The Rains

ENTRY 25

At the edge of town square, Patrick and I bellied down beneath an ambulance, facing the hospital, watching shadows move in the first-floor windows. He wore his mask. His cowboy hat scraped against the undercarriage, so he kept his chin low to the ground. At one side lay his oxygen tank. At the other his shotgun.

Getting here had been hell.

Not because of the Hosts-we’d actually been pretty lucky in that regard. But sneaking around in the night hauling a compressed-air tank and waiting for a Chaser to flash out of every shadow had frayed our nerves to the point of snapping. We’d crept from bush to tree to alley to car, our hearts racing every time we dashed across the open. Though we’d tried to be cautious, we’d been forced to take risks to save time, all too aware that every breath Patrick drew meant one less breath in the tank.

Our lookouts at the school had noted decreased Host activity along the southern fence line by the teachers’ parking lot, so we’d slipped out there. That gate also put us closest to the building itself for our return. Since we’d be lugging back as many super-heavy oxygen tanks as we could, any saved distance helped. Alex stood watch at the gate now, with Cassius at her side; when we got back, she’d signal us once the coast was clear. As strong as she was, she wouldn’t be able to manage the heavy tanks as well as Patrick or I. We’d asked for volunteers, of course, but none of the bigger boys had stepped forth. They were either scared or-like Ben-unwilling to risk their necks.

I was unarmed. The amount of loading and hauling I had to do required full use of my hands, so I couldn’t have my baling hooks dangling around my wrists. I felt naked without them.

Worse yet, Patrick was getting weird on me. First he joggled his head from side to side. Then he waved a hand in front of his face, wiggling his fingers.

“What?” I hissed.

“Everything’s blurry,” he said. “And I’m light-headed.” He pushed his palm to his forehead. “My head hurts. And feels good at the same time.” He offered me a goofy smile. “I think the oxygen’s making me loopy.”

“Great.” I reached for his tank and slid it toward me. I couldn’t read the dials, not in the dark, and even if I could have, I had no idea which way to adjust the oxygen concentration. That would have to wait for Chatterjee.

So I was stuck in the middle of the town square, heading into a deadly mission, with my brother acting like a drunk.

He took a few Darth Vader breaths. “Luke, I am your father.”

I smacked his arm. “Pull it together.”

He furrowed his brow. “Okay, okay.” Then he grinned. Then he tried to be serious again.

I rolled my eyes and returned my focus to the hospital.

I had to admit, part of me was relieved to see him smile. Patrick wasn’t exactly jokey to begin with, but ever since the Dusting he’d been like a pallbearer. Maybe he thought that smiling showed a lapse in discipline. Like the rest of us, he had plenty to be serious about. Right now he had even more to worry about than we did.

Before we’d left the gym, he and Alex had taken some time together on the bleachers, trying to adjust to his new life with the mask. Everyone-me included-gave them distance as they sat together, her hands cupped in his, murmuring privately to each other. As I passed, I made out only a snatch of their conversation, Alex’s whisper carrying over as she told my brother, “We will make this work.” It was hard watching them try to adjust, their expressions holding so many different emotions at the same time. Barring a miracle, that mask was now a permanent part of him. My plan had saved Patrick for the moment, but at a pretty steep price.

As I’d gathered my gear and walked over to get him, I’d heard them playing their old game, her words quiet in the crowded gym.

“-cross raging rivers for me?”

His smile, locked behind the mask, looked as sad as it did happy. “I would.”

Her eyes glimmered. “Would you climb mountains?”

I could barely make out his voice beneath the mask. “If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.”

She’d blinked, and her tears had fallen. “How ’bout that mud, Big Rain? We still on for the mud?”

He nodded.

She’d put her forehead to his, their faces close, his breath fogging the mask from the inside, hers from the outside. You could see the aching in their eyes, how badly they wanted to kiss. But they couldn’t.

They’d never be able to again.

I shook off the image of them on the bleachers, training my gaze back on the hospital. Hosts still milled around the ground floor. What were they doing in there? I’d assumed that they’d have to leave soon-to patrol the streets, to help in the church, to search out other kids to grab-but it struck me how little we really knew about them. Maybe they’d stay holed up there the whole night.

In which case we’d be in all kinds of trouble.

I risked a quick click of the flashlight so I could read the dial on the oxygen tank. An hour and a half of air left.

We’d gone from one countdown to another.

I alternated between watching the hospital’s ground floor and the pressure gauge on the oxygen tank. The shapes kept moving inside. The dial accelerated toward empty. Soon enough, panic sweat plastered my shirt to my back. With each passing second, my fear grew. We couldn’t keep waiting, and yet we couldn’t make a move. I was brimming with stress, and to make matters worse, Patrick seemed as content as could be, drunk on oxygen.

Once the dial got into the red, I realized we had to make a move.

I reached over and shook him. “Patrick. Patrick.”

He blinked at me sleepily. “Huh?”

“We gotta do something. Now. We’re down to twenty minutes. Look. No, look over here.”

His wobbly gaze found the dial. “Hmm.”

Then I did something I never thought I’d do. I slapped him across the face. Hard. Of course, I made sure to miss the mask and the straps.

He shook his head. “Thanks,” he said. “Okay. Twenty minutes. What do you want to do?”

“Remember when Andre Swisher ran out into the square?”

He nodded.

“I need to create a diversion. Draw them out. I’ll run across the lawn and loop back.”

That made his expression sharpen at last. “No way. We are not risking your life to save mine.”

“You got a better idea?”

He blinked hard, scrunching his eyes closed as if trying to squeeze his thoughts into place. Then he opened them. “Yeah,” he said.

With its siren screaming and lights flashing, the ambulance bulldozed across the town square, turning a bench into a spray of tinder. The tires left muddy tracks through the grass. The ambulance smashed into the central fountain, upending in a pile of rubble, stale water sloshing across the grille.

It wailed and wailed.

For a moment nothing happened. Then a handful of Hosts flashed out of doorways around the square. Four Chasers pried open the ER doors and bolted through, their ragged shoes flying right past Patrick’s and my noses.

We were hidden beneath a Buick Enclave in the front lot. We’d rigged up the ambulance, turning it on, then jamming a crutch between the gas pedal and the headrest. From outside the vehicle, I’d reached in and yanked the transmission into drive, the screeching vehicle nearly taking off my arm before I could pull it free.

As the Hosts pursued the wailing ambulance, Patrick and I rolled from cover and slipped through the ER doors. Patrick held his portable gas tank in one hand, the shotgun raised in the other.

Even in the dark, the ground floor sparkled, as spotless as ever. Gurneys and rolling privacy curtains, half-open doors and nurses’ stations-a lot of hiding places to keep us on edge. We poked around the emergency room, searching the cabinets and storage areas.

No oxygen tanks.

“I don’t see any,” Patrick said, his voice distorted through the mask. “Where are they?”

I jogged over to the directory by the elevator, passing a big window looking out at the square. A dozen or so Hosts encircled the smashed ambulance, a pride of lions zeroing in on their wounded prey. Even from here I could make out the quick puffs of air as they breathed.

I ran my finger down the directory, stopping at RESPIRATORY CARE-FLOOR TWO. I felt my stomach sink.

“We have to go upstairs,” I said.

“Then let’s go.” Patrick hoisted the tank in one hand and followed me to the wide stairs, being careful not to let the tube tug the mask away from his face. Any snag in the line could mean death.

We took each corner slowly, pausing at the landing. I risked a glance at Patrick’s tank-the dial even further in the red.

He shook his head again hard, as if trying to jar something loose inside it. In the distance I could hear the siren wailing away. I wondered how long it would hold the Hosts’ attention.

When we stepped out onto the second floor, it looked dark and still. Blue and red flickered in the window at the corridor’s end, the ambulance’s lights still flashing through the darkness. An overhead sign directed us down a corridor. Side by side, we eased past one doorway, then another.

The squeak of a wheel broke the silence.

We froze.

A crash cart rolled slowly out from one of the patient rooms.

It stopped in the middle of the corridor.

We stared at it there, about ten feet away, blocking our path. Patrick’s breath fogged the mask quicker and quicker, burning oxygen.

From deep in the room came the tick-tock of shoes against the floor. Then that awful shallow panting.

A Host dressed in ripped nurse’s scrubs emerged calmly, her gaze forward, her head twitching. Psychiatric restraints-thick leather cuffs lined with padding-swung from her drawstring. Seemingly she hadn’t heard us; she’d just bumped the cart as she’d moved around in the room. She wore clogs with slim heels that flexed her calves. From the side she looked almost normal.

When Patrick set the portable tank down, it gave the faintest clank.

Her head pivoted to face us.

I didn’t recognize her. Much of the hospital staff came in from Lawrenceville or Stark Peak for two-day shifts. Fluffy blond hair floated around her defined cheekbones. In another life she might have been attractive. But the holes bored through her eyes caught the shadows, giving her face a skull-like appearance in the low light.

Patrick raised the shotgun.

“Wait,” I said. “The noise’ll draw the-”

She leapt at us, swatting me to the floor, one hand reaching for the restraints at her drawstring. Patrick jabbed the shotgun butt at her, putting a dent in her forehead, the swinging motion straining the plastic tubing to the breaking point. As if it were happening in slow motion, I saw the mask start to pull away from his face. He leaned forward, trying to give the tubing some slack. Then the Chaser sprang onto my chest, her knees pinning my arms to the sides. The back of my hand knocked the tank, and it toppled and started rolling on the tile. As it spun away from us, I saw the dial rotating around, the needle well into the red zone.

Patrick lunged toward the rolling tank, leading with his mask. If that tank rolled too far from his face, the tube would rip off.

I bucked violently and wrestled with the Host. She stank of sour sweat and grime. I smacked her head to the floor, but she only bounced back stronger on top of me.

Over the frayed shoulder of her scrub top, I saw Patrick on all fours, still scrambling after the tank, keeping the faintest dip in the tubing. He dove for it, but before I could see if he reached it, the nurse’s hand slapped down over my eyes. Nails dug into my forearm, and I felt a restraint start to encircle my wrist.

I flailed, freeing my hand and trying to claw at her face, but her grip was too powerful. Her hand slid from my eyes and covered my mouth and nose. I tried to breathe around the reek of her sweaty palm, but my air was cut off, my vision starting to go spotty. It had just begun to haze over when I heard a clank, and her head snapped to the side, bent at an impossible angle on her neck.

She fell away, revealing Patrick behind her, mask intact, gripping the portable tank he’d just used to nearly unseat her skull from her shoulders. At my side she jerked on the floor, dots of static fizzling across her eye membranes.

Patrick took a knee, exhausted from the exertion, the oxygen intake messing with his stamina. Groaning, I turned on my side to face the tank, squinting at the dial.

Nearly on empty.

“Patrick, we gotta go.” I stood, picked up his tank, and hoisted him to his feet. He grabbed his shotgun from the floor and stumbled along beside me, his arm around my shoulders.

The Respiratory Care Department turned out to be a glorified suite at the back of the second floor. Three beds, various equipment piled on carts, a hanging privacy curtain in the rear.

I scanned the suite-no tanks.

Patrick looked at me, his eyes wide above the mask. “Chance. You need to get ready.” He spun the shotgun around and held it out to me.

We’d come all this way to find nothing.

But I wasn’t ready to give up. A last hope flickered as I charged forward and raked aside the privacy curtain.

Behind it a dozen oxygen tanks, gloriously lined up like missiles.

Nearly three times as large as Patrick’s portable tank, they were labeled “H,” marked as containing 6,900 liters of oxygen. Each one would buy him a day and a half.

I went weak with relief.

Grabbing his arm, I jerked him around the bed and through the curtain. Lifting his tank, I checked the dial. The needle was practically touching the “empty” peg.

“Take a breath,” I said. “A deep, deep breath. And hold it.”

“Chance.” He reached behind himself and leaned weakly on the bed. “I can’t think so straight.”

“Then listen to me. Take a deep breath now. Just listen to me, Patrick.”

He sucked in a deep breath. I tore the tube off the portable tank just as the dial clicked to empty.

Holding the end of the transparent tube, I spun to face the nearest H tank. I ripped off the white plastic ring serving as the protective seal, exposing the oxygen outlet.

I stared in disbelief at the barbed nozzle.

It was the wrong size for the tubing attached to Patrick’s mask.