Sam followed the streaming gas cloud with his eyes, into the streets of the suburb, the sodium lights on the lampposts shining down into it as it drifted past.

Now he saw what he had missed before, when the Jeep had been farther down the sloped road: there were bodies lying all over the ground in the subdivision. They lay sprawled on front lawns, sidewalks, even in the streets.

Sam’s mind put it all together like the pieces of a child’s jigsaw puzzle:

The chopper crash had been loud enough to wake every single person in the suburb, and the flames had been bright and high enough to be seen from every house.

It was hard to imagine even a single person—man, woman, or child—not going outside to look, or at the very least opening a window to see what was going on.

Nearly the entire population of Ashland had been standing on their lawns when the gas cloud rolled through, indistinguishable from the smoke. They had inhaled it without the slightest idea of what it was.

When you’re exposed to the mist, you black out within seconds, stay unconscious for five minutes or so, and then you wake up fully symptomatic—a monster.

“Oh Jesus,” Pierce said softly. “This is bad. This is real, real bad…”

“Is everyone going to start killing each other when they wake up?” Dani asked.

Pierce stared at the subdivision, thinking it through—maybe envisioning what was coming.

“In the wild, they never did,” Pierce said. “The bailarines, I mean. The afflicted never attacked each other.”

Sam thought of his father—he had to be up there somewhere, probably lying sprawled on the front lawn of the house. But not for long. How many minutes had passed since the chopper had crashed—since the gas cloud had begun drifting through the suburb? Three, at least. Maybe four.

Sam took his eyes off the houses and the yards, and turned them on the crash site again. On Lauren. She was lying nowhere near the ruptured canister, and far clear of where the wind was blowing the gas. There was no real chance she had been exposed. The fact that she was awake verified it.

“Let’s just get Lauren and go,” Sam said.

He braced a foot on the sidewall of the Jeep and hopped down to the road. Dani was just behind him, about to step down, when Pierce spoke: “Look.”

Sam and Dani both turned to follow his gaze to the downed helicopter.