The Rains

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Dr. Chatterjee worked his way back across the court. He paused behind Alex and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. Continuing on, he flipped over the dry-erase board to reveal the blank back side.

  Then he regarded the rest of us. “Everyone line up by age,” he said. “Youngest in the front. I’m gonna write all your names and birthdays in order here. So we know.”

  After some jostling and confusion, we formed a single row. Everything proceeded in orderly fashion, pretty amazing given what was going on. Maybe we were just happy to have something easy to do. Marina took her spot ahead of Maria, having been born a few minutes before her. Dr. Chatterjee listened to everyone, then jotted his or her information up on the board in his neat hand. The line moved slowly forward. I tried to choke down my fear, to keep my gaze ahead at Rocky’s black curls, at JoJo and the Mendez twins, but every step of the way I sensed Patrick back there toward the end of the line. I didn’t want to know how near the end he was.

  Finally I couldn’t fight the urge anymore, and I turned and looked back along the long line of kids, past Ben and Alex and Eve.

  Patrick was the second kid from the end.

  The last in line was Chet Rogers, his big ruddy face downcast. His arms trembled, and his left knee jackhammered. He twisted one sweaty hand in the other.

  Whereas Patrick was trying to fight off his fear and doing a pretty good job of it. I don’t think anyone except me could tell how rattled he was, but I knew him the way only brothers know each other. The way he knew me.

  His jaw looked tight. His mouth thin and firm. For a moment I thought he was holding it together for me like he always did. But then I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Alex.

  And she was looking back at him. I didn’t think it was possible for her to seem more upset than she had when Britney died, but she held herself now as if her body were hollow, as if her insides had crumbled away.

  I knew she felt that way because I felt that way myself.

  Eve traced where I was looking and stepped forward in line. “I’m so sorry, Chance,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” I said, and turned back around quickly so she couldn’t see me bite my lip. I reached down, and sure enough, Cassius was there, his black muzzle pointed up at me. I scratched at his scruff beneath the collar the way he always loved, and he tilted into me. “Good boy,” I said. “Good, good boy.” It was all I could do to hold myself together.

  Finally I arrived at the front of the line. I had to fight to keep my voice from cracking when I spoke to Dr. Chatterjee. “July fourth,” I said. “Not sure what time.”

  “Thank you, Chance,” he said. “I seem to recall you were born in the morning.”

  I went and took my seat on the bleachers with the others. After a while Alex came and sat next to me.

  “Hey, Blanton,” I said.

  “Hey, Little Rain.”

  It made me smile, which I’m sure was her intent. “I hate when you call me that,” I said.

  She leaned over, gave me a playful bump with her shoulder. “Yup.” But it was sad, too. There was nothing more to say, really. It was just a way of reaching out, of connecting. We were united in that moment as the two people who cared the most about Patrick. And about what was gonna happen to him.

  A while later—though we tried not to notice how much later—my brother joined us on the bleachers. Together we listened to Chet give his birthday in a trembling voice.

  Ben hopped up onto one of the middle bleachers and started pacing across it. The front of his shirt was stiff with dried blood from where he’d wiped his hands. “Look,” he said, “the first thing to figure out is who’s in charge. And I think it’s pretty clear who’s protected us the best so far.” The heel of his hand rested on the stun gun tucked in his waistband.

  “Dr. Chatterjee’s in charge,” I said.

  Ben cast his broken gaze over at me. “Dr. Chatterjee,” he said, “can’t hold a gun. Not with that grip.”

  A lot of the kids looked taken aback. We’d heard students be rude to teachers before, but we’d never seen one be so dismissive before.

  Ben’s mood had changed since he’d returned from taking care of Britney’s body. He seemed more cocky, his eyes gleaming with some secret confidence.

  Dr. Chatterjee took off his glasses again, calmly polishing them. “Is that what you think leadership is about, Mr. Braaten?” he asked.

  “Not generally,” Ben said. “But now more than ever.”

  “How about wisdom? Experience?”

  “You may have noticed that age ain’t exactly being rewarded in the new order.” Ben scanned the kids’ faces. “Like I said, I’m willing to do what has to be done to keep you guys safe.”

  “You wouldn’t send help for Dick and Jaydon,” Eve said, “when they went to help the others. So which of us are you keeping safe?”

  “The majority of you.”

  “Which is fine,” Patrick said. “Until you’re not part of the majority.”

  Rocky spoke up. “I think our leader should be Dr. Chatterjee,” he said. “And whoever’s oldest.”

  We looked up at that board, Chet Rogers’s name at the very bottom. His birthday four days from now.

  And Patrick’s name written right above.

  Chet made a nervous noise. I thought maybe he was going to say something, but he drew into himself. He crossed his arms over his chest as if he were hugging himself. His eyes stayed lowered as he tried to smooth out his breathing, but he was wheezing pretty good. I remembered how his mother and the school nurse always seemed to hover nearby, fearful of an attack. A kid with asthma in farm country was at no small risk. If he had an episode now, I’d have to run to the nurse’s office to fetch his oxygen mask.

  But Ben paid Chet little mind. “If we’re going for stability,” Ben said to Eve, “why would we choose leaders who are next in line to die?”

  Patrick stood up abruptly. “Let’s cut to it. Do we agree that everyone gets a vote?”

  Most everybody nodded.

  “Okay. How many vote that Dr. Chatterjee’s in charge?”

  About three-fourths of the hands went up.

  “That’s settled, then,” Patrick said, with a glance at Ben. “Now let’s get back to figuring out just what the hell to do.”

  “Fine,” Ben said. He cast a look across the faces of the kids. “But think about it. When the next Host shows up, who do you want between you and it? Me or Chatterjee?”

  “For now, Mr. Braaten, we will let that remain a rhetorical question,” Dr. Chatterjee said, “and get back to the facts as we’re learning them. Eighteen appears to be the age at which people … transform.” His forehead furrowed as he puzzled this out. “Once that chronological point is crossed, it’s as if a switch is thrown, making the person susceptible to spores in the air.”

  “How do you know the spores aren’t already inside us all?” Eve asked. “Just hanging out, waiting to spread?”

  Dr. Chatterjee blinked a few times. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I don’t.”

  “No,” Chet said, still rocking himself. “You’re right.”

  “How do you know?” Chatterjee asked. “Chet? How do you know?”

  “I … um, I saw my neighbor—Mr. Gaeta? Right after it happened. He was chasing a kid down the middle of our street, and a car…” Chet gasped a few times. “I saw his brains when they … spilled out. And they were black. Like covered with oil. And then next…” His breathing quickened, and for a moment I thought he might hyperventilate. “The car plowed into the kid he’d been chasing.” He took in a gulp of air. “Luis Millan.”

  At this a wail went up from the back of the gym. Probably one of Luis’s cousins. We were all shocked.

  “His head was…” Chet’s hand hovered by his forehead. “And his … brain … I could see … it looked normal. It wasn’t all black and oily. Not yet. So no, I don’t think the stuff was in there. I think it waits in the air until the second we turn eight
een. Your brain’s ready, and then that next breath costs you … everything.” He stared at his trembling hands. “Like Britney.”

  Alex pulled the cuffs of her sweater down over her fists. She jackknifed over, her feet up on the bleacher bench in front of her, her arms pressed between her thighs and her chest. Patrick sat beside her, rubbing her back.

  Again I looked across at my brother’s name and birthday written up on the board. Then down at the wet smudge from the mop where Britney had fallen.

  I didn’t mean to speak, at least not that loudly, but there was my voice, carrying across the gym. “How could they know?”

  “How do they know any of it?” Ben said. “They know to burn the guns. They know to cut the power. And the phone lines. The grown-ups—it’s like they’re still in there somewhere, but just the bad parts.”

  Beside me, Alex shook off a shudder.

  I said, “What I mean is, how could the parasite know exactly when Britney turned eighteen?”

  Rocky said, “Well, Dr. C. said the white matter—”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But everyone develops at different rates. I mean, we’re humans. It’s not like we’re trees and you can just cut us open and count the rings inside. I know that doctors can make guesses based on teeth and bone development and stuff, but it’s not like we have some internal meter or something. Besides, nothing can tell when we actually enter the world. I mean, as opposed to conception or being in the womb or whatever.”

  “If there is a meter of some kind,” Eve said, “maybe it starts the instant air first hits the lungs?”

  “But there isn’t one.” I looked over at Dr. Chatterjee. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Not a meter, exactly,” he said. “But there is something. Structures on the tips of chromosomes called telomeres. They’re repetitive nucleotide sequences that get shortened every time DNA duplicates. Recently there’s been some research indicating that these provide estimates for how long an organism has been alive and how long it has until it dies. They’ve been doing promising work with warblers on Cousin Island—”

  “But those are estimates,” I said.

  “As our technology advances,” Chatterjee said, “we are finding them to be alarmingly accurate as indicators of life expectancy.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But we can’t tell how old a person is to the day. To the minute.”

  “Well…” Ben stood up, his weight creaking the bleacher. “We can’t.”

  I felt a tingling under my scalp. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re dealing with more than spores and parasites,” Ben said. He hopped down the benches, one after another, then stood at the bottom and looked up at me, Alex, and Patrick. “When I was out there taking care of Britney’s body, guess who I bumped into? Ezekiel. Looks like our ol’ janitor was sleeping off a hangover in the football stadium again, woke up with the commotion.” Ben took a moment to wipe his hands across the front of his shirt, mimicking the gesture that had left those bloody streaks. “So I handled him, too.” With a glance at Chatterjee, he added, “Maybe not as well as our elected leader here could’ve.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you say something?” Chatterjee asked.

  “Didn’t want to overstep my bounds. But seeing as our leadership is casting about for answers, I figure I’d better speak up now.” Ben started for the doors, waving at us to follow. “You three and the good doctor better come with me.” He turned back to look at us, the crimped skin of his forehead shiny even in the diffuse light of the high windows. “You’re gonna wanna see this.”

  ENTRY 15

  We halted in the corridor of the humanities wing, bumping into one another. I tried to swallow, but my throat gave only a dry click. The sight before us had brought us up short.

  A pale arm thrust across the threshold of Mr. Tomasi’s classroom. Limp fingers touched the floor as if reaching for something.

  And they were twitching.

  “Wait,” Patrick said. “He’s still alive?”

  “If you can call it that,” Ben said.

  A dark snake of blood streamed parallel to the arm, polished and gleaming, mirroring back the pinhole ceiling tiles above. The duffel bag containing Britney had been dumped by the lockers; Ben had probably dropped it there when he’d run into Ezekiel.

  Alex’s voice cut through my shock. “This whole time we’ve been in the gym? You left a Host out here still alive?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Ben said. “He ain’t going nowhere. You’ll see.” He strode forward, but none of us moved.

  We’d seen a lot, but that didn’t mean we were used to it.

  Aside from Ben, who led the way with a big-game hunter’s delight. “C’mon, then,” he said. “He’s not gonna get you. Not anymore.”

  Patrick broke us out of our statue formation. Alex, Chatterjee, and I followed. I’d had Cassius stay back with JoJo, who’d started crying at the thought of being left without me and Patrick. The big pup had tucked up to her side, and she’d rested her face on his tan fur, her head rising and falling as he breathed. Seventy pounds of Rhodesian ridgeback was a pretty good comfort.

  I could have used some comfort myself. Though it was day, the hall was surprisingly dim, and I realized I’d never been inside the school with the lights off. Another first.

  As we neared the doorway, Ezekiel drew slowly into view. Arm. Shoulder. Then the head nodded to the side, facing away, those two tunnels bored through the back of the skull, framed by mouse-brown hair.

  We confronted the body, that twitching hand.

  The palm slid a few inches on the tile, making a squeaking sound, and Chatterjee gave a little yelp. Ezekiel repeated the motion, as if he were trying to paddle.

  “So check it out,” Ben said, stepping across the body. He grabbed the legs, rotated Ezekiel around, and pulled him out into the hall like a rolled-up carpet.

  Ezekiel’s head knocked the doorjamb, his arms drifting up over his head as if he’d jumped off a cliff. A deep indentation cratered the flesh above his left eyehole where the stun gun had caved in his skull and penetrated his brain. A black slick showed beneath, a smear of infected white matter. One cheek twitched. His Adam’s apple lurched, and clicking sounds emerged, as if something were trying to talk through his voice box but had no idea how to operate it.

  I thought about Dr. Chatterjee’s description of the parasite wrapped around the frontal cortex—how it had its figurative hands on the control levers of the human body—and I shuddered. I heard Alex gasp. Chatterjee’s hand was up, covering his mouth. Patrick alone didn’t flinch as he stared down at the thing that used to be Ezekiel.

  Ben kept pulling him by the ankles, the body shushing across the tile, the head leaving behind a six-inch swath of blood. Once Ezekiel was well into the hall, Ben dropped his legs with a thump. Then he kicked the limbs wide, posing the guy so it looked like he was doing a jumping jack.

  Patrick stood back a few feet with the rest of us. Watching Ben drag Ezekiel around like a sack of trash, I felt something clench in my stomach. I was intimidated by Ben, and that feeling was made worse when I glanced over at Patrick and could tell that he was, too. It wasn’t just Ben’s ruthlessness that was scary. It was the fact that he actually seemed in his element.

  He looked up at us, the scar tissue pulling into different arrangements on his face. “You’re not gonna see from back there.”

  We eased forward. Alex hesitated a moment over by the duffel bag containing what remained of her best friend. Patrick rested a hand on her lower back, steering her with us.

  We ringed the twitching body.

  I’d not yet seen a Host up close. The eyeholes were bizarrely clean, the insides rimmed with vessels and brain matter but not dripping or bleeding at all. It was almost as if they’d been bored by a laser that cauterized as it went.

  Setting his feet on either side of the flung-wide arm, Ben crouched by Ezekiel’s face and beckoned us to come in even closer. I’d seen too many horror movies to not
be freaked out. But I wasn’t willing to let Ben see me scared, so I bit the inside of my cheek and bent in a little more.

  Ben took a slender Maglite out of his pocket and clicked it on. He tilted the flashlight’s beam across Ezekiel’s face, and what I saw made my nerves jump.

  The eyeholes weren’t holes at all. Each had a transparent membrane stretched across the surface like Saran Wrap. It looked like the liquid sheet covering the little plastic ring on a bubble wand after you dip it in the soapy solution.

  Ben grabbed a handful of Ezekiel’s hair and tugged his head up off the floor so we could see through to the second membranes stretched across the backs of the tunnels.

  “God in heaven,” Chatterjee said. “What in the world is that?”

  “Dunno,” Ben said, breathing heavily from all his exertion. “But watch this.”

  He let the head clunk back to the floor. Then he tapped the membrane with a forefinger. The membrane turned on like a computer screen but stayed transparent at the same time, so we were looking through an image and at it at the same time.

  It showed the gray early-morning sky broken by a few clouds, their shapes rendered with lines, sort of like you see on a blueprint. The picture—if you could call it that—twitched a few times, fuzzed with static like the TV back in the gym. Somewhere beneath my shock, it occurred to me that this interference might be because of the damage to the brain caused by the stun gun. Were the clouds in the image drifting? Before I could process any of this, the angle shifted, scanning across the sky.

  It wasn’t a still picture. It was footage.

  As the view tilted downward, the football stadium’s bleachers scrolled into sight, marked with those same odd structural outlines. It was as though some software program were tracing every edge and contour of the visual field. The point of view rose higher, about six feet off the field, and then the angle tilted forward severely so we were looking at the grass.

  “What are we seeing?” Patrick asked.

  The footage continued at a rapid clip, the line of the end zone coming into sight. A ninety-degree right turn spun the field on its axis, and the point of view moved forward, turf sweeping by, each blade of grass delineated by those digital-looking lines. Every now and then, the toe of a boot poked into range at the bottom.