The Rains (Untitled #1)(48)
A skeletal claw closed over Nick’s sneaker, stripping it off as Patrick ripped him free. The shoe moved back across the throng, hand over hand, held high like some kind of relic. The sea of Hosts pooled at the base of the barricade. In the darkness I couldn’t see where they ended.
Nick’s sock dangled from the end of his foot. He stared at it in disbelief before Patrick hurled him around onto the stacked tree trunks of the barricade.
“Move it!” Alex screamed down.
I was high on the barricade, straddling the top log, my palms sticky with sap. On the far side, the open road of the pass waited, rising up, clear of Hosts and obstacles.
Patrick scrambled up the face of the logs, side by side with Nick, one arm around the younger boy’s waist, practically carrying him.
The Hosts surged over the station wagon, flaring up the jumble of trees like a flame. Fingernails scraped at Nick’s feet. Turning, Patrick pistoned a leg down into the face of the Chaser with the tattered skirt.
She plummeted, taking out several Hosts beneath her, but where they’d fallen, six more surged in their place, scrabbling up the trunks like spiders. Nick awkwardly climbed the fallen trees, his bare foot slipping on the wet bark. He nearly fell, but I lunged down and caught his arm.
Behind me Cassius barked and barked, and for once no one hushed him.
As I hauled Nick up, the log rolled between my legs. Patrick kicked and thrashed, freeing his legs from the upthrust hands. A big male Host seized my brother by the calf and started to drag him down.
Gritting his teeth, Patrick swung around, one-arming the shotgun and firing down into the Host’s face. I could see blood on his foot. The choke was set wide, and some pellets must have peppered through his boot. The guy rocketed down, taking a dozen other Hosts with him.
It wouldn’t be enough. More scaled the wall all around us. Alex swung her hockey stick, knocking a few back, but they kept on, scaling and lunging. It was like an old-fashioned battle from that movie, orcs trying to storm the castle wall.
Patrick shot up toward us, leaping like a rock climber scaling a cliff face.
I stood, the log wobbling beneath me. Unstable. “Step back!” I shouted at Alex.
She hopped away, sinking into a bramble between logs on the back side. Patrick flew up the wall at me, throwing his shotgun before him. It sailed over my head and landed somewhere behind me.
Below, the barricade creaked with the weight of countless bodies. Another few seconds and they’d swarm him. I leaned over the top of the log, praying it would hold, and lowered my hands, screaming, “Jump!”
Patrick bent to leap. For an awful moment, I thought he was too far below, that it wouldn’t be enough, that our fingertips would brush and he’d fall away into the living mass. Then I remembered the baling hooks that had been dangling from my wrists all this time.
As Patrick leapt, I shoved the hooks down at him, adding about a foot to my reach.
His hands rose to the metal curves, and I clamped down on the handles with everything I had. My chest and stomach ground painfully on the top log. My shoulders popped under Patrick’s weight, the ligaments screaming. I dragged him up and over. He tumbled down the back side of the barricade before grabbing hold of a bough heavy with pine needles.
The clamor of hands and feet pounded the barricade below us.
Next to me Nick stared down, his muscles locked up from terror.
“Nick!” I yelled. “Move!”
He pivoted to vault over the top log.
His bare foot slipped on the wet bark.
His arms rose up into the air to grab something that wasn’t there, and for a split second he floated right beside me, facing over the barricade at Patrick and Alex, his legs cycling.
Then he dropped.
I grabbed his hood as he fell, but the hands below caught him. There was an instant of resistance. Then they tore him away, screaming, down the canted face of the barricade.
His hoodie still swayed from my fist; they’d ripped him right out of it.
With shocking speed they moved him overhead toward the back of the throng. He was whisked away like a rock star surfing a crowd at a concert. His wild eyes found me for an instant. Then a gnarled hand gripped his chin and spun him around. Countless hands carried him across the swell until he faded into the darkness.
My throat had closed; I couldn’t even yell after him.
The Hosts resumed their upward race, clawing their way to the top of the barricade. Several had reached the apex, arms bent over the highest log, faces rising into view.
I stepped back, dug my heels into the branches behind me, and drove my chest into the wobbling topmost tree. It rocked once on its makeshift bed, aided by the Hosts tugging from the other side, then rolled back at me. When it rocked forward again, I hurled myself into it with all my might. It rose up, up, reaching a tipping point. And then it went.
The tree hammered down the front of the barricade, smashing Hosts, bulldozing everything in its way. It picked up speed, catching one Chaser square in the thighs and launching her so far that she smashed into the overturned bus. Once the tree hit level ground, it slowed until it rolled off the highway into a ditch.
I didn’t have time to be impressed with the damage. A number of Hosts still remained down below, picking themselves up, regrouping. I stared hard through the darkness, but there was no sign of Nick. He’d been carried off already. Some of the injured Hosts staggered toward the barricade again. A woman with a caved-in cheek and a missing lower jaw. A man with his collarbone spiking through his uniform shirt.