The Rains

ENTRY 19

First the heads moved, rotating to face us, moonlight streaming through the skulls. Then the shoulders pivoted. They turned as one, the bodies separate and yet coordinated, like a flock of birds changing direction.

A bunch of them in ragged crop-picker overalls and flannels. Weather-beaten cheeks, bronzed skin, lanky builds. Jack Kaner used migrant workers and paid them a decent wage, though he rotated them through like crops. Sometimes there were a dozen. Sometimes more.

From the corner of my eye, I caught more movement. Turning, I came aware of shadowed forms spread through the fields, ovals of countless faces hidden among the cornstalks.

They’d frozen at our approach, letting us creep right into their midst.

My chest jerked in breaths. Instinctively, we’d fallen into a fighting formation, facing outward, our backs nearly touching. Cassius barked and barked.

The Hosts exploded into motion, flying at us, stalks rustling. The nearest one leapt. I saw Patrick’s arms move, and then the boom of the shotgun thundered through the air. With a swipe of her hockey stick, Alex snapped a Chaser’s head to the side. Cassius launched himself at the next Host, locking his jaws around the throat. The Host fell back, arms grabbing to pry his jaws loose.

“Into the corn!” Patrick said. “Stick together!”

Cassius lifted his dark muzzle from the Host and led the charge. We ran right over the Host’s body, breath hissing through his torn throat as our boots trampled his chest.

We plunged into the field. Leaves tore at my cheeks. Ears of corn knocked against my shoulders, my chest. Stalks snapped underfoot. I kept Alex’s back in sight, but it was hard, the view chaotic and jumbled. Arms and leaves flew at us from all sides like brushes at a car wash. The panting breaths and flashes of limbs all around made the very field seem alive.

A face and shoulder shot into sight, knocking Alex two steps to the side. I swung a baling hook in the Host’s direction, felt it penetrate flesh, jerked it free. We kept on, stumbling behind Patrick and Cassius.

The sounds grew louder, closing from behind and coming at us from both sides. I realized we were probably going to die here in the fields behind Jack Kaner’s barn. Patrick bowled a Host over, the stalks bending low for an instant. Before they snapped back up, I made out a caterpillar tunnel to our right.

“This way!” I shouted. “Follow me!”

Alex and Patrick fell behind me as I bulled through lanes of corn, swiping with the baling hooks, using them like machetes. The mouth of the caterpillar tunnel came up quicker than I’d expected, and I had to duck to avoid getting clipped on the forehead by the top of the arch.

I skidded in across moist dirt, the others piling in behind me. The inside of the tunnel looked like a giant intestine, the translucent white poly tarp fluttering and lifelike. It stretched five feet tall, so a worker could walk down the middle with only a slight hunch. The trapped heat pressed into our skin.

Keeping a low profile, I crawled a ways into the tunnel, the heels of my hands mashing kale and chard into the mud. A snapping sound turned my head. I froze to watch the outlines of the corn rows through the translucent tarp. Patrick banged into me from behind. A cornstalk bent forward and tapped the outside of the poly.

I dropped flat on my stomach, my cheek pressed into a knot of cucumber vine. Rustling sounds told me that Alex and Patrick had also gone flat. I could only pray that my brother could keep Cassius quiet. Patrick started to raise the shotgun, but I looked back at him over my shoulder and put my finger to my lips.

In the place where the corn had dipped forward, a form emerged. Its shadow, backlit by the moon, fell onto the tunnel right next to me. A head with two holes through it, grotesquely stretching up the curved wall of the tarp. As the Host lumbered forward, the shadow evolved, shoulders and torso and waist, until the entire outline seemed to hover over us.

Wind whipped across the mouth of the tunnel, giving off a low wail. We waited, trying not to move, trying to not even breathe. The smell of fertilizer burned my nostrils.

More crackling came from outside, and then other shadows played over the tarp all around us. Behind me I heard Cassius growl, but Patrick hushed him quietly and he listened.

The figures shuffled by, just outside the tunnel, their shadows flickering past the half hoops of PVC piping, riding the bumps of the segments.

The last Host finally ambled away. I stayed still until I could no longer make out the crunch of his boots in the rich soil. Then I sat up. Patrick and Alex looked at me, their faces drained of blood in the ghostly light of the tarp-filtered moon.

I said, “That was close.”

A Chaser shot through the wall on the other side, long nails tearing a dagger slit in the tarp. A tilted face, eyeless, covered by tangles of hair. She lunged forward, grabbing Alex’s ankles. Alex screamed and hacked at the skinny arms with her hockey stick, knocking them away.

The Chaser’s waist hung up on the tarp as she tried to pull herself through. Her head twitched; raspy breaths leaked through her cracked lips. Patrick rolled over and yanked a rebar spike out of the ground, the segment of tarp flapping up. Then he rolled back and drove the stake through the Chaser’s skull. She shuddered and went limp.

The freed segment of tarp snapped in the wind, straining the other spikes. Patrick hadn’t made a noise with the shotgun, but this wasn’t much better.

We ran.

Hunched over, barreling up the length of the caterpillar tunnel. The shadows reappeared, zooming in from our left. Three, then five, then eight. On the other side, there was no moon to backlight the Hosts and give us warning, but I had to imagine they were swooping in from that direction as well.

The Hosts started diving at the tarp, trying to break through. They dented the walls, which collapsed or puffed back into place. Stooped over, we sprinted through the gauntlet, heading for the barn on the far end. It was our only hope.

Patrick shouted something, and I looked back. The tunnel had been flattened behind us, but now the rear end of the tarp caught the wind. It rose, ripping segment after segment free, the destruction catching up to us. It felt like being inside a snake that was being skinned. Spikes flew, PVC pipes sprang free, and then the walls around us lifted up and away, leaving us running between Hosts on either side, fully exposed.

The tarp floated off toward the hillside, riding the wind like a magic carpet.

Some of the Hosts had run ahead, knocking free a few of the spikes from the tunnel next to us. As they turned for us, I veered between two of them and dove for the raised lip of the neighboring tunnel. I rolled inside and came up with blood dripping from my arms and chest.

Not blood. I’d smashed through a row of tomatoes.

Alex and Patrick sailed through the gap, and then we were running again, trying not to slip on the smashed tomatoes underfoot. On the left side, shadows zoomed along parallel to us, skimming across the poly. I made out Cassius’s bounding form among them, snapping and barking.

The Hosts’ numbers grew again, and they started pelting the poly with their bodies. This tunnel was going to give way just like the first one.

I halted and started burrowing through the far side.

“What are you doing?” Alex screamed.

“I have a plan!”

I rolled free of the tunnel’s right wall and saw with relief that there were no Hosts over here. Patrick and Alex appeared through the translucent poly, yelling at me, shadows massing at their backs. “We gotta go, Chance!”

Falling to my knees, I tore up the nearest stakes. Then I scuttled along the length of the tunnel, yanking rebar stakes free as I went.

When I risked a glance up, I saw the Hosts smeared against the far wall of the tarp, all distorted faces and fingers worming through rips. We were almost out of time.

Grabbing the edge of the tarp I’d just freed, I lifted it as high as I could, feeling the wind blast across my back.

At last it caught.

The lifting wall brought me face-to-face with Alex and Patrick. They watched with stunned amazement as the tarp flopped over, the sky opening above their heads. Rebar went airborne all around me, dirt peppering my face like shrapnel. The floating tarp wrapped around the mass of Hosts, blasting them back into the corn, clearing the row.

Only Cassius, low to the ground, remained, staring at us, as befuddled as a dog can get.

The tarp lurched and bulged like a living blob.

The barn was fifty yards away.

An arm tore free of the tarp, thrust up at the moon.

Shoulder to shoulder, we sprinted for the big rolling door. My footsteps jarred the dirt, my view of the barn rocking side to side. I could hear movement behind us, getting closer. That awful quick panting at our backs.

My breath fired through my lungs. Patrick bolted out ahead, shotgun swinging at his side. He slammed into the door first, then started rolling it open. We hurtled toward him. The gap wasn’t big enough for us to fit through, but there was no time to slow. Alex bladed sideways and skimmed by. I followed her lead, the door clipping my shoulder. I spilled onto the floor, somersaulting over in time to see Patrick slide inside after us. As he put his weight to the door, the gap filled with mouths and eyeholes, countless Chasers clamoring to get in.

The hefty door slammed shut, smashing a woman’s frail wrist. Patrick strained against the handle to keep it closed, cords standing out in his neck. “The truck!” he shouted. “Get in the truck!”

Jack Kaner, bless him, had an extended-cab Chevy Silverado pickup with diesel V8, four-wheel drive, and dually tires. A no-screwing-around farm vehicle, parked across from the stall doors like a mirage. I ran for the driver’s seat, gave a quick prayer, and reached for the ignition. The keys were there. Cassius leapt over the tailgate as he was trained, and Alex swung into the passenger side, but I was accelerating before she could get the door shut. Patrick drove himself against the barn door, but he was losing the battle, his boots skidding across fallen hay.

As we neared, he let go. The barn door flew wide with the force of dozens of bodies, banging at the end of its tracks. Hosts tumbled over from the sudden lack of resistance. Aiming the cab at the opening, I sped past Patrick, who hooked the tailgate with his hand and swung himself into the bed like he always did when we repaired fence posts on Uncle Jim’s ranch.

I plowed into the Hosts, their heads snapping against the hood. Some churned under the powerful wheels; others flew off to the sides. For a moment the tires gummed up, and I was afraid the sheer mass of them would stop us. In the band of the rearview mirror, Patrick flashed in and out of sight, hammering the butt of the shotgun down into faces, Cassius snapping and clawing right along with him.

The V8 roared, and then we shot free. I drove straight across the field, throwing back rooster tails of mud and lettuce. A Host emerged from the cornstalks, and I smacked him with the grille, sending him bumping over the windshield and then up into the night sky.

The Silverado hammered across the roadside channel and then screeched sideways onto the highway as I braked. The engine shuddered, smoke wisping up from the tires.

We’d made it.

Alex shot me a look that might have held admiration. I waited for Patrick to hop down from the bed. As he came around the driver’s side, I slid over the console into the backseat, relinquishing the wheel.

He climbed in and stepped heavy on the gas, heading for the shadowy rise of Ponderosa Pass. Jack Kaner’s farm faded behind us.

“Nice job, Chance,” Alex said.

Patrick shot her a look of his own and kept driving.