If I could have, I would have asked Lark for an autograph. My son was a huge fan—emphasis on the was, because, in all likelihood, Rayph was dead—as were Jules, and Pel.

I spent a while trying to push thoughts of my family out of my head. The knowledge of their rejection was too painful for me. Eventually—after a couple minutes of subjective time—I slowed down my thoughts and returned time to normal, joining Heggy in helping the singer’s bodyguards lift Lark out of his stretcher and onto one of the hospital beds being wheeled into the Hall.

“Somebody get some damned epoxy on the double!” Heggy shouted.

Seeing the lull in the crowd, Ani walked out through the doors. Dr. Lokanok was never one to waste an opportunity to take charge.

She waved her arms. “Everyone,” she said, “follow me. We’ve got triage tents set up in the courtyard. We’ll get you sorted as quickly as possible.”

“AN—Ani!” Jonan yelled, at first into the megaphone, but then with his own voice. “What are you doing? There are zombies out there!”

Dr. Lokanok looked over her shoulder, toward her improbable boyfriend. “Someone’s gotta be there for them, Jonan,” she said. “These people are scared.”

Ani walked out onto the street without another word. She stood among the crowd tall and lithe, like an iris among marsh-reeds. At times like these, the impressions of precocity and genius conveyed by those big, round spectacles of hers were worth their weight in gold. Like Heggy, there was just something about Ani that made you want to trust her.

Setting the megaphone on the floor, Jonan vaulted over the staircase’s polished balustrade. People scattered as he landed on the ground floor with a resounding thud—a drop of several feet—and stayed out of his way as he darted to the bleeding pop-music icon’s bed.

Jonan glanced at Mr. Lark’s beleaguered bodyguards. “I’ll take good care of him guys,” he said. “Give yourselves a pat on the back. You did a good job.”

Great, I thought, so he’s a fan of the Morgans, too?

It would have been highly inappropriate for me to ask him that question, but, thankfully, Jonan disappeared before I had a chance to not ask him. With the help of two nurses, he rolled the bed through the jammed automatic doors at the back of the Hall, while beds continued flowing out in the opposite direction. Most of the sheets and pillows were still dirtied from their previous users’ infections. There wasn’t time to clean them.

I imagined these beds had been assigned to new patients, but then the firefight began, and now our new arrivals took precedence.

Suddenly, a new voice broke through the chaos.

“Move!” someone yelled.

It was coming from outside.

“Move! We’re military!”

“Coming through!” another man yelled.

A group of soldiers limped toward the entranceway, carrying an unconscious comrade on their shoulders. Their standard-issue, camo-patterned uniforms were sheathed in a thick, but flexible cover of black carbon-fiber armor: breastplates, pauldrons, and jambeaus.

Their voices came out scratchy, no doubt because of their face-occluding gas-masks.

“A little help, Dr. Howle,” Nurse Kaylin said, glancing at me. Briefly, she looked away and let out a nasty cough.

“Jess…” I muttered, obviously concerned—and then more so when I thickened my wyrmsight and saw the fungus’ aura beginning to bloom in her chest.

“No time,” she said, turning back to face me. “C’mon.”

I needed to make a rule about not using my wyrmsight on my colleagues. I didn’t want to see it in them.

I wanted to have hope.

I cursed under my breath as I helped Nurse Kaylin grab the unconscious soldier.

“Boys,” one of the soldiers said, glancing at his teammates.

Working together, we lifted the ailing soldier and put him onto a bed. I wished it was one worthy of his valor, rather than one with black stains of infection ooze in various states of dryness mottling its sheets. He and it could be cleaned later, if the soldier survived, but he almost certainly wouldn’t, so it really didn’t matter one way or the other.

At this point, you had to be in denial or outright insane if you thought that anyone had recovered from the Green Death, or even could recover from it. I know, never say never, but, at this rate, if recovery or immunity was even possible, it would be unspeakably rare; so rare, it might as well not exist. In a world that made sense, you’d like to think that, between recovery and “gaining magic powers and slowly transforming into monstrous wyrms”, recovery would be more likely, but it had been a week to the day since the world had last made sense, and, sad to say, it showed no signs of reverting back to making sense anytime soon.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Heggy turned around. “Private,” she said, roaring at one of the soldiers, “what the hell is going on here?!” She jabbed her finger at the mushroom clouds dissolving in the distant sky. “Are we nuking our own people?”

The soldier shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he replied, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

The visors on the soldiers’ imposing helmets looked black as Night from the outside, but, as Heggy had once told me, on the inside, the men were face-to-face with a detailed digital heads-up display, constantly relaying data from both their superiors and the battlefield in front of them.

I wondered what kinds of messages were passing before his eyes right now.

Heggy growled at him. “N-Not at liberty to say?” She sputtered. “Boy, do you know who the hell you’re talkin’ to?”

But before the man could follow up with a question of his own, another soldier ran up to us, carrying a black plastic case that looked like it had been chewed up by an angry airport luggage mover and spat back out.

“Are you doctors?” he asked.

Heggy and I nodded. “Yes.”

Andalon watched quietly at my side.

He thrust the case into my hands.

I yelped.

“Get this to a Dr. Meesle-lan Skor-byne-ka.”

“Dr. Skorbinka?” I said, blinking in surprise.

I cannot begin to explain how weird it feels for your eyelids to lag behind your decision to make them blink. I’m so glad I don’t have to put up with it anymore.

The soldier nodded. “It’s something from Stovolsk.” He glanced at the case. “Whoever sent it took great pains to get it here.”

“Stovolsk?” I said, shocked.

My wyrmly-perfect memory told me exactly why that mattered.

“Genneth,” Heggy shook her head, “what is it?”

I locked eyes with Dr. Marteneiss, trembling with anticipation.

“The experimental treatment Dr. Skorbinka suggested,” I said, “the—the mycophage—it’s arrived!”

Heggy’s eyes widened faster than a startled deer’s. “No shit…” she said.

“Is that a good thing, Mr. Genneth?” Andalon asked.

I answered with a thought: Yes, Andalon. That’s good.

It was the best news I’d heard all day. For a moment, I felt something almost like hope.

I tightened my grip on the case. Heck, I held on to the thing like it was dear life itself!

And, as far as I knew, it might just be.

Fresh volleys of gunfire spat out in the distance—nearer than farther, by the sound of it. Shouts and cries of terror rippled through the civilians.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors they’d seen on their ride with the military convoy to WeElMed.

“Shit,” Heggy said again.

The people were getting riled up again.

The tension was so thick, you could taste it.

Or maybe that was just the sickly sweet stench of fungal spores.

Heggy stepped forward and yelled. “Ani, get over here! There’s a—”

—Without warning, the wordless moans of an unearthly choir reverberated through the pre-dawn sky. The sound shook you to your bones. Everyone froze. Scattered voices spoke their worries, saying things like, “There it is again!”, “What the hell is that noise?”, and “The monsters are gonna to get us.”

But I wasn’t focusing on their fear. No: I was focusing on Andalon. Where others showed fear, Andalon showed compassionate concern. She floated up over the crowd, rising higher and higher, as if to meet the sound right as it crested over the city’s skyline.

Then, looking down, she turned around to face me.

“It’s the wyrmehs, Mr. Genneth. They’re…” She looked left and right. “They’re singing.”

A potent mix of emotions wracked through her tender body. Fear, excitement; worry, sorrow, and longing.

“They’re so sad.” She wept. “The wyrmehs are so, so sad…”

“Private,” Heggy said, “I’m Heggy Marteneiss.” The instant the words left Heggy’s mouth, the handful of soldiers around us staggered back in shock, drawing my attention away from Andalon.

“Shit!” one of them cursed. He turned to another. “Labder, that’s right, General Marteneiss’ sister works at the goddamn hospital!”

They bowed deeply. “We’re sorry, ma’am.”

“Michaels, she’s still a civilian,” Private Labder said, replying with angEr. “We’re not at liberty to discuss—”

“—Labder, she’s a Marteneiss and a doctor. Now shut up and let me tell her what’s going on before she has her brother court-martial us!”

Heggy nodded in approval, smiling from behind her see-through rebreather mask. “You two better tell me what the hell is going on!”

Private Michaels—the one who’d handed me the mycophage case—pointed at the Crusader Hill Tunnel. “Our commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Adam Kaplan went to take out some hostiles in the tunnel and recapture the armored transport at the head of the survivor convoy.”

“And what about the—”

—The roar of aerostat turbines interrupted Heggy’s question. We all looked up to see an aircraft descending over the middle of the scallop-paved street. People scattered from the landing zone like leaves in the wind. Machinery hissed and whirred as the aerostat settled in place and shut its engines down. Hydraulics smoothly lifted up the door on the side of its hull. A man stepped out. The black hazmat suit he wore made ours seem archaic by comparison. Its carbon fiber armor was studded with built-in technology. The thing was as much a weapon of war as it was protection against a hostile, biohazards environment.

Knowing my luck, it probably had air conditioning, too.

Actually, it turned out it was a liquid-based cooling system, though my point still stands.

The darkness on the helmet’s visor slunk away like smoke in a breeze, giving us a clear view of the face inside. A light came on in the helmet, revealing a dour, grizzled visage.

Over by Crusader Hill Tunnel at the opposite end of the Garden Court, I could hear engines thrum. Sound and movement rippled through the crowd as people turned to look, but the gasps of fear and alarm turned to relief and cheers.

It was the convoy!

They emerged safely from Crusader Hill Tunnel.

“Thank the Angel,” one of the soldiers said, “the civilians made it!”

“He did it!” Michaels said.

Aerostats hovered into view. They must have been the convoy’s escorts.

They meandered through the air briefly before landing on the tops of some of the hospital’s newer buildings.

Then the man in the black hazmat suit spoke. His words echoed through the entire WeElMed complex, broadcast live on every available speaker.

“Greetings, West Elpeck Medical Center. I am—”

Waving an arm, Heggy darted through the doors and out onto the street. “Hey, Vernon!” she said. “It’s ‘bout time you got here!”