Before we’d left the gym, he and Alex had taken some time together on the bleachers, trying to adjust to his new life with the mask. Everyone—me included—gave them distance as they sat together, her hands cupped in his, murmuring privately to each other. As I passed, I made out only a snatch of their conversation, Alex’s whisper carrying over as she told my brother, “We will make this work.” It was hard watching them try to adjust, their expressions holding so many different emotions at the same time. Barring a miracle, that mask was now a permanent part of him. My plan had saved Patrick for the moment, but at a pretty steep price.
As I’d gathered my gear and walked over to get him, I’d heard them playing their old game, her words quiet in the crowded gym.
“—cross raging rivers for me?”
His smile, locked behind the mask, looked as sad as it did happy. “I would.”
Her eyes glimmered. “Would you climb mountains?”
I could barely make out his voice beneath the mask. “If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.”
She’d blinked, and her tears had fallen. “How ’bout that mud, Big Rain? We still on for the mud?”
He nodded.
She’d put her forehead to his, their faces close, his breath fogging the mask from the inside, hers from the outside. You could see the aching in their eyes, how badly they wanted to kiss. But they couldn’t.
They’d never be able to again.
I shook off the image of them on the bleachers, training my gaze back on the hospital. Hosts still milled around the ground floor. What were they doing in there? I’d assumed that they’d have to leave soon—to patrol the streets, to help in the church, to search out other kids to grab—but it struck me how little we really knew about them. Maybe they’d stay holed up there the whole night.
In which case we’d be in all kinds of trouble.
I risked a quick click of the flashlight so I could read the dial on the oxygen tank. An hour and a half of air left.
We’d gone from one countdown to another.
I alternated between watching the hospital’s ground floor and the pressure gauge on the oxygen tank. The shapes kept moving inside. The dial accelerated toward empty. Soon enough, panic sweat plastered my shirt to my back. With each passing second, my fear grew. We couldn’t keep waiting, and yet we couldn’t make a move. I was brimming with stress, and to make matters worse, Patrick seemed as content as could be, drunk on oxygen.
Once the dial got into the red, I realized we had to make a move.
I reached over and shook him. “Patrick. Patrick.”
He blinked at me sleepily. “Huh?”
“We gotta do something. Now. We’re down to twenty minutes. Look. No, look over here.”
His wobbly gaze found the dial. “Hmm.”
Then I did something I never thought I’d do. I slapped him across the face. Hard. Of course, I made sure to miss the mask and the straps.
He shook his head. “Thanks,” he said. “Okay. Twenty minutes. What do you want to do?”
“Remember when Andre Swisher ran out into the square?”
He nodded.
“I need to create a diversion. Draw them out. I’ll run across the lawn and loop back.”
That made his expression sharpen at last. “No way. We are not risking your life to save mine.”
“You got a better idea?”
He blinked hard, scrunching his eyes closed as if trying to squeeze his thoughts into place. Then he opened them. “Yeah,” he said.
*
With its siren screaming and lights flashing, the ambulance bulldozed across the town square, turning a bench into a spray of tinder. The tires left muddy tracks through the grass. The ambulance smashed into the central fountain, upending in a pile of rubble, stale water sloshing across the grille.
It wailed and wailed.
For a moment nothing happened. Then a handful of Hosts flashed out of doorways around the square. Four Chasers pried open the ER doors and bolted through, their ragged shoes flying right past Patrick’s and my noses.
We were hidden beneath a Buick Enclave in the front lot. We’d rigged up the ambulance, turning it on, then jamming a crutch between the gas pedal and the headrest. From outside the vehicle, I’d reached in and yanked the transmission into drive, the screeching vehicle nearly taking off my arm before I could pull it free.
As the Hosts pursued the wailing ambulance, Patrick and I rolled from cover and slipped through the ER doors. Patrick held his portable gas tank in one hand, the shotgun raised in the other.
Even in the dark, the ground floor sparkled, as spotless as ever. Gurneys and rolling privacy curtains, half-open doors and nurses’ stations—a lot of hiding places to keep us on edge. We poked around the emergency room, searching the cabinets and storage areas.
No oxygen tanks.
“I don’t see any,” Patrick said, his voice distorted through the mask. “Where are they?”
I jogged over to the directory by the elevator, passing a big window looking out at the square. A dozen or so Hosts encircled the smashed ambulance, a pride of lions zeroing in on their wounded prey. Even from here I could make out the quick puffs of air as they breathed.
I ran my finger down the directory, stopping at RESPIRATORY CARE—FLOOR TWO. I felt my stomach sink.
“We have to go upstairs,” I said.
“Then let’s go.” Patrick hoisted the tank in one hand and followed me to the wide stairs, being careful not to let the tube tug the mask away from his face. Any snag in the line could mean death.