A hand waved at them from the cockpit before the plane banked toward the next farm over.
“Harvey is nuts,” Jenny laughed, waving back.
“There are his other boys,” Randy said, pointing around to other farms in the distance where helicopters had lifted off and were preparing to spray.
Harvey’s plane flew in low toward the field, wings locked and steady as he released a perfect line of spray over the corn plants.
“Say what you want about Harvey,” Randy said, “but that man can spray.”
The plane came to the end of the field and lifted higher, banking around for a second turn as the helicopters began dispersing their payloads as far as Randy could see.
“What is that?” Jenny asked, pointing to the field Harvey was working on.
Randy’s eyes drifted back and squinted. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light. It seemed like wisps of black smoke were rising from the part of the field Harvey had just sprayed.
“Is the field on fire?” Randy asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s happening in the other fields, too.” Jenny pointed toward the horizon where black wisps were rising from the fields, reaching for the choppers as the breeze blew them about.
Randy watched as Harvey’s plane flew back into the drifting wisps, laying down another coating of spray. The wind kicked out by the plane’s propeller dispersed the smoky dust in all directions. A moment later, Harvey’s plane swayed in the sky, wings tipping back and forth in a wild, erratic fashion. The nose lifted for a moment before the entire plane flipped upside down and plunged into the ground, throwing up an enormous ball of fire.
Jenny stood with a gasp. “Oh, no. Harvey!”
“What in the world?” Randy stood next to his sister with confusion etched across his face.
In the distance, the helicopters wavered, dipped, and turned inside the black clouds. One chopper lurched forward, banked sharply, and slammed into the ground with another explosion. The others followed suit, leaving the sky empty. The wispy clouds moved as one vast entity as the wind pushed them westward.
“We can’t let them spray our field.” Randy stood up, his gut loose and queasy. “Something’s up with the spray. It’s some kind of poison or something.”
The sound of a machine roaring to life reached them from across the field. Pipes shuddered with pressure, and Harvest Guard burst from the nozzles, spraying the fungicide high into the air where it fell like rain across their entire field. The field sizzled and snapped like bacon cooking on a griddle as inky wisps rose from the soil.
“Mom and Dad!” Jenny cried out, leaping off the bench and running toward the access road that ran through the center of their field.
“No, Jenny!” Randy jumped after his sister, though he knew he had no chance of catching her. She was tall and long-legged, and she’d been running track since eighth grade.
The wind drove the wispy tendrils across the access road, making them look like fingers prodding and hunting for prey, each individual strand a part of some larger beast. The darkness rose higher and higher, dimming the sunlight as a shadow fell across the field.
Randy sprinted harder, shouting, “Jenny, stop! Jenny!”
His sister was well ahead of him, dead set on sprinting through the poison cloud. The girl pulled up ten yards from the wisps as a figure stumbled toward them down the access road. Randy recognized his mother’s yellow button-up shirt and her light red hair. Her eyes bulged out, her neck strained as her head twisted back and forth.
She fought to breathe, gasping for a single ounce of air. It seemed impossible that the friendly, smiling woman who had made them breakfast earlier now looked like something out of a nightmare. Tendrils lay across her skin like burn marks, dispersing in a light puff that reformed once she’d passed.
His mother clutched at her throat with one hand and waved them away with the other.
Randy reached his sister, grabbed her by the arm and jerked her backwards. Jenny resisted, swinging an elbow back to connect with his gut. Randy shrugged off the blow and kept pulling her away. Jenny might be faster but Randy was the stronger of the two. Long days working in the fields during harvest season and playing rough high school sports had broadened his shoulders and given him a toned edge many college athletes would envy.
“She needs our help, Randy!” Jenny wailed as she punched and kicked at him. “Let me go! We need to help her!”
“No, she’s waving us away!” Randy shouted back, watching as his mother nodded fiercely.
The woman stopped at the edge of the access road, holding her hand out to them. Her eyes were filled with pain, yet there was a hint of love and regret in them. She fell to her knees and pitched face forward on the ground.
The sound that grew from Jenny’s chest and erupted from her wide-open mouth was like nothing Randy had ever heard. It was part sob and part animal growl, a sound that rejected their mother’s death outright in the eyes of the world and God. It was a sound Randy knew he would never forget as long as he lived.
Nothing could save their mother. They had to get away or face the same fate. Randy wrapped his arms around his sister, squeezed tight, and dragged her away, kicking and screaming. The wind kicked up and drove the tendrils toward them like an ocean tide.
Jenny suddenly stopped fighting him. She seemed to realize the danger they were in. She turned in his arms and stumbled toward the house, pulling him along with her.
Randy’s stomach dropped when he saw the house covered in tendrils that had blown in from another field. They were settling on the roof and sides of the house, spreading quick.
They could still make it to the house and get inside, but they’d left the windows open. Their house was old, built before air conditioning, designed to allow a stiff breeze to blow through all the time. The tendrils would surely find them before they could shut all the windows and doors.
“Come on,” Randy said, grabbing his sister’s hand. “The truck.”
They sprinted toward the beat-up Ford with the tendrils chasing close behind. Randy threw open the passenger side door, and Jenny dove inside, crawling fast across the seat to knock her head against the driver’s side window. Randy jumped in behind her, slamming the door shut behind him.
The tendrils settled on the glass, pulsing and spreading out like he’d seen them do on the house. Growths like tiny veins stretched for several millimeters before sprouting soft, fuzzy nodules that glowed with a faint crimson luminescence.
Randy’s mouth fell open in horror as he realized that was what his mother had breathed in. That’s what had gotten into her lungs and suffocated her, and his own throat tightened in reflex as more tendrils settled on top of the truck.
“Can it get in?” Jenny’s voice was nearly a shriek as she raised to her knees and looked around in fear.
“I don’t know,” Randy replied, then he realized the truck vents were open. He reached out and slammed the ones in front of him closed. Jenny followed suit, swinging herself upright in the seat and closing the vents on her side of the truck.
Randy looked around in disbelief as the windows turned black and slowly cut off the sunlight.
“Whatever it is, it has weight,” he said. “I think it will settle as long as we don’t disturb it, and then maybe we can leave.” Though Randy believed that about as much as he believed dogs could fly. “Let’s wait it out,” he whispered to comfort himself as much as his sister. “Let’s wait it out.”
Chapter 6
Burke Birkenhoff, Chicago, Illinois
Burke groaned and rolled over in his king-sized bed. Tossing off the covers that twisted around his legs, he glanced at the clock on the nightstand to see it was late afternoon. He picked up a bra that dangled from an empty wine glass and tossed it after the covers.
Feeling around on top of the nightstand, he found the remote control for the blinds and pressed a button. The glass along the walls shifted, and sunlight poured into the room.
“Too much,” he gr
oaned, hitting a second button to reverse the effect so that only faint slivers of light made it into the room. “Much better.”
Burke winced against the impending headache before he put on a pair of running pants and stumbled into the bathroom. As he brushed his teeth, he recalled all the contracts that had recently come in for sales of their latest chemical fungicide, Harvest Guard, and all its derivatives. There was Harvest Guard Plus, Harvest Guard Residential, and even a Harvest Guard Seasonal.
After finishing in the bathroom, he strode along a white tiled hallway singing the Harvest Guard ad slogan to chase away his hangover. “For home, field, or yard, you can trust Harvest Guard.”
Farmers desperate to keep their crops from being wiped out in the summer had purchased record numbers of Durant-Monroe’s “ultimate solution” over the past two weeks, and the company’s stock price had nearly doubled. Billions of gallons of product had shipped two days ago, and every farmer in over a hundred countries would spray today.
Entering the studio-sized living room on the fifty-second floor of the Durant-Monroe building, Burke paused to peer out his enormous bay window. The view of Chicago was extraordinary. The patio door was open, and an exhilarating breeze blew through the apartment. Burke took a deep breath before moving over to the breakfast bar where Pauline sat on a high-backed stool dressed in one of his T-shirts. She sipped coffee as she stared into the living room at the big screen television hanging above the mantle.
“Good morning, Pauline,” Burke said in the light, professional tone he reserved for his assistant, despite the intimacy of their relationship. He came around the counter and kissed her on the forehead. Her blonde hair was still messy from the wild night. “How do you feel this morning?”
“I have mixed feelings,” Pauline replied, never taking her eyes off the television screen. “Get back to me in a few minutes.”
Burke chuckled as he circled back around the bar, grabbing the fixings for a Bloody Mary. There was already a bottle of vodka on the counter next to the stove, so he walked to the refrigerator and dug around for the Bloody Mary mix and some celery. “That’s what I like about you, Pauline. Your dry, snappy sense of humor.”
“Are you watching this?” Pauline asked, and the tone of her voice held a note that made Burke’s spine tingle with danger.
“I’m not,” he admitted. “I’m in too good a mood to care about world events.” He shut the refrigerator door and placed the mix and celery on the counter.
“I’m serious, Burke. You need to get over here.”
Burke let out an annoyed sigh and joined Pauline at the breakfast bar. Arms folded over his bare chest, he watched the news unfold with a growing sense of dread.
A woman news reporter stood in the center of a small-town street while a “Breaking News from Durham, North Carolina” ticker flashed across the bottom of the screen. The reporter smiled into the camera and launched into the story. “Reports out of Durham, North Carolina indicate a possible toxic outbreak after farmers in the area sprayed fungicide on their crops today. Witnesses say there may be a connection between the toxic outbreak and a new chemical fungicide called Harvest Guard. Durant-Monroe Chemicals released Harvest Guard just this week. Farmers and agricultural companies paid up to a month in advance for what Durant-Monroe calls the ultimate solution to fungal diseases affecting crops and crop harvests. Farmers across the United States who wanted to get the jump on fungus infestations this year lined up in droves yesterday to pick up millions of gallons of Harvest Guard with plans of spraying today. Witnesses say the spray produced a black cloud that, when breathed in, caused asphyxiation in its victims. The toxin has already killed dozens of people.”
The screen switched to the reporter holding out her microphone to what Burke assumed was a local farmer with the rough-hewn features of someone who’d worked in the fields his entire life.
“I was late getting started on my spraying,” the farmer said, adjusting his Farmall hat. “But I saw my neighbor, Wiley, start early like he always does. I was working on some of my equipment in the yard when I noticed a black cloud rising above his field. Damn thing looked alive the way it moved.”
“Alive?” the reporter asked in an incredulous tone.
“Yeah, a little,” the farmer acknowledged. “I went to check on Wiley, but he never came out of his field. Then that cloud started moving toward me. Looked like the wind had caught it.”
“Can you tell us which way the cloud went?”
“I think southwest,” the farmer said, but the look in his eyes was uncertain.
The view switched to stock footage of a Durant-Monroe Chemical truck driving down a gravel road while the reporter continued. “Some say the quick push to market by Durant-Monroe is to blame for the toxic outbreak, but that’s speculation at the moment.” The view switched back to the reporter who gave the camera a sharp nod. “This is Deborah Wright reporting from Durham, North Carolina for CNA News.”
They switched to the anchor desk where an anchorman with a slick haircut fixed the camera with a serious expression. “We’ve not been able to reach Durant-Monroe Chemicals for comment, but we expect to hear something very soon.”
“What’s MSNA saying?” Burke’s tone held a note of dread.
Pauline held up the television remote and switched channels.
The story from MSNA was the same except they were reporting from a small town in Indiana where similar outbreaks were happening. There were over a dozen dead there. As Pauline navigated through the channels, it became clear that the toxic outbreaks were happening all across the United States, and things were getting worse by the minute.
A seed of fear settled into Burke’s stomach. His company was on the verge of greatness, and he couldn’t allow it to slip away. Burke narrowed his eyes at the screen. Part of him wasn’t surprised. It was true they had rushed Harvest Guard to market in all its forms, paying off the necessary governmental agencies to punch it through the system. Burke hadn’t been too worried, since the new formula was just a small tweak to the one they’d produced last year.
“This can’t be good, right?” Pauline asked, biting her lip. “Tell me this wasn’t us.”
“This kind of thing happens more than you think,” Burke replied, trying to convince himself more than Pauline. “Everything is fine.” He started looking around for his phone until he saw Pauline fish it out of the front pocket of the T-shirt she wore.
“You started getting direct messages ten minute ago,” she said, waving the phone as Burke came over to take it. “It’s now over a hundred. I thought I’d let you brush your teeth before you dug into them. What do you want me to do?”
Burke stared at his phone like it was a deadly snake dangling between her fingers. Almost angrily, he snatched it out of her hand and set his jaw. “Get Josh over here right away and have him bring all the department heads. We’ll start damage control.”
“You got it. Anything else?”
Burke started to say no, then he glanced up at the television. While he was confident they would get this under control, there was a small chance they wouldn’t.
“Tell Charlie to prep the bus,” Burke said with an ominous tone.
“All right,” Pauline nodded, uncurling her long legs and sitting up in her chair. She turned around, faced a slim laptop resting on the breakfast bar, and opened the screen. “I’m on it, boss,” Pauline said, and she began tapping on the keyboard.
Chapter 7
Moe Tsosie, Bakersfield, California
Moe Tsosie guided his semi-trailer truck onto the entry ramp and joined I-5 heading south. He’d picked up his trailer full of almonds and avocados outside of Bakersfield, California and planned on delivering it to Las Vegas by the end of the day.
It would be a brief trip, just four hours, before he’d head home to Chinle, Arizona for four days of rest. Moe seldom caught so many days off in a row, and he used the time to get caught up on his chores around the house and do some horseback riding in the canyons around th
e reservation.
Traffic was light, so he increased his speed to seventy miles per hour and kicked back with a sigh. Fruit and almond farms stretched to both sides, nothing but green as far as he could see. Industrial sprayers spread out between the rows of crops, and Moe watched the liquid chemicals squirt up from nozzles to arc out over the plants in a fine, misty rain.
In the distance, massive electric towers stood with their arms held wide like Godzilla-sized monsters stalking across the land. The Tejon Mountains painted the horizon behind them, menacing and dark.
Moe glanced left toward Bakersfield and saw the distant speck of a news helicopter flying over the city. He’d cut across to jump on I-15 soon, so it would be nice to find a traffic report. He reached out and flipped on his radio, and the jingle of a car dealership commercial filled the truck cab. Moe sat back and listened until the next news report started a few minutes later.
“This is Rick Davidson reporting from the KGET news chopper in Bakersfield,” the reporter said, the volume of his voice raised over the background noise of whirring rotors. “We’re looking at light traffic throughout the city today, with only a bit of congestion on Highway 99 at 7th Standard Road. Otherwise, it’s a beautiful day out there with winds coming out of the northeast at 11 miles per hour.”
“Awesome,” Moe said, referring to the traffic, and he ran his hand through his long dark hair so it fell back over his shoulders. Moe calculated he could reach Las Vegas by early afternoon and be drinking coffee in Chinle by evening. Luckily, the Denny’s stayed open late, even in his hometown.
Moe flipped on his CD player and Patsy Cline crooned “Always” from his cab speakers. The singer had lived and died before Moe was born, though something about the earnest tone of her voice pierced Moe’s heart. She made him think of the women he’d loved before and the future loves he might live to regret.
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