The Rains

ENTRY 20

Our excitement built as we neared the base of Ponderosa Pass. Maybe we were reaching the end of the infection zone, or maybe we had to get up and over to Stark Peak, but either way it felt good to be making progress. Deserted cars cropped up here and there on the road, spaced out far enough that we could steer around them. The highway was desolate under normal circumstances but looked even more so now. Few folks had been on the open road far from town two nights ago when the spores had blown across the plain.

The high beams gave us early warning of Hosts on the highway. We drove past a few stragglers. Twice we saw a horde up ahead, but Patrick had plenty of time to veer into a field and cut around them. A mile or so from the base of the pass, we came upon a dark gas station, the pump area littered with abandoned cars.

Patrick eased the truck in, aimed for the open road. He kept it idling and hopped out. I started to follow, but he shot me a wink and said, “I got it from here, little brother.”

He headed over to check the pumps. Cassius sprang from the truck bed, keeping pace at his side. Patrick coasted between cars, his head dipping from view as he peered through windows. Then he ducked behind a minivan and didn’t come back up.

Alex’s fingers tightened around the door handle. Through gritted teeth she said, “Chance.”

I braced myself to go with her, but then Patrick’s head popped into sight again. He gave a wave and jogged over. Beside me Alex blew out a breath.

With a scraping of claws, Cassius jumped into the pickup’s bed. Patrick slid into the driver’s seat, locking the door behind him. “The power’s out here, too. Which means the pumps won’t work.” He shot a nervous glance over at the dark windows of the store. “I’m sure they have a backup generator somewhere for emergencies. The problem is getting to it.”

I leaned between the seats and peeked at the dial. “We have a quarter tank. Will that get us there?”

“It’ll get us up but not over,” Patrick said. “Last thing we need is to be stranded on the pass.”

“I suppose we could coast down.”

“How about getting back?”

“Hey, dummies,” Alex said. She pointed to the cab of a semi truck parked off to the side of the gas station. “Ever heard of siphoning?”

Seconds later we were idling next to the semi. Alex unscrewed an air hose from a nearby pump, ripped the nozzle off, then unscrewed the gas cap on the cab and stuck one end in. She sucked the hose a few times, spit out a mouthful of diesel fuel, and sank the streaming end into the Silverado’s waiting tank.

She wiped her chin on her shirt and gave a little smirk at our expressions.

A few minutes later, we were back on the road with a full tank.

The country thickened up with brush, then trees, and soon the mountains resolved from the darkness. Leaning between Alex and Patrick, I marveled at the green peaks, granite showing through like old castles or giant’s teeth. The pass had never looked so beautiful before.

Soon we’d be in Stark Peak, where Patrick would be safe. We’d find police stations and scientific experts and put matters where they belonged-back in the hands of grown-ups.

We barreled toward the mountains, our headlights boring through the darkness, when all of a sudden a jumbled rise of green and brown appeared where none should be.

Patrick stomped on the brakes. The seat-belt strap cut into my lap, and my arms braced against the headrests for the collision. As the locked tires screeched, trying to halt the two-and-a-half-ton Silverado, I caught streaked glimpses of the view ahead. A pile of fallen trees barricaded the road haphazardly, rising twenty or thirty feet. One of the biggest trees had smashed across the rear of an old-fashioned station wagon. A Host tilted through the shattered windshield, his face raised so our headlights shone right through his sightless eyes.

We were going to smash right into him.

The Silverado skidded, skidded, and finally stopped, the grille almost kissing the hood of the station wagon.

For a moment we sat there, staring at the Host as he stared back at us, the smoke from our brake pads and tires drifting past us, joining the streamers of fog.

We lifted our eyes to the cause of the landslide. Farther up the pass, an eighteen-wheeler had careened off the road, smashing into a shelf of trees. The last falling pine had caught the station wagon, trapping the driver even as he transformed.

There would be no getting our Silverado through the barricade. We’d have to progress on foot, which put Stark Peak farther away.

Right now we had a bigger problem, underscored by the rasp of the Host’s hands as he tried to pull himself through the mouth of the shattered windshield. He’d snapped off most of his nails, lifting them right out of the beds. Judging by the bloody scratches in the hood, he’d been trying to claw free for a while. The steering wheel had broken from the impact, one curved edge gouging him between the ribs, holding him in place. But it looked like he might tear himself free soon.

The headrest behind the Host and the passenger seat hung in tatters. He’d also tried to pull himself toward the back of the station wagon. Why?

We climbed down and fanned out around the car. Cassius started to bark, backing up and stomping the ground like a bull. I hushed him.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Patrick hopped onto the hood of the station wagon. The Host’s focus shifted, his bloody hands grasping for Patrick’s ankle. Setting his boot on the nape of the Host’s neck, Patrick pinned the twitching face against the metal. Then he drew the butt of the shotgun back over his shoulder and hammered it down, pulverizing the Host’s head.

Patrick jumped down. “We’re on foot from here,” he said. “At least until we find another car on the far side of the barricade.”

“I’ll pull the truck off the highway,” Alex said. “Stash it for our drive home.”

She held up her hand, and Patrick hit it with the keys.

A thin voice called out from behind us. “Wait! Don’t leave me!”

I whirled around, catching movement in the station wagon’s backseat. A hand held up, the palm facing us. Another palm rose barely into view and then a boy’s face, squinting into the glare of our headlights.

“Please help me out,” he said. “And hurry. There are tons of them around here.”

“How long have you been trapped in there?” Patrick asked.

“I lost track,” the boy said. “My seat belt got pinned in the crash. And then my dad, he just changed. He… he could almost get me.”

To keep out of reach, the kid must’ve stayed balled up on the seat, cramming himself down into the footwell as much as his seat belt would allow.

My eyes moved past the body to the tattered headrest and passenger seat. What had it been like for him hiding here, mere feet from a Host bent on destroying him? A Host who was also his dad?

“I’ll get you out of there,” Patrick said.

He nodded at Alex, who jogged back to the truck behind us. As I watched her go, a blocky form glinted in the darkness a good ways from the side of the road. A commuter bus lay on its side, half sunk in the marshy reeds. Decaled on the back, the giant logo from the Lawrenceville Cannery. Lawrenceville was little more than a cluster of lean-to houses around the factory perched on the highest shoulder of Ponderosa Pass, so they bused in most of their work staff from the valley. The windows were tinted. There was no telling who was inside.

Patrick said, “Go check out that bus, Chance.”

Thumbing up a folding knife, he leaned into the windshield past the dead Host and started sawing off the kid’s seat belt. The rear of the station wagon looked caved in and claustrophobic, but the kid seemed to be uninjured.

Alex pulled the Silverado around onto the reeds in front of the rocky brink of the pass. When the headlights swept the bus, the dark windows reflected back the glare, giving up nothing. My boots sank into the reeds as I walked over. Using the tires for holds, I climbed up onto the side of the bus and crouched for a moment, my baling hooks ready. Below, Cassius took up a guard posture, aiming his snout at the darkness.

Toward the front of the bus, the door lay open, pointing at the stars. My breath hitched in my chest. I clicked on my flashlight and shone it between my feet through the windows. This close, the beam penetrated the tinted glass, giving a murky view of the interior. Bags and purses lay jumbled against the far windows at the bottom, their contents strewn all over the place. Slowly, I walked across the panes, shining my light on the shattered glass and the trash below. A wallet. A baseball cap. A few coolers knocked open. Shoes and lipstick tubes. There’d been a lot of workers in there when the driver had transformed, tipping it over.

Which meant that now there were a lot of workers out here.

One of the windows fissured beneath my weight. I jumped to the next. That one spiderwebbed as well, so I hopscotched onto the metal beside the panes. I continued along, my flashlight stabbing across the empty rows of seats.

Finally I reached the end and slid off the bus. Alex joined me and Cassius as we headed back. Patrick was still leaning through the windshield of the station wagon, working on the kid’s belt.

The kid’s breaths came as panicked wheezes.

“What’s your name?” Patrick asked, using that voice he reserved for calming down sheep tangled in barbed wire.

The boy’s lips trembled. “Nick.”

With a snap the belt fell away. Patrick grabbed Nick’s hands and pulled him out carefully through the windshield. As he slid past the corpse of his father, the boy squeezed his eyes shut.

“It’s okay,” Patrick said. “Don’t look. I’ll tell you when you’re clear. Just keep talking to me.”

“Okay. Okay.” Nick’s side rubbed against his father’s body, the stiff hand trailing along his back. He stifled a cry.

“Hey,” Patrick said. “Hey. How old are you?”

“I’m thirteen,” Nick said, barely managing his words. “A freshman at Stark Peak High.”

“A Monarch?” Patrick said. “Monarchs suck.”

A tension breaker about the old rivalry.

Nick made a nervous laugh without smiling.

Patrick slid him down the hood. “You’re clear now.”

Nick opened his eyes and swung around, landing on the ground. A small kid for his age, with thoughtful eyes. He wore a hoodie up over his head, the sleeves too long for his arms. The back of the hoodie sported an image of an old king with a scepter and crown, a cartoon take on his school mascot.

As Alex jogged back over to us, Nick stomped his feet against the cold. “We have to go,” he said. “Now.”

“The Hosts,” I said.

It took him a moment to catch up to the name I used for them. “That’s right,” he said. “There are hordes of them roaming around here. It’s like they’re guarding the pass. We should-”

The faintest crackling sounds came from the edge of the forest beside the barricade. Twigs snapping. Feet squelching into mud. The cracking of joints.

We stood like a phalanx, breath cold in our lungs, watching. Cassius didn’t growl, but his upper lip wrinkled back from his teeth, showing his fangs.

The darkness took shape slowly, resolving into human forms. In the lead a woman wearing a tattered skirt crouched low to the ground. Her hair was still thick enough to cover the holes in the back of her head, so her eyes looked like black coasters.

The others gathered around her, a wall of not-humanity. More Hosts than we’d yet seen assembled in one place, all of them wearing uniforms from the cannery.

They charged.