It was sunk to the bumper in the boggy reeds, the tires lost from view.
No way I’d be able to drive it out of here, not until the land dried.
The nearest vehicles were fifteen miles away at the gas station. On foot across the open plain of the valley, Alex and I would be picked off easily. I doubted she could make it fifteen more steps, let alone miles.
For the first time since I’d left the school, despair settled through me.
To have come all this way to be defeated by a simple rain.
How stupid of me to park the Silverado out here on soft ground.
As wetness crept through my socks, I leaned against the truck. Then my temper snapped. I banged the hood with my fist, then tried to kick the side panel, though I could barely yank my boot free to do it.
“Chance,” Alex said.
I felt her hand on my shoulder.
“I don’t care,” I fumed. “I don’t care if they hear me.”
Part of me wanted the Hosts to come so I could take out my rage on them.
I tried to kick the truck again, a poor effort.
“Are you done?” Alex asked calmly.
I turned, hooks dangling around my wrists. “I think so.”
“There is another car we could use.”
“What are you talking about?”
But already she’d started sloshing back to the highway, her feet making sucking sounds as they pulled from the earth. Alert for Hosts-maybe I didn’t really want them to show up-I followed.
She reached the station wagon, its tailgate smashed beneath the last tree trunk in the barricade. Opening the driver’s door, she reached in and unbuckled the seat belt from around the dead Host’s thighs. Then she nonchalantly yanked him out and dumped him on the ground.
Nick’s father. Killed by Patrick. Now just another dead Host lying among others.
She climbed in and stared at me through the shattered windshield. Streaks of blood marred the hood, along with those fingernail scrapes. “Well,” she said, “get in.”
“Alex. The car is crushed under that tree.”
“Just the back.”
“Not a prayer.”
“Fine,” she said. “Out of my way, please.”
I stepped to the side.
The engine coughed as she turned it over and then died. On her second try, it coughed some more but finally caught. The transmission clanked as she jerked the car into gear, and then she stomped the gas pedal.
The motor roared, the tires spinning, throwing up smoke. The station wagon went nowhere.
I didn’t think it could get louder, but it did.
Bent over the wheel, her face set with determination, Alex gave the engine more gas.
The car remained in place, pinned down by the tree.
“I told you!” I shouted.
Alex either ignored me or couldn’t hear.
I cast a glance at the darkness behind me. A few floating white ovals resolved-faces of Chasers. Then bodies came visible beneath them, making slow progress through the reeds. Some of the Hosts were sunk to their knees, but still they drove themselves on.
The wheels screamed against the tarmac.
The station wagon’s front bumper lifted an inch. The tree made a faint crackling sound against the crunched metal of the tailgate. Perhaps the slightest shift.
The frontline Chasers were now only a few steps from the highway. Legions more appeared behind them.
“Alex! We don’t have time for this!”
She didn’t so much as look up.
All at once the station wagon shot free of the tree, the massive trunk slamming into the ground behind it. The car bolted past me, then screeched to a halt. My mouth gaping in amazement, I watched as Alex leaned over and flung open the passenger door.
“Coming?” she asked.
The closest Chaser pulled her foot free of the muck and set it on the edge of the highway, the others waddling behind her. She was near enough that I could see stringy hair flicking behind the holes bored through her face.
I sprinted over and hopped in. Alex pulled out, the car rattling like crazy, a rear tire whining against the collapsed wheel well.
Alex shot me a little smirk.
She pegged the speedometer at sixty, the car shuddering like it might come apart. After a few miles, smoke started drifting up from the hood. The whine from the back grew louder and louder until the stink of burning rubber filled the car.
After another stretch of highway, we heard the rear tire flap free, the car resettling on its chassis. By some miracle Alex kept us going another few miles on three tires and a rim, sparks flying out behind us. Surprisingly, we spotted no Hosts alongside the road.
Just as we coasted up on the gas station, the engine sputtered and quit. Alex hopped out by the pumps and gave a little bow.
“I gotta admit, Blanton,” I said. “That was impressive as hell.”
We edged into the parking lot, strolling among the vehicles like a couple of car shoppers.
“Well, dear,” she said, taking on a housewife’s demeanor, “the minivan has more room for groceries and is much more sensible, but then again…” She halted by a Mustang and regarded me over the low roof with a wicked smile. “I’ve always thought ‘sensible’ was overrated.”
Seconds later we vroomed out of the gas station, 420 horses rattling our bones against the seats. Alex rolled down her window, sticking her arm out in the wind, and I followed suit. We must’ve looked like some kind of crazy earthbound airplane. We averaged well over a hundred across the valley, slicing past the occasional Mapper, barely slowing until Alex veered onto that dirt road outside of town. Snaking back into the forest, we parked where we’d left the Silverado after our last journey, our tires settling into the same ruts in the mud.
We climbed out, and Alex regarded the woods nervously, her fists clenching around her hockey stick. “Think I’ll be okay on this leg?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“I’m pretty tired, Chance.”
I could tell it was hard for her to admit.
“Slow and steady,” I said.
We pushed into the branches, heading toward town, toward school, toward Patrick. Alex leaned on her hockey stick, using it like a crutch. We hadn’t made it ten steps when we heard a crackling of branches, something moving swiftly toward us.
The sound of a body crashing through underbrush.
I stepped protectively in front of Alex. The crackling grew nearer, nearer.
Chet’s hulking form emerged, shredded clothes swaying about him. One of his hands was gone, the other mangled by Zeus. Bite marks raked his torso and face, and yet he still came at us, drawing back the nub of his arm to strike.
Stepping forward, I swung a baling hook straight down through the top of his head, sinking it a half foot deep.
The weight of the blow sent him to his knees. I kicked him, and he collapsed to the side. Then I set the tread of my boot on his lifeless cheek and ripped the hook free of his skull.
It surprised me how little I felt.
Alex was behind me, drawn back against a tree, her chest rising and falling from the scare.
“You okay?” I asked.
Again she regarded me with that expression I couldn’t quite read.
“Why do you keep looking at me that way?” I asked.
“You’re not who you were,” she said.
I wiped the bloody hook across my jeans. “None of us are anymore.”
She pushed herself off the trunk, balancing on her good leg.
“These woods are full of Hosts,” she said. “You ran into so many on your way to me. I don’t know that I can outrun them.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ve got friends here.”
“What do you mean?”
I put my fingers in my mouth and gave a sharp whistle.
Nothing.
I stared through the branches, waiting.
“Chance?” Alex looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you doing?”
But already I heard them charging through the foliage, churning up dirt. Alex didn’t have time to get scared before the pack of ridgebacks exploded through the trees, surrounding us, nipping at our hands and butting into us, fighting for attention. Cassius jumped up on me, setting his paws on my chest, licking my face. Smiling, I settled him down.