The Rains (Untitled #1)(42)

We kept to the hillside, moving among the trees, Cassius a few feet ahead of us, a canine early-warning system. The backpack tugged at my shoulders, filled with our supplies, including extra shells for Patrick’s shotgun and my notebook. It took forever, but we finally worked our way down toward the back of the church and peered out from the edge of the parking lot. To one side the pews lay in a jumble like a giant stack of firewood. The Hosts had removed them all from the church. To make room for what?

A flatbed truck parked by the rear door blocked most of our view of the building, but we could still make out the stained-glass windows on either side of the altar, glowing with light from within. Over the breeze we heard moans and sobs, footfalls and dragging sounds.

My mouth went dry.

We waited for a while, watching and listening, but nothing changed. Then Patrick said, “Now or never, I guess,” and crept out from cover.

I looked across at Alex. I could read the fear in her eyes, but she tightened her grip on the hockey stick and stepped from the tree line. Cassius and I stayed at her heels.

We hurried across the parking lot, passing the flatbed and jumping over the boxwood hedges beneath the window. I put my hand on Cassius’s neck and pushed him down into the dirt with us. The whine of machinery vibrated the wall at my shoulders.

Cautiously, we rose and peered through the window. Due to the stained glass, everything looked murky, drenched in blues and reds, but then I found a white piece in the mosaic and the view inside became clear.

I wish it hadn’t.

In place of the pews were rows of cages, crates, and pens, stretching from wall to wall, filling the whole interior. Every last one filled with a kid.

Hundreds of them.

Inside a repurposed chicken coop, Lyssa Unger, one of the cheerleaders, lay curled in the fetal position. Now loaded into one of our dog crates, Andre Swisher sobbed hoarsely, his muscular arms trembling. Blake Dubois had been crammed into a flat battery cage used to house hens, his discarded wheelchair flipped over beside it, one tire spinning lazily in a draft.

Dozens of Hosts moved through the aisles like the guards in some awful death camp. Most of them distributed white plastic coffee mugs from the church kitchen. I sourced the whining noise to an industrial meat grinder at the edge of the altar. Wearing his smeared butcher’s apron, Ken Everston fed the grinder, grabbing items piled at his feet. Corncobs. Raw meat. Dog food. A whole turkey still in the plastic wrapper. A constant stream of beige sludge emerged from the machine, the other Hosts passing the white mugs beneath it, filling them for the children.

They were fattening them up? Or just keeping them alive? To what end?

My gorge reared up, pressing at the back of my throat.

What made it even more scary was how organized it all was. The Hosts—or whoever was controlling them—kept moving pieces around the chessboard, executing a grand plan we couldn’t keep up with. They’d temporarily abandoned their roles to carry out various tasks. They’d done this before, of course, like when they’d melted down the guns and taken out the power lines, but I hadn’t seen this many working with such machinelike precision in one place before. It was as though their programming had been rewritten all at once, putting them in service of a new goal. Seeing them in action was as awe-inspiring as it was fearsome.

There were way too many Hosts in the church for us to launch some kind of rescue mission. We’d be overpowered immediately.

Beside me Alex stiffened. In a tiny voice, she said, “Dad?”

There he was. Sheriff Blanton, patrolling the church like a foreman. The other Hosts stepped aside before him, falling into line, making clear who was in charge.

He walked over to the basement door and swung it open. A moment later Afa Similai emerged from below, his dreadlocks swaying around his empty eye sockets. His muscles protruded as if carved from granite; Afa lifted the battery cage holding Blake. Blake slid to one end of the cage, crying out. Afa thundered to the front of the church and exited, returning a moment later to grab another crated kid.

We watched this for a time, doing our best to remember to breathe. After Afa had retrieved five kids, he didn’t come back from the front of the church. We waited nervously for him to reappear, but that door stayed shut.

Alex’s gaze stayed locked on her father. Sheriff Blanton led several Hosts up to the meat grinder, each of them carrying food—a pineapple, dry pasta, a jar of pickles. It would all go into the gruel. He patrolled around the church, passing right in front of our window. As his boots thumped past us, Alex pressed her hand to her mouth, tears spilling over the bumps of her knuckles. His shadow rolled across her face and then was gone.

Cassius gave a low growl, fur standing up on his shoulders. He swung his head toward the side of the building.

“What?” I whispered. “What is it, boy?”

From around the corner came the rattling of wheels.

My muscles tensed. “Let’s go,” I said. “Now.”

We hurdled the boxwood hedge, making it to the far side of the flatbed truck just before Afa came into view. He was hauling the pallet jack. Shooting a look over my shoulder, I saw that it was stacked with cages. Fortunately, Afa was bent forward, straining against the weight of the pallet, so he didn’t see us as we vanished into the tree line.

Breathing hard, we watched him roll the pallet jack to the side of the big truck. Several more big male Hosts trailed behind him. They hoisted the crates up onto the flatbed. Seeing the kids loaded up like produce was almost too much to bear. Cheeks pressed into wire. Fingers curled around bars. Sobs and pleading.