We headed off the porch and forged ahead into the crops. We came to that cleared field and noticed the little piles where the stalks had once been, the crumbled remains like ash.
I remembered the news frenzy following Asteroid 9918 Darwinia’s disintegration. All the statistics and gossip about what had landed where.
At the sight, Patrick made a noise deep in his throat, and then we continued on. Sweet corn rose on either side of us, the husks scraping our sleeves. On alert, we rasped through the darkness toward the Franklins’ land, Patrick and I keeping the lead.
“What was that in the silo?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “But it wasn’t Mrs. McCafferty. Not anymore.”
“We killed her.”
“No,” he said. “You saw her. She was already dead.”
“Then what was she? And don’t say the Z-word.”
“I have no idea,” Patrick said. “It’s like she was sick with some crazy disease. Rabies or whatever.”
“Rabies doesn’t put tunnels through your head.”
“A new strain, then,” Patrick said. “Or some other killer virus.”
“But what disease does that?” I said. “It’s like something had … I don’t know, taken her over.”
Just saying it out loud made the back of my neck prickle. Our boots crunched the hard earth.
Patrick cleared his throat. “She was more like a … a … what’s the name for it? In biology? The opposite of a parasite?”
“A host,” I said.
We let the word hang there. Behind us we could hear JoJo sniffling and Rocky murmuring, “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
We reached the edge of the field, breaking through the stalks onto open ground.
“What was she trying to do?” I whispered. “The … host? Ripping out her hair, pinning you down, tying your wrists? Was she gonna eat you?”
“No,” Patrick said. “She was trying to take me captive.”
“For what?”
Instead of answering, Patrick halted abruptly. Touched his hand to the earth. When he lifted it to the moonlight, his fingertips were smudged with something dark.
Blood.
The kids emerged from the corn, nearly stumbling into us from behind. Patrick stood quickly and lowered his hand so they wouldn’t see his stained fingertips.
“What?” Rocky said.
“Just catching my breath,” Patrick said.
The blood trail continued forward, nearly impossible to make out in the darkness. Patrick’s eyes traced the direction it went, his head slowly tilting up. I looked where he was looking. A stream of particles flowed above us, luminous in the moonlight, like the trail of a magic carpet.
We traced the stream across the starry sky to its source.
The top of the water tower.
*
The giant tower rose like a spider on stilts. We stood at the base of the metal ladder leading up and up. I realized that my knee was jittering and told it to stop. The stream of particles looked to be growing thinner, a fire burning itself out.
“What do you think it is?” Rocky asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe your dad went up there, started a fire or something?”
“Please help him,” JoJo said. “Please bring him home.”
Patrick set his hands on a rung, the shotgun making a clang against the side rail.
“Shouldn’t I come up and get your back?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
I turned to the kids. “Stay here—right here. If you see anything or anyone, give a shout.”
Rocky nodded and drew his little sister in protectively.
Patrick was already twenty or so rungs above me, his progress punctuated by the steady knock of the shotgun against metal. I started up after him.
I will confess: I don’t love heights. This water tower was 150 feet high, which wasn’t so bad, except for the fact that the ladder rose in the space between the legs of the tower, unattached to anything else. It felt like scaling a magical beanstalk, the earth falling away, my fists and toes finding holds in thin air.
Patrick finally reached the tank itself, and he climbed the metal rungs welded to the side. I followed him, focusing on each handhold, not daring to look anywhere else.
I heard a final clank of the shotgun as Patrick got to the top, and then there was silence.
“Patrick?” I called up, panic finding its way into my voice. “Everything okay?”
His voice floated down from the darkness. “No,” he said.
I quickened my pace to the top and crawled onto the flat roof of the tank, still not risking a look up from my feet until I was a few paces off the edge. My legs felt wobbly, though whether that was from the altitude or the sight before me, I didn’t know.
There on his back lay what was left of Hank McCafferty.
His torso and stomach were gone. In their place was a crater. He’d been hollowed out, the cage of his ribs thrusting up in the eroded space. Deep in the gleaming cavern, I could make out the line of his spinal cord. That strange pollen streamed forth from the hole, his remains turning to particles and paying out like a ribbon riding the wind.
It took me two tries to speak. My voice came out reedy. “What the hell is that stuff?” I asked.