“I’m going to try something different. Just stick that under your jacket. Keep it dry. Don’t light it unless I tell you.”
She tossed the flare towards the worms. It landed in the middle of the road. Sarah held her breath, wondering if it would go out, but the flame continued to burn brightly. The worms paused, caught between the flare and the hole.
“That gives us a head start.” She grabbed Kevin’s arm. “Come on!”
They ran down the road, heading towards the forest. Sarah risked a glance behind them, and was relieved to see that the worms were still trying to negotiate their way around the flare. Then the mist closed in their wake, and the creatures disappeared from sight.
They kept running for another five minutes, until they reached the cover of the trees. Once they were inside the forest, they paused, panting for breath. Sarah noticed that Kevin was wheezing.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. My chest still hurts. Just need to rest up.”
“We can’t stay here long. We need to keep moving.”
“I know. Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”
Sarah studied their surroundings. The rain drummed against the leafy canopy overhead. The sound was surprisingly loud. Many of the trees were leaning to one side, their roots struggling to keep a purchase in the over-saturated ground. Others had collapsed, leaving behind huge holes in the earth that were now filled with water. She spotted white fuzz growing on several tree trunks, concealing the bark. The mold also covered a slab of granite jutting up from the forest floor.
Behind her, Kevin shrieked. Sarah spun around, to see him wiping the back of his hand on his coat. He seemed embarrassed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I brushed up against a branch. It tickled my hand and I though it was… you know, one of them. Scared me.”
“Well, you scared me, too. Jesus, Kevin…”
“Sorry.” He smiled. “You still love me?”
Grinning, Sarah shook her head. “I’d love you a lot more if you hadn’t lost our bat.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
“When we get to the tower, you can have first pick of whatever we find.”
“Deal.”
They continued on their way. The mist grew thick between the trees, and the road sloped steadily upward. Neither of them spoke. Sarah stretched her neck and shoulder muscles, trying to work out the kinks.
Kevin scratched the back of his hand, which had begun to itch.
Neither one of them noticed the fungus growing on the branch he’d touched.
CHAPTER 4
Henry Garrett knew that he was dreaming.
Lucid dreaming, people called it. He’d seen them talk about it on television, back when the televisions still worked.
The last time he’d had this dream, Henry had floated deep beneath the mountains—not through a subterranean network of tunnels and caves, but through the very ground itself. Ethereal, he’d slipped through rocks and roots and soil. Henry didn’t know how far he’d descended. There was no way to tell for sure in a dream. He reckoned it was a long distance. Eventually, he stopped. And there, far below the earth, he’d seen a door open up. As he watched, a worm the size of a school bus had crawled out of it and immediately started to give birth. Slime dripped from its body and coalesced into smaller worms. As Henry gaped, the creatures began to burrow upward, chewing through the planet’s core like Japanese beetles through an apple tree. They left slime in their wake.
Henry had screamed himself awake.
This time, the dream was different. Oh, there were some similarities, but the location wasn’t the same. He wasn’t floating down through the ground. Instead, he was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The other big difference in this dream was that when he saw a similar door opening on the ocean floor, it wasn’t a big old worm that came crawling out, but a host of different creatures.
First, dozens of tentacles thrust through the doorway, grasping and wriggling in the current. The tendrils varied in size, but all of them were covered with rows of suckers, and each sucker had a puckered, greedy mouth lined with needle-like teeth.
Schools of silver fish darted through the doorway, swimming around the flailing tentacles. They were about eight inches in length, and reminded Henry of a cross between piranhas and flying fish. Their broad pectoral fins were curved like wings. As he watched, they devoured every living thing in their path. The water turned red.
Next came a group of creatures that looked like a mix of human beings and great white sharks. They had the legs, arms, and partial torso of a person, but the tail, head, dorsal fin and upper body of a shark. Their mouths were the creatures’ most striking feature—rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Over ten-feet in length, they swam by using both their powerful tails and their lithe legs—propelling themselves through the water with great speed.
There were quivering jellyfish that shot black, corrosive acid through the water. Spiny starfish that glared at him malevolently with human eyes. Blind, aquatic worms that burrowed into whatever they could find and began boring. Beautiful mermaids with long, flowing hair and breasts that made him hard—even in his dream.
One of the mermaids noticed him watching. Smiling, she swam closer.
Henry’s erection swelled.
She opened her mouth and began to sing. He could hear her clearly, even though they were underwater. He strained, trying to make out the words.
And then, the creature that the tentacles were attached to thrust itself from the doorway and emerged onto the ocean floor. Huge clouds of silt and muck were stirred by its entrance. When they cleared, Henry glimpsed the beast.
Just like before, Henry woke up screaming. He shrieked for a long time, lying there in the loft at the top of Fred Laudermilk’s grain silo. Eventually, his gasps became sobs, then moans. His cat, Moxey, rubbed against him, purring. Henry patted her absentmindedly, feeling her ribs beneath the skin.
She was losing weight. They both were.
Unable to sleep anymore, Henry sat up in the gloom and listened to the rain.
Was it his imagination, or was the rain coming down faster now?
CHAPTER 5
The sound of the rain no longer lulled Henry to sleep. Each time he shut his eyes, the weird dreams came back again.
So did the pain in his stomach.
Before the flood, Henry used to see commercials on television, asking folks to send money to help starving kids in Africa. Henry had always felt sorry for the other children, but he didn’t think his parents would be helping out. They barely had enough money to feed themselves. If it wasn’t for their garden and food stamps, they’d have probably been like those people in Africa. Henry had often tried to imagine what it would feel like—being so hungry.
He didn’t have to imagine anymore. He knew all too well.
So did Moxey.
During one particularly severe bout of hunger, he’d considered eating her. Then, horrified that he’d even think such a thing, Henry had pulled the cat to his chest, cuddling her while she purred, letting his tears soak her fur.
They had plenty of water. When they’d climbed to the top of the grain silo, Henry had brought along a case of bottled water and a backpack full of provisions. The food was all gone now, even after carefully rationing it, but they still had some water left. He didn’t trust drinking the rainwater, and there was no way he was drinking the water surrounding the silo.
It was full of things.
He had no way to catch fish, and wasn’t sure he’d eat them even if he could. The few fish he’d seen looked sickly—a white, mucous-like substance covered their bodies. Some type of waterborne infection, he guessed. Daniel Ortel had caught a catfish like that before evacuating with the National Guard, and when Daniel touched it, the fish’s skin sloughed off like pudding. Soon after, Daniel had gotten sick.