After JoJo burst through the doors with her breathless announcement, the gym erupted in panic. Kids and teenagers hopped up from their cots and cowered at the base of the bleachers.
Ben yanked his stun gun from the waist of his jeans. “I’m gonna kill any of them that come inside,” he said, keeping his voice as low as he could manage.
Dezi and Mikey stormed past Eve into the supply station, grabbing for Patrick’s Winchester. Eve protested, but Mikey shoved her aside.
“What are you doing?” Eve said. “If that shotgun goes off in here, every Host within a mile’ll hear it.”
Chatterjee rolled off his mattress and fumbled with his leg braces. “Everyone stay calm. Quiet. If you’re this loud, they’ll all come stampeding in here.”
That got everyone to hush.
“We need to plan our counterattack,” Rocky said.
“There’s no time for a plan,” Ben said. “Not anymore. We take him down fast and hard.”
“JoJo said there are a bunch of Mappers inside already,” Eve said. “If we kill one, our cover’ll be blown. They’ll know we’re here. They’ll hunt us down.”
Sweat dripped from Ben’s hairline, tracing the pathways of his scars. “We’re out of options,” he hissed.
JoJo hopped up on the bleachers. “Hey. Hey.” She was raising her hand. “There is one other option. It’ll even let us keep the high school.”
“Shut up,” Dezi said. “We’re handling it.”
“You guys gotta listen to me,” JoJo said.
No one did.
Alex stepped up onto the bleacher beside her. “Let her talk,” Alex said.
Something in her tone made everyone stop. They looked at JoJo.
“Fine,” Ben sneered. “What’s our other option, JoJo?”
“We let him in,” JoJo said.
A sound echoed through the gym—the click of fingernails against the door handle.
JoJo whispered, “Everyone take your shoes off. Now. And get behind me. Stay as quiet as possible.”
She hopped down and ran across the basketball court to the side of the doors. The others moved behind her, a wave sweeping across the floorboards. Ben headed over last. But he kept his stun gun at the ready.
“If he spots us,” Ben said, “I’m killing him.”
The door eased open.
The Host was so tall he had to duck to get through the doorway. He entered and stood there a moment, his head tilted down, eyeholes aimed at the floor.
Boo Radley.
Right to his side, the big group of kids and Chatterjee quivered in a mass against the wall. JoJo stood at the forefront, Bunny’s head clutched defiantly in hand.
If Boo Radley turned his focus even slightly, he’d see them all cowering there.
But he didn’t.
Instead he walked to the center of the gym. Then he started his spiral pattern, turning at ninety-degree angles, picking his way through cots as he moved outward.
He kept walking and turning, expanding slowly.
The kids remained silent. Not a cough. Not a sneeze. Not a whimper.
As Boo Radley got to the outer edge of the cots, JoJo directed the others with hand gestures, like a traffic cop. The group padded lightly, their socks quiet against the floorboards, a few teenagers skittering out ahead, others scurrying to catch up. They spread through the cots behind Boo Radley as he made a turn. It was like musical chairs without the chairs, a dance in tight quarters. Every kid had to place every step carefully. Dezi limped to keep up.
Boo Radley reached the far wall and rotated, the kids swinging again to his blind spot, moving of a piece like a school of fish. They let him map, stepping where he stepped, keeping behind him.
Boo Radley walked along the wall, and JoJo gestured for everyone to head to the center of the room now. They swept behind her again, trying not trip over one another’s heels. Rocky barely got out of Boo’s way, the long fingers of the swinging arm skimming across the back of his shirt.
Boo traced his path along the bleachers, scanning through the benches to take in the space beneath. Then he mapped the far wall and pivoted on a heel.
The kids flattened against the west wall, two bodies deep.
Boo walked past them, his footfall and the buzz of flies the only sounds in the gym. He reached the double doors and plucked at a handle with his long fingers. The door swung open silently on greased hinges. He started to duck through.
Way down at the end of the row, Maria Mendez stepped out of line so she could watch him leave.
And kicked an empty Dr Pepper can.
It clattered on the floorboards.
It might as well have been an A-bomb going off.
Everyone froze.
Alex dove and caught the can. The silence sounded even louder than the rattling.
Boo Radley stopped. He reversed back through the door. Started to turn.
JoJo stepped out in front of everyone like a conductor. She stuck her arm to the side and swung it downward as she sank below the line of cots. Everyone flattened to the floor a second before Boo Radley rotated around.
His eye membranes fixed on the wall across from him.
Even at his height, he’d be unable to see over the final rows of the cots.
Only the blank wall beyond was visible.
He swiveled back to the doorway and passed through.
When the door sucked closed behind him, it was as though the walls themselves exhaled.
* * *
I was half crazy with anticipation by the time I saw Boo Radley exit the gym and step back out into the hall.
He was leaving them alone?
It made no sense.
Before I could react, the rear classroom doors banged open around me all at once. I grabbed my chest and flew back against the wall, knocking my head. I stayed frozen flat against the building as the Hosts exited the school through the row of rear doors. They drifted out toward the baseball field and the waiting slit in the fence.
Staring at their receding backs, I kept telling myself to breathe. I took it a gulp at a time. Once the Mappers were a little ways off, I spun off the wall and ran through the nearest door. I collided with Patrick in the corridor, who was flying in from the front doors. I banged off him like the losing bumper car and gave a yelp.
His jigsaw pendant had spilled out of the collar of his shirt. For Patrick this signaled full dishevelment. “What the hell went down in here?” he asked.
My voice still didn’t work, so I shook my head.
He hauled me to my feet, and we sprinted to the gym.
He yanked the door open to reveal everyone inside.
Safe.
They were gathered around JoJo, who along with Bunny’s head was holding court: “—figured if we let ’em map the school, then they’ll think we aren’t here. And I remembered what Chance did in the cemetery, how they couldn’t see him because he tucked in perfectly behind a Mapper.”
She grinned proudly and hugged Bunny’s head to her chest.
I cleared my throat, glared right at Ben. “Good thinking, JoJo,” I said. “You saved us all.”
My voice was still strained, but at least I’d found it again. It was worth it to see Ben’s face.
“Where’d the Mappers go?” JoJo asked.
“Back fields.”
“Can I see?”
Patrick nodded. “I think you’ve earned it.”
JoJo led a small group of us out into the hall. We lined up against the windows, our breath fogging the glass at intervals.
The Mappers were more than halfway to the baseball diamond by now.
As we watched, they stopped walking one by one. Then they tilted their heads up to the heavens.
Their eye membranes glowed to life, dozens of spots of blue.
Familiar clicking sounds carried back to us. Throaty and irregular.
The Mappers were uploading all the data they’d just gathered. Data that showed the school to be empty.
A sense of wonder settled over us as we watched them across the dark fields. The blue spots floated like fireflies.
The Mappers finished, their heads nodding forward, and then they plodded toward the fence.
Boo Radley went down first. That worn ankle simply gave out, the tibia shoving its way through the ankle hole. His other leg kept churning even though it was tilted off the ground, and then he collapsed into a pile, his rotting body disintegrating before our eyes.
Another Host dropped, and then they went down in twos and threes, putrefying puddles on the outfield grass. Only a few made it to the fence and stepped through, trudging off into the darkness beyond.
We stayed there lined along the hall, watching breathlessly. It was impossible to look away.
For a while parts squirmed on the ground. A foot waving in the air. A head quivering on the fragile stalk of a neck. Fingers clutching soil, clawing their arm forward right out of its shoulder socket.
As dawn cast its pale light across the fields, the remains were still. A murder of crows swept in, picking over the offerings.
Dr. Chatterjee backed away from the windows first, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Well,” he said. “That should buy us some more time.”
Ben came off the wall next. “Not if we starve to death,” he said.
No one had the heart to argue. It was the most battle-worn I’d ever felt without a battle.
We streamed back toward the gym. I couldn’t help but pause and gaze once more across the fields.
A raven dipped its beak into one of the puddles and came up with a glistening morsel. It flew off, banking against the dappled orange clouds.
It was odd what passed for beautiful these days.