Chapter 31

At dawn after the storm, George is feverish and grotesquely swollen. Jack refuses Larry’s plea to fetch medicine America-side, fearing arrest and todash danger. George urges them to finish their mission, names their bond, then dies. They let him rest by the fire through the night.

In the morning, they bury George by the road, marking the grave with a taped cross and his glasses while Alice sings a farewell. They drive deeper into Bayver Road’s claustrophobic woods; the blob-boxes’ voices dull to a drone as the crates bulge. That night Jack organizes watches.

Richard the bumbler wakes Jack to find Slow Mutants ringed around the camp. Jack’s warning shot and kill spark a firefight; the muties retreat except one, who climbs onto Goldie and smothers Larry until he blasts her apart with a bolt pistol. Ry nearly beats Larry for sleeping on watch; Jack stops him, noting the muties still lurking at the treeline.

On the eighth day, trees thin and the muties fade. While watering the boxes, Mary’s hand is silently swallowed by the gray blob in Lazaro. Jack slowly pulls her free as the mass mutters dreamlike fragments; her hand is uninjured but pruney, and they resolve to watch for infection.

That night, Larry—face torn, lips flayed from scrubbing away the mutie’s kiss—fires the SAW wildly, then turns it skyward. He confesses the kiss left him hearing the redhead/mutie voices commanding them to kill each other and fail. Jack confirms the Doom Boxes aren’t the source. Larry fights the compulsion, refusing to reload, but warns he’ll soon turn. Acknowledged as ka-tet, he takes Jack’s mercy of returning his pistol and, to protect them, shoots himself under the chin. Ry grimly notes they are four now.