The Rains

ENTRY 38

A shiny black Andalusian stallion loomed in the single stall. Seeing us, he threw back his head, exposing a white star on the left side of his chest. I pushed back the stall door, and he pranced out. With massive hindquarters and powerful hocks, he must have been seventeen hands.

At my back Alex leaned against the tack wall, the reins clanking behind her.

“It’s like he’s not real,” she said.

I put my hand on the stallion’s flank, felt the muscle and heat. Stacks of hay remained in his stall, a nearly empty bucket of oats, and a trough half filled with water. Though he’d been nourished, he was agitated from being pent up. He was ready to run.

That was fine by me.

I tapped my heels into the stallion’s ribs, pushing him from a two-beat trot to a lope. We rode bareback straight down the asphalt strip of Ponderosa Pass, his hooves like thunder against the tarmac. I leaned forward, gripping the reins, Alex’s arm looped around my waist. Her other hand swung free, gripping the hockey stick. Just in case.

Sure enough, a Chaser darted from the tree line ahead of us. I yanked the harness to the right, and Alex nearly lopped off the eyeless head as we cantered past.

The road gleamed with night dew, a black river leading us down to the barricade. We floated above the world, high enough to be safe, fast enough to soar. Alex’s body felt warm and tight against mine. She leaned into me, resting her cheek against my back when she got tired.

We made great time, the ride way easier than the brutal off-road hike we would have had to make. The rhythm of the horse beneath us was hypnotic, the crisp night air intoxicating. We encountered few Hosts on our descent. Two of them Alex dispatched with her hockey stick, and a third I trampled right over.

At last the eighteen-wheeler came into view where it had plowed off the road, crashing into the forest and starting the cascade of trees. We reached the rear of the barricade and slid off, Alex’s legs wobbly beneath her. I propped her up. The stallion was in full lather, breathing hard, and he looked regal, even godlike. His shiny black coat made him nearly invisible in the darkness, save for the white star.

I stroked his muzzle and thanked him. Uninterested, he turned and trotted off.

Once the mist folded around him, it was as though he had never existed.

As I helped Alex up and over the fallen trees, I realized that she was even weaker than I’d thought. Though she was toughing it out, it was clear that the past two days had taken a serious toll.

We peered over the top of the barricade to check for Hosts, then picked our way down the logs. I set my hand on an upthrust branch, and it felt soft, wrapped in fabric of some sort. When I looked closer, a cartoon of an old king with a scepter and crown became visible. It was Nick’s Stark Peak High Monarchs hoodie, snared there where I’d dropped it after he’d been snatched away by the horde.

I kept moving.

When we landed on the roof of the station wagon, Alex took note of the corpses splayed around the vehicle. She glanced over at me. “You did this?”

I nodded.

Again she gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. I hopped down, then eased her off the roof. She landed gingerly, trying not to put all her weight on her sore leg.

We rushed off the highway in the direction of the Silverado, our feet squelching in the marshy reeds. It seemed wetter down here; there must’ve been a good rain on this side of the pass last night.

A few steps farther, when I started to sink to my calves, I sensed we might be in trouble. Once we reached the truck, I pulled up short, dismayed.

It was sunk to the bumper in the boggy reeds, the tires lost from view.

No way I’d be able to drive it out of here, not until the land dried.

The nearest vehicles were fifteen miles away at the gas station. On foot across the open plain of the valley, Alex and I would be picked off easily. I doubted she could make it fifteen more steps, let alone miles.

For the first time since I’d left the school, despair settled through me.

To have come all this way to be defeated by a simple rain.

How stupid of me to park the Silverado out here on soft ground.

As wetness crept through my socks, I leaned against the truck. Then my temper snapped. I banged the hood with my fist, then tried to kick the side panel, though I could barely yank my boot free to do it.

“Chance,” Alex said.

I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t care,” I fumed. “I don’t care if they hear me.”

Part of me wanted the Hosts to come so I could take out my rage on them.

I tried to kick the truck again, a poor effort.

“Are you done?” Alex asked calmly.

I turned, hooks dangling around my wrists. “I think so.”

“There is another car we could use.”

“What are you talking about?”

But already she’d started sloshing back to the highway, her feet making sucking sounds as they pulled from the earth. Alert for Hosts-maybe I didn’t really want them to show up-I followed.

She reached the station wagon, its tailgate smashed beneath the last tree trunk in the barricade. Opening the driver’s door, she reached in and unbuckled the seat belt from around the dead Host’s thighs. Then she nonchalantly yanked him out and dumped him on the ground.

Nick’s father. Killed by Patrick. Now just another dead Host lying among others.

She climbed in and stared at me through the shattered windshield. Streaks of blood marred the hood, along with those fingernail scrapes. “Well,” she said, “get in.”

“Alex. The car is crushed under that tree.”

“Just the back.”

“Not a prayer.”

“Fine,” she said. “Out of my way, please.”

I stepped to the side.

The engine coughed as she turned it over and then died. On her second try, it coughed some more but finally caught. The transmission clanked as she jerked the car into gear, and then she stomped the gas pedal.

The motor roared, the tires spinning, throwing up smoke. The station wagon went nowhere.

I didn’t think it could get louder, but it did.

Bent over the wheel, her face set with determination, Alex gave the engine more gas.

The car remained in place, pinned down by the tree.

“I told you!” I shouted.

Alex either ignored me or couldn’t hear.

I cast a glance at the darkness behind me. A few floating white ovals resolved-faces of Chasers. Then bodies came visible beneath them, making slow progress through the reeds. Some of the Hosts were sunk to their knees, but still they drove themselves on.

The wheels screamed against the tarmac.

The station wagon’s front bumper lifted an inch. The tree made a faint crackling sound against the crunched metal of the tailgate. Perhaps the slightest shift.

The frontline Chasers were now only a few steps from the highway. Legions more appeared behind them.

“Alex! We don’t have time for this!”

She didn’t so much as look up.

All at once the station wagon shot free of the tree, the massive trunk slamming into the ground behind it. The car bolted past me, then screeched to a halt. My mouth gaping in amazement, I watched as Alex leaned over and flung open the passenger door.

“Coming?” she asked.

The closest Chaser pulled her foot free of the muck and set it on the edge of the highway, the others waddling behind her. She was near enough that I could see stringy hair flicking behind the holes bored through her face.

I sprinted over and hopped in. Alex pulled out, the car rattling like crazy, a rear tire whining against the collapsed wheel well.

Alex shot me a little smirk.

She pegged the speedometer at sixty, the car shuddering like it might come apart. After a few miles, smoke started drifting up from the hood. The whine from the back grew louder and louder until the stink of burning rubber filled the car.

After another stretch of highway, we heard the rear tire flap free, the car resettling on its chassis. By some miracle Alex kept us going another few miles on three tires and a rim, sparks flying out behind us. Surprisingly, we spotted no Hosts alongside the road.

Just as we coasted up on the gas station, the engine sputtered and quit. Alex hopped out by the pumps and gave a little bow.

“I gotta admit, Blanton,” I said. “That was impressive as hell.”

We edged into the parking lot, strolling among the vehicles like a couple of car shoppers.

“Well, dear,” she said, taking on a housewife’s demeanor, “the minivan has more room for groceries and is much more sensible, but then again…” She halted by a Mustang and regarded me over the low roof with a wicked smile. “I’ve always thought ‘sensible’ was overrated.”

Seconds later we vroomed out of the gas station, 420 horses rattling our bones against the seats. Alex rolled down her window, sticking her arm out in the wind, and I followed suit. We must’ve looked like some kind of crazy earthbound airplane. We averaged well over a hundred across the valley, slicing past the occasional Mapper, barely slowing until Alex veered onto that dirt road outside of town. Snaking back into the forest, we parked where we’d left the Silverado after our last journey, our tires settling into the same ruts in the mud.

We climbed out, and Alex regarded the woods nervously, her fists clenching around her hockey stick. “Think I’ll be okay on this leg?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“I’m pretty tired, Chance.”

I could tell it was hard for her to admit.

“Slow and steady,” I said.

We pushed into the branches, heading toward town, toward school, toward Patrick. Alex leaned on her hockey stick, using it like a crutch. We hadn’t made it ten steps when we heard a crackling of branches, something moving swiftly toward us.

The sound of a body crashing through underbrush.

I stepped protectively in front of Alex. The crackling grew nearer, nearer.

Chet’s hulking form emerged, shredded clothes swaying about him. One of his hands was gone, the other mangled by Zeus. Bite marks raked his torso and face, and yet he still came at us, drawing back the nub of his arm to strike.

Stepping forward, I swung a baling hook straight down through the top of his head, sinking it a half foot deep.

The weight of the blow sent him to his knees. I kicked him, and he collapsed to the side. Then I set the tread of my boot on his lifeless cheek and ripped the hook free of his skull.

It surprised me how little I felt.

Alex was behind me, drawn back against a tree, her chest rising and falling from the scare.

“You okay?” I asked.

Again she regarded me with that expression I couldn’t quite read.

“Why do you keep looking at me that way?” I asked.

“You’re not who you were,” she said.

I wiped the bloody hook across my jeans. “None of us are anymore.”

She pushed herself off the trunk, balancing on her good leg.

“These woods are full of Hosts,” she said. “You ran into so many on your way to me. I don’t know that I can outrun them.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ve got friends here.”

“What do you mean?”

I put my fingers in my mouth and gave a sharp whistle.

Nothing.

I stared through the branches, waiting.

“Chance?” Alex looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you doing?”

But already I heard them charging through the foliage, churning up dirt. Alex didn’t have time to get scared before the pack of ridgebacks exploded through the trees, surrounding us, nipping at our hands and butting into us, fighting for attention. Cassius jumped up on me, setting his paws on my chest, licking my face. Smiling, I settled him down.

The others swarmed Alex, who laughed, delighted.

“Come on, boys,” I said. “We need a fanged escort through the woods.” I clapped my hands once. “On guard.”

They folded around us, burying us in the pack as we stumbled toward town. Alex looped an arm over my neck so I could help her limp along. Bypassing the town square, we charted a course that kept us in the trees for as long as possible. If it weren’t for the dogs, we would’ve been in trouble hobbling through the dark woods, but they were amazing. At one point we heard shallow panting from the foliage to our left. Deja, Princess, and Tanner charged off. When Alex and I peered through the branches, we saw our former history teacher on her knees, being yanked to and fro like a rag doll.

These dogs were bred to hunt lions.

The thing that had been Mrs. Olsen didn’t stand a chance.

The dogs came back to us, their snouts bloodied, and we heard nothing more from beyond the branches.

We kept on peacefully for a time, making progress, Alex guarding her hurt leg. Halfway to town the dogs heard something we didn’t, and the whole pack shot off through the underbrush. There were snarling and ripping sounds, and a brief time later they emerged, ears perked, tails wagging. We never even saw the Hosts. The ridgies surrounded us again, their brown eyes flashing alertly, and picked up right where they’d left off.

But that only highlighted how vulnerable we felt when we reached the edge of the woods, halting before a row of unfenced backyards that signaled the start of the neighborhood around school. Though there were no visible Hosts, the sight of all that open ground before us made my stomach lurch.

Firming my grip around Alex, I stepped onto the Woodrows’ back lawn, veering past the barbecue by the side of the house. Then I noticed that the dogs were no longer with us. Hesitating back in the tree line, they whined. Some pack instinct must have told them to stick to the forest.

When we turned, we saw only their eyes glinting in the dark spaces between the trunks. Set by set, they pulled back, vanishing. One pair of eyes remained a little longer, floating there. I knew they were Cassius’s. Then those, too, drew back and were gone.

Suddenly the night seemed much lonelier.

Alex and I moved silently alongside the Woodrows’ house and up their long driveway. A few blocks ahead, the big shadowy block of the school loomed, barely visible in the first rays of dawn.

Home. Or at least as close a thing to it as we had left.

The streets looked empty, but even so we made our way carefully from hiding place to hiding place. Alex stumbled, slipping from my grip, holding her injured leg and wincing. She leaned against a pickup truck.

Nervously, I watched a seam of light nudge the horizon, the glow bringing the street into clearer view.

“C’mon, Alex. Just one more block.”

“Sorry. Gimme a hand.” Biting her lip, she grabbed around my neck and let me hoist her to her feet.

Looking past me, she gasped.

I glanced up.

Barely visible in the predawn glow, a wave of movement swept around the corner between us and the school.