Last Chance--A Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  A moment of weightlessness.

  I hit the ground on my stomach.

  Right away I felt a powerful grip clamp down on my boot.

  A Chaser.

  The bones of her hand wore tattered flesh and stringy tendons like a lacy glove.

  She ripped me backward into the pack.

  ENTRY 29

  The pressure on my boot was relentless. I slid back into the heart of the cluster of Hosts, my chest and stomach skating over ice. My chin bumped along the ground.

  I looked back at Patrick. His gun was aimed, but if he fired, the pellets would tear into me, too. I rolled over and hammered my heel into the Chaser. She recoiled, readjusting her grip, and I yanked my foot free.

  The others dove in at me from both sides.

  Alex thrust her hockey stick toward me, and I grabbed at the slanted blade with numb fingers. She ripped me forward just before the Hosts piled onto me.

  By some miracle I held on.

  Fingers brushed the back of my shirt as I jetted out of the embrace of the mob. One of them tore at my sleeve and came away with a swatch of fabric.

  Alex shot me like a puck onto the slick patch of open ground before the widow’s porch. I spun in a half circle, the snow-filled night sky rotating crazily overhead. Patrick and Alex were running backward toward me, holding off the seething tide of Hosts. Barely.

  I shot to my feet.

  The porch was about fifty yards away now.

  Not a speck of cover.

  The Hosts’ gurgles rose in a terrible chorus as they bunched in the snow, a wave ready to break.

  It broke.

  They bounded at us.

  We turned and ran.

  Their ragged breath chased us. The tapping of footfall quickened. Snow streaked my vision. Patrick jacked the shotgun.

  “Now!” he yelled.

  We spun around. The Hosts, blurs against the whiteness. Feet away.

  Patrick leveled the Winchester.

  Another noise rose above the din.

  Howling.

  Dog howling.

  The Hosts spun, disoriented by the noise.

  Ridgebacks barreled out of the trees on either side of the front yard, arrowing in at the Hosts. A perfectly executed attack.

  After all, they were bred to hunt lions.

  Tanner hit first, bulldozing the biggest Mapper, knocking him right off his legs. Deja and Princess lasered in on the Chaser who had grabbed me. Grace had one of the others by the scruff of the neck, whipping her head back and forth. Cassius held the rest at bay. He straightened his front legs and sank down behind them, ready to pounce, his square head lowered. He was issuing a rumble of a growl that would’ve frozen a grizzly.

  Cassius drew himself back up to his full height, the rumble growing even louder, an animal sound that drowned out the animal sounds of the Hosts.

  Then he lunged.

  Tanner streaked into the mob after him.

  We watched the ridgebacks dismember the Hosts. It felt like watching a massacre. At last the dogs paused, staring at the streamers of mist, but no more Hosts emerged from the snow.

  It was over.

  The ridgies circled us, wagging their tails, nuzzling our palms. A victory dance. We petted them in long strokes along their sides—their reward.

  The celebration was cut short.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Atticus?”

  I looked around, growing frantic.

  I pictured the last time I’d seen him. He’d been limping. I thought about how much losing a step could cost you in the wild.

  My gaze moved from dog to dog, and then I searched among the trees. Cassius sat in front of me and cocked his head, his forehead wrinkled in that distinctive ridgeback way.

  “Why didn’t you protect your brother?” My voice rose with emotion. “You had one job—one job more important than any other. And that was to protect your brother.”

  The dogs were cowering, and I realized I was yelling.

  A sting of guilt now, to add to the grief.

  “Brothers always protect each other,” I said. “No matter what.”

  Patrick rested a hand on my shoulder. “Chance,” he said. “It’s not their fault.”

  Alex scratched Cassius’s head and then Deja’s.

  But the dogs were still shifting from paw to paw, their tails tucked, looking at me. Uncomfortable, upset. After all, I was the one who’d raised them.

  I lowered to my knees and held out my arms. The dogs crowded in, leaning against me, and I hugged them, buried my face in their fur.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Good dogs. Good, good dogs.”

  “Why don’t we bring them inside?” Patrick said. “Give them some food.”

  I rose, and we walked to the house. The dogs loped along beside us. When we stepped up onto the porch, they halted.

  Alex opened the door, and we turned back.

  The dogs stared at us, waiting. They were panting, wearing big dog smiles. Their breath misted the air.

  A familiar sadness tugged at my chest. No matter how many times it happened, I couldn’t get used to this part. But I had to.

  “Release,” I told them.

  They bounded off into the forest again, playing and nipping at one another. A blast of snow sheeted the air, and when it cleared, they were gone.

  Alex and Patrick were already inside, the door left ajar for me. I took a moment to gather myself and then stepped in after them.

  They were standing frozen in the foyer. I almost bumped into Patrick.

  I said, “What are you—”

  Patrick raised a finger to his lips.

  A scraping sound carried up the stairs from the basement, as unsettling as the tines of a fork across a plate.

  It wasn’t the Widow Latrell. She’d headed into town at the beginning, along with most of the other Hosts. In a fight for our lives, Patrick had kicked her into the forge. We’d watched her burn, watched the flesh of her neck bubble as sparks flew up all around her. She was long gone.

  Which prompted the question:

  What was down in the basement?

  ENTRY 30

  Patrick edged across the foyer and nudged open the door to the basement.

  Pitch-black.

  The scraping grew louder.

  Patrick inched slowly across the threshold, leading with the muzzle of the shotgun. Alex and I crowded behind him, braced for a fight. He used the Winchester to ease the door further ajar. The hinges complained. Light fell across the top step, but the rest stayed bathed in darkness.

  He firmed the shotgun to his shoulder. Reached for the light switch with his other hand. Clicked it on. A bare bulb dangled about halfway down the staircase.

  No one—and nothing—on the stairs.

  The stairs ended at a wall—you had to turn at the bottom to enter the basement. There was something on the wall.

  A smudge.

  Dark.

  As if someone had flicked a paintbrush across the drywall.

  Our eyes adjusted.

  Picked up the crimson tint of the smudge.

  The scraping kept on, rising up the stairs at us, lifting the hair on my neck.

  Patrick put his boot on the second step. It groaned. The third.

  I followed.

  Because brothers always protect each other. No matter what.

  Alex pressed up against me, guarding our rear. The tips of her long blond hair brushed across the side of my neck, my cheek. We descended. It felt like an eternity. At last we neared the bottom.

  The basement gaped to our right, but aside from the smell of dank concrete and the feel of open space we could sense nothing.

  The scraping didn’t get louder. It didn’t get quieter either.

  Alex cleared her throat, the noise making me start.

  Patrick stepped off the bottom stair and faced the darkness, the shotgun pointed into the mouth of the basement.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “What?” I hissed. “W
hat’s ‘Oh’ mean?”

  He stepped forward. My night vision was kicking in, enough for me to make out a shape squirming a few feet into the basement. Like a sack of grain. But alive.

  It wasn’t moving toward us. It wasn’t moving away from us. It was just squirming. And scraping.

  Patrick reached across, put his hand over the light switch.

  “You might not want to see this,” he said.

  “Too late for that,” Alex said. “Turn on the light.”

  The light went on.

  At first I didn’t recognize her. Lips rotting away, exposing a toothy grimace in her otherwise expressionless face. Clumps of hair fallen out around the holes through her head. Her face was moving. Maggots in her eyes.

  It was Gladys Jenkins.

  Eve’s grandma.

  She’d been friends with the Widow Latrell. They used to knit or play bridge or do whatever old ladies did.

  She clawed at the concrete. The scraping sound wasn’t her fingernails.

  It was her finger bones.

  Her nails had torn out already. They lay yellow and cracked on the floor, like cheese curds. She was wearing one of those long flower-print dresses with a high collar and poofy sleeves. The hem was hiked up over one knee, and we could see where her compression socks ended. A white stick of bone poked out of the side of her thigh. From the looks of it, she’d shattered her hip, too. That whole side of her dress was sopped with blood.

  She was trying to pull herself forward still, like a wind-up car spinning its wheels against a wall.

  I realized with horror that she’d been doing this since the Dusting. Day after day down here, broken and sprawled on her stomach, literally scraping her fingers to the bone.

  I remembered her baking fresh cookies for Halloween and thinking about how much effort that took when she could’ve just bought bags of candy at the Piggly Wiggly like everyone else.

  “Her eyes,” Alex said. That was all she could manage. Her voice sounded strangled.

  Patrick reached out his hand toward me, palm up. He flicked his fingers: Give it to me.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I got it.”

  But I didn’t move.

  His hand stayed there, steady as can be.

  I gave him one of my baling hooks.

  He put it straight through the top of her head.

  The scraping finally stopped.

  Patrick wiped the hook back and forth across his thigh, then handed it back to me.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice husky. “Let’s find something to eat and then get back to school.”

  His boots creaked the stairs on the way up. Alex and I stood there awhile longer, shoulder to shoulder, staring at what used to be Grandma Jenkins. I could hear Alex breathing hard.

  I felt something brush the backs of my fingers. Alex’s hand.

  I took it.

  ENTRY 31

  “There are Hatchlings here in our town,” Patrick said. “Not just Hosts.”

  Alex and I stood next to him on the bleachers, facing out at the crowd of kids and teenagers gathered on the basketball court below. Weak morning light filtered through the high windows. Dust danced in the yellow shafts. We’d made our way here without incident, slipping into the school before dawn broke.

  Dezi piped up first. “You said they all went to Stark Peak.”

  “We saw them headed there initially,” Alex said. “But looks like they’re spreading out.”

  Ben lifted the stun gun from the waist of his pants. “We can handle a few stragglers.”

  “No,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “We’ve handled the Hosts, haven’t we?” Ben said.

  “The Hatchlings are much, much worse.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because,” I said, “they’re hungry.”

  A silence descended over the gym. One of the Mendez twins started sobbing. Mikey hushed her.

  “They won’t get us in here,” Ben said. “The Hosts didn’t even manage to map this place. At least not the inside. So as far as the Harvesters know, the school doesn’t even exist.”

  I thought about Grandpa Donovan going from house to house in the neighborhood across the street, vacuuming up all the floor plans with his blank eyes.

  “The Mappers aren’t done,” I said. “Not yet. For all we know they still have this place on their list.”

  “The Mappers—like the rest of the Hosts—are falling apart,” Ben said. “When I was on lookout yesterday, I saw Mr. Alessandri out there. He was decomposing. His shins literally fell apart. Just gave way. He was lying in the middle of the street, useless, until a coupla coyotes dragged him off.”

  “It’s true,” Alex said. “The Hosts are in bad shape. But trust me. You don’t want to take any chances. With them or with the Hatchlings.”

  “Because of that,” Patrick said, “we gotta buckle down security even more. We should limit all missions off school grounds.”

  “We still need to make the occasional food run.” Ben looked across at Dr. Chatterjee. “At the discretion of our beloved leader, of course.”

  “Besides,” Dezi said, “you guys are the ones who keep going off school grounds.”

  “That’s because they’re risking their necks to tell us what’s going on out there,” Eve said. “We’d be in the dark if it wasn’t for them.”

  “We’re working on a plan,” I said.

  I regretted it the minute it came out of my mouth.

  “Oh?” Ben’s glare sharpened. “What plan is that?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” Patrick said, covering for me. He put one foot up on the bench in front of him and leaned his elbow across his knee. “That’s why we’ve been scouting.”

  “So you’re out there making some secret plan with that alien helmet you got,” Ben said. He turned to the others. “That’s right. They’ve got info they’re keeping from us, and we’re supposed to sit around here, not ask questions, and starve.” He swiveled back to us. “Is that about the score?”

  There were a few more grumbles of support than usual. This caught me, Patrick, and Alex off guard.

  I said, “We’re still figuring out what the helmet does.”

  I was drowned out by shouts. Just a handful of voices, but they were loud. I looked across the crowd at Dr. Chatterjee and noticed him looking nervous, too.

  He took a few steps toward the front.

  “The food is the real issue at hand,” he said. “As of now our food stores are still above the designated thresholds.” He removed his eyeglasses and polished them on the hem of his filthy shirt. “By my calculations we don’t need to go on the next foraging run for another three weeks.”

  “My calculation’s simpler,” Ben said. “We get more food. We eat more food.”

  “There are more variables than that,” Chatterjee said.

  “Right,” Ben said. “Like, it’s to all your advantage to keep me and my boys well fed. We’re the ones who’re gonna have to fight when the Hosts come. It’s not like JoJo’s gonna save you.”

  A few teenagers laughed.

  “The supermarket’s right there,” Dezi said.

  “Every time one of you steps out of this building,” Chatterjee said, “you are risking not just your own life but the lives of everyone in here.”

  “That’s only if they follow us back here,” Ben said.

  Several more voices rose in defense of Ben. I was surprised to see Jenny White and Kris Keuser nodding along.

  Chatterjee held up his arms. His hands shuddered slightly from the tremor. “Okay,” he said. “We can certainly discuss whether we’d like to approve an early food run.”

  “We don’t need to discuss it,” Ben said. “I want a vote. This is a democracy, right? That’s what you keep telling me.” He turned to the others. “Don’t you want a vote? Don’t you guys want more food? Better food?”

  Several scattered cries of agreement came.

  Chatterjee’s Adam’s apple lurched as he swallowed d
own whatever he was about to say. He held silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “Very well,” he said. “All those in favor of an earlier food run, raise your hands.”

  About ten hands shot up immediately—Those of Ben and his lackeys. But slowly more and more hands went into the air. From high on the bleachers, Patrick, Alex, and I watched, stunned, as they continued to rise.

  At last Chatterjee tallied the votes.

  Thirty-eight for.

  Fifty-seven against.

  Ben and his crew had lost by a decent margin. But still—it was the closest he’d ever come to collecting a majority. From his expression I could see he understood the significance of that. He looked over at us, and something in his smile reminded me of a wolf.

  Hungry. Biding his time.

  As the crowd dispersed to get on with the day, JoJo ran over to me. I picked her up and carried her over to my cot. That’s when I noticed Bunny.

  Or, to be precise, Bunny’s head.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  I sat down on my cot, the cheap springs creaking beneath our weight. Across the gym I noticed Chatterjee pull Patrick aside and start talking to him. Chatterjee’s expression was very serious. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Ben tore her head off,” JoJo said.

  I felt a ticking in my stomach, like a bomb. “What? When?”

  “Right before he whipped Rocky.”

  At first I didn’t register the words. I gazed at JoJo’s knitted brows. Her big brown eyes. There was a white-noise rush in my ears. I looked over at Chatterjee and Patrick across the gym.

  I realized now what Chatterjee was telling Patrick. And I realized I wouldn’t be able to get there in time.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion.

  I started to dump JoJo off my lap.

  Patrick’s spine went ramrod straight.

  Chatterjee grabbed for his sleeve.

  Patrick’s arm pulled free as if Chatterjee weren’t holding it at all.

  JoJo slid onto the mattress.

  I stood up.

  Hurdled Alex’s bed.

  Patrick sliced through the cots.

  Ben stood clustered with Mikey and Dezi.

  Ben turned around as Patrick approached.

  Ben started to smile.

  And Patrick decked him.

  He knocked Ben into a 180, sending him crashing through two cots, racking them up like bowling pins. For an instant Mikey and Dezi were shocked, frozen in place. Ben got up and charged Patrick, hitting his gut in a football tackle, knocking him through a few bystanders and over the top of another cot.