Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

Marina Mendez piped up from her post by the window atop the bleachers. “Just like z-”

“Don’t say it,” Rocky cut in.

Dezi Siegler, one of Ben’s buddies, called out from the back, “But we don’t have any guns. Except your brother. And you.”

“Yeah,” Leonora Rose said. “Does other stuff work? Like if you bash them in the skull?”

Ben tugged the bolt gun from his jeans and held it up over his head. He tugged the trigger. Compressed air hissed, and there came the thunderous smack of the steel rod firing. “This worked just fine,” he said.

The raised gun caught a beam of light from the high window. The end was coated in blood.

“But I thought that was just a stun gun,” Eve said.

“For cattle.” Ben thumbed another air cartridge into place. “But compared to a cow skull, a human’s is like an eggshell. It’ll put a Host on the ground in seconds flat.” A smile blossomed on his face. “Trust me.”

The doors boomed open behind us, making me jump. Alex entered with the small TV tucked under one arm, hockey stick clenched in her other hand. Her hair fell across her face, and she jerked her head, clearing it from her eyes. “Look what the blonde found,” she said.

Britney came in at her heels. I had to say, seeing them up there with their makeshift weapons, they looked pretty tough. Britney might not have been an athlete like Alex, but she was on the cheer team, her muscles shaped from being a base, propping up the pyramids and throwing the fliers. These were Creek’s Cause girls, not the willowy types you saw on TV who looked like they needed a cheeseburger.

Alex walked over, set down the unit on the lowest bleacher bench, and let her bag slip off her shoulder and thud on the floor.

“That’s all well and good,” Ben said. “But what are you gonna plug it into? Like I said, we can’t turn on the generator until-”

From her bag Alex pulled a twelve-volt battery with an outlet plug, the one Mrs. Yee used in physics when she talked about circuits and joules and made a lightbulb glow. Alex plugged in the TV, looked across her shoulder, and gave Ben a smirk.

He sucked his teeth and glanced away.

All the kids gathered in the court, sitting cross-legged, staring hopefully at the screen. Marina alone stayed in her perch high on the bleachers, staring out the window, as if she still couldn’t believe the world she was looking at. Taking a deep breath, Alex pushed the button. The TV went on with a popping sound. The little screen filled with static.

As Alex fussed with the rabbit ears, I stared across the rows of stressed-out faces. In the dimness of the gym, I could see the TV’s glow flickering in all those sets of eyes like a pilot light. Like hope.

Everyone sat there as if it were some kind of movie night.

A signal caught on the screen, a blurry image scrolling vertically like the self-dumping hoppers in a grain lift machine. Another tweak of the rabbit ears and the image stilled. It was some dumb talk show, the host overseeing a competition between housewives who’d done their own makeovers. Alex started clicking the plastic knob, changing the channels. An ad for a new kind of car wax. A close-up of a weeping woman in soap-opera-soft lighting. A newscaster giving a live early-morning traffic report, the sound fuzzed by the bad signal.

Everything looked to be normal.

When Alex turned off the TV, you could sense the relief in the room, the first stirrings of optimism.

“Okay,” Patrick said. “So we can assume that the spores from McCafferty haven’t spread out of the valley.”

“Not yet,” Eve said.

That sent a ripple of concern across the basketball court.

“Let’s focus first,” Chatterjee said, “on what we know to be true.” He ticked off the first point on his slender forefinger. “The adults are affected, but not the kids. Can we zero in on an age?”

A silence as we all regarded one another. Marina called down from the bleachers, “I see Stevie Saunders and Hanna Everston across the street. How old are they?”

Answers rang out.

“Stevie’s twenty-three,”

“I think Hanna is, too.”

“No, she’s just twenty.”

“Twenty, then,” Dr. Chatterjee said, his voice heavy with dread.

My insides felt heavy, too. I pictured that hipster beanie, the Piggly Wiggly apron. When I spoke, my voice sounded thin against the gym walls. “We saw Eddie Lu. I think he’s just nineteen.”

“He is.” A younger kid raised his hand as if he were in class. Chatterjee nodded at him. “He’s my cousin. His birthday was this summer. We had a pool party.”

“Oh, my God,” Marina said. She covered her mouth, turning away from the window so fast that her pigtails whipped her cheeks.

“What?” Patrick said.

Marina said, “Talia Randall’s out there.”

Britney stiffened at the mention of her cheer captain. “She is? Is she…?”

Marina’s face looked down at us all. She didn’t say anything.

“Oh, my God,” Britney said.

Alex said, “Wasn’t her birthday just last month?”

Britney nodded. Her lips parted in shock. Her face, suddenly wan. Sweat sparkled across her temple. I didn’t understand what was going on.

“How old did she turn?” I asked, trying to catch up.

“Eighteen,” Alex said, keeping her gaze pegged on Britney.

Britney’s trembling hand rose to the back of her head. She tugged the rainbow ribbon free, and her hair fell about her face, crowding her cheeks, her eyes. Her pale, sweaty face stared out from beneath the straggly locks.

“We did a thing in class yesterday,” Britney said faintly. “But today…”

Her fingers loosened, the ribbon unfurling from her fist. The colorful letters running down its length became visible. Even though they were sideways, I could read them clear as day.

PARTY ON, BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!

“Today’s my actual…” Britney’s voice faded away.

Alex stepped forward and took her hand. “It’s gonna be okay. There’s no way it works that precisely. You’re gonna be-”

“Do you know,” Dr. Chatterjee spoke slowly, shaping each word, “what time of day you were born?”

Britney opened her mouth to answer. Her glossy lips stayed like that, wobbling in an oval.

And then she shuddered.

Alex took an unsteady step back. “No,” she said. “No, no, no.”

Patrick came up behind Alex, and she stepped back again, bumping into him. He hugged her with one arm from behind but I noticed he kept his other hand free.

The one holding the shotgun.

Blackness stole across Britney’s eyes, darkening the whites until they looked like giant pupils.

The faintest crackling sound came, like the sound of insects feasting, as Britney’s eyeballs turned to dried bits of ash.

Alex was sobbing, bent forward, her shoulders shaking. She was screaming, but I couldn’t hear her.

The ash fell away, leaving two tunnels through Britney’s head.

Britney seemed to hang forward, her weight shifted onto the balls of her feet, hair dangling across her features, an electronic doll waiting to animate.

The kids were all standing now, backing away. A few broke for the doors. Cassius barked once, and I hushed him firmly. Up on the bleachers, Marina screamed. Alex clutched Patrick’s arm, shaking her head, her eyes rimmed red. They were about five feet away from Britney. Sprinting kids strobed across my field of vision, turning the scene into a stop-action-Alex’s hand lurching to cover her mouth, the shotgun jerkily rising in Patrick’s grip. It seemed we were the only four still points in the gym, the kids swarming all around like bees.

“We have to be quiet!” Dr. Chatterjee said. It was the first time I’d ever heard his voice raised. He was staggering away from Alex, nearly tripping over his orthotics. “If we’re too loud, we’ll bring more of them here!”