I finally unlocked my legs and jumped forward. Alex and I clasped hands.
Feeling the warmth of her palm pressed to mine, I finally allowed that, yes, this was real. They were alive. I could’ve choked on my relief.
Alex started to haul me aboard, but I pulled back.
“Wait,” I said. “The others.”
She looked past me. Exhaled.
“Okay,” she said, then swung the shotgun up past my cheek, rested it on the ledge of my shoulder, and fired behind me. It felt as though someone had banged a pair of cymbals inside my head. Over the ringing in my ears, I made out the screech of air exiting punctured armor. Alex barely paused. Unhooking the cargo straps, she stepped free. “But we’d better move it.”
She hopped off the semi and landed beside me, firing off two more shots at charging Drones.
Turning to the truck, I jumped on the runner and stared through the passenger window at my brother.
“Patrick!”
But he was way too focused to celebrate a returned-from-the-dead reunion. “Focus,” he said. “We got work to do.” His hand rooted in the backpack resting on the bench beside him. “Use this.”
I saw my preferred weapons glinting inside. “My baling hooks!”
“Better.”
He came up instead with what looked like a power drill and slid it across the seat to me. I reached through the window and caught it by the handle.
A nail gun.
Behind me I heard Alex fire and fire again. Through the windshield I could see more Drones sprinting toward us.
“I removed the muzzle guard so it actually fires nails like in the movies.” Patrick revved the engine. “Now, get going.”
I hopped down. Patrick dropped the truck into gear again and shot forward, chewing through the wave of Drones just before they reached us.
With Patrick covering our backs, Alex and I went shoulder to shoulder and faced the foundation.
Drones left their positions among the floating slabs, streaking toward us. The Husks were distended to their breaking point. The Hatchlings squirmed more vigorously inside their humps. It seemed like they could sense the commotion.
Alex wrinkled her nose against the stench as she fumbled to reload. “Is that…?”
“The Hatchlings,” I said. “They reek.”
The Drones were closing in, and Alex was still struggling with the shells. I raised the nail gun, gripping it with both hands. The strip of nails swung beneath my fists like an ammo belt.
I pinged off a shot with a pneumatic pffft, but it fell short. It took another try for me to figure out the range, but then I sank a sixteen-penny nail into the face shield of a Drone. For a second, nothing happened.
Then black mist piped out from around the nail, a tiny leak. The pressure grew stronger until it shoved out the nail, which clinked onto the concrete. The Drone lifted his hands, trying to cover the hole. Air blasted through his fingers. His hands flew away as the pinhole expanded, blowing out more chunks of face shield until the entire mask disintegrated in an oil-well burst. Newton’s third law kicked in and shot him back onto his butt. The suit sat there, an empty shell.
Alex and I looked at each other. A smile tugged at her mouth, but I could see that her lips were trembling. Her fingers shook, too, as she slotted the next shells into the magazine tube beneath the barrel. Fighting off panic, we turned and mowed down the advancing Drones.
Between them we caught glimpses of the foundation. One of the Husks started to give way. For an instant I could make out a suggestion of the child’s body it used to be, and then it was just stretched skin, a shape distorted beyond recognition. A fissure opened in its side with a moist yielding. I swear I saw a long finger poke out through the gap. The other Husks wriggled and bulged.
If we waited any longer, we were going to find ourselves in the middle of a massive Hatch. I couldn’t imagine what the things inside would look like.
Or what they’d do to us.
We unleashed another volley at the Drones, clearing enough space for us to turn and run to the factory. Over on the parking lot, Patrick was wheeling the semi truck into tight doughnuts, crushing his attackers. None of the Drones could get close to the cab.
Not yet anyway.
Alex and I wheeled around the corner of the cannery and through the rolled-back doors.
The Hosts were waiting.
They stood around the assembly line, blocking the wall of crated kids. Some were strangers. But a few weren’t. Mr. Tomasi. The Durant brothers—Gene and Billy Joe. Afa Sibanda, a dreadlocked Tongan ranch hand who used to work McCafferty’s harvests. It was always worse when you knew them before. Their eyeless faces showed no humanity, no sign of who they had been. And yet you could still recognize them.
Mr. Tomasi was nearest. He’d been one of my favorite teachers. He’d taught me Lord of the Flies. He’d once told me I was a good writer, that I should think about college. He liked to listen to baseball on the radio.
Lifting the nail gun, I fired a shot at his head. It missed the mark, puncturing his throat. Fluid oozed around the nail, draining down his chest. It had no effect; he kept on coming toward me and Alex just like the others.
So I put another nail through his forehead.
He fell.
I looked at him there, lying still on the floor. Emotion rose up in me, but I beat it down. Not here, not now. What was alarming wasn’t what I’d done to Mr. Tomasi. What was alarming was that I could force myself to get over it.
The kids erupted, banging their locked crates.
“Get me out!”
“Over here! Kid—over here!”
Alex blasted away, the scattered buckshot taking out two Hosts at a time. I shot the Hosts on either side of Mr. Tomasi, clearing a path to the kids. While the remaining Hosts descended on Alex, I hurdled the bodies, ran to the cages, and started unlatching them as fast as I could. It took everything I had not to look over my shoulder every two seconds.
The first few kids spilled out and ran away.
I shouted at them, doing my best to keep the fear from my voice, “Help me open these! Open the other cages!”
First one girl stayed to help and then another. The more we freed, the more helped free other kids. They poured forth, tumbling over the conveyor belt.
Alex cried out, and I turned and looked over the current of fleeing kids to see Afa swat her to the ground. He was the last Host standing. He drew back a powerful arm. A single punch would knock her unconscious—or worse.
Pure dread chilled my veins, freezing me to the spot. A half second passed, an eternity of wasted time, before I shattered free.
I ran to Alex, sliding over the conveyor belt, and slammed into Afa from the side just as he threw his punch. My weight barely budged him, but the impact was enough to make him swing wide. His fist smashed into a metal control box, knocking it off the wall. I bounced off him and landed next to Alex, the nail gun sliding away.
We stared up as Afa turned.
His hand was badly damaged from the blow. His pinkie was missing, the stub sending out a jet of fluid. His middle and ring fingers dangled from threads. The flesh at his remaining knuckles had been peeled back to the bone.
With his good hand, he reached for the steel lever that operated the conveyor belt and wrenched it free. Wielding it, he came at us.
I could hear the semi truck revving outside and the smack and hiss of the undercutter blades tearing through Drones—Patrick was too busy to save us.
Alex didn’t have time to clear the shell from the shotgun, so she swatted at Afa with the stock. He knocked the shotgun aside. Alex and I backed to the wall—nowhere to go. Afa raised the steel lever.
Then something hit him from behind, shuddering his massive frame. He staggered forward. Another blow came, then another.
The others were coming to our rescue, hammering into him like a wave.
He wheeled around. A few of the smaller kids flew free, but more and more tackled him until he was brought down to his knees. He fell onto his hands, kids tumbling over his frame. The steel lever clanged on the floor, spinning slowly until one end kissed my feet.
I grabbed it. Stood up.
“Everyone get back!” I shouted.
The kids peeled off Afa in all directions, his giant frame exposed like that of a breaching whale. I wound up with the lever, waiting until I had a clear shot.
Afa’s head swung up to face me. I looked straight through his eyeholes.
You wouldn’t have thought a single swing could do so much damage.
Afa shuddered on the floor, his skull caved in, his hijacked brain done for good.
I heard my voice as if from a distance, the words coming out soft and husky. “Sorry,” it said to what was left of Afa. “I’m sorry.”
I hoisted Alex to her feet. She grabbed the shotgun as she rose.
The other kids and teenagers had poured outside, dodging Drones, scattering in all directions—literally running for the hills. Since the battle raged on in the parking lot between Patrick’s Mad Max truck and the Drones, most of the kids made for the foundation, sprinting between the floating slabs.
Alex grabbed my arm and pointed.
With dread I looked across to where the kids streamed between the Husks. At first I was confused by what I was seeing over there. The entire foundation seemed to be alive, a pulsing, organic mess. The movement wasn’t just from the fleeing kids wending their way through the slabs. It was on the slabs, too. The Husks no longer resembled children at all. The humps stretched up so high they looked like giant eggs set on end. The walls of flesh were pulled taffy-thin. Beneath the translucent sheets of skin, bipedal creatures stirred, finding their feet. They reared up, shoving their arms wide, clawing at the Husks to get free.
The panic I’d done my best to tamp down inside erupted, pinpricking my skin, putting a sheen of sweat across the back of my neck.
“Oh, my God, Chance,” Alex said. “It’s happening.”