With real eyes.

I let out a garbled sound, choking on a gasp.

His gentle voice descended on me with that great lilting accent. “Chance? Is that you?”

It took two tries before I could find any words. “Dr. Chatterjee,” I said. “Wait—you’re a grown-up. Why aren’t you infected?”

He held out a trembling hand to pull me up to my feet. “That isn’t the question,” he said. “It’s the answer.”

Entry 12

ENTRY 12

We all headed down the long school hallway clustered together, Dr. Chatterjee moving at a decent pace despite his leg orthotics. I was still breathing hard, relieved that I hadn’t had my skull caved in by my favorite teacher.

“White matter!” Dr. Chatterjee announced excitedly. “It’s the key.”

“Like brain white matter?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t we keep our voices down?” Patrick said.

Dr. Chatterjee waved him off. “It’s safe in here. Now, look.” He unclipped an electronic unit swaying from his belt like a holstered gun. We all crowded around to see it in the dim hall.

“Wait,” Rocky said. “That’s the carbon monoxide detector thing, right?”

We looked at him, surprised.

“What?” he said. “I was emergency room captain in Mrs. Rauch’s class last year.”

“That’s right,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “It detects carbon monoxide, natural gas, other hazardous leaks. But check this out.” He clicked a button, backlighting the screen, which blinked code red. Beneath it two words flashed: UNIDENTIFIED PARTICULATE.

His face, shiny with sweat, held equal parts worry and excitement. “So my hypothesis is that this airborne particulate enters the human body—”

“Tell him about the spores,” Patrick said to me.

Dr. Chatterjee stiffened. “What spores?”

“Like the zombie ants,” I said.

His lips quivered a little. He scratched at the side of his face, the stubble giving off a rasping sound. It occurred to me that I’d never seen him not perfectly clean-shaven. “What do you mean, Chance?”

“Well, we saw Hank McCafferty—” I caught myself, feeling a surge of remorse. I glanced nervously at Rocky and JoJo.

Rocky’s eyes glimmered, but he kept his chin up. “It’s okay,” he said. “I want to know.”

I took a deep breath. Then I continued, filling in Dr. Chatterjee, starting with when Patrick had interrupted me in the barn. The acrid smell on the wind. The hammering noises and screams carrying over from the McCafferty place. When I got to the part about Mrs. McCafferty in the grain silo, JoJo buried her and Bunny’s faces in her brother’s chest. I described climbing to the top of the water tower and the sight waiting for us, Hank blown wide open, releasing spores to the wind.