Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

JoJo’s cries grew louder.

Patrick said, “We gotta be quiet. We don’t know who’s in here.”

JoJo crammed Bunny’s ear into her mouth and chewed on the ragged tip.

“Don’t worry,” Chatterjee said, ambling ahead of us past the glass trophy cabinet toward the gymnasium. “We’ve checked the entire school. It’s secure.”

“Who’s we?” Patrick said.

Dr. Chatterjee struck the double doors with the heels of his hands, and Alex gave a little gulp of shock. We froze at the threshold. Dozens of sets of eyes stared back at us.

Huddled in groups across the bleachers and the basketball court were about half the kids of Creek’s Cause.

The others who had made it.

Our friends and schoolmates were in terrible shape. Both of the Mendez twins, JoJo’s closest friends, were missing patches of their hair. Little Jenny White wore a torn and bloody dress, and one of her shoes was gone. I couldn’t remember her age, but she couldn’t have been older than ten. A few seniors were there, including Ben Braaten, his face sporting that jigsaw scar from the car crash that had killed his two brothers. I saw several of my classmates. Eve Jenkins, who sat next to me in American history, had claw marks across her face. It looked like they’d been caused by fingernails.

A bunch of the emergency cots had been rolled out from the storage room, just like after last year’s flood, when two dozen families had taken up residence here for the better part of a month while their houses were repaired. The retractable bleachers, pulled out now like they were for pep rallies and basketball games, served as a base camp for some of the kids. The benches were covered with sleeping bags, backpacks, first-aid kits, and a few scattered pillows for those lucky enough to have grabbed them before they fled. A row of makeshift weapons-knives, fire axes, baseball bats-lined the lowest bench. Now I understood Chatterjee’s foraging among hammers and wrenches in the shop class. High casement windows atop the bleachers let in weak shafts of dusty light. A freestanding dry-erase board had been wheeled to the front of the polished court, facing the cots. Coach McGill’s zone defense diagrams had been mostly erased and written over them was a list of hundreds of names.

A roll call of all the kids of Creek’s Cause.

The survivors must have made a list of their team members and classmates, young neighbors and relatives. About a hundred of the names on the unofficial census had been crossed off.

While we’d been scrambling from horror to horror, they’d been hard at work organizing here tonight. Almost as hard at work as the Hosts had been.

Dr. Chatterjee walked to the board, his steps echoing through the gym. He picked up the marker and crossed out Patrick Rain, Chance Rain, Alexandra Blanton, Rocky McCafferty, JoJo McCafferty. The tip made a squeak with each line.

None of us had spoken. We were too stunned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hundreds of names that weren’t crossed off. All those kids missing, taken by Hosts. Andre Swisher from track. Talia Randall, the picture-perfect cheer captain. Blake Dubois, one of the special-needs kids. I pictured Blake with his warm smile, his stick-thin legs propped on the footrests of his wheelchair. He wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“We weren’t sure we’d find any more kids,” Chatterjee said. “The town is pretty much locked down by the Hosts. You live the farthest out, so I suppose it makes sense that it took you longer to get here.”

Alex peered out through her tangled bangs. “Plus, we had a few detours on the way.”

Patrick finally broke our silence, turning to face the others. “We got work to do,” he said. “More of us could still be locked up or hiding in houses.” His shadow against the floorboard was well defined, right down to the Stetson. “Why aren’t we out there helping them?”

A number of the older kids averted their eyes.

“Dick and Jaydon went out,” Ben Braaten said. “And never came back.”

Patrick stared at him. He and Ben had never gotten along, not since the fistfight behind Jack Kaner’s barn in their freshman year. This was a while before the car crash, and Ben and his brothers thought it would be funny to empty my backpack into Hogan’s Creek. I hadn’t thought it was very funny, and Patrick hadn’t either. The brawl went twenty minutes and wound up a draw-the only fight I’d known Patrick not to win. Both of them were bigger now, and every time they were near each other, it seemed like they were itching to go at it again and answer the question left hanging by the last round.

“The Hosts are taking the kids to the church.” Patrick raised the shotgun, laid it over his shoulder. “We should scout it, see if we can free them.”

Ben waved a hand. A line of scar tissue twisted his upper lip, so you could never tell whether he was smirking or not. “You want to kill yourself, have at it.”

Britney Durant, Gene’s daughter and Alex’s best friend, cocked her head, her jaw shifting from side to side. A rainbow ribbon took up her chestnut hair in a ponytail. She said, “Ben, don’t be such a-”

“We need a plan,” Dr. Chatterjee said, cutting her off. “But first we need to regroup, think everything through carefully.”

I remembered what he’d said in the hall about impulsiveness and decision making and put a hand on my brother’s shoulder. “Let’s take a second, Patrick,” I said quietly.

He looked over at me, gave a little nod. At times I was the only person Patrick would listen to.

“Check in your weapons, please,” Chatterjee said, gesturing to the lowest bench. We stepped into the gym, Cassius staying next to me like he’d been trained. As Patrick, Alex, and I laid down our weapons, JoJo ran to the Mendez girls, and they did a three-way huddle-embrace. The rest of our little band spread out, greeting our friends, bumping knuckles and waving. It was comforting, but I also felt a weird embarrassment. One of the McGraw boys from my PE class was balled up in a corner sobbing. Leonora Rose, who I’d known since forever, squeezed me in a tight hug. Others crowded in on me with a million questions.

Chubby Chet Rogers leaned toward me, his cheeks flushed with concern. “Did you see my little brother?”

Someone else said, “My mom-was my mom in the square?”

All those dread-filled faces, hands grabbing at me, trying to get my attention. Fighting through claustrophobia, I shook my head. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t. I don’t know.” The kids finally eased off and left me alone, going back to their groups. Gossip swirled all around, bitter with desperation.

“I heard Tommy’s dad put him in a duffel bag.”

“Sheila saw Patrice slung over her mommy’s shoulder in a burlap sack. She said she could see her in there squirming.”

Through the press of bodies, I saw Alex resting her hands on Britney’s shoulders, talking to her. Britney was crying. I figured Alex had told her about seeing her dad and uncle in the square, working the jackhammers, taking down the power grid. They were Hosts like everyone else’s parents. For the first time in my life, I was grateful that my mom and dad weren’t around. Seeing Uncle Jim and Aunt Sue-Anne had been painful enough. At least I never had to see this happen to my parents.

I reached the bleachers and realized I was standing next to Eve Jenkins. She said hi quietly and turned her right cheek away from me, the one with the scrapes.

Patrick had always thought that she had a crush on me, though I wasn’t sure. She’d do things like borrow my science textbook, then stop by our house later with it, apologizing that she’d forgotten to give it back. Patrick said it was an excuse to see me, but I wondered if she was just absentminded. She was pretty in a simple kind of way-dark hair with straight bangs, round face, a dimple in one cheek when she smiled. Even though she was also older than me, next to Alex she still looked like a kid.