Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Boy

At first light I unbolted the cellar door and found the boy on the shop step.

Tuck had seen him through the ventilation grille, a small shape curled against the shutters with his knees pulled up.

He was nine, the bakery woman's son.

He had been caught outside at the bus stop when the sky changed, and he had crawled four blocks home along the walls.

The woman came up the stairs behind me and made a sound I hope I never hear again.

His hair was wet, and his hands were wet, and a grey line ran up the inside of each arm toward his elbows.

His skin was hot to the touch.

"He's rain sick," I said.

"He's breathing," she said. "He's breathing, Gillian. Do something."

I knew the rule.

Rain sick people turn into hollows in about a day.

Unless they are cured, and the Terminal had been the only place that could do it.

I carried the boy down the stairs and laid him on a blanket.

The whole cellar had gone silent, and every face was turned toward us.

Ezra was sitting on a crate, with his bad night plain in the circles under his eyes.

I crossed the cellar and knelt in front of him.

"I'm asking you," I said. "I'm not telling you."

"I know the difference." He looked at the boy and at his mother, and his face did a small, tired thing.

"What do you need?"

"A cup of clean water, and one drop."

"Only one?"

"Only one."

Tuck brought a tin cup from the barrel.

Ezra took a paring knife from the shelf and drew it across the pad of his left thumb.

A bead of blood came up, bright and round.

He held it over the cup until it fell.

The drop sank in the water and turned it faintly pink.

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