bleacher, having just finished talking to them all. Judging from the mood, it was clear what news she’d related.
The kids’ faces were as blank as dolls’, as blank as those of the Hosts themselves. Shock hung like a cloud in the room. It was so much to come to terms with, especially for the younger ones.
But they deserved the truth.
They deserved to know what was in store for them at the Lawrenceville Cannery if they were ever caught.
No one noticed me and Patrick standing at the back of the gym.
At last the spell broke. A few of the kids started crying. JoJo sat between the Mendez twins, trying to comfort them, but they were inconsolable.
“I don’t understand,” Eve said. “Why would they do this?”
Dr. Chatterjee rose unevenly on his braced legs, his hands clasped before him. “If these beings are indeed implanting offspring as Alex suggests…” He paused uneasily, cleared his throat. This was obviously difficult for him to talk about. “Then young specimens would provide the best … nutrients … for the growing offspring. Children have a lot of good healthy tissue for the offspring to…” He forced out the next words. “Feed off.” A deep breath. “As for the bones, the epiphyses—the growth plates—are most active in children, which could serve to accelerate maturation for a parasitic entity.” Seeming to lose his train of thought, he stopped briefly, his mouth wavering. “I’d hypothesize that the older kids are being used because hormone levels are highest during puberty, which would best support growth.…” He took off his eyeglasses, wiped them on the hem of his shirt. For a moment he looked lost.
Then he did something that caught us all off guard. He lowered his eyes into the fold of his hand and wept. We remained silent while his sobs filled the gym.
“If you can’t handle this,” Ben said, hopping up onto the bleachers and walking behind Chatterjee and Alex, “then you’re in serious trouble. Because kids getting implanted isn’t what we should be worried about right now.”
“What should we be worried about?” Dezi Siegler called out.
Ben took his time and looked at the crowd. The heel of his hand rested on the butt of his stun gun. “You should be worried about who’s gonna protect you when those things hatch.”
A chill of fear rippled through the kids.
Patrick broke the silence from the back of the gym: “Know what I’m worried about?”
Every head turned; every face lit with amazement.
There my brother stood, without a mask. Breathing real air.
“I’m worried about who loosened the valves on my tanks and let all the oxygen out,” Patrick said, striding forward. “I couldn’t have this conversation with you before, Ben. I was in too much of a rush to save my life. But turns out I don’t need the tanks after all.”
Ben looked shaken. Forgetting he was in the bleachers, he tried to take a step back, the bench behind him catching him at the calves. He sat down hard in the footwell.
At the sight of my brother, Alex stood, bearing most of her weight on her good leg. “Patrick? How are you breathing?”
As my brother threaded his way through the kids, they gazed up in wonderment. He reached the bleachers, and Alex threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him hard. They kissed.
I stood to the side, doing my best not to look.
Patrick and Alex broke apart, and he turned to face the others, his arm around her. Everyone clapped. I could feel heat rise to my face; I only hoped it didn’t show.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” Patrick said. “And I’m even luckier Chance is my brother.” He dipped his head, a rare show of em
barrassment. “Thanks for bringing Alex back.”
Everyone’s attention swung to me. Eve watched me very closely.
I gave a dumb little wave because I didn’t know what else to do. Then I took the black cowboy hat off my head.
And put it back on Patrick’s where it belonged.
ENTRY 41
Moths swirled in the shafts of light falling through the windows of the biology lab. Once Dr. Chatterjee had examined Alex’s leg and prescribed ice, Advil, and rest, she’d curled up on her cot and fallen asleep. Then he’d asked to meet with me and Patrick privately. He’d led us to his old classroom. Sitting behind his dusty desk now, he played with a DNA model made of rubber.
“The unidentified-particulate readings haven’t diminished since your eighteenth birthday, Patrick,” he said. “Not one bit.”
“Do you think he might have passed some window of vulnerability or something?” I asked.
“I don’t think that’s likely.”
“Why not?”
“Because so far everything about these spores, these … beings, has been maximally aggressive and effective. A brief infection window is neither. Plus, Occam’s razor dictates that the simplest solution is often the correct one.” Chatterjee spun the rubber ladder in his hands. “Which in this case would be genetic immunity.”
“If I have it, then Chance has it, too,” Patrick said. “I mean, these things are hereditary, right?”
The hope in his voice was so clear. As was the desperation.
“We won’t know for two and a half more years,” Chatterjee said, “when Chance turns eighteen. But I don’t think it’s as likely as in … other families.”
Watching that genetic model rotating in his hands, I felt my heart pounding. “What do you mean?” I said.
Patrick drew himself upright. “What are you talking about?”
“Your parents wanted to keep it all quiet for some reason. I counseled them against it, but I couldn’t say anything due to medical confidentiality. But now I don’t really see the point anymore, since everyone’s gone. You’re the only ones who … who…”
“Dr. Chatterjee,” Patrick said, his teeth clenched. “Will you please get to the point?”
Chatterjee set the DNA ladder down on his desk, finally looking up at us. “Your mother had some fertility issues. For a time she thought she couldn’t have kids. But your parents wanted children very badly. And your mother wanted to be pregnant, to carry you both. They kept trying to find a way. And finally they did.” He took a deep breath. “You were both born by embryo transfer.”
You could have knocked Patrick and me over with the tap of a finger.
The bags beneath Chatterjee’s eyes made clear what a toll these past weeks had taken on him. Bad news piling on top of bad news, and him the only adult in sight.
“So that means…” My brain was still a half step behind. “Patrick and I might have had different biological mothers?”
“Yes,” Chatterjee said. “If the genetic code that makes Patrick immune is from the maternal side—”
Patrick looked crestfallen. “Then Chance wouldn’t be immune like I am.”
For a moment silence reigned.
I thought about how much bigger than me Patrick always was. Stronger, too. The way everyone joked about how little family resemblance we had. And our personalities also had been different from the gates. Our interests and talents seemed to pull us in different directions from the beginning.
“Wouldn’t you know if the egg donor was the same?” Patrick asked. “I mean, you were our doctor. You delivered us. Wouldn’t that be in a file somewhere?”
“I’m afraid that information was kept confidential even from me. It resides somewhere in a computer system at the donor bank.”
My head felt heavy, filled with smog. I thought about what Alex had told me in the cabin about her father and my mom: They were gonna get married, have kids, the whole thing. Then Dad broke up with her after graduation. I don’t know what it was. Cold feet, fear, whatever. But he never forgave himself for it. Or her.
He’d broken it off with my mom because he’d found out she couldn’t have kids. Or at least she’d thought she couldn’t.
When I came back from my train of thought, Dr. Chatterjee was staring at me, looking dismayed.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “Thanks for telling us.”
“I’m sorry to drop this bombshell on you in the middle of everything else,” he said.
“That’s what the world is now,” I said. “One bombshell after another. We might as well get used to it.”
Patrick turned to me. “If I could trade places with you and give you my immunity, I would.”
“I know,” I said. “But I wouldn’t take it.”
He put an arm around my neck and tweaked me into him, hard. It hurt and felt good at the same time.
Dr. Chatterjee rose, and we started to head out.
“What are you gonna do about Ben?” I asked.
Chatterjee halted, his leg braces clanking. “We don’t know that he loosened those valves, Chance.”
“Yes,” I said. “We do.”
“You’re making accusations without evidence. We can’t act on that. We can’t live like that. Think what this community would deteriorate into without rules in place.”
“Ben said it himself,” Patrick said. “There have to be new rules. The old ones won’t work anymore.”
His face long with sorrow, Chatterjee put a hand on the ledge of my brother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Patrick,” he said.
He trudged out ahead of us.
* * *
Over the next few days, Alex rested up, but something was working on her thoughts like an infection. I watched her chewing her lip at night, staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. During the days she worked on her injured leg with a vengeance, stretching it out on the bleachers and doing deep knee bends. Every morning and every afternoon, she’d turn on the TV and give the dial a twirl all the way around.
I don’t know what she was hoping for, but every channel still showed static.
When I dreamed, I saw the faces of those kids in their cages at the cannery. The Queen’s stinger, poised to descend. Children floating on metal slabs, their bellies distended. I didn’t sleep for long, waking up in starts, drenched in sweat.
One night I jerked awake to find JoJo tugging at Alex’s sleeve two cots over. Alex shifted up on her pillow, and Patrick stirred as well.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Alex said.
Over the thudding of my heart, still on overdrive from the nightmare, I barely made out JoJo’s fragile whisper. “Alex?” she said. “Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”
Alex’s eyes ticked over toward my brother, and they shared a look through the darkness. I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Alex’s expression shifted into something hard and unrecognizable. She looked back at JoJo. “I can’t,” she said, and rolled over again.
She sounded angry, but I could hear the heartbreak beneath the words.
JoJo’s shoulders pinched up, and she shuffled away a step, stunned. I rose quickly and came to her side. “C’mon, Junebug. Let’s get you back to sleep.”
She lifted her arms to me the way she did when she was upset. Picking her up, I carried her over to her cot and tucked her in.
“Are they gonna get me, Chance?” she asked.
I thought about what I’d be willing to do to protect her. “Not so long as I’m around,” I said.
Her smile glinted in the darkness. “Then I’ll always be safe,” she said. “’Cuz nothing would ever happen to you.”
Content for the moment, she snuggled into Bunny and closed her eyes.
The weight of the promise pulled at me. From her perspective I must have seemed big and invincible.
Just like Patrick always seemed to me.
I couldn’t go back to sleep that night.
I used the following days to ca
tch up on rest and bring my journal up to speed. The sixth night we were back, Alex finished stretching and then started running up and down the bleachers—a drill that Coach Hanson used to make us do in PE when we weren’t paying attention.
It was clear that Alex was training for something.
Chatterjee stood and watched her, his forehead grooved with furrows. He seemed worried.
In between lookout shifts, Patrick paced around the school grounds. There was a building sense of anticipation, of unease. I sensed that something was coming, a storm brewing inside him and Alex, inside even me, but I couldn’t grasp what it was.
That night a hand shook me gently from sleep. “Okay, Junebug,” I murmured, rolling over. “Let’s get you back to—”
But it wasn’t Junebug. It was Eve.
She crouched beside my cot, her eyes wide with concern. “When you and Alex were gone, it was awful,” she whispered. “Patrick did his best, but he had the mask on and the tank, so he could only do so much.”
Her gaze lifted past me, and I turned to follow it across the gym. By the double doors, Ben sat watch, alert as ever, a shaft of moonlight falling across his eyes. When I turned back, I was surprised by the fear in Eve’s face.
“Chatterjee couldn’t control Ben,” she said. “He’s getting worse and worse. What’s gonna happen to the rest of us if all three of you are gone?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
Disappointment flickered across her eyes. “Oh, Chance,” she said. “You really can’t tell?”
“No.”
“You’re so amazing sometimes, but then you’re also so … young.” Eve leaned forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. Before I could respond, she scurried off toward her cot, keeping her profile low to the ground so Ben wouldn’t spot her.
My cheek tingled where her lips had touched. I lifted my fingers to the spot, my thoughts churning. It took half the night, but I finally worked out what Eve was talking about. Perhaps I’d known all along.
Alex said it first.
It was the next day. She, Patrick, and I were on northeast-quadrant lookout in Tomasi’s room. Alex hopped off the desk, landing strong on her feet. She stretched her left leg to the side and pulled it up, testing the muscle.
The Rains Page 27