My eyes moved past the body to the tattered headrest and passenger seat. What had it been like for him hiding here, mere feet from a Host bent on destroying him? A Host who was also his dad?

“I’ll get you out of there,” Patrick said.

He nodded at Alex, who jogged back to the truck behind us. As I watched her go, a blocky form glinted in the darkness a good ways from the side of the road. A commuter bus lay on its side, half sunk in the marshy reeds. Decaled on the back, the giant logo from the Lawrenceville Cannery. Lawrenceville was little more than a cluster of lean-to houses around the factory perched on the highest shoulder of Ponderosa Pass, so they bused in most of their work staff from the valley. The windows were tinted. There was no telling who was inside.

Patrick said, “Go check out that bus, Chance.”

Thumbing up a folding knife, he leaned into the windshield past the dead Host and started sawing off the kid’s seat belt. The rear of the station wagon looked caved in and claustrophobic, but the kid seemed to be uninjured.

Alex pulled the Silverado around onto the reeds in front of the rocky brink of the pass. When the headlights swept the bus, the dark windows reflected back the glare, giving up nothing. My boots sank into the reeds as I walked over. Using the tires for holds, I climbed up onto the side of the bus and crouched for a moment, my baling hooks ready. Below, Cassius took up a guard posture, aiming his snout at the darkness.

Toward the front of the bus, the door lay open, pointing at the stars. My breath hitched in my chest. I clicked on my flashlight and shone it between my feet through the windows. This close, the beam penetrated the tinted glass, giving a murky view of the interior. Bags and purses lay jumbled against the far windows at the bottom, their contents strewn all over the place. Slowly, I walked across the panes, shining my light on the shattered glass and the trash below. A wallet. A baseball cap. A few coolers knocked open. Shoes and lipstick tubes. There’d been a lot of workers in there when the driver had transformed, tipping it over.

Which meant that now there were a lot of workers out here.

One of the windows fissured beneath my weight. I jumped to the next. That one spiderwebbed as well, so I hopscotched onto the metal beside the panes. I continued along, my flashlight stabbing across the empty rows of seats.

Finally I reached the end and slid off the bus. Alex joined me and Cassius as we headed back. Patrick was still leaning through the windshield of the station wagon, working on the kid’s belt.

The kid’s breaths came as panicked wheezes.