“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “We need help. We need to tell someone.”
I followed the pollen’s course to the distant lights of town and felt something inside me go cold.
That’s when we heard Rocky and JoJo screaming.
ENTRY 6
I was closest to the ladder, so I was the first man down. Patrick clanked down above me, urging me to move faster, his boots skimming my fingers as I pulled them off the rungs. My descent was so fast that it felt like falling. I couldn’t tell how far we’d come or how much farther we had to go.
Below, the kids’ screams grew louder, louder, and I risked a glance down. Forty or so feet below, Rocky and JoJo sprinted by, around the base of the water tower. A figure flashed past, chasing them, nightgown fluttering like a ghost in its wake.
Mrs. Franklin?
Patrick’s tread crunched my fingers. I yelped and whipped that hand free, holding on with the other. I reeled away from the ladder. The ground spun dizzyingly below. My sweaty grip nearly slipped, but I swung around and clamped back onto the rungs.
“Move!” Patrick was shouting. “Movemovemovemovemove!”
I did, not looking down again until my heel jammed into the dirt and I tumbled onto my back.
I blinked away the pain. A menacing silhouette leaned over me. It was Mr. Franklin, an outline of solid black against the blackness. Except I could see right through the holes where his eyes used to be, the stars shining through the tunnels in his head.
Quick breaths misted the air by his mouth. He leaned over, his head twitching, those large farmer’s hands reaching for me.
I opened my mouth to scream when he was wiped suddenly from view. Patrick had barreled off the ladder and knocked him over. Patrick rolled to his feet, planted a boot in the middle of Franklin’s chest, and unloaded the shotgun right into the man’s head.
The boom made me recoil there in the mud. It echoed off the hills of Ponderosa Pass.
Terror had left my skin clammy. I pulled myself to my feet.
Mr. Franklin’s body lay inert. His head was mostly gone.
After the experience with Mrs. McCafferty coming back to life after the gut shot, Patrick had taken no chances, going straight for the head.
A high-pitched scream snapped us out of our daze. Rocky and JoJo sprinted around one of the legs of the water tower, Mrs. Franklin right behind them, a streak of white.
Patrick chambered another shell and stepped into the path of the kids. Rocky split in one direction, JoJo the other. They brushed the outsides of Patrick’s legs as he fired a blast through Mrs. Franklin’s face.
She flew back and landed, her dress hiked up, exposing her pale, smooth thighs.
The kids cowered behind Patrick. Rocky sobbed. JoJo clutched Bunny and didn’t make a sound, just stared at the woman’s legs.
Patrick’s shoulders rose and fell. Sweat glossed his neck. Though I was standing, I felt like I was falling, my foundation tumbling away. Seeing Mrs. McCafferty get tangled in the auger had been horrifying. This was worse. Standing there beneath the water tower over the corpses of our neighbors was one of those nothing-will-ever-be-the-same moments. In the space of an hour, Patrick and I had killed three grown-ups. And the stream of pollen just kept pouring out of Hank McCafferty overhead. I couldn’t help but think it had something to do with what was going on.
That whatever we’d run into hadn’t even gotten started.
I walked over and straightened out Mrs. Franklin’s dress so it covered her legs. I don’t know why it mattered to me. But it did.
Then I leaned over and threw up. Patrick eased to my side, put a hand on my shoulder. I wiped my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry.”
I turned back to the kids. JoJo hugged Bunny to her chest, shivering violently despite her thick sweater. “Did you find our dad?”
Patrick nodded. He didn’t say anything, but it was enough. The kids’ eyes were glazed over with shock.
I thought about my mom’s clutch purse spilling bloodstained pebbles of windshield glass. How Patrick had slept on the floor next to my bed those first days after the car crash because I kept waking up screaming.
I crouched, bringing myself to eye level with JoJo, and rested my hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you stay with us now?” I said.
This was no time to linger on loss. We had to get safely home and start figuring out just what in the hell was going on.
She managed a nod.
Bracing myself, I tightened my grip on the baling hooks and turned for the cornfields. Something caught my eye, a dark stream against the stars.
The river of pollen was blowing directly over our house.
ENTRY 7
We moved silently through the stalks and across pastures until the distant lights of our porch were yellow blurs in the darkness. Again Patrick and I were leading the way ahead of the kids. We followed the particles floating overhead.
They looked almost like fireflies in the moonlight. I felt something twist inside my chest.