But I had to get up and look inside. I had to see if they had Alex in there, crammed into a crate. And if so, I had to figure out what the hell to do next. I pictured her terrified, her knees drawn in to her chest, and felt anger take hold inside me. I let it give me strength.
Rising to a crouch, I peered through a clear piece of glass in the mosaic.
The inside of the church was empty.
Not a single crate. Not any Hosts. No meat grinder or piles of food.
And worst of all, no Alex.
Just a few left-behind sneakers and what looked like food stains on the floors.
Seeing the church empty was almost as unsettling as coming upon the caged kids in there earlier, but I couldn’t say why. My gaze fixed on an overturned Converse high-top. I grappled with the absence of all those boys and girls and what it might mean.
Any hope that this would be a short mission guttered out. The Hosts had probably crated Alex up and trucked her off with the other kids.
I put my back to the wall and slid down again behind the hedges. For a moment I let despair overtake me. But only for a moment.
I pictured Alex again, the way she tilted her chin up when she laughed. How she’d tuck her hair behind her ear when she leaned forward. Her fingernails, chewed to the quick or broken off from hockey practice, not like those of the other girls. Then, for an instant, I let myself remember that look of admiration she’d thrown my way after I helped us escape Jack Kaner’s farm.
Wherever she was, I’d find her. I’d get to her. And I’d bring her back.
To Patrick.
Which meant that I had to cross the valley, scale Ponderosa Pass, and make my way to Lawrenceville, where God only knew what waited for me.
As terrifying as it had been to sneak to the church, my journey had barely started.
My hooks and Alex’s hockey stick were useful, sure, but Patrick had saved the day many more times with a gun. To have even a prayer of making it, I’d need bullets.
And there was only one place to get those.
Back in the forest, Cassius’s eyes glinted from the darkness between trunks. He didn’t move until I jogged up to him and tapped his head to release him. As he trotted at my side, he nuzzled my palm, his way of saying hi. He looked up at me, tail wagging, and I realized that it was more than just a greeting. I made him feel safe. I was his pack. His family.
Since the minute he could walk, he’d stayed at my side whenever he could. Though it was against house rules for a puppy, I snuck him past Sue-Anne into my room most days after school. He’d been an active puppy, chewing up two pairs of my sneakers and an algebra textbook. That’s why I knew that something was wrong when he’d turned sluggish at three months. Then the vomiting started. By the time we rushed him to the vet, he was almost dead from parvovirus. Doc McGraw had to keep him overnight to give him IV fluids and antibiotics. Cassius wasn’t supposed to live through the night. Uncle Jim let me stay with him even though it was a Tuesday. He probably realized he couldn’t stop me anyways. I’d bedded down on an old horse blanket outside Cassius’s crate. In the morning Cassius was too weak to lift his head, but when he saw my face at the bars, he’d flicked the tip of his tail once, the closest thing to a wag he could muster.
Even when he was dying, he’d needed to show how happy he was to see me.
That tiny flick of the tail was the best thing anyone had ever given me. I swore then and there that if he lived, I’d make sure he always knew how much he was loved. He’d taught me the importance of that.
The memory made me stop right there in the woods. I crouched in front of him and dug my fingers into the scruff beneath his collar the way he loved. He panted through his dog smile, that big tail pulling his rear end back and forth, back and forth. “Good boy,” I told him as we started off again. “Good, good boy.”
Keeping to the pines, we circled the town square, gradually making our way to the bluff behind Bob n’ Bit Hardware. No sign of Hosts anywhere. Had they all left with the kids as part of whatever awful plan was going down in Lawrenceville?
If so, that would make the front part of my mission easier but what was coming much, much harder.
Cassius and I scampered down the bluff to street level, careful not to skid out on loose rocks. Then we ducked behind a car. Lowering to my belly, I peered through the tires. Way across the square, a Mapper was walking his paces. I watched until he vanished up a side street, and then I crept from cover toward the rolling rear door of the hardware store.
Orange light flickered around the edges of the door, and when I put my hand on the metal handle, it was warm from the blacksmith forge inside. I eased it aside, just wide enough that I could peer through with one eye.
Melted pistols and rifles were scattered around the burning forge. A few more still lay across the fire, devoured in the spots where the flickering flames touched them. A blackened set of tongs was sunk into the glowing coals, the handles sticking up like rabbit ears. On the anvil lay a revolver, its barrel hammered out of shape. Lumps of metal filled a crate beside the anvil.