“What’s your name?” Patrick asked, using that voice he reserved for calming down sheep tangled in barbed wire.

The boy’s lips trembled. “Nick.”

With a snap the belt fell away. Patrick grabbed Nick’s hands and pulled him out carefully through the windshield. As he slid past the corpse of his father, the boy squeezed his eyes shut.

“It’s okay,” Patrick said. “Don’t look. I’ll tell you when you’re clear. Just keep talking to me.”

“Okay. Okay.” Nick’s side rubbed against his father’s body, the stiff hand trailing along his back. He stifled a cry.

“Hey,” Patrick said. “Hey. How old are you?”

“I’m thirteen,” Nick said, barely managing his words. “A freshman at Stark Peak High.”

“A Monarch?” Patrick said. “Monarchs suck.”

A tension breaker about the old rivalry.

Nick made a nervous laugh without smiling.

Patrick slid him down the hood. “You’re clear now.”

Nick opened his eyes and swung around, landing on the ground. A small kid for his age, with thoughtful eyes. He wore a hoodie up over his head, the sleeves too long for his arms. The back of the hoodie sported an image of an old king with a scepter and crown, a cartoon take on his school mascot.

As Alex jogged back over to us, Nick stomped his feet against the cold. “We have to go,” he said. “Now.”

“The Hosts,” I said.

It took him a moment to catch up to the name I used for them. “That’s right,” he said. “There are hordes of them roaming around here. It’s like they’re guarding the pass. We should—”

The faintest crackling sounds came from the edge of the forest beside the barricade. Twigs snapping. Feet squelching into mud. The cracking of joints.

We stood like a phalanx, breath cold in our lungs, watching. Cassius didn’t growl, but his upper lip wrinkled back from his teeth, showing his fangs.

The darkness took shape slowly, resolving into human forms. In the lead a woman wearing a tattered skirt crouched low to the ground. Her hair was still thick enough to cover the holes in the back of her head, so her eyes looked like black coasters.

The others gathered around her, a wall of not-humanity. More Hosts than we’d yet seen assembled in one place, all of them wearing uniforms from the cannery.

They charged.

Entry 21

ENTRY 21

“Over the barricade!” Patrick roared.

Our boots hammered on the hood, over Nick’s dead father, across the roof of the station wagon. One by one, we leapt onto the deadfall of pines, grabbing at branches, needles poking our hands. Cassius bounded up and over effortlessly. Nick slipped on the top of the car, and Patrick went back for him, grabbing his shirt collar and tugging him to his feet.