Matt coughed yellow phlegm into his palm and wiped it onto the blanket, then shivered again. But this time it wasn’t from the fever. For the first time in his life, he was certain of death. It hit him like an NFL defensive end, popping his dazed mindset into cold reality. If he didn’t leave tomorrow, he’d die. He’d die from infection, or from one final attack.

The wind carried the scent of sweet gale up from the Black. He thought of the trout finning in the dark water and gentle riffles under the Milky Way. Cold. So cold. He took his black North Face jacket out of his backpack and laid it over himself.

Ah . . . the waters of the upper Black, he thought. His eyelids fluttered and he dozed off into paradise, away from the darkness.

He woke at 2:00 a.m., teeth chattering. He crawled under the blankets, his legs rigid and unresponsive. For a moment he wondered if it was ten degrees in the shack. Thoughts of Stacey popped into his mind, her warm smile and laughter comforting him.

“I’m s-s-sorry if I f-f-failed you guys” he said. The fever wracked him and he shuddered. When he closed his eyes, he felt the frenzied bacteria colonizing the highways of his arteries and the fertile soil of muscle tissue. The bacteria weren’t all that different from the Being. He couldn’t see them, yet they still disabled him, trapping him.

“Why d-d-don’t you go f-f-find the Being and invade its b-body,” he mumbled. “That’s the b-bad guy.”

Mother nature doesn’t choose sides, the little voice said. She just is, Matthew.

“I g-g-guess I c-caught the the bad e-end of i-it, huh?” he asked.

Yes, you did, the voice said.

“I’m g-g-going to die, aren’t I?” he asked.

There was no response.

Matt slipped into vivid dreams of color and action. Objects and people swirled around him—his mother, his father, Stacey, and Andrea. Stacey walked towards him in a park, then away like a yoyo. In his dream he jostled from the bumps of Julip Road as he lay on a cot in his father’s old pickup. His father looked through the rear sliding window of the cab, grinning, letting him know they’d arrived. It was all so pretty. Everyone he loved made an appearance, and they loped from scene to scene. He relished it all, happy to see them, excited to feel their energy. The peace and finality warmed his heart. He shook his father’s hand, then embraced him, telling him how happy he was to see him.

Matt woke at 3:00 a.m., convulsing under the covers, teeth knocking so hard they cut his tongue. He spit blood on the covers and laughed. “This is f-fun!” he said to no one. “Best f-fun I’ve had in a l-long time. So glad I c-c—came.”