I tried to scream, but no sound came out.
My throat, still wrecked from Mikey’s near strangulation.
The Hosts were five feet away and closing in—no time to turn and run. One of them still clutched the pair of bolt cutters he’d used to cut the zip ties; it dangled at his side. The breeze wafted the reek of rotting flesh into my face. One of the flies pinged off the side of my head.
My hands were raised, spread. I tried to turn them into fists.
I stared at the eyeholes and realized—they were angled slightly down.
Mappers.
My mouth was still open in a silent scream. My brain raced, a thousand thoughts compressed into microseconds.
They hadn’t picked up on me yet. They were charting the school grounds. Thank God I hadn’t screamed. If they recorded me here, it would alert the Harvesters to the school. More would come. Everyone would die.
Out the other end of this flurry of thoughts spit a single command: Don’t be seen.
Four feet away.
From my throat issued a tiny creaking sound, a snuffed-out moan. It was the only noise my throat could manage. The Hosts didn’t key to it.
Three feet.
They were side by side, their shoulders aligned but an arm’s length apart.
Two feet.
I rotated on the balls of my feet, blading my body. I put my arms flat at my sides, willing myself to occupy the thinnest profile imaginable.
One foot away.
I closed my eyes. Sucked in my stomach. Blew out a breath to compress my chest.
I was inanimate. A rock. Carved from wood.
The buzz of flies intensified. The Hosts were close enough that I could sense the heat of their bodies, could feel the air move.
I tensed so hard that my muscles cramped. My calf knotted. The arch of my right foot locked up. A nerve shot down my neck into my shoulder.
Sandwiching me. Fabric whispered against my chest. Don’t breathe.
The crunching sounds continued, the footsteps advancing uninterrupted.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut even as I heard them move away. The noise changed as the Hosts forged onto the grass, the long blades brushing across their feet. Only then did I allow myself to open my eyes.
I watched them continue on, vacuuming up the lay of the field with their eye membranes. I released the breath I’d been holding.
There was no sign of Patrick anywhere. He’d probably already circled and was working his way across the fence line in the front.
I was on my own.
Finally unlocking my legs, I stepped lightly back onto the grass behind second base, willing my boots not to scrape against the ground. Then I sprinted for the school, giving the Mappers a wide berth.
I hit the math-and-science wing at a full sprint.
Mrs. Wolfgram’s classroom door was ajar.
The black rectangle of the doorway stared back at me.
I swallowed down bile, crept closer, put my face to the dirty window.
Not just one Mapper inside the room but two.
If I ran inside to face off with them, I’d be spotted. If I killed one of them, another would map my body contours and convey my position to the Harvesters. Even if I killed them all, they’d blip offline abruptly at the same time, which would no doubt raise suspicion. Either way the Harvesters would know that there were kids on the premises. The high school would be blown. They’d send more Hosts or worse—Hatchlings.
There was no way to stop the Mappers and remain invisible at the same time. My insides twisted with frustration, wrung like a wet towel.
I reversed course, jogged an arc around to Chatterjee’s room. My panic flared a notch higher when I saw another Mapper in there, covering the floor I’d occupied minutes before. He was really tall, six and a half feet, with narrow hands and elongated fingers. He’d been a stocker at the Piggly Wiggly. I didn’t remember his name, but the mean kids called him Boo Radley.
He finished spiraling his way through Chatterjee’s classroom and stepped into the corridor, turning to head for the heart of the school.
Toward the gym.
Where a hundred or so kids were sleeping.
I bolted along the side of the building, hurdling bushes and sprinklers.
As the classrooms whipped by, I spotted another Host inside, veering off into the chemistry lab.
I peered through window after window, searching for someone to warn. I passed the labs and then the physics rooms with no luck.
Through the open classroom doors, I caught flicker-glimpses into the halls—Boo Radley shadowing my movement as he progressed through the school. Flecks spun around his head, flies in perpetual motion. I ran ahead of him, hoping to spot one of the kids. But I was running out of room—and time.
At last I came around the corner to the final hall that ended at the gym. Desperately, I peered through the nearest window and spotted movement up ahead.
JoJo.
She trudged through dim blocks of light falling through the panes. She wore one of my T-shirts, which drooped down over her knees. Bunny’s head swung at her side. Her cheeks looked plump, her eyes puffy with sleep. She turned for the bathroom.
I tapped on the window with my fingertips. It took everything I had not to hammer the glass with the heel of my hand.
At first she started, scared. Her head swiveled over. A few blinks as she registered it was me. And then she walked over to the window.
“Chance?”
I tried to talk, but only a strangled croak came out of my injured throat.
She leaned closer. “You okay?”
I pointed violently down the hall behind her. My mouth moved, but it could barely force out the word: “Mappers.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
I waved my hand again down the hall but then realized that my crazy gesticulations weren’t helping. I waved for her to come even closer. She leaned in, her temple kissing the window. I put my face to the glass and choked the words through my vocal cords.
“Bunch of Mappers … inside … heading for the gym.… warn others.”
Her eyes widened. She pulled back from the window, shot a glance up the corridor. And then she sprinted for the gym.
Only now did I see that Rocky was farther down the hall on front-door lookout. She grabbed his sleeve and yanked him up off his chair. He ran at her side, the two of them barreling along.
I pressed my cheek to the window, peering in the other direction up the hall. A swirl of flies came into sight around the corner. A distorted shadow fell across the floor, stretched over the tiles and up the opposite wall, holes of light showing where the eyes would be.
Any second and Boo Radley would step into sight.
Frantic, I whipped my head back toward JoJo and Rocky.
She reached the door to the gym, yanked it wide, and they vanished through. The pneumatic closer stalled the door as it swung shut. It moved in infuriating slow motion, the seam at last vanishing.
I turned back just in time to see the tall Mapper step into view.
He moved with his spine erect, almost regally, floating down the hall. A living halo of flies pulsed above his head.
He walked right past me.
Helpless, I watched him go. His heels were cracked. The skin of one ankle was rubbed through, the Achilles tendon straining, vibrating like a plucked cello string.
Behind him more Hosts appeared and entered the other classrooms off the hall. They were finally mapping the school interior. Every square inch of it.
Boo Radley trudged toward the double doors to the gym. Soon enough those talonlike fingers would curl around the door handle.
Too late I remembered that we’d barricaded the gym’s other exits to protect against a Host invasion.
The door Boo Radley headed for was the only way in or out.
The kids were trapped inside the gym.