What was the plan, exactly? Make his way across the subdivision and come out on the north side? He wouldn’t make it half that distance before someone tore him to pieces.

What options did that leave? Sitting tight somewhere in here? Tucking in and waiting for the military to finally show up and get control of the scene?

Where could he do that? Where could he hole up?

He looked around and found himself considering a tall sugar maple at the edge of the yard. Would the afflicted be able to climb up after him?

Was it worth the risk of finding out the hard way?

He thought of the obvious answer—hiding inside a house—but there were lots of problems with that plan. First, any house might have the afflicted inside it. Second, and more unnerving, any house might still contain traces of the poison gas. The wind had cleared the streets and yards of the stuff, but whatever had blown into houses through open windows could still be inside, if only a little. And a little might be enough.

There was simply no way to be sure, no matter what house he tried—

He cut himself off mid-thought, and stared away into the haze along the street.

Lauren Coleman’s house was down there somewhere, not far.

In his mind he saw Dani taking the key from its hiding spot, that afternoon. Saw the two of them stepping inside, the air of the place stale and hot after a week of being closed up tight, no windows open, no air conditioner running.

They had left it that way, too.

CHAPTER FORTY

On a normal night Sam could have sprinted to the house in less than a minute. On this night, the going would be nowhere near as fast.

He moved from hiding place to hiding place—shrubs along the edges of porches, clumps of small pine trees in front yards. Wherever he stopped, he held still and waited, listening for sounds close by in the dense smoke.

He had covered maybe half the distance to Lauren’s house now. He ran to a waist-high sprawl of lilac bushes near a mailbox and ducked down. He could hear a low, steady rumbling sound, and realized after a few seconds that it was a car engine.

His mind conjured up an absurd image: one of the afflicted behind the wheel of a vehicle, madly racing up and down the streets of Ashland, taking out any person or thing that got in the way.

But the vehicle didn’t sound like it was moving at all. It sounded like it was parked and idling, somewhere close by.