Chapter 25
THE IDEA of traipsing across town wearing an emergency blanket and a scowl left me cold. And drafty. Fred offered to drop me off at home on their way back to their watch steeple. I rode in silence, glowering in the fire truck’s front passenger seat, questions washing through my brain.
I should have burned to death. Had something in the melon healed me? Had Absolute seeded the town with hospital fruit? That thought chilled me. It implied that the creature that had eradicated life on Earth had plans for our future.
But recovery wasn’t quite the word. The bruise at the back of my head, where someone had tried to use a baseball bat to split my skull, had completely healed. I’d skinned a knuckle some point in the last couple of days. Even the scab was gone. The quarter-sized blist
