JoJo smashed Bunny to the hollow of her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.

Patrick said, “Get behind me.”

He stepped to the front of our little vanguard, but I’d heard the resignation in his voice. It was gonna end here like this.

As the horde closed in on us, we held our ground—because we had nothing else to do.

Entry 11

ENTRY 11

They flew at us, some sprinting stiffly, others bounding on all fours, blank-faced and panting. The eye sockets tunneling through their heads gave us glimpses of the waves of Hosts behind them. They would overpower us and haul us to the church and put us in cages.

And then what?

The thought of what was coming tightened the skin across the back of my neck. A flurry of images overwhelmed me, scenes from every horror movie I’d ever seen. Probes and scalpels, boiling cauldrons and bloody chains. The baling hooks swung at my sides, scraping my jeans.

The mass drew nearer, nearer.

I listened to the flick-flick-flick of the hooks against denim. One of the points snagged in the fabric.

The point!

I turned and jammed the tip of the baling hook into the seam between the sliding doors. I yanked with all my might. The doors peeled back, barely wide enough to slither through.

I shouted through clenched teeth, “JoJo! Rocky! Go!”

They darted through the gap, Cassius scrambling after them. My biceps were cramping, but I held on, gripping one baling hook’s handle with both hands, the other hook dangling from my wrist. Alex squeezed through the gap next, spilling onto the supermarket floor.

The horde was twenty feet away. Now ten. Ahead of the pack, Coach Hanson scrabbled forward on three limbs, one leg stuck out to the side, a splinter of bone thrust up through her thigh.

Patrick ducked beneath me to blade through the gap, but he was too wide. His chest jammed in the opening. The Hosts were almost on us. I wrenched the hook as hard as I could, prying the doors apart another inch, and Patrick tumbled through. I fell in behind him, feeling dozens of hands brushing my back. The doors banged shut around my ankle. I turned, looking back into the press of flesh filling the giant glass door. At the bottom, Coach’s breaths fogged the pane, her hands cradling my boot at the heel and toe, like a mom helping a child slip off a sneaker.

Cassius stood protectively over me, the fur raised along his scruff, barking at the glass. I ripped my foot back as hard as I could, and the doors slammed shut. Faces and hands smeared the panes, blotting out the light.

My chest jerked up and down. For a minute it seemed I wasn’t going to catch my breath ever again.

“They can use tools,” Patrick said. “Let’s move before they figure it out.”