It struck me then that maybe some of the odd bits I remembered from stories and textbooks and documentaries might actually be useful out here in the real world. Which meant that maybe at some point I might be as useful as Patrick out here, too.

“That’s right,” I said.

“If this stuff is like that fungus, then why didn’t Mrs. McCafferty do the same thing as her husband? And the Franklins? If they were infected by some human version of that parasite or whatever, why didn’t they climb up to the highest spot they could find and … explode?”

“I don’t know. It makes no sense.” Picturing that dark shadow looming over me at the base of the water tower, I shuddered. “What was Mr. Franklin gonna do to me?”

“It was weird,” Patrick said. “He was just walking calmly, not trying to run you down. Different from his wife or Mrs. McCafferty. I saw him from the ladder. He was walking with his head angled down, like he was looking for something.”

“Without any eyes,” I said.

“That’s right. But if he did have eyes, they would’ve been pointed at the ground. You happened to land right in his path. That’s the only reason he noticed you and started to come after you. At least that’s what it looked like.”

“So the spores, maybe they affect men and women differently,” I said.

“The women try to catch people and the men walk around and look at stuff? What for?”

I shrugged. JoJo ambled forward and hugged my side, even as we kept walking. I laid an arm across her back, careful not to hurt her with the baling hook. She was murmuring to herself, what sounded like a nursery rhyme. After a few steps, she let go and drifted back with her brother.

We walked in silence for a time. The only sound was our boots crunching against the dirt. We emerged from the corn into the scrubby, tree-studded land between our place and the McCaffertys’. As we edged through a row of Gambel oak, the lights of our porch started to resolve.

“Even if they weren’t human anymore,” I said quietly to Patrick, “it still feels like we’ve killed people, you know?”

“If you were like that, would you want to keep living?” Patrick asked. “Would you want to know your body was still running around, terrorizing other people?”

I pictured myself doing awful things without knowing I was doing them. “No,” I said. “No way.”

“These spores float over everything,” Patrick said. “Like a crop dusting.”

“That’s right,” I said. “A dusting.”

“Then why aren’t we Hosts?” Patrick gestured back to Rocky and JoJo. “Or them? We breathed the same air as Mrs. McCafferty and the Franklins. If the spores turn people, why hasn’t it turned us?”

“Maybe we’re immune.”