The Rains (Untitled #1)(28)

As soon as I was done, the questions started pouring in.

Eve asked, “Why do some of them swell up and explode and others chase kids around and look at the ground and stuff?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“In some species it’s not uncommon to see differentiated roles,” Dr. Chatterjee said, stepping in to help me. “Like ants and bees have drones, workers, and queens. Or it could be that the first-generation Hosts serve to spread the infection and the second-generation Hosts…” He paused. “Act differently.”

Little Jenny White raised her hand next. “I stabbed Mrs. Johnson through the stomach. And she lived.”

Her cheeks were flushed, and her chin trembled. Nine years old or so, standing there in a bloody dress, talking about putting a knife through her neighbor’s gut. A week ago it would have been unthinkable. A day ago it would have been unthinkable.

When Jenny spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “So how do you kill them?”

“We think it’s their brains that are effected,” I said. “So you gotta shoot them in the head.”

Marina Mendez piped up from her post by the window atop the bleachers. “Just like z—”

“Don’t say it,” Rocky cut in.

Dezi Siegler, one of Ben’s buddies, called out from the back, “But we don’t have any guns. Except your brother. And you.”

“Yeah,” Leonora Rose said. “Does other stuff work? Like if you bash them in the skull?”

Ben tugged the bolt gun from his jeans and held it up over his head. He tugged the trigger. Compressed air hissed, and there came the thunderous smack of the steel rod firing. “This worked just fine,” he said.

The raised gun caught a beam of light from the high window. The end was coated in blood.

“But I thought that was just a stun gun,” Eve said.

“For cattle.” Ben thumbed another air cartridge into place. “But compared to a cow skull, a human’s is like an eggshell. It’ll put a Host on the ground in seconds flat.” A smile blossomed on his face. “Trust me.”

The doors boomed open behind us, making me jump. Alex entered with the small TV tucked under one arm, hockey stick clenched in her other hand. Her hair fell across her face, and she jerked her head, clearing it from her eyes. “Look what the blonde found,” she said.

Britney came in at her heels. I had to say, seeing them up there with their makeshift weapons, they looked pretty tough. Britney might not have been an athlete like Alex, but she was on the cheer team, her muscles shaped from being a base, propping up the pyramids and throwing the fliers. These were Creek’s Cause girls, not the willowy types you saw on TV who looked like they needed a cheeseburger.

Alex walked over, set down the unit on the lowest bleacher bench, and let her bag slip off her shoulder and thud on the floor.

“That’s all well and good,” Ben said. “But what are you gonna plug it into? Like I said, we can’t turn on the generator until—”

From her bag Alex pulled a twelve-volt battery with an outlet plug, the one Mrs. Yee used in physics when she talked about circuits and joules and made a lightbulb glow. Alex plugged in the TV, looked across her shoulder, and gave Ben a smirk.

He sucked his teeth and glanced away.

All the kids gathered in the court, sitting cross-legged, staring hopefully at the screen. Marina alone stayed in her perch high on the bleachers, staring out the window, as if she still couldn’t believe the world she was looking at. Taking a deep breath, Alex pushed the button. The TV went on with a popping sound. The little screen filled with static.

As Alex fussed with the rabbit ears, I stared across the rows of stressed-out faces. In the dimness of the gym, I could see the TV’s glow flickering in all those sets of eyes like a pilot light. Like hope.

Everyone sat there as if it were some kind of movie night.

A signal caught on the screen, a blurry image scrolling vertically like the self-dumping hoppers in a grain lift machine. Another tweak of the rabbit ears and the image stilled. It was some dumb talk show, the host overseeing a competition between housewives who’d done their own makeovers. Alex started clicking the plastic knob, changing the channels. An ad for a new kind of car wax. A close-up of a weeping woman in soap-opera-soft lighting. A newscaster giving a live early-morning traffic report, the sound fuzzed by the bad signal.

Everything looked to be normal.

When Alex turned off the TV, you could sense the relief in the room, the first stirrings of optimism.

“Okay,” Patrick said. “So we can assume that the spores from McCafferty haven’t spread out of the valley.”

“Not yet,” Eve said.

That sent a ripple of concern across the basketball court.

“Let’s focus first,” Chatterjee said, “on what we know to be true.” He ticked off the first point on his slender forefinger. “The adults are affected, but not the kids. Can we zero in on an age?”

A silence as we all regarded one another. Marina called down from the bleachers, “I see Stevie Saunders and Hanna Everston across the street. How old are they?”

Answers rang out.

“Stevie’s twenty-three,”

“I think Hanna is, too.”

“No, she’s just twenty.”

“Twenty, then,” Dr. Chatterjee said, his voice heavy with dread.