We walked through the woods, our boots packing down dead leaves. Though Patrick and Alex were close, I could barely see them through the mist. It floated between the trunks like a slow-moving river, eddying around the branches. The leaves turned the moonlight into a mosaic on the forest floor. It smelled of mulch and pine.
We walked in silence. There wasn’t much to say after what the Rebel had told us.
Patrick and I, we’d get to save humanity. We’d get to save Alex.
But we’d have to die to do it.
A wall of vertical bars emerged from the mist ahead. Wrought iron.
Patrick and Alex slowed, but I walked forward, set my hands on the bars, and peered through at the rows of gravestones. I’d nearly lost my life in here a month back. I’d wandered inside through the thick mist, not noticing that the place was filled with Hosts. Thankfully, I’d tucked in behind a Mapper, and Mappers don’t look up unless something catches their sight. I’d walked slowly and silently behind him, matching his footsteps as he charted his course through all the other Hosts. If any of them had raised their heads a few inches, it would’ve been the end of me. But none had.
It had taken me hours to get out.
Patrick came up on one side of me and Alex on the other. We looked like three jailbirds there gripping the bars.
“We don’t even get to wind up in there,” I said to Patrick. “We’ll be exploded all over the place like Mr. McCafferty.”
“Beats turning into a Host,” Alex said. “Or getting eaten by a Hatchling.”
“Look at Unnamed Girl, all upbeat,” I said.
She bumped me with her hip. “I’m not Unnamed Girl,” she said with a Clint Eastwood squint. “I’m the Girl with No Name.”
We stared at the ghostly headstones, morphing in and out of the fog. Patrick put his arm around Alex.
I looked at my brother. “We’re not human. We’re not Rebels. There’s no one like us. Except us.”
“And me,” Alex said. She pushed off from Patrick and walked up the fence line, trailing her hand along the bars, her fingertips making the faintest dings against the metal. “I consider myself an honorary whatever-you-are.”
She moved a ways off, giving us space. I guess she figured we needed some brother-to-brother time. Especially right now. Alex was good like that.
Patrick squinted out from beneath his black cowboy hat. “So what exactly are we?”
“We’re time bombs,” I said. “That’s all.”
“We could save the entire planet,” Patrick said. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Great,” I said. “So they’ll build a statue of us in town square.”
Patrick made his half grin. “’Member how boring you used to say it was living here? Ranching and farming? Two restaurants in town? The same faces day in, day out? That would’ve been us till we died. We would’ve worked and married and maybe had kids and wound up in there”—he aimed a finger through the bars—“like everyone before us.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We would’ve.”
“I could’ve been happy having that life,” he said.
“I know.”
“But not you.”
I didn’t answer. I knew he was trying to make me feel better about being a hero. But I wasn’t a hero. He was. He saw the big picture, how everything added up. I just didn’t want to die. Not like that, not ever.
Patrick said, “You used to talk about how there was a whole big world out there.”
I finally nodded.
“Well, maybe this is the price of playing in that big world,” he said. “We get to now, whether we want to or not. We get to do this for Rocky and JoJo and Chatterjee and Eve.”
“And Alex.”
He looked at me. “And Alex.”
“Thirty-seven days,” I said.
“I know when Alex’s birthday is, Chance.”
A flash of a memory hit me: Patrick sprawled on top of a carport, his oxygen mask knocked off his face. He’d just inhaled air. Infected air. We’d both thought he was gonna die. “I know how you feel about her,” he’d told me. “Take care of her. And make sure she takes care of you.”
“We never talked about it,” I said. “What you told me on top of that carport.”
“What’s to talk about?”
I stared at him.
He stared at me.
“We’re both gonna be dead soon, Chance,” he said. “Does it really matter anymore?”
Before I could reply, I noticed that Alex was backing up toward us, her knuckles dinging the bars in reverse. She didn’t stop until her shoulder blades bumped into Patrick.
“There’s something out there,” she said.
We heard the crunch of a footfall. Twigs snapping. Underbrush giving way. The mist mushroomed around us. We couldn’t see farther than a few feet.
We went back-to-back-to-back, our weapons raised.
Then a sound issued out of the fog.
A rumble.
I relaxed. “Don’t worry. It’s the dogs.” I lowered my baling hooks and gave a whistle.
The noises that answered me didn’t sound like my Rhodesian ridgebacks at all. Had the pack gone rabid?
“Chance?” Alex said. “Wanna tell your doggies to chill the hell out?”
A face emerged from the swirling mist.
It barely registered as human. The missing eyes were the least of it.
The lower jaw had fallen off. Rot holes in the flesh showed the larynx pulsing with every breath, making a terrible ragged noise that called to mind a snarl.
More upright forms appeared behind it.
Wheezes and wet rumbles issued from damaged faces.
They weren’t ridgebacks.
They were Hosts.