Rising slowly, I drew shoulder to shoulder with them.
Hundreds of asteroids streaked through the night air, rocketing for Earth. Alight with flames, they slanted toward Stark Peak, Lakewood, Springfield—more cities than I could name, more than I could even see. Too many to count, they filled the sky.
The asteroid over Creek’s Cause wasn’t the problem.
It was the prelude.
ENTRY 22
It wasn’t the grueling hike down that wrecked us, nor the half-day wait at the base of the pass for nightfall. It wasn’t the two hours we spent huddled behind the barricade for the horde to disperse so we could boost the Silverado, nor the long, silent drive across the valley. It wasn’t even the jarring off-road route we were forced to take as we neared Creek’s Cause, having to dodge the town that once belonged to us.
It was the weight of despair.
We hadn’t failed just in our mission; we were coming back to a far more chilling reality. It wasn’t just Creek’s Cause that was compromised—or the valley itself.
It was the whole state. Or even the continent.
And Patrick turned eighteen in four days.
After leaving the truck in the woods outside town, we circled the school and came in from the barren plain to the west, sneaking to the left-field fence of the baseball diamond. Patrick had switched the locks on the bullpen gate himself, and so after a few twists of the combination dial we drifted onto the outfield grass and crept toward the school just as dawn started to lift the cover of night.
Finally we came up on the back door near Dr. Chatterjee’s biology room. Before Patrick could give a tap with his knuckles, it swung open.
Ben Braaten’s wide, broken face peered out at us, chewing a Slim Jim, a lookout canteen looped around his neck.
He took our measure, then stepped back to let us in. “All hail the rescuing army,” he said.
*
We entered the dark gym, worn out and exhausted. Some kids were sleeping, but there was a surprising amount of activity. JoJo and Rocky tossed the Frisbee, the fluorescent green disk zipping back and forth. JoJo had set Bunny on the bottom bleacher so that those half-marble stuffed-animal eyes could watch them play. JoJo spotted us first, gave a shout of delight, and ran over, wrapping her arms around me. Her sweeping brown hair had been cut short, sticking out at jagged angles. I guess the two-minute showers had made it too hard to manage. It looked terrible and adorable at the same time.
We walked over to the storage room to turn in our supplies and weapons. Eve had fallen asleep at her desk, her cheek resting on her arms. I shook her gently.
She lifted her sleepy head. At the sight of me, a smile seemed to catch her by surprise. “Chance. I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
“Uh, we’re here, too,” Alex said with a knowing grin.
“Right.” Eve looked embarrassed as she took our stuff. “Glad you’re okay.”
Most of the others had noticed us by now, the kids on the cots rousing as news of our return rippled through the gym. Over on the bleachers, Dr. Chatterjee was frowning down at the carbon monoxide detector. He looked up and threw a salute in our direction.
“What happened?” he asked, the others quieting down at his voice.
“You guys really don’t know?” Patrick said. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?” Ben asked.
“The booms in the sky?” Alex said.
A hundred blank faces looked back at us.
Then Marina Mendez bolted upright. “The explosions we heard,” she said, prodding her twin sister.
“Yeah,” Maria added. “We thought the Hosts were blowing up gas lines in town or something.”
Dr. Chatterjee found his feet and stood shakily, his face blanched with concern. “What were they?”
“Asteroids,” Alex said. “There were more of them.”
“How many more?” Chet asked.
Alex walked to the bleachers, slid out the TV, set it on one of the benches, and turned it on. The kids swept around onto the gym floor as if drawn magnetically.
A panicked newscaster clutched her papers in her sweaty fists.
“—meteorites scattering the eastern seaboard—”
Alex turned the old-fashioned dial, clicking through the channels, every fresh bit of news as unsettling as the last.
“—confirmed reports of strange stalks sprouting up—”
“—pods splitting open—”
“—afflictions from Los Angeles to Seattle—”
The images were even worse.
Times Square, empty except for trash blowing around and a few Mappers walking their spirals.
A woman with a swollen belly pulling herself atop the hovering disk of Seattle’s Space Needle, lying like Snoopy on his doghouse, and bursting, scattering spores far and wide.