The Rains

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,” Patrick 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.

“Maybe they’re still asleep,” I said. “Maybe they don’t know anything’s wrong.”

At my side Cassius and Princess whined uneasily, and I hushed them.

“Stay here,” Patrick said to the kids. Then to me, “Make the dogs stay with them.”

I gave the command, and they sat. I looked Zeus in his yellow-brown eyes. I always thought of him as my warrior, his face marred with scars from play-fighting with the others or driving coyotes off our property. Having fathered five litters in his seven years, he occupied the top of the hierarchy, the others falling in behind him whenever he gave a directed stare or showed his teeth.

“On guard,” I said, and his ears flattened back against his skull. Then I looked at Rocky. “You see anything, tell him to S-P-E-A-K, and he’ll bark like crazy. You guys are our lookouts. Got it?”

He nodded, but his face was pale with fear.

I followed Patrick across the open front yard. We took a turn around the house, peering in windows. Behind us an empty hammock squeaked at the swivels. Patrick went up on tiptoes to peer into Alex’s bedroom, and I saw his back stiffen.

“What?” I whispered.

He gestured for me to look. Her bed was empty, the sheets smeared to one side, half on the floor.

As if she’d been dragged off the mattress.

The rest of her room looked normal enough, her closet door ajar, a big leopard-print beanbag in the corner, a vintage steamer trunk pushed up against the footboard of the sleigh bed.

Behind us the hammock squeaked and squeaked.

Patrick stepped away from the window, shotgun in hand. My own hands cramped around the baling hooks. A sprinkler leaked at our feet, turning the flower bed to mush.

We eased across to the next window. Sheriff Blanton’s bed was empty, the duvet thrown to one side.

Two ghostly faces peered at us from the far wall. I lurched backward, the realization hitting only a moment later-it was our own reflections thrown back at us from a mirror.

I needed a moment to catch my breath, but Patrick was already moving to check the other windows. The house appeared to be empty. We hit the tall fence at the edge of the house and circled back in the direction we’d come. Patrick walked briskly, his body tense. I had to pause in front of Alex’s window to tug my boot out of the mud caused by that leaky sprinkler.

Through the pane I heard a faint rattle.

With mounting dread I turned my head and looked through the window.

Nothing.

Then the lid of the steamer trunk jumped, the latch jangling.

I started. It banged again, even louder, the metal loop rattling against the hasp.

My mouth had gone dry. I looked up, but Patrick had already vanished around the corner.

The next bang nearly sent me airborne. Patrick reappeared at the edge of the house, staring back at me. I could barely make out his face in the gloom. He mouthed What? and I gestured furiously for him to get back over here.

A moment later we stood shoulder to shoulder at the window. The steamer trunk lid lifted, an inch of black showing at the seam. A hand flashed into view, four fingers curling over the lip, pale in the shadows. Then they pulled back into darkness, the lid banging shut again.

Patrick was breathing hard. “The hell was that?” he whispered hoarsely.

I shook my head.

The trunk made a noise like a heartbeat. Thump-thump.

We were frozen, our breath fogging the glass. Then Patrick said what I was dreading he might: “We have to go in.”

He set his palms flat against the pane and shoved gently upward. The sash window rose, squeaking in its tracks. He swung one leg over the sill, then eased himself through.

I gleaned that this was something he’d done before.

Gathering what courage I could, I followed.

Side by side in Alex’s room, we stared at the steamer trunk.

Thump-thump.

We drew near. Patrick readied the shotgun in one hand, seating the butt firmly against his shoulder. With his other hand, he reached for the latch. His fingers trembled. I’d never seen them tremble before, not even after Mom and Dad died.

His fingertips reached the latch. Curled beneath it.

Then he flung it up over the metal loop, freeing the lid and skipping back with the shotgun raised.

A form exploded up out of the trunk, screaming, long hair fanning out. Two hands drew back and swiped the air, moving as one piece. Long nails whisked so close to my face that I felt the wind against my cheeks. Metal glinted around the wrists.

I waited for the boom of the shotgun, but Patrick wasn’t firing. The person lunged forward to attack again, her face falling into a band of moonlight from the window.

“Alex?” I said.

All the tension went out of her body. Her shoulders curled in, and her hands fell to her waist. Handcuffs cinched her wrists.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Chance?” Her gaze immediately moved past me. She squinted into the darkness, and then her lips parted. “Patrick,” she said. She moved by me and hooked her arms up around his neck. He lowered the shotgun to his side and held her.

“What happened?” Patrick asked. “Who did this to you?”

“My dad.”

“Where is he now?”

A clicking sound rose, barely audible at first but growing louder.

It was coming from the closet.