She fell away, revealing Patrick behind her, mask intact, gripping the portable tank he’d just used to nearly unseat her skull from her shoulders. At my side she jerked on the floor, dots of static fizzling across her eye membranes.
Patrick took a knee, exhausted from the exertion, the oxygen intake messing with his stamina. Groaning, I turned on my side to face the tank, squinting at the dial.
Nearly on empty.
“Patrick, we gotta go.” I stood, picked up his tank, and hoisted him to his feet. He grabbed his shotgun from the floor and stumbled along beside me, his arm around my shoulders.
The Respiratory Care Department turned out to be a glorified suite at the back of the second floor. Three beds, various equipment piled on carts, a hanging privacy curtain in the rear.
I scanned the suite—no tanks.
Patrick looked at me, his eyes wide above the mask. “Chance. You need to get ready.” He spun the shotgun around and held it out to me.
We’d come all this way to find nothing.
But I wasn’t ready to give up. A last hope flickered as I charged forward and raked aside the privacy curtain.
Behind it a dozen oxygen tanks, gloriously lined up like missiles.
Nearly three times as large as Patrick’s portable tank, they were labeled “H,” marked as containing 6,900 liters of oxygen. Each one would buy him a day and a half.
I went weak with relief.
Grabbing his arm, I jerked him around the bed and through the curtain. Lifting his tank, I checked the dial. The needle was practically touching the “empty” peg.
“Take a breath,” I said. “A deep, deep breath. And hold it.”
“Chance.” He reached behind himself and leaned weakly on the bed. “I can’t think so straight.”
“Then listen to me. Take a deep breath now. Just listen to me, Patrick.”
He sucked in a deep breath. I tore the tube off the portable tank just as the dial clicked to empty.
Holding the end of the transparent tube, I spun to face the nearest H tank. I ripped off the white plastic ring serving as the protective seal, exposing the oxygen outlet.
I stared in disbelief at the barbed nozzle.
It was the wrong size for the tubing attached to Patrick’s mask.
ENTRY 26
Patrick’s face turned a deeper shade of red. He gestured emphatically with his hands. I unstuck my body, which had gone into a panicked lockdown, and started yanking drawers open, looking for who knows what. Bag valves, syringes, tubes filled with weird solutions.
Patrick’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. The butt of the shotgun slid past my cheek. He was trying to give me the shotgun.
To kill him.
I ignored him, ripping open a cabinet door.
Inside, a stack of oxygen masks. More heavy-duty than the one he wore now, with wider straps, like something a fighter pilot might wear. I fumbled the nearest one off the shelf, a coil of tube spiraling open below it. It was wider—a match for the nozzle.
I nearly cried out in triumph.
Whirling toward the H tank, I knocked aside the shotgun, tossing Patrick the mask.
I rammed the thicker tube onto the barbed nozzle and opened the valve. Oxygen hissed up the line and out the mask, clearing out the old air. “Now!” I shouted.
With his cheeks ballooned, Patrick looked like he might explode. But he tore off his mask, flipping it aside, and secured the new one over his head.
“Breathe out, hard,” I said.
Patrick blew out so hard that flecks of spit dotted the inside of the mask. He panted, sucking in oxygen as I adjusted the airflow.
He was fine. We’d done it.
I set the dial to eight liters per minute because that’s where Chatterjee had set the old one. Though my focus was on the knobs, I could hear Patrick’s breathing start to even out.
“I think we’re okay,” I said, and looked up.
The nurse Host was standing behind him.
Her head was torqued to one side as if some of her vertebrae had shattered. Her eyeless gaze seemed focused.
She seized Patrick, crimping his tube, and ripped him back over the bed. The tube strained on the H tank, almost pulling off the nozzle.
Patrick’s giant eyes found mine. He was trying to hold his breath in case the tube tore off, but her bear hug was crushing his chest. She whisked him out into the corridor so fast that his legs flew up in the air. The tube pulled taut. I flipped the H tank over the bed onto its side, sending it rolling after them. It clattered as it went, miraculously clearing the doorway, the tube barely holding on.
Hurdling the bed, I took off after them. Patrick swung an elbow, clipping the nurse’s damaged forehead, but she didn’t let go. They fell together, banging into the crash cart and knocking it over, one defibrillator paddle springing out on its cord and snapping back like the tongue of a frog.
As the tank hit its outer limit, the tube went piano-wire tight, yanking the mask straps and Patrick’s head forward. I braced for the tube to pop free, but it didn’t. Instead the rolling tank switched direction, curving in an arc across the tiles, somehow staying tethered to Patrick’s face. Given the weight of the tank, the tube wouldn’t hold it long—it was like having a swordfish on ten-pound-test fishing line. I dove on my stomach and swatted the tank toward them, putting slack back in the line.
She was choking Patrick out now, one arm locked across his throat, the other flailing to cuff his wrist. How could I get her off without tangling in the tubing or knocking it loose?
A glint to their side caught my eye.
The defibrillator paddle.
I lunged for it, sweeping it up and yanking its companion free. I thumbed the charge button on the portable defibrillator. The unit turned on with a whine. It made a series of short beeps and then a long one. I slammed the metal paddles onto the nurse’s head and pulled back on the discharge buttons.
The reaction was unlike anything I’d seen in movies or TV. The nurse jerked back so violently that it looked as though she’d been lassoed. She landed in a sitting position. Electricity fizzled across her eye membranes, sparking, and then they ignited, giving out whooshes of flame. She fell back, her head smacking the floor, and lay still. Wisps of black smoke tendriled up from her eyeholes.
Her momentum had knocked Patrick across the floor. He spun like a hockey puck over the tile, his mask and tank clattering with him. He wound up on his belly, facing me. We looked at each other.
“Sorry,” I said.
He mumbled something I couldn’t make out.
I scrambled over to the tank. The tube had been tugged to the very edge of the nozzle, a millimeter away from popping off. I secured it tightly and looked up. “You okay?”
He nodded, but I could see he was foggy. “‘Okay’ might be an overstatement.”
“We made a lot of noise, so we’d better move it before they get here,” I said.
I helped him up, and then we hustled back to the Respiratory Suite, Patrick hugging the hundred-pound H tank as he walked. He was having trouble moving well. I couldn’t count on his helping me much.
After we checked out the tanks—there were ten more big ones—I saw something in the back of the suite that spelled even better news. A beige machine the size of an industrial copier. Block letters on the side spelled out OXYGEN TANK FILL SYSTEM.
We now had a sustainable plan.
Whether we came back here for future missions or figured how to get the entire machine and its filters back to school, we had a way to keep him breathing.
With a simple push-button setup, the unit was surprisingly easy to figure out. It had a plug in the back but also a toggle for an internal backup generator, one of the benefits of emergency medical equipment. I inserted the lighter portable tank into the system and started filling it.
We wouldn’t have time to wait around.
“Can you carry another tank?” I asked.
Tucking the shotgun beneath his arm, Patrick swept up
another tank with ease. Sometimes even I forgot how strong he was. I grabbed two tanks myself, staggering under the weight, struggling to keep them from dragging loudly on the floor. We hurried back into the hall.
Patrick led the way down the rear stairs, and I scrambled after him.
He shouldered through a door onto the ground floor, and we shot gazes up and down the corridor, but no Hosts were in sight. From the square we could still hear the scream of the ambulance siren. I prayed it had drowned out the commotion of our battle upstairs.
Sliding glass doors let out into an alley behind the hospital. “Let’s go,” Patrick said. “We can’t carry more than these.”
I looked frantically around the corridor, then saw what I was searching for up against a wall.
A gurney.
I ran over, heaving the heavy tanks onto the mattress. Patrick set his on there, too, then leaned on the railing with both hands, panting hard. Sweat ran from his hairline into his eyes as he struggled with the effects of the oxygen.
“I’ll run to get the rest,” I said. “You’re too weak. We can’t risk you dragging that tank up and down with you.”
He started to shake his head, but I left him there anyways.
I scrambled back up the stairs, stepping over the sizzled corpse of the Host, and grabbed two more tanks. I made it back down okay.
Patrick had stacked the tanks on the gurney and was readying the thick nylon straps to hold them in place. I set the two down by his feet and ran back up. Every time I turned a corner or put my back to the dark hall, fear licked at the nape of my neck. Somehow I made it through two more trips, grabbing the refilled portable tank on my final leg. Since the gurney was overflowing, I decided to leave the last two tanks behind.
Patrick secured the load, cinching the straps to pin the pile of tanks to the mattress.
He leaned his weight into the gurney, starting it rolling toward the rear exit. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said. “We need IV bags and needles.”
He looked at me, blinking, fighting for clarity.
“To feed you,” I said.
“Hurry, Chance,” he said. “Just … hurry.”
I sprinted back upstairs, my steps pounding down the dark corridor. I’d clocked the big refrigerator behind one of the nurses’ stations. When I arrived and tugged open the door, a puff of cool air greeted me. Thank God—the seal had held.
I had to shove aside an EKG cart so I could swing the door wide. The cart wobbled off up the hall on creaky wheels. Grabbing a giant organ-transplant bag, I eyed the IV bags inside the refrigerator. There were solutions with saline and dextrose, minerals and vitamins, but I had no time to figure out which I needed, so I swept every last one from the shelves into the bag. Then I dug through the drawers behind the station, looking for the equipment that Dr. Chatterjee had told me to get. Catheters, tubing, large-bore needles. I loaded them up, zipped the bag shut. I crouched to slide the strap over my shoulder, then rose unsteadily, using my legs so I wouldn’t throw out my back.
I wobbled a few steps, passing the front stairs, heading for the rear of the building. I sensed movement in the unlit landing by the stairwell.
The door creaked open.
A shadow filled the doorway.
I could see straight through its head.
I dumped the bag and did the first thing I could think of, which was to kick the Host right in the stomach.
He flew about halfway down the dark stairs, then seemed to stop, floating in midair, his arms spread to the sides.
It was impossible.
Something lofted him back onto his feet, and I saw that he hadn’t been floating at all.
He’d been propped up by the Hosts beneath him.
They filled the front stairwell.
Like a rising tide, they surged up at me.
ENTRY 27
Blood rushed to my head, so intense I thought I might pass out. I wheeled around, searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon.
The EKG cart I’d kicked aside was a few steps away. I dashed for it and grabbed the edge, using all my might to swing it around toward the door.
I felt the impact shudder the cart before I saw what it had struck—the Host, already past the threshold. The metal edge had hit him in the gut, doubling him over the equipment. The doorway behind him was packed with reaching arms and blank faces. Though my thighs screamed, I put all my force into driving the cart forward, shoving him into the others, through that doorframe, and onto the stairs.
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 b
ore 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.
We heard movements inside some houses and on the nearby streets, but we chose our path well, weaving through the neighborhood one cautious block at a time.
The Rains Page 19
