Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

I pressed my lips together to firm them. “I can’t do it, Patrick,” I said.

“You can.”

“I can’t do it without you.”

“You can. You always could.” He lifted his fist. Dangling from the bottom, Alex’s jigsaw pendant.

I stared at it. Then I held out my hand.

He dropped it into my palm.

“Please don’t ask this of him, Patrick,” Chatterjee said. He’d approached, standing a few cots away. “If you do, you know he’ll try, and then we’ll lose him, too. He’s just a kid.”

Patrick’s eyes never left mine. “Not anymore he’s not.”

“No one could pull that off,” Ben called over. “How’s he supposed to do it? Battle all the Hosts and bring her back?”

Patrick and I still didn’t break our eye contact. Though there were nearly a hundred bodies in the gym, this was between brother and brother. My heart thumped in my chest, strong and true. What he’d said and how he’d said it had shown me a strength I hadn’t known I had.

I said, “I’ll think of something.”

Patrick’s lips pressed together behind the mask. “He always does,” he said, his eyes still locked on mine.

I swept a gaze across all those faces. They’d stay here together, sleeping on cots behind the safety of the perimeter fence. For a moment I envied them.

But something in their gazes caught me by surprise.

They envied me.

“Bring her back, Chance,” Patrick said.

He gestured for me to lean close. Condensation from his breath fogged the mask, and I could see that he was struggling not to cry. He took off his black cowboy hat.

And put it on my head.

I stepped away. Taking Alex’s hockey stick, I shoved it into her gear bag and slung the straps over my shoulders so the end stuck up like a sword handle, just how she used to wear it. The gym remained dead silent, all focus turned to me. I did my best to ignore it. Wearing the Stetson low over my eyes helped block everyone and everything out. I heard nothing but the steady rush of my breath. In, out. In, out. To keep the fear from catching me, I just had to breathe and force my body to do whatever was next.

As I headed across the court to the supply station, Eve rose from her cot and walked at my side. When we got there, she went around the little desk, sat, and looked up with a mock-official expression.

“So,” she said, “what can I help you with?”

She was trying for a light tone, but I could see how worried she was. I loaded up with water bottles, stale sandwiches, energy bars, and batteries for the flashlight, preserving the perishables in Ziplocs in case it rained. I also encased my notebook in a plastic bag to protect it. Darkness was gathering at the windows. A few minutes more and it would be night.

“You want your brother’s shotgun?” she asked.

“Too big for me,” I said.

“Just these, then?” she said, sliding my baling hooks across the desk.

I slipped the loops onto my wrists, then leaned over and pointed to one of the shelves. “And that.”

Sheriff Blanton’s revolver. The one I’d taken from his bedroom back on that endless first night.

“What good is it without bullets?” she asked as she reached for it.

“I know where to find bullets,” I said.

She handed it to me, and I clipped the holster to my belt. Then I nodded at her and touched the brim of the cowboy hat, a mock formality to match hers from earlier. She managed a smile.

“Thank you for everything, Eve,” I said.

She couldn’t help but beam a little.

“You’re a good friend,” I said, and her smile faded a few watts. I realized too late how my words had cut her. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings, but I also didn’t have it in me to figure out how to fix it right now. I was concerned about a thousand things, and feelings weren’t one of them.

I took the gun and turned to leave.

That first time we’d left the safety of the school to head for Stark Peak, there’d been the three of us like always. Me, Patrick, Alex.

The second time, sneaking into the hospital, me and Patrick.

Now it was just me.

As if he sensed my thoughts, Cassius trotted over to join me.

We threaded our way through the cots, heading out. As I neared the exit, my shadow fell before me and crept up the closed double doors. It was tall and broad, topped by a cowboy hat. It didn’t look like my shadow at all.

It looked like Patrick’s.

A light rain pinged the leaves all around me, making them dance. Cassius shook off water, then shook again. Most ridgebacks don’t like rain. They’re bred for the African desert, and water annoys them.

I stood a few feet back from the tree line, foliage framing my face as I peered at the rear of the church. There were no flatbed trucks or pallet jacks or patrolling Hosts. Aside from the faint patter of rain, everything was still. I couldn’t sense movement through the stained glass.

But I knew I had to take a closer look.

After a few quick breaths to steel myself, I put Cassius on a sit-stay and sprinted across the back parking lot, diving over the hedge. I lay there against the base of the building, gripping the baling hooks, listening for any sounds. It took me longer than seemed reasonable to catch my breath. Then it struck me-I wasn’t so much winded as afraid.

Though I’d figured it would be scarier out here without Patrick, I hadn’t counted on how much scarier.

But I had to get up and look inside. I had to see if they had Alex in there, crammed into a crate. And if so, I had to figure out what the hell to do next. I pictured her terrified, her knees drawn in to her chest, and felt anger take hold inside me. I let it give me strength.

Rising to a crouch, I peered through a clear piece of glass in the mosaic.

The inside of the church was empty.

Not a single crate. Not any Hosts. No meat grinder or piles of food.

And worst of all, no Alex.

Just a few left-behind sneakers and what looked like food stains on the floors.

Seeing the church empty was almost as unsettling as coming upon the caged kids in there earlier, but I couldn’t say why. My gaze fixed on an overturned Converse high-top. I grappled with the absence of all those boys and girls and what it might mean.

Any hope that this would be a short mission guttered out. The Hosts had probably crated Alex up and trucked her off with the other kids.

I put my back to the wall and slid down again behind the hedges. For a moment I let despair overtake me. But only for a moment.

I pictured Alex again, the way she tilted her chin up when she laughed. How she’d tuck her hair behind her ear when she leaned forward. Her fingernails, chewed to the quick or broken off from hockey practice, not like those of the other girls. Then, for an instant, I let myself remember that look of admiration she’d thrown my way after I helped us escape Jack Kaner’s farm.

Wherever she was, I’d find her. I’d get to her. And I’d bring her back.

To Patrick.

Which meant that I had to cross the valley, scale Ponderosa Pass, and make my way to Lawrenceville, where God only knew what waited for me.

As terrifying as it had been to sneak to the church, my journey had barely started.

My hooks and Alex’s hockey stick were useful, sure, but Patrick had saved the day many more times with a gun. To have even a prayer of making it, I’d need bullets.

And there was only one place to get those.

Back in the forest, Cassius’s eyes glinted from the darkness between trunks. He didn’t move until I jogged up to him and tapped his head to release him. As he trotted at my side, he nuzzled my palm, his way of saying hi. He looked up at me, tail wagging, and I realized that it was more than just a greeting. I made him feel safe. I was his pack. His family.