“I’m still confused,” Caterina said. “Where are we going, again?”
“That’s easy,” Simon told her. “We’re going to the edge of the world.”
PART THREE - THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
CHAPTER 66
As she did every morning since she’d killed him, Sarah went to the large windows and looked for Kevin’s ghost. It had been two weeks since Henry’s arrival and Kevin’s death, and Sarah was pretty sure that she wasn’t coping with it in a healthy manner. She’d felt grief and guilt and sadness in the first few days, but they’d quickly been replaced with an emotional malaise—a numbness that seemed to coat her very soul. She didn’t feel anything anymore. She didn’t eat enough, not that it mattered. Henry ate enough for them both. She’d had to remind him several times about rationing their food. She slept too much, but there was no release even then, because every time she closed her eyes she dreamed of Baltimore and the cultists, or Teddy and Carl.
Or Kevin.
If she could see his ghost, if she could see a Kevin-shaped apparition standing at the base of the tower and waving up at her, it would be proof that he wasn’t really gone. Proof that the sum total of his existence hadn’t ended with a bullet and then melted away into a puddle of water. Because if he didn’t exist anymore, if there wasn’t some part of him, some part of his consciousness, some part of his essence that didn’t survive beyond this, then what hope was there for any of them? What was the point of going on? She thought back to her conversation with Henry when he’d first arrived at the ranger station. She’d asked him if he was ready to kill himself, and he’d said he wasn’t. She hadn’t been either. But now…?
Sarah wiped condensation from the window and peered outside. Kevin’s ghost wasn’t there to greet her, but Earl and the others were. If the thing outside was really even Earl anymore. The creature was man-shaped, having a head, two arms and two legs, and stood about Earl’s height, but its mass was nothing more than white fuzz. Its clothing, skin and hair had all been covered by the fungus. It certainly didn’t look like Earl. Sarah could only take Henry’s word for that it was. Henry’s word… and the fact that the creature seemed to grow agitated when it saw her, as if it recognized her, remembered her from before. And if it was Earl, then what had happened to Teddy and Carl? Could they have been transformed into one of these things, as well? The thought of those two sweet old men stumbling around as one of these fungal-zombies filled her with remorse.
Henry stirred behind her. Sarah turned, smiling sadly as he stretched and yawned.
“They still out there?” he asked.
Sarah nodded. “They haven’t moved. Still in the same spot they were in yesterday. But there’s more of them now.”
“Wonder how they know we’re up here? I mean, how is it that more and more of them keep showing up? It’s like Earl called for reinforcements. You reckon they can communicate in some way?”
“They must,” Sarah said. “Or maybe they’re just converging on the last piece of dry land.”
She turned back to the window and stared at the horizon. The forest was gone, submerged now beneath the waves. A few treetops still jutted from the water, but with each passing day less of them were visible. The rain kept falling and the waters kept rising, and their mountaintop refuge was now nothing more than a very small island in a very big ocean. Sarah figured that they had about another week before the waters reached the tower itself. After that, it would only be a matter of time before the ranger station sank beneath the surface, as well. That was unless the white fuzz got them first. She and Henry had managed to stymie Earl’s attacks by barricading the door and booby-trapping the stairs, but that didn’t impede the strands of fungus that were slowly growing up the sides of the tower, encasing the steel girders like vines. Sometimes at night, Henry told her he could feel the tower swaying back and forth as the supports weakened, but Sarah insisted it was just his imagination.
“What next?” Henry muttered, running a hand through his dirty hair and crawling out of bed.
“That’s just what I was wondering,” Sarah whispered. She looked again for Kevin, but only saw more rain.
CHAPTER 67
The hours crawled by. Neither Sarah or Henry owned a watch. Both had used their cell phones to tell time. The forest ranger station only had one clock, and it was broken and as useless as their phones. There was no way for them to truly mark the passage of time. Even day and night was becoming muddled as time wore on. There was no moon or sun to go by. Both were blotted out by the cloud cover now. Still, there was light—a murky, gray haze that allowed for visibility. Sarah supposed that would have to pass for daylight.
Neither of their sleeping or eating routines approximated any semblance of normalcy anymore. They slept when they were tired and ate when they were hungry. Gone was the pretense of three square meals a day or catching a solid seven or eight hours of sleep. The only schedule they were adamant about was making sure that one of them was awake at all times to keep an eye on Earl and his friends.
When Henry had first arrived, Sarah had been grateful. He was someone new, someone alive, a fellow survivor. A fellow human being. They had talked non-stop the first few days. Henry had told her all about his parents and friends and Moxey, and about what it was like to grow up in West Virginia. Sarah had been delighted to learn that the boy had known Teddy and Carl, but was crushed by his news of what he’d seen at Teddy’s former home. She’d told him about her former life, her family and her ex-girlfriends, and what she missed about them. They’d also shared survivor’s stories. Henry related his experiences at the top of the grain silo, and Sarah commiserated with tales from the top of the Marriott in Baltimore. But after the first week, their conversation dwindled. Now, they struggled to find topics to discuss. It wasn’t like they could turn to pop culture or the news anymore. There were no current events, other than the rain. And talking of news from the past served only to deepen their mutual depression.
Occasionally, they still got broadcasts from Sylva, the guy with the pirate radio station in Boston. But his signal grew weaker and his messages had become heartbreakingly insane. The man was obviously infected with the white fuzz. Still, his was a human voice, and those were in short supply.
The situation had impacted their hygiene, as well. Sarah tried to keep her clothes clean, but there was only so much she could do when there was no water to wash them with. She didn’t dare use the rainwater. There was no telling what it would do to the fabric—or to herself. She brushed her teeth every day, regardless of whether she’d eaten or not. In an effort to further conserve their drinking water, she didn’t rinse, and the toothpaste often left her tongue feeling gritty and dry. She still used deodorant, although sparingly. She secretly wished Henry would, too. The teenager reeked of underarms—a musty, dank smell not at all dissimilar to that of the worms.
Sarah thought about the worms a lot. She wondered what had become of them. They hadn’t seen one in quite some time, and the sudden disappearance of the creatures left her unsettled, although she didn’t know why. It reminded her of rats deserting a sinking ship. Was the mountain going down soon? Was that why the worms had vanished? And where had they gone to, if not here? From everything she knew about them, Sarah seriously doubted that the worms could swim. She was ruminating over it again when Henry spoke.
“We could build a boat.”
“Hmmm?”
“I reckon we could build a boat and float on out of here. Just like I did in Renick. There’s got to be other folks who are still alive.”