Patrick bent to leap. For an awful moment, I thought he was too far below, that it wouldn’t be enough, that our fingertips would brush and he’d fall away into the living mass. Then I remembered the baling hooks that had been dangling from my wrists all this time.

As Patrick leapt, I shoved the hooks down at him, adding about a foot to my reach.

His hands rose to the metal curves, and I clamped down on the handles with everything I had. My chest and stomach ground painfully on the top log. My shoulders popped under Patrick’s weight, the ligaments screaming. I dragged him up and over. He tumbled down the back side of the barricade before grabbing hold of a bough heavy with pine needles.

The clamor of hands and feet pounded the barricade below us.

Next to me Nick stared down, his muscles locked up from terror.

“Nick!” I yelled. “Move!”

He pivoted to vault over the top log.

His bare foot slipped on the wet bark.

His arms rose up into the air to grab something that wasn’t there, and for a split second he floated right beside me, facing over the barricade at Patrick and Alex, his legs cycling.

Then he dropped.

I grabbed his hood as he fell, but the hands below caught him. There was an instant of resistance. Then they tore him away, screaming, down the canted face of the barricade.

His hoodie still swayed from my fist; they’d ripped him right out of it.

With shocking speed they moved him overhead toward the back of the throng. He was whisked away like a rock star surfing a crowd at a concert. His wild eyes found me for an instant. Then a gnarled hand gripped his chin and spun him around. Countless hands carried him across the swell until he faded into the darkness.

My throat had closed; I couldn’t even yell after him.

The Hosts resumed their upward race, clawing their way to the top of the barricade. Several had reached the apex, arms bent over the highest log, faces rising into view.

I stepped back, dug my heels into the branches behind me, and drove my chest into the wobbling topmost tree. It rocked once on its makeshift bed, aided by the Hosts tugging from the other side, then rolled back at me. When it rocked forward again, I hurled myself into it with all my might. It rose up, up, reaching a tipping point. And then it went.

The tree hammered down the front of the barricade, smashing Hosts, bulldozing everything in its way. It picked up speed, catching one Chaser square in the thighs and launching her so far that she smashed into the overturned bus. Once the tree hit level ground, it slowed until it rolled off the highway into a ditch.