“It’s okay, boy,” I whispered. “Come on.”
As we eased out into the field, more scarecrows came into sight all around us. A whole patch of them. And then we realized.
They weren’t scarecrows.
ENTRY 19
First the heads moved, rotating to face us, moonlight streaming through the skulls. Then the shoulders pivoted. They turned as one, the bodies separate and yet coordinated, like a flock of birds changing direction.
A bunch of them in ragged crop-picker overalls and flannels. Weather-beaten cheeks, bronzed skin, lanky builds. Jack Kaner used migrant workers and paid them a decent wage, though he rotated them through like crops. Sometimes there were a dozen. Sometimes more.
From the corner of my eye, I caught more movement. Turning, I came aware of shadowed forms spread through the fields, ovals of countless faces hidden among the cornstalks.
They’d frozen at our approach, letting us creep right into their midst.
My chest jerked in breaths. Instinctively, we’d fallen into a fighting formation, facing outward, our backs nearly touching. Cassius barked and barked.
The Hosts exploded into motion, flying at us, stalks rustling. The nearest one leapt. I saw Patrick’s arms move, and then the boom of the shotgun thundered through the air. With a swipe of her hockey stick, Alex snapped a Chaser’s head to the side. Cassius launched himself at the next Host, locking his jaws around the throat. The Host fell back, arms grabbing to pry his jaws loose.
“Into the corn!” Patrick said. “Stick together!”
Cassius lifted his dark muzzle from the Host and led the charge. We ran right over the Host’s body, breath hissing through his torn throat as our boots trampled his chest.
We plunged into the field. Leaves tore at my cheeks. Ears of corn knocked against my shoulders, my chest. Stalks snapped underfoot. I kept Alex’s back in sight, but it was hard, the view chaotic and jumbled. Arms and leaves flew at us from all sides like brushes at a car wash. The panting breaths and flashes of limbs all around made the very field seem alive.
A face and shoulder shot into sight, knocking Alex two steps to the side. I swung a baling hook in the Host’s direction, felt it penetrate flesh, jerked it free. We kept on, stumbling behind Patrick and Cassius.
The sounds grew louder, closing from behind and coming at us from both sides. I realized we were probably going to die here in the fields behind Jack Kaner’s barn. Patrick bowled a Host over, the stalks bending low for an instant. Before they snapped back up, I made out a caterpillar tunnel to our right.
“This way!” I shouted. “Follow me!”
Alex and Patrick fell behind me as I bulled through lanes of corn, swiping with the baling hooks, using them like machetes. The mouth of the caterpillar tunnel came up quicker than I’d expected, and I had to duck to avoid getting clipped on the forehead by the top of the arch.
I skidded in across moist dirt, the others piling in behind me. The inside of the tunnel looked like a giant intestine, the translucent white poly tarp fluttering and lifelike. It stretched five feet tall, so a worker could walk down the middle with only a slight hunch. The trapped heat pressed into our skin.
Keeping a low profile, I crawled a ways into the tunnel, the heels of my hands mashing kale and chard into the mud. A snapping sound turned my head. I froze to watch the outlines of the corn rows through the translucent tarp. Patrick banged into me from behind. A cornstalk bent forward and tapped the outside of the poly.
I dropped flat on my stomach, my cheek pressed into a knot of cucumber vine. Rustling sounds told me that Alex and Patrick had also gone flat. I could only pray that my brother could keep Cassius quiet. Patrick started to raise the shotgun, but I looked back at him over my shoulder and put my finger to my lips.
In the place where the corn had dipped forward, a form emerged. Its shadow, backlit by the moon, fell onto the tunnel right next to me. A head with two holes through it, grotesquely stretching up the curved wall of the tarp. As the Host lumbered forward, the shadow evolved, shoulders and torso and waist, until the entire outline seemed to hover over us.
Wind whipped across the mouth of the tunnel, giving off a low wail. We waited, trying not to move, trying to not even breathe. The smell of fertilizer burned my nostrils.
More crackling came from outside, and then other shadows played over the tarp all around us. Behind me I heard Cassius growl, but Patrick hushed him quietly and he listened.
The figures shuffled by, just outside the tunnel, their shadows flickering past the half hoops of PVC piping, riding the bumps of the segments.
The last Host finally ambled away. I stayed still until I could no longer make out the crunch of his boots in the rich soil. Then I sat up. Patrick and Alex looked at me, their faces drained of blood in the ghostly light of the tarp-filtered moon.