We charted a path across the middle of the square, hurdling benches. I set JoJo down so I could use the baling hooks when I needed them. I swiped at Hosts as they neared. They were fast, pushing their muscles to their limits. Principal Delarusso pulled even with me, sprinting faster than a fifty-year-old body should allow, that string of pearls bouncing around her neck. A run in her stocking snaked up from her shin, widening as it rose, her protruding kneecap somehow obscene. She hurled herself at me, hitting me high before I could get a hook up to protect myself. The blow sent us into a rolling tumble. I glimpsed Patrick and the others ahead, their legs vanishing through the closing ranks of Hosts.

I was caught.

Delarusso flung me over, one bony knee poking me in the chest, tensed hands pinning my arms to either side. Her strength was incredible, and I had a fleeting thought of those possessed ants, their mandibles clamping with enough newfound strength to hold their entire bodies up in the air. Delarusso’s head pulled down over mine, and I found myself looking clear up through her eyes to the lightening sky above.

A streak flew overhead and wiped her from view. I rolled to my feet to see Alex finishing her follow-through, her torso twisted with the strength of her swing. She whipped the hockey stick in a full circle, staggering several Hosts back on their heels, then yelled, “Chance—c’mon!”

She cleared a route and I forged after her. We broke through the pack. Then we were dodging stragglers, knocking them over, cutting hard to fake others out. Hosts poured from the church. Most of the adults from the county had congregated there. I couldn’t even imagine what was happening inside.

Up ahead with the kids, Patrick waved at us from the Piggly Wiggly. He stood on the front mat of the supermarket’s automated doors, but they weren’t opening, not after Gene Durant cut the power. Cassius’s fur stood up, even beyond the ridge, and he was barking furiously. Patrick stepped back, lifted the shotgun, and fired at the glass doors. The big panes wobbled and scarred, but the pellets weren’t enough to break through.

I recalled Jack Kaner bragging about the new heavy-duty clear Lexan doors he’d installed after the F2 tornado ripped through last July, shattering the old ones. Bullet-resistant doors.

We ran toward Patrick as he slotted another shell into the shotgun. A few spiral-walkers kept on pacing their patterns in the big parking lot, not looking up to notice as we ran past. We reached Patrick, panting hard, and he said, “Don’t turn around.”

So of course I did.

An army of Hosts descended on us, already at the perimeter of the parking lot. More poured around either side of the building from the back, blocking off any exit path.