The Rains (Untitled #1)(20)
Up ahead with the kids, Patrick waved at us from the Piggly Wiggly. He stood on the front mat of the supermarket’s automated doors, but they weren’t opening, not after Gene Durant cut the power. Cassius’s fur stood up, even beyond the ridge, and he was barking furiously. Patrick stepped back, lifted the shotgun, and fired at the glass doors. The big panes wobbled and scarred, but the pellets weren’t enough to break through.
I recalled Jack Kaner bragging about the new heavy-duty clear Lexan doors he’d installed after the F2 tornado ripped through last July, shattering the old ones. Bullet-resistant doors.
We ran toward Patrick as he slotted another shell into the shotgun. A few spiral-walkers kept on pacing their patterns in the big parking lot, not looking up to notice as we ran past. We reached Patrick, panting hard, and he said, “Don’t turn around.”
So of course I did.
An army of Hosts descended on us, already at the perimeter of the parking lot. More poured around either side of the building from the back, blocking off any exit path.
JoJo smashed Bunny to the hollow of her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.
Patrick said, “Get behind me.”
He stepped to the front of our little vanguard, but I’d heard the resignation in his voice. It was gonna end here like this.
As the horde closed in on us, we held our ground—because we had nothing else to do.
ENTRY 11
They flew at us, some sprinting stiffly, others bounding on all fours, blank-faced and panting. The eye sockets tunneling through their heads gave us glimpses of the waves of Hosts behind them. They would overpower us and haul us to the church and put us in cages.
And then what?
The thought of what was coming tightened the skin across the back of my neck. A flurry of images overwhelmed me, scenes from every horror movie I’d ever seen. Probes and scalpels, boiling cauldrons and bloody chains. The baling hooks swung at my sides, scraping my jeans.
The mass drew nearer, nearer.
I listened to the flick-flick-flick of the hooks against denim. One of the points snagged in the fabric.
The point!
I turned and jammed the tip of the baling hook into the seam between the sliding doors. I yanked with all my might. The doors peeled back, barely wide enough to slither through.
I shouted through clenched teeth, “JoJo! Rocky! Go!”
They darted through the gap, Cassius scrambling after them. My biceps were cramping, but I held on, gripping one baling hook’s handle with both hands, the other hook dangling from my wrist. Alex squeezed through the gap next, spilling onto the supermarket floor.
The horde was twenty feet away. Now ten. Ahead of the pack, Coach Hanson scrabbled forward on three limbs, one leg stuck out to the side, a splinter of bone thrust up through her thigh.
Patrick ducked beneath me to blade through the gap, but he was too wide. His chest jammed in the opening. The Hosts were almost on us. I wrenched the hook as hard as I could, prying the doors apart another inch, and Patrick tumbled through. I fell in behind him, feeling dozens of hands brushing my back. The doors banged shut around my ankle. I turned, looking back into the press of flesh filling the giant glass door. At the bottom, Coach’s breaths fogged the pane, her hands cradling my boot at the heel and toe, like a mom helping a child slip off a sneaker.
Cassius stood protectively over me, the fur raised along his scruff, barking at the glass. I ripped my foot back as hard as I could, and the doors slammed shut. Faces and hands smeared the panes, blotting out the light.
My chest jerked up and down. For a minute it seemed I wasn’t going to catch my breath ever again.
“They can use tools,” Patrick said. “Let’s move before they figure it out.”
I rolled out from beneath Cassius. He was upset now, his tail tucked between his legs. We ran through the dark aisles, heading for the rear of the building. Rocky clipped a grapefruit pyramid, sending the fruit rolling across the tiles. Being in here now was surreal, the aisles dark and empty.
We rushed through the swinging doors behind the butcher’s counter and through the car-wash curtain that never made any sense to me. The rear room, a concrete box rimmed with freezers, was cold enough that I could feel the chill coming up through my boots. Boxes and pallets and a broken meat grinder.
We doubled over, hands on our knees, breathing hard. It felt like when Coach Hanson made us run the mile during PE, screaming at us over her stopwatch, her face nearly as red as her Cardinals hat. I thought about her back there at the sliding doors, her broken leg stuck out to one side, not feeling the pain. Driven by a single focus: getting at us.
I shuddered, and it wasn’t from the cold.
Patrick put his hand on the dead bolt leading to the loading bay in back. Alex set her hand gently on his and said, “Don’t.”
He paused.
“The kids are too tired.” She gestured vaguely toward Rocky and JoJo. I realized I was standing behind them and hoped she wasn’t including me among “the kids.” She looked back at Patrick. “Give them a sec to catch their breath.”
A shattering sound carried across the aisles, followed with what sounded like bodies slapping the floor.
Patrick threw the dead bolt.
The loading bay was empty—whatever Hosts had been back here must have been drawn to the front. We jumped off the dock, landing on the asphalt. Patrick headed into the row of Dumpsters. We single-filed behind him, squeezing through the narrow space. Cassius scrambled to press into the side of my leg.