need to use them anymore. He just felt the people’s rage like white-hot fever on his skin. The screaming tore itself through his mind as the mob tore apart the shrieking cars in the parking lot looking for them. The headache pounding like blood trying to claw its way out of his veins. The imaginary world and the real were the same to him now. He didn’t know where he was.
“Which way, Christopher?!” the sheriff screamed.
Christopher opened his eyes and saw nothing but dark angry space. There were too many voices now. Bodies running through the parking lot. Others scattered through the hospital. The mobs like tumors in the hallways all around them. There was so much darkness, he didn’t know which direction to run.
“He’s slipping,” Christopher heard Ambrose say.
“Christopher, can you hear us?” said the sheriff.
Christopher could say nothing. There was too much rage to guide them through it. They were enveloped by darkness. There was no light left in the world.
Except one.
In the middle of all that hatred, he felt a light. Warm and kind. It was racing to the hospital.
It was his mother.
He could follow his mother’s light.
“My mother is coming for us. Go to the ER,” Christopher whispered.
“But—” Ambrose cautioned.
“Trust me,” Christopher said.
So they did. They made a hard turn back into the belly of the beast. Christopher felt the light getting closer. His mother was coming. He could feel Mr. Collins crash into the maternity ward behind them. They turned the corner into the ER. It was flooded with people, angry after waiting a week for a bed that would never be empty again. The vending machines were now debris on the ground. People sifted through the rubble. Looking for food. Looking for drink. Looking for vengeance. When they saw Christopher, the ER opened into a primal scream and joined the chase.
The three rushed outside into the icy parking lot. The storm swirled above them. A big angry sky filled with clouds. Giant faces moaning.
“Mr. Olson! Look out!” Christopher screamed as Mrs. Keizer rushed at them.
“Help my daughter forget her name!” she screamed.
The old woman raised a scalpel. Ambrose reached out and grabbed her before she could stab Christopher. Mrs. Keizer slipped on black ice, landing on her hip, which cracked like a wishbone. A scream rose from the other direction. Mrs. Collins wheezing through her paint-coated lungs.
“Look what you did to my mother! Give my mother back her name!”
The sheriff turned as Mrs. Collins charged from the other direction in a wheelchair. She ran her hands quickly over the wheels, then jumped up onto her feet and broke into a dead sprint. She raised a scalpel. The sheriff winced as the scalpel sliced into his side. He dropped Christopher and fell to his knees. Bleeding profusely. Mrs. Collins inched toward Christopher. Coughing and hacking white sludge. Nothing could stop her.
Except Christopher’s mother.
Kate Reese reached over and turned Jerry’s truck on the black ice. The truck slammed into Mrs. Collins, who flew backward across the icy parking lot. Christopher’s mother threw open the passenger door and rushed to her son.
“Help me, Jerry!” she screamed.
Jerry left the engine running and jumped out of the truck. He ran behind Kate. Gun reloaded and drawn. Firing at everyone to save Kate Reese as she ran to save her son. She grabbed Christopher and raced him back to the truck. Ambrose and the sheriff behind her. She laid her son in the passenger seat and jumped into the driver’s just as the sheriff and Ambrose climbed into the flatbed with Jerry. Mr. Collins led the mob out of the hospital and ran at Christopher in the passenger side, his nail gun raised.
Bang.
The last bullet left the sheriff’s gun. Mr. Collins fell backward next to his wife and her mother. The truck powered through the black ice, and Christopher’s mother raced her son away from the hospital.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Christopher looked up and smiled at his mother, who didn’t know she was covered in the light from one hundred billion stars.
Chapter 114
The sheriff looked back as the hospital emptied itself into the parking lot like a rattlesnake uncoiling. He turned and saw Kate Reese hold the wheel with her left hand. Her son with the right. She looked down at her little boy, sick and pale.
“You hang in there,” she said.
Kate reached into the glove compartment and found a box of ammunition. She handed it back to the sheriff in the flatbed of the truck. She said nothing. She