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?”