The Rains (Untitled #1)(63)

The momentum of the heavy cart packed him and the others back through the doorway. Roaring, I gave a final shove, the cart flying away from me, hurtling through the frame.

Then gravity took over.

The cart seemed to fill the walls of the stairway, blasting down the steps, smashing everything in its path. Meaty crunches and wet gasps.

I didn’t wait around to admire the damage.

Swinging the bulging bag up onto my shoulder, I sprinted for the rear stairwell. I didn’t have time to be cautious—I just threw open the door and staggered inside, pulled by the weight of the bag. If the Hosts had made it into the rear stairwell as well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. My breaths rang off the walls, loud panting that sounded like the breathing of a Host. In fact, the echoes made it sound like there were Hosts all around me.

At last I reached the ground floor and pushed the door open, barely keeping to my feet as I tumbled forward.

Patrick waited in front of the loaded gurney, his mask tube trailing back to the H tank, now stacked with the others. His shotgun was raised and aimed at my head.

“Chance,” he said calmly. “Hit the floor.”

I was too exhausted to argue or even ask. I let my muscles go slack, let the heavy bag tug me down until my chest slapped the tile.

The shotgun exploded overhead, and I rolled to my side to see three Hosts behind me fly back, ripped to pieces by the expanding spray.

Those breaths in the stairwell hadn’t been my own, echoing back at me. They’d been the Hosts right behind me, their outstretched hands inches from my back. Sprawled there on the cold tile, I shuddered.

For a moment we stayed perfectly still. The echo of the shotgun rang up the stairwell and through the building, making it—I hoped—impossible to source. We waited until it died away, then sprang back into motion.

Fighting to my feet, I slung the bag onto the gurney. The corridor still empty. The rear sliding doors just behind us.

With both hands I slammed into the gurney, getting it moving toward the rear exit. It was too slow, and I was too weak. It clipped a doorway, and one of the giant oxygen tanks bounced off, clanging on the floor, the loudest sound I’d ever heard.

Patrick and I halted. Our eyes met.

A moment of breath-held silence.

Then we heard the shuffling of dozens of feet. A moment later a wall of Hosts swept around the corner at the end of the hall. They’d reversed course from the blocked front stairwell, tracking the sound.

Patrick rushed back and pried open the doors to the rear alley. They parted. I propelled the gurney toward the opening, risking a look behind me.

They were almost on me. It was too late.

Patrick reached past my face, grabbed a fistful of my shirt at the rear collar, and hurled me up onto the stacked tanks. My momentum started the wheels turning. I rode the gurney out through the rear doors.

Inches from my face, the end of his tube popped off the H tank. I reached for it, but it flew away like a fly fishing line as I rolled clear of the building on the gurney.

Twisting, I stared back at Patrick in time to see the shotgun rise.

But he wasn’t aiming at the Hosts.

He was aiming at the floor.

I realized what he was doing an instant before it happened.

The shotgun roared, the shot striking the end of the oxygen tank. It rocketed forward, lifting off the floor and impaling the lead Host right through the stomach. The tank bore a massive dent but somehow it hadn’t exploded.

That was about to change.

Patrick shuck-shucked the shotgun and fired again. The tank exploded, wiping out the Chaser it was embedded in and the wall of Hosts behind it. The fireball filled the corridor. Patrick hopped back through the doors into the alley as flame blossomed out into the cold night. Heat billowed over us and then flowed up and away.

I slid off the gurney, groping on the cold ground, finally coming up with the tube. My hands chased it to the end. Patrick waited for me, his breath still held.

I shoved the tube back over the hissing nozzle. Patrick pulled his mask away from his face until the oxygen shot up the line, fluttering his hair. Then he snapped the mask into place, blew a big exhalation through the one-way valve, and started breathing again.

I started breathing, too.

We didn’t pause to celebrate.

He took one side of the gurney, and I took the other. Side by side we hurried up the alley, wheels rattling like crazy over the bumpy asphalt.

As we neared the edge of the alley, Patrick said, “Slow up, slow up.”

I shot a look behind us and willed my legs to slow down.

“Chance,” Patrick said, his voice a bit wonky from the oxygen and the mask. “They’re gonna hear us.”

I forced myself to slow even more. Finally we eased to a stop and peered around the corner. We had only a slice of a view past the pharmacy. The ambulance was still there in the middle of the town square, but there were no Hosts around it anymore. They’d rushed the hospital—or at least I hoped that was where they were.

The siren was still shrieking. Somehow I’d drowned out the sound in my head, turning down the volume on all background noise as we’d run the gauntlet of the hospital. I was glad to hear the wail piercing the night, shrill and steady. That would cover the sound of our movement through the neighborhood as we headed back toward school.

We set out down an unlit street, pushing the gurney across the sidewalk, one wheel squeaking intermittently. We stopped every few driveways, using parked cars for cover.