The Rains (Untitled #1)(55)

She didn’t laugh. “Forty-eight hours,” she said, still not meeting his eyes. “That’s what we have. That’s all we have.”

Finally she let him turn her face upward. He said, “Then let’s spend it the best we can.”

She nodded. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

They embraced.

I knew I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see, and yet I couldn’t stop.

“You have to take care of Chance,” he said. “He’s tough, but he’s still just a kid.”

The words felt like a slap.

Alex nodded, rolling her lips over her teeth and biting down, trying to fight off tears. They hugged again, squeezing each other tight.

Cassius finished, and I pulled back quietly from the flower bed and headed inside, filled with more feelings than I could make sense of.

Lying on my cot in the darkness, I realized what the worst part was.

It was that Patrick was right.

I was just a kid.

Sometime later my brother crept between the cots and stood over me. His face looked hard, even angry. “When I start to change, you take me out right away. Understand? I want it to be you.”

“Patrick, I—”

“You don’t hesitate. You do it.”

“You won’t change.” I could hear the desperation in my voice, and I hated myself for it, hated him for being right about what he’d said out there. “You can’t turn into one of them.”

“Chance,” he said. “We gotta deal with reality. Now, promise me.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “I promise.”

*

Thirty-six hours till Patrick died.

The next two days passed like torture, the hours dragging like claws across my skin.

The food was going stale, the sheets getting dirty, and the lookouts reported regular Host activity beyond the fences. They’d mapped the surrounding streets already, sure, but they kept wandering around as if on patrol. Now and then we’d hear a scream carry to us on the wind, and we’d know they’d discovered another holdout somewhere in the neighborhood. Some poor kid dragged from a cupboard or an attic into the open and carried off in a cage.

Bits of the conversation I’d overheard by the flower beds played endlessly in my head.

You have to take care of Chance.

I could stop breathing, but that probably wouldn’t help me much either.

That’s all we have.

I tried to get some sleep but wound up tossing and turning. I looked at Patrick’s back facing me from his mattress and struggled not to think of the clock ticking down. Alex was crammed next to him in the tiny cot, his arm draped over her. They were determined to spend every final minute together.

Twenty hours till he died.

I don’t know if I slept at all, but I do know that when sunlight streamed through the windows, I didn’t feel the least bit rested. I ate breakfast with Alex and Patrick, all of us chewing our food silently, alone with our thoughts. Only Cassius didn’t know what was going on, slurping his food out of his bowl with relish.

We stayed together for Patrick’s afternoon lookout shift on the bleachers but found even less to say. Alex sat one bench down from Patrick and rested her head in his lap. As he gazed out the window, he stroked her long, long hair. Cassius had scaled the bleachers with me, and I was petting his neck until I noticed the parallel and felt stupid enough to stop.

Nine hours till he died.

I cleared my throat. “They were taking the kids to Lawrenceville,” I said. “Maybe we could go there. We could confront the Hosts, find some solution.”

“Chance,” Patrick said in that parental voice he barely ever used with me. “We won’t make it in time. You know that.”

“And there’s no confronting them,” Alex said. “They don’t exactly show reason.”

I said, “It’s better than staying here and just … giving up.”

“I’m not giving up,” Patrick said. “But the little time I have left I want to spend with Alex. And with you.”

JoJo came up and tugged at my sleeve. “You said you’d get my Frisbee.”

“There are too many Hosts out there right now.”

“But you promised.”

My nerves were so worn that even JoJo was bothering me. “Look, I’ll get it when it’s safe. I’m not gonna risk my life for your dumb Frisbee.”

The moment I saw her reaction, I regretted what I’d said, but she slinked off before I could apologize.

Patrick just looked at me. It was enough.

“Come on, Little Rain,” Alex said.

I wheeled on her. “Stop calling me that.”

She recoiled. I didn’t realize how cutting my tone was until I saw her expression.

Even from his post by the doors, Ben overheard, his gaze tilting up. I wanted to be alone, to hide where no one could see me. I stomped down the benches and headed to the bathroom. After splashing cold water on my face, I stared down my dripping reflection in the mirror.

When I came back into the gym, I plopped down on my cot rather than be a third wheel and disrupt the lovebirds. I tried to rest, tried to calm myself, tried to stop the flood of my thoughts.

Six hours till he died.

Over by the dry-erase board, Ben set about rabble-rousing, gaining more followers. As I jotted in my notebook, his voice rolled across the gym floor. “We gotta stay alert and dig in here.”