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only with
the rhythmic chirp and wing beats of insects. The watchtower’s dim light was
attracting moths, mosquitoes, and their many winged friends, some of whom were
unsettlingly large. But Corks was used to that, for the most part.
    A moth flitted and fluttered around
the glow of the light as he watched. Would the insects be next? The virus had
already taken all the other animals, and if it jumped to insects, how could the
town be protected then?
    Even if insects lost their ability to
fly following infection, as the birds had, they’d likely keep their ability to
climb. And even though their climbing would become clumsy, they’d probably make
it up the concrete and through the chain link after a few practice go’s, and
then that would be all she wrote.
    The coffee’s smell was wafting up at
him, but it gave him no comfort.
    That won’t happen, he told himself.
It’s been too long since the last mutation already, so there won’t be any more.
The insects can’t get it, because they’re too different. They can’t.
    It was difficult to rely on that sort
of logic, because a great variety of animals had succumbed to infection. After
humans, the virus had jumped to other mammals, and then to birds, and then to
fish. Corks couldn’t be sure that insects and fish were more different than
mammals and birds. Maybe insects were just as different from mammals as fish
were.
    Perhaps all that was worth knowing was
that the virus was smarter than the world and all of its creatures, and where
it had found ways of entering new species, it would do so once more.
    Briefly, he felt gripped by a
panic-fueled urge to exterminate all the damned bugs and insects in the world.
His breathing became more rapid and uneven. This was when it always became hard
to control.
    “I’m watching over the town, over New
Crozet, my town,” Corks said as calmly as he could between gasps for air. “I
have to keep it together. I can keep it together. I do keep it together.
Everything’s under control. Everything’s okay. It’ll be another uneventful
night, and New Crozet will go on another day. We’ll go on.”
    Hardening his resolve, he stood up
straighter and reminded himself of the job he had to do, and that he was going
to do it extremely well. He wouldn’t allow himself anything less.
    As the wings beat frantically around
him, he took a tepid sip from his thermos, and then another, before screwing it
up again and putting it back in its place under his chair. He often fell victim
to anxiety attacks when he was in the watchtower, but rarely this early in the
night. They usually began just before his shift ended, when his time at his
post was running out.
    The anxiety came to him on most of his
shifts at that time, just before first light. The attacks were characterized by
an overwhelming feeling that the world was out of control, and that he couldn’t
control anything, not even the smallest of details around him, but that he had
to try. As the end of his shift drew nearer, this mania would metastasize
progressively, causing him to close his eyes for set intervals, reopen them briefly
and then close them again, the sight of the reality that surrounded him too
much to bear.
    On this night, the anxiety took a
different turn. Rather than shutting his eyes for counts of five or ten or
fifteen as he was prone to do, he found himself staring at the dirt road toward
the forest, unblinking and unable to shift his attention away. He felt that the
image of the road was burning itself into his mind, carving its dust and gravel
into the soft matter of his brain to create an indelible impression there,
crisscrossing the folds.
    Corks tried to look away but couldn’t
even turn his neck.
    Beads of sweat formed at the fringes
of his receding hairline and ran down his brow, collecting over his eyebrows in
preparation for the next leap. Moments later he was hyperventilating, and a sheen
of sweat was draping his forehead, then sweat was soaking through his