The Rains (Untitled #1)(25)
“Your weakness is your strength,” Patrick said.
“That’s right, Patrick,” Chatterjee agreed. Then he looked at us all. “Just like your weakness is yours. As Alex said, you’re willing to take risks. Now you’ll have plenty of opportunity to do so.”
I thought of Eddie Lu out there wandering around the Dumpsters in his beanie and apron. “Wait,” I said. “But this means … as we get older…”
Chatterjee’s eyes moistened behind his round glasses. “If the spores are still in the air, yes.”
“What?” JoJo asked. “What’s that mean?”
“It means we’ll turn into them,” Rocky said angrily, waving a hand at the wall and the Hosts beyond.
It took a moment for the realization to work its way across JoJo’s face, and then her forehead furrowed and she started crying. I wanted to comfort her, but the shock was still ringing through me, too. Of all of us, she’d be safe the longest. I’d get there well before her, the white matter spreading through my brain until one day it hit a tipping point. One more cell would grow, bridging some microscopic connection—just enough to allow the parasite to reach its nasty little claws around my frontal cortex, encasing it and taking me over.
But first I’d lose Patrick.
And Alex.
It was like life had always been, I guess, but accelerated. Aging brings us closer to death—any idiot knows that. I’d just always thought I’d have a longer runway. I was fifteen, sure, but at times I still felt like I was just a kid. Even if the future laid out before me wasn’t glamorous or grand, it still always seemed to stretch out, decade after decade, farther than I could see. I didn’t want the end of the road to be visible. Not yet.
I pictured having to watch that death shudder hit Patrick. And alter him. My big brother, my rock, the most solid thing I’d ever known.
And that was only if we got lucky. If the Hosts didn’t take him first. Or me.
JoJo’s cries grew louder.
Patrick said, “We gotta be quiet. We don’t know who’s in here.”
JoJo crammed Bunny’s ear into her mouth and chewed on the ragged tip.
“Don’t worry,” Chatterjee said, ambling ahead of us past the glass trophy cabinet toward the gymnasium. “We’ve checked the entire school. It’s secure.”
“Who’s we?” Patrick said.
Dr. Chatterjee struck the double doors with the heels of his hands, and Alex gave a little gulp of shock. We froze at the threshold. Dozens of sets of eyes stared back at us.
Huddled in groups across the bleachers and the basketball court were about half the kids of Creek’s Cause.
The others who had made it.
ENTRY 13
Our friends and schoolmates were in terrible shape. Both of the Mendez twins, JoJo’s closest friends, were missing patches of their hair. Little Jenny White wore a torn and bloody dress, and one of her shoes was gone. I couldn’t remember her age, but she couldn’t have been older than ten. A few seniors were there, including Ben Braaten, his face sporting that jigsaw scar from the car crash that had killed his two brothers. I saw several of my classmates. Eve Jenkins, who sat next to me in American history, had claw marks across her face. It looked like they’d been caused by fingernails.
A bunch of the emergency cots had been rolled out from the storage room, just like after last year’s flood, when two dozen families had taken up residence here for the better part of a month while their houses were repaired. The retractable bleachers, pulled out now like they were for pep rallies and basketball games, served as a base camp for some of the kids. The benches were covered with sleeping bags, backpacks, first-aid kits, and a few scattered pillows for those lucky enough to have grabbed them before they fled. A row of makeshift weapons—knives, fire axes, baseball bats—lined the lowest bench. Now I understood Chatterjee’s foraging among hammers and wrenches in the shop class. High casement windows atop the bleachers let in weak shafts of dusty light. A freestanding dry-erase board had been wheeled to the front of the polished court, facing the cots. Coach McGill’s zone defense diagrams had been mostly erased and written over them was a list of hundreds of names.
A roll call of all the kids of Creek’s Cause.
The survivors must have made a list of their team members and classmates, young neighbors and relatives. About a hundred of the names on the unofficial census had been crossed off.
While we’d been scrambling from horror to horror, they’d been hard at work organizing here tonight. Almost as hard at work as the Hosts had been.
Dr. Chatterjee walked to the board, his steps echoing through the gym. He picked up the marker and crossed out Patrick Rain, Chance Rain, Alexandra Blanton, Rocky McCafferty, JoJo McCafferty. The tip made a squeak with each line.
None of us had spoken. We were too stunned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hundreds of names that weren’t crossed off. All those kids missing, taken by Hosts. Andre Swisher from track. Talia Randall, the picture-perfect cheer captain. Blake Dubois, one of the special-needs kids. I pictured Blake with his warm smile, his stick-thin legs propped on the footrests of his wheelchair. He wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“We weren’t sure we’d find any more kids,” Chatterjee said. “The town is pretty much locked down by the Hosts. You live the farthest out, so I suppose it makes sense that it took you longer to get here.”