Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

For a moment the silence bathed me.

Eight Hosts, dead at my hand.

With each breath I seemed to inflate, my spine straightening one vertebra at a time, pulling me upright inch by inch.

A familiar sound called my attention to the side of the highway. A few more Hosts trudged toward the barricade, their legs mired up to the ankles in the marshy reeds.

I drew the revolver, waited until they reached the edge of the asphalt about ten yards away. Then I shot them through their foreheads, one after another.

I thumbed the release and let the wheel click open, the hot brass falling away, bouncing at my feet. I climbed up the station wagon again and found my backpack where I’d dumped it on the fallen trees.

After reloading the revolver, I was on my way.

Though there was no sign of Hosts beyond the barricade, I cut off the main road and traveled through the terrain alongside it as we had before. Scaling the slope was treacherous, as was making headway through the underbrush. The heavy backpack tugged at my shoulders, and the hockey stick tangled in branches. My thighs and calves burned. But at a certain point, I fell into a rhythm.

Everything hurt just as much, but I no longer cared. I was separate from the pain and exhaustion, just like the Hosts, observing it as if from some other place. Every time I got hit by thoughts of what might be waiting for me in Lawrenceville, I pushed them aside.

My focus narrowed to a single aim: finding Alex.

For a while I zoned out, drifting in time. It was a few years ago, a night when Alex had called to tell Patrick that her dad had to go out on patrol.

We sneak over to her house and hide in the bushes, waiting for the sheriff’s car to pull out of the driveway. Finally Sheriff Blanton steps outside. He pauses on the porch, looking back at her in the doorway. “I don’t want those Rain boys over here,” he says. “Rain only-”

“-goes one direction,” she says, cutting him off. “Down.” She shoves his shoulder playfully. “I got it. Now, go keep the peace already.”

When Sheriff Blanton turns for his car, she casts a glance over at the bushes where she knows we’re hiding and shoots us a wink I feel in my spine.

I know the wink isn’t for me. It’s for Patrick. But it doesn’t matter. I’m close enough to her, to them, that some of her glow touches me, too.

As soon as the car’s taillights disappear, we sneak across the front lawn and Alex lets us in, giving Patrick a kiss I can hear even though I don’t look over. We make root beer floats and head outside. Like old times, we cram into the hammock together to peer up at the stars, slurping our drinks, swaying, and picking out the constellations.

“I think I see Man Throwing Up,” Alex says, pointing at a spray of stars.

“Is that Greek?” I ask, and she laughs.

I’m nestled against her side, her bare arm pressed against mine, and it is warm and soft.

“What do you see, Patrick?” she asks.

“It’s just north of the Big Dipper,” Patrick says. “It’s called Your Dad Tossing My Butt in Jail.”

“Ooh,” Alex says. “That’s an exciting one.”

“Exciting?” Patrick says, and I can hear the grin in his voice. “I think it’s more scary than anything.”

“Well”-Alex turns her face to Patrick, her hair drifting across my cheek-“I hope it’s worth it.”

“It’s worth it,” Patrick says.

The hammock rocks hard as my brother climbs out. “I need another root beer float,” he says, and pads into the house.

Alex and I lie there for a moment alone. It feels like floating.

“What do you see, Chance?” she asks.

“The Little Bear,” I say.

“Where?”

“There.”

“I thought that was the Little Dipper.”

“It’s called that, too.”

I hear her rustle on the hammock as she turns to me. “How do you remember all this stuff?”

I can feel her breath. We’re that close. I don’t dare look over. I shrug. “I don’t know.”

She turns back to face the night sky. “Is there a Big Bear?”

“It’s called the Great Bear. It’s formed using the Big Dipper. See, there? The hindquarters. Then the rest of him.”

She leans her cheek against my shoulder, peers up the length of my arm.

“It’s much more obvious than the Little Dipper,” I say. “Higher in the sky and way huger. It dominates everything.”

“Hmm,” she says. Her cheek stays against my shoulder, and I don’t want to lower my arm, not if it means she’ll move away. “But the Little Dipper has the North Star in it, doesn’t it?”

I feel my blood quicken a bit at the playful note in her voice. “Uh-huh.”

“Isn’t that the most important star? The one sailors navigate by? The one all the other stars rotate around?”

I finally lower my arm and turn. Our faces are so close that our noses almost touch. Her green eyes are luminescent. It’s such a perfect moment I almost forget to be self-conscious.

“Know what I think?” she says. “I think the Little Bear shouldn’t underestimate himself.”

My breath catches in my throat.

Before my whirling brain can fix on a reply, the hammock dips again and Patrick spills into the netting beside us. His arm slides beneath Alex’s neck, pulling her into him. He’s big enough that if he dangles one leg off the hammock, his foot can touch the ground, and he rocks us, rocks us in the quiet of the night.

Alex has turned her face back to him, sure, but she keeps her arm pressed alongside mine.

We sway for a long, long time.

A splash of bracing cold water brought me back into my body there in the wilds of Ponderosa Pass. A lip of dirt had crumbled away, sending me stumbling calf-deep into a river.

The current was strong, pulling one of my legs out from under me, the weight of the backpack spinning me around.

I lost my footing, found it again, my boots scraping across the mossy bed. Cold water rose to my thighs, but I kept my chest and head out of the water. I bulled my way to the far side and clawed at the clay of the opposite bank, dragging myself up out of the water. For a time I lay there panting and freezing.

Alex’s voice came to me from afar: Would you cross raging rivers?

I would.

I forced myself to my feet and checked the backpack. It was still mostly dry, the plastic bags protecting the perishables and my notebook. Something tingled at my calf, and I tugged up my pant leg. A dark slippery oval clung to my flesh.

A leech.

I scraped it away, leaving a smudge of my blood. I found two more on my other leg and flicked them back into the river. If I wasn’t lost, I was certainly off course, which meant I’d have to find higher ground to regain my bearings. I continued upslope, damp pants clinging to my legs, the pass growing steeper and steeper until I had to lean forward and use my hands to pull myself up a rocky rise.

Would you climb mountains?

If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.

At last I reached the top, tumbling over the lip, landing in a mud wallow. My muscles gave out under the burn, and I sprawled there panting in the soothing wet.

It felt so pleasant lying here. It would be so easy to rest, to drift off, to give up.

Would you crawl through mud for me?

I shoved myself up to all fours, shook my head hard, drew in a deep breath.

If mud needed crawling through to get to you, I would.

I stood, sludge caking my hands and knees. Staggering with exhaustion, I drifted into the thickening pines. The branches drew denser and denser, needles crowding in on me from all sides until it felt like I’d be skewered alive. Finally I broke into a clearing, scratching at my aching arms.

At first I didn’t register where I was. Then I saw the ring of Rocky Mountain Douglas firs around me, the forked road beyond, the three cleared spaces on the ground.