The Rains

ENTRY 30

A light rain pinged the leaves all around me, making them dance. Cassius shook off water, then shook again. Most ridgebacks don’t like rain. They’re bred for the African desert, and water annoys them.

I stood a few feet back from the tree line, foliage framing my face as I peered at the rear of the church. There were no flatbed trucks or pallet jacks or patrolling Hosts. Aside from the faint patter of rain, everything was still. I couldn’t sense movement through the stained glass.

But I knew I had to take a closer look.

After a few quick breaths to steel myself, I put Cassius on a sit-stay and sprinted across the back parking lot, diving over the hedge. I lay there against the base of the building, gripping the baling hooks, listening for any sounds. It took me longer than seemed reasonable to catch my breath. Then it struck me-I wasn’t so much winded as afraid.

Though I’d figured it would be scarier out here without Patrick, I hadn’t counted on how much scarier.

But I had to get up and look inside. I had to see if they had Alex in there, crammed into a crate. And if so, I had to figure out what the hell to do next. I pictured her terrified, her knees drawn in to her chest, and felt anger take hold inside me. I let it give me strength.

Rising to a crouch, I peered through a clear piece of glass in the mosaic.

The inside of the church was empty.

Not a single crate. Not any Hosts. No meat grinder or piles of food.

And worst of all, no Alex.

Just a few left-behind sneakers and what looked like food stains on the floors.

Seeing the church empty was almost as unsettling as coming upon the caged kids in there earlier, but I couldn’t say why. My gaze fixed on an overturned Converse high-top. I grappled with the absence of all those boys and girls and what it might mean.

Any hope that this would be a short mission guttered out. The Hosts had probably crated Alex up and trucked her off with the other kids.

I put my back to the wall and slid down again behind the hedges. For a moment I let despair overtake me. But only for a moment.

I pictured Alex again, the way she tilted her chin up when she laughed. How she’d tuck her hair behind her ear when she leaned forward. Her fingernails, chewed to the quick or broken off from hockey practice, not like those of the other girls. Then, for an instant, I let myself remember that look of admiration she’d thrown my way after I helped us escape Jack Kaner’s farm.

Wherever she was, I’d find her. I’d get to her. And I’d bring her back.

To Patrick.

Which meant that I had to cross the valley, scale Ponderosa Pass, and make my way to Lawrenceville, where God only knew what waited for me.

As terrifying as it had been to sneak to the church, my journey had barely started.

My hooks and Alex’s hockey stick were useful, sure, but Patrick had saved the day many more times with a gun. To have even a prayer of making it, I’d need bullets.

And there was only one place to get those.

Back in the forest, Cassius’s eyes glinted from the darkness between trunks. He didn’t move until I jogged up to him and tapped his head to release him. As he trotted at my side, he nuzzled my palm, his way of saying hi. He looked up at me, tail wagging, and I realized that it was more than just a greeting. I made him feel safe. I was his pack. His family.

Since the minute he could walk, he’d stayed at my side whenever he could. Though it was against house rules for a puppy, I snuck him past Sue-Anne into my room most days after school. He’d been an active puppy, chewing up two pairs of my sneakers and an algebra textbook. That’s why I knew that something was wrong when he’d turned sluggish at three months. Then the vomiting started. By the time we rushed him to the vet, he was almost dead from parvovirus. Doc McGraw had to keep him overnight to give him IV fluids and antibiotics. Cassius wasn’t supposed to live through the night. Uncle Jim let me stay with him even though it was a Tuesday. He probably realized he couldn’t stop me anyways. I’d bedded down on an old horse blanket outside Cassius’s crate. In the morning Cassius was too weak to lift his head, but when he saw my face at the bars, he’d flicked the tip of his tail once, the closest thing to a wag he could muster.

Even when he was dying, he’d needed to show how happy he was to see me.

That tiny flick of the tail was the best thing anyone had ever given me. I swore then and there that if he lived, I’d make sure he always knew how much he was loved. He’d taught me the importance of that.

The memory made me stop right there in the woods. I crouched in front of him and dug my fingers into the scruff beneath his collar the way he loved. He panted through his dog smile, that big tail pulling his rear end back and forth, back and forth. “Good boy,” I told him as we started off again. “Good, good boy.”

Keeping to the pines, we circled the town square, gradually making our way to the bluff behind Bob n’ Bit Hardware. No sign of Hosts anywhere. Had they all left with the kids as part of whatever awful plan was going down in Lawrenceville?

If so, that would make the front part of my mission easier but what was coming much, much harder.

Cassius and I scampered down the bluff to street level, careful not to skid out on loose rocks. Then we ducked behind a car. Lowering to my belly, I peered through the tires. Way across the square, a Mapper was walking his paces. I watched until he vanished up a side street, and then I crept from cover toward the rolling rear door of the hardware store.

Orange light flickered around the edges of the door, and when I put my hand on the metal handle, it was warm from the blacksmith forge inside. I eased it aside, just wide enough that I could peer through with one eye.

Melted pistols and rifles were scattered around the burning forge. A few more still lay across the fire, devoured in the spots where the flickering flames touched them. A blackened set of tongs was sunk into the glowing coals, the handles sticking up like rabbit ears. On the anvil lay a revolver, its barrel hammered out of shape. Lumps of metal filled a crate beside the anvil.

Spilled across the floor in heaps like glittering treasure were countless rounds. The piles rose waist-high.

I’d been counting on finding them here.

You couldn’t burn bullets. Not without turning yourself into Swiss cheese.

The farthest stretches of the store were dark. Even so, I could see no Hosts. I listened for a moment but heard no movement.

Nudging the door open another few inches, I crept inside, Cassius slithering through with me, tangling in my legs. I fumbled Sheriff Blanton’s revolver, a.357, out of the holster, set it on the floor, and started digging through the mounds of ammo. Rounds spilled over my hands and wrists, leading to mini-landslides. As the bullets clattered on the floor, I winced, shooting glances at the dark reaches of the store. The baling hooks were swinging around on their nylon loops, getting in my way, so I slipped them off and laid them aside.

Searching for.357 Magnum rounds among this many bullets was like looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack, but I found one, then another, plucking them out of the piles. A minute later I had a run of luck, coming upon a slew of.38 Specials. Though slightly shorter, they’d fit the revolver. I grabbed handfuls, shoving them into Alex’s bag. They rattled to the bottom. They’d be heavy, but well worth having.

Just a few more seconds until I loaded the gun. Then I’d be way safer out here on my own. But in my excitement at finding the bullets, I’d gotten focused on the task at hand.

Too focused.

The rumble of Cassius’s growl made my hands freeze halfway into the bag. Despite the heat of the forge, a cold sweat broke out across my back. Dread pooled in my chest.

I looked over my shoulder.

Looming above me was Bob Bitley. His shirt in tatters, his wispy beard singed. The dancing light of the forge played through the boreholes of his eyes, giving his face a demonic cast. My baling hooks were out of reach on the far side of the ammo heap. Alex’s hockey stick rammed through the bag. The revolver unloaded on the floor beside me.

And yet Bob was ready. He gripped a set of roughly hammered shackles, the type you might see in an old dungeon movie, the chain drooping between them. He shifted, and the crate beside the anvil became clear. Those lumps of metal resolved as dozens and dozens of shackles.

He’d been melting down the guns, turning them into restraints.

It might have been less horrifying if there were any emotion at all on his face-rage or wrath or even evil. But the blank slate of his features somehow made him all the more menacing. I’d only known him to be clean-shaven. The messy beard-nine days of growth-was a reminder of the horrors being wreaked on gentle Bob Bitley, his body still functioning even after his mind had been taken offline.

He grabbed the back of my shirt, shoving one of the shackles toward my wrist. I struck at him. With incredible strength, he hurled me away.

It happened to be in the direction of the forge.

I stumbled a few steps, my hands flailing to keep me upright. I managed to halt just in front of the fire, leaning forward to try to regain my balance.

One of the tong handles nearly kissed my cheek. Hot air gusted in my face. My palms inches from the burning coals. Arching onto my tiptoes, I wobbled, swinging my arms to pull my momentum back.

At last I did.

As I whipped around, Bob lowered his head and charged. There would be no avoiding the forge; he was going to knock me straight into the flames. He’d almost reached me when a tan streak shot in from the side, hammering him from view.

Cassius.

He snarled, chomping down on Bob’s beard and shaking his head violently.

Bob drew back a massive arm and swatted the seventy-pound dog aside as if he weighed no more than a hamster. Cassius struck one of the heaps of ammo sideways, rounds flying everywhere, raining across the floor.

With a single lurch, Bob hurled himself from his back onto his feet. He spun the shackles around his hand and charged again.

None of my weapons were in reach.

But something else was.

I reached for the blackened handles sticking up out of the forge and ripped the tongs free. As Bob came at me, I raised the glowing yellow tips up to the level of his eyeholes and let Bob’s weight carry him onto them. He impaled his face on the tongs, the membranes popping, the hot metal sinking deep, winding up somewhere near the middle of his head. I clenched the handles hard, cinching the tongs inward toward his brain. His eyes fizzled around the hot metal. Black sludge poured into the eyeholes. Noxious smoke drifted from his ears and nose, his mouth foaming.

With the tongs embedded in his face, he fell to his knees and stayed there, kneeling, motionless, his head dipped as if in prayer.

Snatching up Alex’s bag, the revolver, and my hooks, I shot for the door, wanting to get clear after all the racket we’d made. Cassius and I ran from the hardware store. I dove across the hood of the same car we’d hidden behind earlier, Cassius bounding around the grille. On the sidewalk I flattened to the ground, peering through the tires, my dog beside me.

Nothing.

Then a set of legs walked past, just on the far side of the car, heading for Bob n’ Bit.

I looked at Cassius, put a finger to my lips. He understood the command. I lowered my head further so the cowboy hat wouldn’t poke up into view.

When I looked back, there were two sets of feet shuffling by. Then a flurry more. The parade kept coming, though I could only see the Hosts from the knees down. I lay there, breathing, until the torrent slowed.

A last set of boots trudged by, and then there was quiet for a good long time.

At last I risked a peek through the car windows.

I couldn’t see in the hardware store, but the rear door was rolled back, shadows of Hosts thrown about the walls.

I snapped my fingers at Cassius and ran a brief distance up the sidewalk, my baling hooks raised as I ducked into the first doorway.

The general store.

A bell above the swinging glass door clanged our arrival. Flying in, I was immediately attacked from all sides, hands flying in my face, tangling in my hair.

I’d dived right into a nest of Hosts.

I swung the baling hooks wildly. It took a few moments for me to realize that no one was fighting back.

I’d stumbled into the Christmas-ornament display, rows of them hanging from the drop ceiling tiles. As I calmed and lowered my hooks, the ornaments tinkled against one another, throwing off glints of light.

Aluminum Santas and tin reindeer and trees made of pine cones.

Relics from another life.

I thought about all the trees that wouldn’t be trimmed ever again. Our birthdays had been turned into something awful, but I hadn’t considered that the other holidays were all gone as well, vanished into the sinkhole of this new reality.

I could hear footsteps on the sidewalk, drawn by my loud and graceless entrance. I ran through the aisles toward the side door, skimming through with Cassius just as I heard the front-door bell clang again.

We scrambled up the slope alongside the general store and onto the roof where Patrick, Alex, and I had stood the first time we’d gazed across the town square and found it overrun.

I could see several Hosts there now, moving about. A herd of them still clustered around the back of the hardware store, lit by the orange glow of the forge like shamans performing some ancient rite.

I raced up the slope into the woods, running through twigs and bushes, banging off tree trunks. Finally I stopped in a clearing, panting. Even Cassius was breathing hard.

I reached over and stroked his head. “You and me, boy,” I said, his tail wagging at the sound of my voice. “We-”

A whoosh of air came at me from behind. Something hard cracked me across my shoulder blades, and then suddenly the world flew upside down.

Somehow I was flat on my back. Groaning, I tilted my head in the matted pine needles to catch an inverted view of chubby Chet Rogers walking toward me, his big cheeks flushed as always, holes bored straight through his head.

Gripping a jagged branch like a club, he closed in.