Wormwood

to burn them.

A third theory, which had been gaining support when the electricity went dead, held that Wormwood wasn’t a germ or a virus at all, but a type of fallout or radiation spread throughout the atmosphere by the downed Yellowseed satellite. At first this was laughed off as science fiction or speculation, but the people doing the laughing were the same ones — grant researchers and government officials — who’d put the thing into orbit in the first place.

Proponents of the radiation model pointed to a map with an overlay of the satellite’s path of descent and a black “X” at the impact site, citing the first cases in a rural area of Pennsylvania and plotting the high density of subsequent cases cropping up along the westward arc of the burning satellite. It made a convincing argument, and it also explained why the phenomenon was traveling slowly but steadily westward despite natural barriers and rigid quarantine zones.

One man Rudy had seen on television likened the fallout to a long comet’s tail descending across the United States. While the epidemic appeared to be traveling in a westerly direction, what was actually happening was that the radioactive particles were taking longer to filter through the layers of atmosphere as they trailed back along the satellite’s line of descent. In keeping with that model, the longer the particles remained aloft the more dispersed they became due to factors such as wind currents and the Earth’s rotation. “That,” the man assured his audience, “is exactly what we’re seeing with Yellowseed.” He pointed to a map of North America overlaid with a menacing red fireball on a collision course with Willard, Pennsylvania, its long tail dissolving somewhere high over the waters of the Pacific Ocean. “The more time that passes, the more indistinct the tail of our satellite becomes, and the more widespread the contamination.

“Will that make a difference to those of you watching on the west coast?” The man shrugged.  “Possibly. It all depends on how potent this thing is. To give you an example… if I were to open a jar of weapon’s-grade anthrax here in the studio, I’d kill two or three hundred people. If I were to release that same jar in an airburst above New York City, thousands if not millions would die.” He tapped the fading tail on his map. “Dilution or dispersion is no good if the potency remains high enough to kill; it simply means that more people will die. Yellowseed being a pet project of the Department of Defense, I don’t hold much optimism for a quick and easy fix, especially since no one’s stepping forward to tell us what it is or how to stop it. No one’s doing that because to do so would entail responsibility and blame; that means we as scientists have to spend precious time finding out what it is before we can begin the search for a solution, and at that rate this thing will have already run its course.”

The man folded his hands as if in resignation. “I’m aware that it’s not a particularly rosy or popular view at the moment, but I won’t lie to you. It’s a nightmare out there; most of you east of the Mississippi already know that.”

The program, as Rudy recalled, cut to a commercial immediately after this last statement. When it returned, the scientist with the sleepless eyes was gone, replaced with a smiling man who’d developed a brand-new Hollywood diet.

Rudy gazed down the street at Greg Mashburn, still hanging limply from his lamppost.

He wondered if it might be wise to dig up Bud and put a bullet in his head.

Just to be sure.

4

In the soft gray light of their bedrooms, the Navaros were slow to awaken, as if the tranquillizers that Don had fed them were still coursing through their bloodstreams, lying over them like stones. Of course their hearts were no longer beating so it followed that their blood (which had thickened and darkened in their veins, becoming visible through the skin) was no longer circulating. Their tissues, however, were still saturated with the drug, still lethargic and depressed, as if they’d been packed away in thick cotton wadding and left out in the summer sun.

So they were sluggish to open their eyes, to tumble themselves out of bed. Once up, they wandered from room to room as if searching, their footsteps dry and whispery against the carpet, like paper slippers.

Eventually they found something that triggered a response, an excitement they no longer found in one another. It came in pulses, in warm shades of red that moved back and forth across the front of the house.

In voices that called them brightly out of their sleep.

5

Keith decided the house was getting to be too much like a cave with the electricity gone and the windows boarded over. Rooms that were once light and familiar had grown brooding and indistinct over the past week, eerie with candles and long, flickering shadows, silent except for the sound of the wind trying to get in.

Time slowed down to an almost meaningless crawl. A clock that ticked but whose hands never moved, even when one wasn’t looking.

It was the perfect breeding ground for hopelessness and despair. A sense that life had ended and they were trapped inside a cosmic parlor or antechamber, waiting for Death to come and collect them. Or perhaps (worse still) they were simply forgotten.

The excitement of the morning had left Keith feeling restless and edgy, as if he ought to be doing something: standing guard on the roof or walking a beat up and down the street, rifle in hand. Anything but what he was doing, which was nothing.

Shane Dawley was up on his parent’s roof with a gun and a whistle, but so far Wormwood was keeping its distance, sight-seeing through the more densely-populated streets of town. There had been gunshots, distant screams and black smoke billowing here and there, but as of yet no one had come calling, infected or otherwise.

Morning had given way to afternoon and, after drawing lots for a watch, they’d gone back inside their homes to eat lunch and consider what ought to be done now that the nightmare had finally appeared. A meeting was planned for later that afternoon, over at the Cheng’s, but that was still hours away.

Looking pale and wan, Naomi had retreated to the bedroom with a book she’d borrowed from Pam or Helen, leaving Keith to pace about the dim confines of the house, to wander the same dead-ends and cul-de-sacs, alone with his gray, indoor thoughts. He picked up a magazine (likely the last issue of Field & Stream he’d ever receive) and tried to lose himself in its well-thumbed pages.

An advertisement for a Winchester rifle caught his eye, with a six-point buck gazing calmly (almost majestically) into a pair of stylized crosshairs. Keith blinked and found himself beneath the Kennedy Street bridge, squinting through a similar scope at something that was neither calm nor majestic. Something that accepted the bullets he fired with the dull indignity of a rotten tree stump.

He let the magazine close of its own accord and tossed it back to the coffee table, the morning’s horrors playing themselves out in an endless loop, haunting him, conspiring in the shadows with the two men he’d killed down at the 7-Eleven.

When Rudy knocked quietly on his door, wondering if he could help him out with a certain job that needed doing, Keith could have spun him around on the doorstep and kissed him.

6

That is, until he found out what Rudy wanted him to do.

Had it been simple gruntwork, a chance to get outside and use his muscles to hammer nails or haul supplies