The Rains

ENTRY 41

Moths swirled in the shafts of light falling through the windows of the biology lab. Once Dr. Chatterjee had examined Alex’s leg and prescribed ice, Advil, and rest, she’d curled up on her cot and fallen asleep. Then he’d asked to meet with me and Patrick privately. He’d led us to his old classroom. Sitting behind his dusty desk now, he played with a DNA model made of rubber.

“The unidentified-particulate readings haven’t diminished since your eighteenth birthday, Patrick,” he said. “Not one bit.”

“Do you think he might have passed some window of vulnerability or something?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Why not?”

“Because so far everything about these spores, these… beings, has been maximally aggressive and effective. A brief infection window is neither. Plus, Occam’s razor dictates that the simplest solution is often the correct one.” Chatterjee spun the rubber ladder in his hands. “Which in this case would be genetic immunity.”

“If I have it, then Chance has it, too,” Patrick said. “I mean, these things are hereditary, right?”

The hope in his voice was so clear. As was the desperation.

“We won’t know for two and a half more years,” Chatterjee said, “when Chance turns eighteen. But I don’t think it’s as likely as in… other families.”

Watching that genetic model rotating in his hands, I felt my heart pounding. “What do you mean?” I said.

Patrick drew himself upright. “What are you talking about?”

“Your parents wanted to keep it all quiet for some reason. I counseled them against it, but I couldn’t say anything due to medical confidentiality. But now I don’t really see the point anymore, since everyone’s gone. You’re the only ones who… who…”

“Dr. Chatterjee,” Patrick said, his teeth clenched. “Will you please get to the point?”

Chatterjee set the DNA ladder down on his desk, finally looking up at us. “Your mother had some fertility issues. For a time she thought she couldn’t have kids. But your parents wanted children very badly. And your mother wanted to be pregnant, to carry you both. They kept trying to find a way. And finally they did.” He took a deep breath. “You were both born by embryo transfer.”

You could have knocked Patrick and me over with the tap of a finger.

The bags beneath Chatterjee’s eyes made clear what a toll these past weeks had taken on him. Bad news piling on top of bad news, and him the only adult in sight.

“So that means…” My brain was still a half step behind. “Patrick and I might have had different biological mothers?”

“Yes,” Chatterjee said. “If the genetic code that makes Patrick immune is from the maternal side-”

Patrick looked crestfallen. “Then Chance wouldn’t be immune like I am.”

For a moment silence reigned.

I thought about how much bigger than me Patrick always was. Stronger, too. The way everyone joked about how little family resemblance we had. And our personalities also had been different from the gates. Our interests and talents seemed to pull us in different directions from the beginning.

“Wouldn’t you know if the egg donor was the same?” Patrick asked. “I mean, you were our doctor. You delivered us. Wouldn’t that be in a file somewhere?”

“I’m afraid that information was kept confidential even from me. It resides somewhere in a computer system at the donor bank.”

My head felt heavy, filled with smog. I thought about what Alex had told me in the cabin about her father and my mom: They were gonna get married, have kids, the whole thing. Then Dad broke up with her after graduation. I don’t know what it was. Cold feet, fear, whatever. But he never forgave himself for it. Or her.

He’d broken it off with my mom because he’d found out she couldn’t have kids. Or at least she’d thought she couldn’t.

When I came back from my train of thought, Dr. Chatterjee was staring at me, looking dismayed.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “Thanks for telling us.”

“I’m sorry to drop this bombshell on you in the middle of everything else,” he said.

“That’s what the world is now,” I said. “One bombshell after another. We might as well get used to it.”

Patrick turned to me. “If I could trade places with you and give you my immunity, I would.”

“I know,” I said. “But I wouldn’t take it.”

He put an arm around my neck and tweaked me into him, hard. It hurt and felt good at the same time.

Dr. Chatterjee rose, and we started to head out.

“What are you gonna do about Ben?” I asked.

Chatterjee halted, his leg braces clanking. “We don’t know that he loosened those valves, Chance.”

“Yes,” I said. “We do.”

“You’re making accusations without evidence. We can’t act on that. We can’t live like that. Think what this community would deteriorate into without rules in place.”

“Ben said it himself,” Patrick said. “There have to be new rules. The old ones won’t work anymore.”

His face long with sorrow, Chatterjee put a hand on the ledge of my brother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Patrick,” he said.

He trudged out ahead of us.

Over the next few days, Alex rested up, but something was working on her thoughts like an infection. I watched her chewing her lip at night, staring up at the ceiling, at nothing. During the days she worked on her injured leg with a vengeance, stretching it out on the bleachers and doing deep knee bends. Every morning and every afternoon, she’d turn on the TV and give the dial a twirl all the way around.

I don’t know what she was hoping for, but every channel still showed static.

When I dreamed, I saw the faces of those kids in their cages at the cannery. The Queen’s stinger, poised to descend. Children floating on metal slabs, their bellies distended. I didn’t sleep for long, waking up in starts, drenched in sweat.

One night I jerked awake to find JoJo tugging at Alex’s sleeve two cots over. Alex shifted up on her pillow, and Patrick stirred as well.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Alex said.

Over the thudding of my heart, still on overdrive from the nightmare, I barely made out JoJo’s fragile whisper. “Alex?” she said. “Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”

Alex’s eyes ticked over toward my brother, and they shared a look through the darkness. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

Alex’s expression shifted into something hard and unrecognizable. She looked back at JoJo. “I can’t,” she said, and rolled over again.

She sounded angry, but I could hear the heartbreak beneath the words.

JoJo’s shoulders pinched up, and she shuffled away a step, stunned. I rose quickly and came to her side. “C’mon, Junebug. Let’s get you back to sleep.”

She lifted her arms to me the way she did when she was upset. Picking her up, I carried her over to her cot and tucked her in.

“Are they gonna get me, Chance?” she asked.

I thought about what I’d be willing to do to protect her. “Not so long as I’m around,” I said.

Her smile glinted in the darkness. “Then I’ll always be safe,” she said. “’Cuz nothing would ever happen to you.”

Content for the moment, she snuggled into Bunny and closed her eyes.

The weight of the promise pulled at me. From her perspective I must have seemed big and invincible.

Just like Patrick always seemed to me.

I couldn’t go back to sleep that night.

I used the following days to catch up on rest and bring my journal up to speed. The sixth night we were back, Alex finished stretching and then started running up and down the bleachers-a drill that Coach Hanson used to make us do in PE when we weren’t paying attention.

It was clear that Alex was training for something.

Chatterjee stood and watched her, his forehead grooved with furrows. He seemed worried.

In between lookout shifts, Patrick paced around the school grounds. There was a building sense of anticipation, of unease. I sensed that something was coming, a storm brewing inside him and Alex, inside even me, but I couldn’t grasp what it was.

That night a hand shook me gently from sleep. “Okay, Junebug,” I murmured, rolling over. “Let’s get you back to-”

But it wasn’t Junebug. It was Eve.

She crouched beside my cot, her eyes wide with concern. “When you and Alex were gone, it was awful,” she whispered. “Patrick did his best, but he had the mask on and the tank, so he could only do so much.”

Her gaze lifted past me, and I turned to follow it across the gym. By the double doors, Ben sat watch, alert as ever, a shaft of moonlight falling across his eyes. When I turned back, I was surprised by the fear in Eve’s face.

“Chatterjee couldn’t control Ben,” she said. “He’s getting worse and worse. What’s gonna happen to the rest of us if all three of you are gone?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

Disappointment flickered across her eyes. “Oh, Chance,” she said. “You really can’t tell?”

“No.”

“You’re so amazing sometimes, but then you’re also so… young.” Eve leaned forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. Before I could respond, she scurried off toward her cot, keeping her profile low to the ground so Ben wouldn’t spot her.

My cheek tingled where her lips had touched. I lifted my fingers to the spot, my thoughts churning. It took half the night, but I finally worked out what Eve was talking about. Perhaps I’d known all along.

Alex said it first.

It was the next day. She, Patrick, and I were on northeast-quadrant lookout in Tomasi’s room. Alex hopped off the desk, landing strong on her feet. She stretched her left leg to the side and pulled it up, testing the muscle.

“I’m not gonna let happen to them what almost happened to me,” she said.

Patrick bobbed his head in agreement. I wondered if it was something they’d discussed or if it was something they didn’t have to discuss. Maybe it was one of those couple things where one just knew what the other was thinking.

Then Patrick said what we always said: “We got work to do.”

“The kids at the cannery?” I asked.

Alex didn’t respond; she just kept testing that leg, her gaze far away. I thought about my hushed conversation with Eve last night and the worried expression Chatterjee had been wearing more and more often. It seemed he also knew he’d be unable to keep control once we left.

“What about the kids here?” I said. “If we go, Ben’ll take over.”

“Do we protect a few kids from Ben here?” Alex said. “Or all the kids out there from having unimaginable things done to them?”

It wasn’t a question. It was an argument.

I said, “What are you proposing?”

When she looked at me, her gaze was alarmingly steady. “Kill the Queen.”

My throat felt dry, so I forced out the word. “How?”

“Remember what we found in that cabin?” she asked.

I did. I remembered the polished walnut stock. The perfect balance in my hands. The mounted scope.

I nodded.

“If we go,” I said, “we might be taken ourselves. Or killed.”

“That’s right,” Patrick said. “But what does it mean about us if we don’t go?”

“We can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Alex said.

“It’s probably a suicide mission,” I said.

Dezi Siegler and another of Ben’s lackeys sidled into the classroom, relieving us for the next shift.

Alex slid past me on her way to the door. “I’m okay with that,” she said.

After darkness fell, I crept through the cots and shook Eve awake just as she’d done to me the night before. She stirred, looked up into my face, and smiled. Then she saw that I was fully dressed and her expression shifted.

“You have to keep an eye out for JoJo,” I whispered. “You’re the only one I trust.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Of course I will,” she said.

“Tell her I talked to you, that I knew you were the best one to look out for her.”

Eve nodded. “What about Dr. Chatterjee? Is he okay with this?”

“Patrick talked to him. He said he can keep Ben under control until we get back.”

She pushed herself up and reached for me. I leaned into her, and we hugged, her arms extra tight around my neck.

“What if you don’t come back?” she whispered, her lips right at my ear.

I kissed her on the cheek and pulled away. Across the gym I could see Patrick and Alex waiting for me.

For some reason it struck me that it was Halloween, a time for ghosts and ghouls, sugar buzzes and scares. I thought about how much fun tonight should have been for an eight-year-old girl. And what it was instead.

I said, “Take care of JoJo.”