Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

We took each corner slowly, pausing at the landing. I risked a glance at Patrick’s tank-the dial even further in the red.

He shook his head again hard, as if trying to jar something loose inside it. In the distance I could hear the siren wailing away. I wondered how long it would hold the Hosts’ attention.

When we stepped out onto the second floor, it looked dark and still. Blue and red flickered in the window at the corridor’s end, the ambulance’s lights still flashing through the darkness. An overhead sign directed us down a corridor. Side by side, we eased past one doorway, then another.

The squeak of a wheel broke the silence.

We froze.

A crash cart rolled slowly out from one of the patient rooms.

It stopped in the middle of the corridor.

We stared at it there, about ten feet away, blocking our path. Patrick’s breath fogged the mask quicker and quicker, burning oxygen.

From deep in the room came the tick-tock of shoes against the floor. Then that awful shallow panting.

A Host dressed in ripped nurse’s scrubs emerged calmly, her gaze forward, her head twitching. Psychiatric restraints-thick leather cuffs lined with padding-swung from her drawstring. Seemingly she hadn’t heard us; she’d just bumped the cart as she’d moved around in the room. She wore clogs with slim heels that flexed her calves. From the side she looked almost normal.

When Patrick set the portable tank down, it gave the faintest clank.

Her head pivoted to face us.

I didn’t recognize her. Much of the hospital staff came in from Lawrenceville or Stark Peak for two-day shifts. Fluffy blond hair floated around her defined cheekbones. In another life she might have been attractive. But the holes bored through her eyes caught the shadows, giving her face a skull-like appearance in the low light.

Patrick raised the shotgun.

“Wait,” I said. “The noise’ll draw the-”

She leapt at us, swatting me to the floor, one hand reaching for the restraints at her drawstring. Patrick jabbed the shotgun butt at her, putting a dent in her forehead, the swinging motion straining the plastic tubing to the breaking point. As if it were happening in slow motion, I saw the mask start to pull away from his face. He leaned forward, trying to give the tubing some slack. Then the Chaser sprang onto my chest, her knees pinning my arms to the sides. The back of my hand knocked the tank, and it toppled and started rolling on the tile. As it spun away from us, I saw the dial rotating around, the needle well into the red zone.

Patrick lunged toward the rolling tank, leading with his mask. If that tank rolled too far from his face, the tube would rip off.

I bucked violently and wrestled with the Host. She stank of sour sweat and grime. I smacked her head to the floor, but she only bounced back stronger on top of me.

Over the frayed shoulder of her scrub top, I saw Patrick on all fours, still scrambling after the tank, keeping the faintest dip in the tubing. He dove for it, but before I could see if he reached it, the nurse’s hand slapped down over my eyes. Nails dug into my forearm, and I felt a restraint start to encircle my wrist.

I flailed, freeing my hand and trying to claw at her face, but her grip was too powerful. Her hand slid from my eyes and covered my mouth and nose. I tried to breathe around the reek of her sweaty palm, but my air was cut off, my vision starting to go spotty. It had just begun to haze over when I heard a clank, and her head snapped to the side, bent at an impossible angle on her neck.

She fell away, revealing Patrick behind her, mask intact, gripping the portable tank he’d just used to nearly unseat her skull from her shoulders. At my side she jerked on the floor, dots of static fizzling across her eye membranes.

Patrick took a knee, exhausted from the exertion, the oxygen intake messing with his stamina. Groaning, I turned on my side to face the tank, squinting at the dial.

Nearly on empty.

“Patrick, we gotta go.” I stood, picked up his tank, and hoisted him to his feet. He grabbed his shotgun from the floor and stumbled along beside me, his arm around my shoulders.

The Respiratory Care Department turned out to be a glorified suite at the back of the second floor. Three beds, various equipment piled on carts, a hanging privacy curtain in the rear.

I scanned the suite-no tanks.

Patrick looked at me, his eyes wide above the mask. “Chance. You need to get ready.” He spun the shotgun around and held it out to me.

We’d come all this way to find nothing.

But I wasn’t ready to give up. A last hope flickered as I charged forward and raked aside the privacy curtain.

Behind it a dozen oxygen tanks, gloriously lined up like missiles.

Nearly three times as large as Patrick’s portable tank, they were labeled “H,” marked as containing 6,900 liters of oxygen. Each one would buy him a day and a half.

I went weak with relief.

Grabbing his arm, I jerked him around the bed and through the curtain. Lifting his tank, I checked the dial. The needle was practically touching the “empty” peg.

“Take a breath,” I said. “A deep, deep breath. And hold it.”

“Chance.” He reached behind himself and leaned weakly on the bed. “I can’t think so straight.”

“Then listen to me. Take a deep breath now. Just listen to me, Patrick.”

He sucked in a deep breath. I tore the tube off the portable tank just as the dial clicked to empty.

Holding the end of the transparent tube, I spun to face the nearest H tank. I ripped off the white plastic ring serving as the protective seal, exposing the oxygen outlet.

I stared in disbelief at the barbed nozzle.

It was the wrong size for the tubing attached to Patrick’s mask.

Patrick’s face turned a deeper shade of red. He gestured emphatically with his hands. I unstuck my body, which had gone into a panicked lockdown, and started yanking drawers open, looking for who knows what. Bag valves, syringes, tubes filled with weird solutions.

Patrick’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. The butt of the shotgun slid past my cheek. He was trying to give me the shotgun.

To kill him.

I ignored him, ripping open a cabinet door.

Inside, a stack of oxygen masks. More heavy-duty than the one he wore now, with wider straps, like something a fighter pilot might wear. I fumbled the nearest one off the shelf, a coil of tube spiraling open below it. It was wider-a match for the nozzle.

I nearly cried out in triumph.

Whirling toward the H tank, I knocked aside the shotgun, tossing Patrick the mask.

I rammed the thicker tube onto the barbed nozzle and opened the valve. Oxygen hissed up the line and out the mask, clearing out the old air. “Now!” I shouted.

With his cheeks ballooned, Patrick looked like he might explode. But he tore off his mask, flipping it aside, and secured the new one over his head.

“Breathe out, hard,” I said.

Patrick blew out so hard that flecks of spit dotted the inside of the mask. He panted, sucking in oxygen as I adjusted the airflow.

He was fine. We’d done it.

I set the dial to eight liters per minute because that’s where Chatterjee had set the old one. Though my focus was on the knobs, I could hear Patrick’s breathing start to even out.

“I think we’re okay,” I said, and looked up.

The nurse Host was standing behind him.

Her head was torqued to one side as if some of her vertebrae had shattered. Her eyeless gaze seemed focused.

She seized Patrick, crimping his tube, and ripped him back over the bed. The tube strained on the H tank, almost pulling off the nozzle.

Patrick’s giant eyes found mine. He was trying to hold his breath in case the tube tore off, but her bear hug was crushing his chest. She whisked him out into the corridor so fast that his legs flew up in the air. The tube pulled taut. I flipped the H tank over the bed onto its side, sending it rolling after them. It clattered as it went, miraculously clearing the doorway, the tube barely holding on.