The Rains

ENTRY 32

Standing before my parents’ graves, I unfocused my gaze, trying to take in as many of the Hosts as possible. The entire cemetery seemed alive, crawling with them. Their movements were coordinated, the Mappers keeping a short distance apart as they strategically covered ground. I thought about using the revolver, but by the time I’d spent the six shots, the remaining Hosts would’ve swamped me.

A ranch hand in a ragged denim jacket was closing in fast. He turned crisply on his heel, cutting across the back of a mausoleum. His next pivot would take him directly into me. And anywhere I stepped would be right into the path of another Host. A second Mapper trudged along behind me; others walked spirals to either side of my parents’ graves. Beyond the nearest Hosts were layers more, deep in every direction, stretching as far as the darkness and thinning mist allowed me to see.

I dropped to the moist earth before my parents’ plots. The grass smelled fresh like summer, like baseball. A few wisps of fog floated through the air.

I had let go of everyone and everything in the world. I was as alone as I’d ever been, as alone as I’d ever be.

A squish of mud signaled the ranch hand’s next turn. He emerged from the side of the mausoleum, heading for me, his head scanning the ground just ahead of the tips of his boots.

I grabbed the baling hooks so hard that my knuckles ached.

Wet grass slurped at his boots as he moved forward. His eyeless eyes were inches from noticing me. I watched the cant of his head.

And it struck me how I could save myself.

Sliding off my pack, I rolled neatly backward over my shoulders, landing on all fours atop my parents’ graves. Somehow the Stetson stayed on my head. The Mapper walked right past me, close enough that the cuff of his pant leg shushed across my cheek.

Easing to my feet, I pulled the pack on again and slid behind him. I kept right on his back, the tattered denim undulating between his shoulder blades inches from my face. I held his pace precisely, put my boots in his footsteps. When he turned, I turned. I could gaze straight through his head from behind, which helped me gauge where we were going. We crossed paths with another Mapper who drifted within spitting distance but did not look up.

Ever so slowly, our turns widened. I stayed on the Host’s back, wiping sweat from my brow. Other Mappers marched by on either side, scanning the ground at their feet, the awful boreholes directed just to the sides of my legs. The slightest misstep would alert the Host in front of me or put me into the path of another.

It felt like playing Frogger on the old-time arcade game at the One Cup Cafe, trying to zigzag between cars without getting squashed.

Walk, turn, walk.

A swinging arm whistled by to my right, a massive Mapper stomping past, sending off a waft of body odor.

Walk, turn, walk.

Painstakingly, we spiraled our way out of the inner sanctum of the cemetery.

Walk, turn, walk.

A half hour passed at this excruciating pace. Another. The Host in front of me halted, and I nearly stumbled into him, my splayed fingers brushing the back of his jacket. He did not turn. Instead he tilted his head up to the sky. A bluish white glow framed the boreholes and the edge of his head as he uploaded his data to the heavens and whatever resided up there. A clicking sound emerged, maybe from his throat, maybe from somewhere else. Staring through the rear boreholes as if they were binoculars, I watched the mapped terrain scroll across his front eye membranes.

The clicking stopped, the glow faded, the head tilted down, and he continued on. Gathering myself, I followed as carefully as before.

Walk, turn, walk.

We ambled over plots, threaded between tombstones, carved around grave markers. It was slow-motion insanity, my life hanging on every tiny motion. I was following the already dead out of the cemetery, like some mythological hero trying to escape the underworld.

At last the fence came within reach. I fought down a panicked urge to spring onto the wrought-iron bars and scale them. We did a final, endless rotation just inside the perimeter and, after what seemed like forever, walked out through an open rear gate. I followed the Host to freedom. Several Mappers remained in view, dispersing across the rolling hills.

I stayed on the Host’s heels until there were no other Mappers in sight.

Then I simply stopped walking. I let him drift on in a straight line through the woods. Way up ahead he turned ninety degrees and disappeared through a veil of branches.

I briefly remained as I’d been, clenched and tense.

And then the pent-up terror of the past few hours shuddered out of me. On cue my muscles cramped. I had to consciously unlock my shoulders, draw them down and away from my head.

Bathed by the moonlight, I breathed and shook out my knotted neck. Exhaling long and slow, I continued on my course.

After what I’d been through, the remaining bank of the ridge was a breeze. I broke out onto the dirt road, and there it was, mud-spattered and glorious. The Silverado. I grabbed the keys off the front tire where we’d left them.

Swinging in behind the wheel, I felt a charge of triumph.

I followed the bumpy road down, the ride smoothing out as I lurched onto the highway. The route through the valley was straight and true, and I encountered no real problems. Like before, the abandoned cars were easy enough to dodge and Hosts were few, far between, and easy to steer around. For a while I even rolled down the window and let the breeze riffle my hair.

At the gas station, using the same air tube Alex had used, I siphoned off more diesel from the huge fuel tank of the semi. The bitter taste of the sludge made me gag. Once I’d filled up, I drove to an empty stretch of highway and parked the pickup right on the dotted line. Sitting on the warm hood of the idling truck, keeping a clear line of sight in every direction, I ate a stale sandwich and washed it down with some water.

A picnic for one.

I drove on, Ponderosa Pass coming up, a black mass even darker than the darkness ahead. Remembering the mob of workers from the cannery, I eased off the gas before the barricade and killed the headlights.

As soon as the barricade vaguely resolved ahead, I steered off the road. It was pitch-black here, the mountains cutting off the moon from sight, so I slowed to a crawl. The tires sank in the marshy reeds alongside the road.

The overturned bus from the Lawrenceville Cannery seemed to leap out of the darkness. I almost smashed into it, managing to wrench the wheel to the side just in time.

After steering around the bus, I parked the Silverado at the base of the pass. The tree line sloped steeply upward here, impossible to scale. I hopped out, my boots smacking wetly into the earth. To start my hike up the mountain, I’d have to climb the barricade once again.

As I pulled my boots from the wet reeds, they made a sucking sound. It was annoying and loud, but there was no other way for me to get back to the road. I continued on, stepping into a boggy spot. My boot sank even lower. When I went to lift my leg, my foot almost pulled out of the boot. I paused to firm my toes inside the boot.

But the sucking sound continued.

Behind me.

Then it stopped. An echo?

I waited, listening for the faintest sound. Nothing. I took another step, and the sucking noise came again in the darkness behind me. I paused, and it paused as well.

I tried to ram my fear back down my throat. If I started sprinting, I’d literally run right out of my boots. Even if I managed to get away, I wouldn’t last an hour out here barefoot.

I started up again.

The sucking noise started up.

But now it was in stereo.

Dozens of feet squelching through the reeds.

When I looked over my shoulder, there was only darkness. I swung my head back toward the highway. I was almost there. I could even make out the station wagon smashed beneath the fallen tree at the base of the barricade.

Ten more steps.

The invisible army marched behind me.

Seven steps.

Terror bubbled up from my chest. I swallowed it back down.

Three.

At last I eased onto the asphalt, keeping both boots.

I whipped around.

Emerging from the darkness, a band of cannery workers, looking even more ragged than those before. Seven or eight of them. Clothes half torn off. Bushy beards sprouting from the men’s faces. The women’s fingernails snapped off and bloody.

They broke into a run, their feet kicking up sprays of mud.

I turned and sprinted for the barricade, the backpack bouncing on my shoulders. Their footfalls pounded the highway behind me, closer and closer.

I leapt onto the hood of the station wagon, landing before the dead Host driver-Nick’s father. He was still sprawled through the windshield where we’d left him, his head pulverized. I used his back as a stepping-stone to launch me onto the roof, and from there I shot up onto the beaver-dam rise of fallen tree trunks. My hands scrabbled across the wet bark.

The Hosts reached the base of the crisscrossed tree trunks and flew up at me.

They were closing too fast.

I wasn’t going to make it.

If I drew the gun, I’d never get off all the shots in time. I dipped a shoulder, let the pack slide into a trough between the logs. I swung the baling hooks up on their nylon loops and seized the handles.

I turned.

One Host bounded onto the station wagon, denting the roof. Only a few yards away. There’d be no running from them or outsmarting them.

Not this time.

Curved steel hooks protruding from either fist, I turned and leapt into the mass.