Henry grabbed the edge of the desk as the floor bucked and trembled beneath his feet. A deep, sonorous groan echoed from outside, followed by the sound of screeching metal. The tower shook harder, dislodging gear and hardware from the shelves. Items crashed to the tiles and rolled toward him. Henry cried out, terrified, but Sarah’s reaction was quite different. Her screams abruptly turned into laughter.
She’s snapped, he thought, as the ranger station shook harder. The sound of breaking glass came from somewhere over his head, but Henry squeezed his eyes shut, too afraid to look. Sarah’s gone crazy. That must be it. But so fast! What the hell am I gonna do now?
Then, just as suddenly as they’d started, the tremors stopped. Henry didn’t loosen his grip on the desk. He feared it would start all over again if he did. The only sound, other than his breathing, was Sarah giggling. And the rain. Always the rain.
“Do it again, Henry,” she said. “Make it go again!”
“It wasn’t me, Sarah. I reckon it’s the mold. We’ve seen how it turns everything into water. Figure it’s doing the same thing to the station. We can’t stay here.”
“We’ll be okay,” she said. Her voice was clear and confident. Gone was any trace of insanity. “Kevin will be here soon.”
“Kevin? Sarah… Kevin’s dead. You know that. You told me that you shot him yourself, because he was turning into one of them.”
“He’ll be here,” she insisted. “He’s in the helicopter, with Salty. They’ll be along any minute.”
Henry took a deep breath. Letting go of the desk, he stepped toward her. “Sarah, we’re alone here. Well, except for Earl and them others. Don’t you remember?”
And then someone spoke behind Henry, making a liar out of him. Henry yelped in surprise. Spinning around, he saw that the station was empty, except for him and Sarah.
“Who’s there? Come on out, god damn you!”
“My name is Steven Kazmirski. I’m here with my wife, Nahed Shahabi, and our Himalayan cat, Burman.”
“The radio,” Henry yelled, feeling foolish. “It’s the radio.”
He wondered for a moment what had become of the previous broadcaster, Sylva. The man had been infected. Had he finally succumbed? Henry glanced back at Sarah. She seemed calm now, though her eyes had a glazed look. She too was listening. Henry turned his attention back to the speaker.
“…left the John Hancock Tower and rowed over here in the darkness. We didn’t want to use the boat’s motor or spotlight, because we didn’t want to attract predators. There were a lot of corpses in the water. They… bumped into…”
The signal faded. Henry cursed, tensing, until it came back again after a short burst of static.
“…have stayed in California. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, though. But we moved cross the country to Newton. We liked it there, especially with Nahed being pregnant. But then the rain… major pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, just across the Charles River. I solve protein structures with potential drug compounds… Nahed attended…”
There was a particularly long burst of static. Frantic, Henry ran over to the ham radio set, staring at the controls and wondering which one to use. Then the speaker returned. The signal seemed weaker.
“…the Prudential Building… Sylva’s last communication was twelve hours ago. We came… dead. I had to shoot him three times. His last… for his son, Alex, whom I believe he mentioned several times during his broadcasts. I only wish our boat had washed up on our tower sooner, so I could have helped Sylva and his friends before the disease… am sure… my biochemistry and drug development background. If I can learn more about how it spreads… if the white fuzz is fungal, alien, or bacterial, but it’s certainly alive, and therefore contains different proteins… obtain a pure sample of a protein that’s essential in the machinery that replicates the white fuzz’s DNA, then I could stop it with drugs. If the DNA can’t replicate… can’t grow, so I’ll collect fungus samples and extract the protein… using gravity… chromatography columns. Then… add the drug… either a small chemical molecule or a bio-molecule that’s been purified… once … the drug complex to crystallize, I could have a potential cure within a week.”
“You hear this, Sarah? It’s gonna be okay. This fella on the radio says he can stop the fungus!”
“I want to know,” Sarah sang, “who’ll stop the rain?”
“One thing at a time, I reckon,” Henry muttered.
“…need an X-ray generator… university, pharmaceutical company, or government lab that’s not underwater. I’ve heard that the Havenbrook facility in Pennsylvania is still functioning… try for that. I’ll also need power to run… for the math and structure viewing. If Havenbrook doesn’t have electricity, I can always rig up some gas generators… with a baby on the way… I’m doing everything possible to ensure my family’s protect… but I’m itchy and my skin feels funny… the cat has been hissing at me…”
“He’s got it,” Henry whispered, feeling his heart sink. “This poor guy has it, too.”
Sarah began to sing louder, punctuating the chorus with sobs and laughter. Henry felt like doing the same.
CHAPTER 71
Henry switched off the radio and stood there, shoulders slumped, head down, arms hanging limp. He felt drained, both physically and emotionally. His ears felt hot and were filled with a droning buzz. He swayed back and forth, unsure if the tower was shaking again or if he was just about to pass out. The heat spread to his cheeks and forehead. His vision began to blur.
“No,” he mumbled. “Ain’t got time to pass out. Earl and them others will be back. Got to barricade the door again.”
He turned unsteadily. Sarah remained sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She’d stopped singing, but her shoulders still shook with laughter. Her cheeks glistened with tears. More streamed from her red-rimmed eyes.
“Do it, Henry,” she moaned. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Ignoring her, Henry made his way to the door. It was more difficult than he’d expected. His legs were wobbly, and he kept bumping into things. His mind kept returning to what Steven Kazmirski, the man on the radio, had said. Here was a guy who had a cure, who had a means for saving the world, or at the very least, stopping the White Fuzz. But he’d never be able to do it. Henry hadn’t understood all the scientific jargon the man had spouted, but even if he did make it all the way from Boston to that Havenbrook Research Center, he was still infected. He’d be dead before he ever finished the cure.
They all would be, Henry realized. Even if the man on the radio had been able to stop the fungus, he couldn’t stop the rain. The weather was merciless and unchanging. The rain would not stop. It would still be there long after they were dead. Henry stopped halfway to the door and glanced out the tower’s large window. Where once had been a tree-lined horizon, there was now an ocean. Debris floated atop the churning surface—halves of buildings and uprooted trees, cars and trucks, corpses, and even an apparently unmoored ship. The ranger station stood at the very top of the mountain, anchored deep into the rocks, yet black water now lapped at the cliffs just a few hundred yards beneath the tower’s base. In another week, maybe two, it would reach them. But did they even have that long? The steel was weakening, turning to liquid, and those mold monsters were determined to get in.
“Oh, Ma,” Henry whispered. “I miss you and Pa and Moxey. I can see the end of the world from here.”
He stared down at the waves. Two weeks at most, unless the tower collapsed beneath their feet or Earl and the other creatures got inside before then. As if on cue, Henry heard a familiar shuffling gait on the stairs outside. Then a muffled voice rasped.