where the gasoline had splashed on them. A few were now missing appendages, and the stumps were black, as well.
“Maybe gasoline kills it?” she mused.
“At the very least, they don’t like it,” Henry agreed.
Sarah grinned. “Henry, I’ve got an idea…”
CHAPTER 69
“What’s your idea?” Henry asked.
Ignoring him, Sarah pushed past the teen and ran back into the ranger station. Her wet shoes squeaked on the floor. She clutched the empty gas can with one hand. Henry trailed after her, frowning in confusion. Water dripped from them both, pooling at their feet. A blast of thunder rumbled overhead.
“It will work,” Sarah yelled, her tone excited and frantic. “I know it will! This is our way out, Henry. We don’t have to die.”
“What is? I don’t understand.”
Again, she acted as if she hadn’t heard him. Henry’s frown deepened. He stood watching as Sarah rushed from corner to corner, obviously looking for something.
“It’s here somewhere, damn it. Did you grab it all?”
“Did I use all of what? The gasoline? I did just like you said, Sarah. I got that can in the corner next to the radio. Is it empty?”
She turned to look at him and rolled her eyes. Then she held up the can and jiggled it.
“Does it sound full to you?”
Henry lowered his head. “Well, I reckon that’s because you just dumped it all on Earl and his friends.”
“Right. So we’ve got to get more. That’s all. We just get a bunch more gasoline and fight our way out of here. You saw what it does to them!”
“But, Sarah…” Henry paused. “There is no more gasoline. That’s all there is. I mean, maybe there’s some on the storage shed down below, but that thing is covered in white fuzz. It’s already starting to melt. We can’t get in there.”
“You’re lying.”
Sarah moaned—a mournful, terrible sound that scared Henry worse than their attackers had. Her wet eyes seemed black, and her lips turned pale as she grimaced.
“Sarah,” Henry said softly. “Are you okay? What’s wrong with—”
“You’re lying, Henry! You’re wrong. You have to be. There’s more gas here. We just have to look. That’s all. We just need to find some more gasoline. Then we can go home. Don’t you want to go home? D-don’t y-you… you… want… don’t you w-w-wan…”
She backed into the wall and slid slowly to the floor. Her speech dissolved into sobs. Henry wondered if she’d suffered some sort of stroke. Or maybe she’d just snapped? He prayed not, even though none of his other prayers had recently been answered.
“It’s okay, Sarah. I ain’t sure what’s happened to you, but it will be all right.”
When Henry approached her, Sarah began to scream. Her cries were so loud that he almost didn’t notice the second round of thunder until the tower began to tremble.
That’s not thunder, he thought. That’s us! The damn building is shaking…
CHAPTER 70
Henry grabbed the edge of the desk as the floor bucked and trembled beneath his feet. A deep, sonorous groan echoed from outside, followed by the sound of screeching metal. The tower shook harder, dislodging gear and hardware from the shelves. Items crashed to the tiles and rolled toward him. Henry cried out, terrified, but Sarah’s reaction was quite different. Her screams abruptly turned into laughter.
Then, just as suddenly as they’d started, the tremors stopped. Henry didn’t loosen his grip on the desk. He feared it would start all over again if he did. The only sound, other than his breathing, was Sarah giggling. And the rain. Always the rain.
“Do it again, Henry,” she said. “Make it go again!”
“It wasn’t me, Sarah. I reckon it’s the mold. We’ve seen how it turns everything into water. Figure it’s doing the same thing to the station. We can’t stay here.”
“We’ll be okay,” she said. Her voice was clear and confident. Gone was any trace of insanity. “Kevin will be here soon.”
“Kevin? Sarah… Kevin’s dead. You know that. You told me that you shot him yourself, because he was turning into one of them.”
“He’ll be here,” she insisted. “He’s in the helicopter, with Salty. They’ll be along any minute.”
Henry took a deep breath. Letting go of the desk, he stepped toward her. “Sarah, we’re alone here. Well, except for Earl and them others. Don’t you remember?”
And then someone spoke behind Henry, making a liar out of him. Henry yelped in surprise. Spinning around, he saw that the station was empty, except for him and Sarah.
“Who’s there? Come on out, god damn you!”
“My name is Steven Kazmirski. I’m here with my wife, Nahed Shahabi, and our Himalayan cat, Burman.”
“The radio,” Henry yelled, feeling foolish. “It’s the radio.”
He wondered for a moment what had become of the previous broadcaster, Sylva. The man had been infected. Had he finally succumbed? Henry glanced back at Sarah. She seemed calm now, though her eyes had a glazed look. She too was listening. Henry turned his attention back to the speaker.
“…left the John Hancock Tower and rowed over here in the darkness. We didn’t want to use the boat’s motor or spotlight, because we didn’t want to attract predators. There were a lot of corpses in the water. They… bumped into…”
The signal faded. Henry cursed, tensing, until it came back again after a short burst of static.
“…have stayed in California. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, though. But we moved cross the country to Newton. We liked it there, especially with Nahed being pregnant. But then the rain… major pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, just across the Charles River. I solve protein structures with potential drug compounds… Nahed attended…”
There was a particularly long burst of static. Frantic, Henry ran over to the ham radio set, staring at the controls and wondering which one to use. Then the speaker returned. The signal seemed weaker.
“…the Prudential Building… Sylva’s last communication was twelve hours ago. We came… dead. I had to shoot him three times. His last… for his son, Alex, whom I believe he mentioned several times during his broadcasts. I only wish our boat had washed up on our tower sooner, so I could have helped Sylva and his friends before the disease… am sure… my biochemistry and drug development background. If I can learn more about how it spreads… if the white fuzz is fungal, alien, or bacterial, but it’s certainly alive, and therefore contains different proteins… obtain a pure sample of a protein that’s essential in the machinery that replicates the white fuzz’s DNA, then I could stop it with drugs. If the DNA can’t replicate… can’t grow, so I’ll collect fungus samples and extract the protein… using gravity… chromatography columns. Then… add the drug… either a small chemical molecule or a bio-molecule that’s been purified… once … the drug complex to crystallize, I could have a potential cure within a week.”
“You hear this, Sarah? It’s gonna be okay. This fella on the radio says he can stop the fungus!”
“I want to know,” Sarah sang, “who’ll stop the rain?”
