Rather than let the others come after me, I jumped down into their midst and waded in, both arms swinging. Blood spatter arced overhead. I was screaming not in fear but in rage. A battle cry.

I hurled a hook up through the soft flesh beneath a Chaser’s chin, the tip curving through her skull and shoving through her eyehole, popping the front membrane.

—red windshield glass skittering across the floor—

I wrenched the hook free, and she toppled, shuddering.

—Uncle Jim’s eyeless face—

Another Host grabbed me from behind, but I spun, raking both hooks, embedding the points in the sides of his head.

—Zeus licking my face, a puppy curled in my arms—

He dropped back stiffly, his body like a plank, his weight yanking his head free of the steel points.

—my brother hooked to tubes—jigsaw pendant in the grass—Cassius whimpering—Chet’s face transforming behind the chain-link—Bob Bitley staggering toward me—Patrick’s black cowboy hat lowering onto my head—my shadow looming large on the gym doors—

I tumbled out of the storm of memories, coming back to myself, breathing hard. My arms ached at my sides. The Hosts lay sprawled around, twitching and gone. My face and shirt felt sticky with their blood, and my hooks were stained oil-black.

For a moment the silence bathed me.

Eight Hosts, dead at my hand.

With each breath I seemed to inflate, my spine straightening one vertebra at a time, pulling me upright inch by inch.

A familiar sound called my attention to the side of the highway. A few more Hosts trudged toward the barricade, their legs mired up to the ankles in the marshy reeds.

I drew the revolver, waited until they reached the edge of the asphalt about ten yards away. Then I shot them through their foreheads, one after another.

I thumbed the release and let the wheel click open, the hot brass falling away, bouncing at my feet. I climbed up the station wagon again and found my backpack where I’d dumped it on the fallen trees.

After reloading the revolver, I was on my way.

Though there was no sign of Hosts beyond the barricade, I cut off the main road and traveled through the terrain alongside it as we had before. Scaling the slope was treacherous, as was making headway through the underbrush. The heavy backpack tugged at my shoulders, and the hockey stick tangled in branches. My thighs and calves burned. But at a certain point, I fell into a rhythm.

Everything hurt just as much, but I no longer cared. I was separate from the pain and exhaustion, just like the Hosts, observing it as if from some other place. Every time I got hit by thoughts of what might be waiting for me in Lawrenceville, I pushed them aside.

My focus narrowed to a single aim: finding Alex.