Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

Besides, I had to get those tanks moved before daybreak.

As I passed Ben at the lookout post, I said, “Real courageous, Ben. The way you helped Alex and JoJo.”

He shook his head at me. “Courage is overrated,” he said. “In that moment I had to make a tough choice. And I realized: I had one job . Get the gate closed. Protect the others. The only thing that matters anymore is staying alive.”

“If that’s true,” I said, “then what’s the point of staying alive?”

I walked past him down the corridor. I’d almost reached the front doors when I heard footsteps behind me. Eve ran up, keys jangling in her hand.

“I’ll watch the gate for you,” she said.

I appreciated it more than I could say.

As I ran back and forth across the teachers’ parking lot, bringing the tanks in one at a time, Eve waited by the padlock for me, signaling when to wait, when to go.

By the time I lugged the last one to the gym, daylight streamed through the windows and I was worn out and ready to sleep. I set the final tank down with the others. Still woozy, Patrick now lay propped up in his cot, needles and tubes threading into him. He looked like someone dying in a hospital.

I thanked Eve, and she nodded and drifted over to her post at the supply station. I didn’t want to leave Patrick’s side, but it was also hard to look at him like this. I sat next to him and studied my boots. After a few minutes, Chatterjee called me over to the bleachers. Relieved, I went.

“How are the particulate readings?” I asked.

“No better.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, and his expression of concern shot a tremor of fear through me. “Chance, you’re an amazing and resourceful kid…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just don’t want you to think that this is a long-term solution for your brother.”

“Why not? We can refill the tanks. You can make more IV food or whatever you call it.” My voice was rising.

“Providing nutrition exclusively by IV carries with it big risks, Chance.” His sad eyes blinked behind those glasses. “Infections. Deficiencies. Imbalances. And we can’t give him enough nutrition this way. We’re too limited without a central line.”

“Then I’ll get you one.”

Chatterjee drew a deep breath. “You did a wonderfully smart and brave thing that will give us more time with Patrick. But at some point you’re going to have to let him go.”

I felt my face harden into a mask. “No,” I said. “Not ever.”

I went back over to where Patrick rested and lay on my cot next to his. My eyelids grew heavy, and I knew that the minute I closed them, they’d stay shut. So I forced them open. Right now I just wanted to be near my brother. He was holding up his jigsaw pendant so he could look at it. Alex’s matching piece dangled from his other clenched fist, the two parts swaying side by side.

I wondered where Alex was right now. What was happening to her and who was doing it.

It was hard not to notice her empty cot.

It was hard to notice anything else at all.

I woke up to the sounds of fighting.

Patrick was on his feet, heading for the exit, dragging the hundred-pound tank behind him, the IV line snaking from his shirtsleeve. Dr. Chatterjee was trying to slow him while Ben, standing at the gym door, looked on.

“This is ridiculous, Patrick!” Chatterjee said. “You stop this instant!”

Patrick bulled on. “I’m going for her.”

As I blinked myself awake, the light felt disorienting. It was dusk already? I’d slept all day?

“You’re not gonna get farther than the next block hauling that tank around,” Dezi Siegler said.

“Where would you even look?” Jenny White cried out.

“The church,” Patrick said. “Then Lawrenceville.”

“Lawrenceville,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “This is insanity, Patrick.”

But my brother kept stumbling forward.

“How about food?” Eve pleaded.

“I don’t need food,” Patrick said. “I’m not leaving her out there.”

As he neared the doors, Ben stepped in front of him. “Forget about her, Patrick,” he said. “She’s long gone.”

Off balance from holding the tank, Patrick swung at him weakly. Ben leaned back, the punch missing. Patrick stumbled forward. I leapt up and ran over to them, hurdling cots.

Patrick swung again, and Ben ducked, then shoved him over. Patrick fell hard on his side, grunting, and Ben jumped on him, pinning him to the floorboards. “Come on, Patrick. You really think you’ll make it out there? Look how useless you are.”

Patrick was winded. “… not… useless.”

Ben reached down, gripped Patrick’s mask, and pulled it away from his mouth and nose.

All movement in the gym stopped.

Patrick stayed tense on his back, one arm raised defensively. I halted in midstep, afraid that if I moved again, it would mean that time would keep moving, too.

There was no sound except the hiss of oxygen escaping from the mask.

“Ben,” Dr. Chatterjee said in a shockingly calm voice, “put the mask back on Patrick. You don’t want a Host in here any more than we do.”

Ben glared down at Patrick. The wide straps strained. Held tight in Ben’s grip, the mask wobbled a few inches from my brother’s face. Ben looked from Patrick to Chatterjee, then to me. My brother’s life in his hands.

The moment stretched on and on.

Finally Ben released the mask, letting it snap back into place hard over Patrick’s nose and mouth. Then he climbed off Patrick and stood, his face shifting with emotion, his scar lines pulling into strange new alignments.

Patrick exhaled hard through the one-way valve, then panted to catch his breath, his chest jerking.

“Hell, I was doing him a favor ,” Ben said. “Showing him what it’ll be like out there. If one of me could do that to him in here, how do you think it’ll go down with hundreds of Hosts in the open?”

It took Patrick a few seconds to push himself onto one knee, then find his feet. I wanted to help him up, but I knew if I went over to help, it’d make him angry right now. He picked up his cowboy hat and put it on. Then he adjusted the mask straps and the tube and walked back over to his cot. Every head in the gym turned to watch his retreat. He slumped onto the mattress, still breathing heavily, one hand resting gently on the mask as if making sure it was still there.

Seeing him defeated like that made something inside me break into little pieces and blow away. I swallowed hard. I wanted to pummel Ben’s face until those scar lines cracked open again. But as he took up his chair by the double doors, I detected a note of remorse in his face. That’s the only thing that stopped me from attacking him and probably getting myself killed.

I walked over to Patrick, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. I was about to ask my brother if he was okay when he tilted his head, looking up at me from under the brim of his trademark black cowboy hat.

What I saw in his eyes chilled me through and through.

“You have to go, Chance,” he said through his mask. “Go get her. Get her and bring her back to me.”

I had a hard time drawing breath. It felt as though I had a rock lodged in my throat. Everyone was still staring at us-from the cots, the bleachers, all around the basketball court. It was like getting tossed in the middle of a rodeo arena, expected to perform some feat I’d never trained for.

I shook my head.

“Ben’s right,” Patrick said. “I can’t go after her. Not with this.” He grabbed the tube from the mask. “And this.” He tugged up his stretched shirtsleeve to show the line embedded in the pit of his elbow. His eyes glimmered, and for one terrible instant I thought he might cry.