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He pushed the swing harder than she’d been doing Little Pete almost fell backward

“Oh, God How did it happen?”

“Worms,” Sam said dully “Some kind of worm Or snake I don’t know I have a dead one in there on the kitchen counter I was hoping you’d…I don’t knohat I was hoping I figure you’re our expert on ht?”

He said the expert part with a wry s She was just the only person who cared enough to try and make sense in a syste in the FAYZ

“If you keep pushing him, he’ll be fine,” Astrid said of her brother

She found the creature in a Baggie on the kitchen counter It looked more like a snake than a worm, but not like any normal snake, either

She pressed gingerly on the bag, hoping it really was dead She spread waxed paper on the granite counter and dued in the junk drawer for a tape measure and did her best to follow the contours of the creature

“Eleven inches,” she noted

Then she found her ca a fork to lift the ie

Astrid loaded the pictures onto her laptop She dragged them into a folder labeled “Mutations—Photos” There were dozens of pictures Birds with strange talons or beaks Snakes with short wings Subsequent pictures showed larger snakes with larger wings One, taken at a distance, seemed to show a rattlesnake the size of a sle’s

She had a blurry photo of a coyote twice the size of any nor a strangely shortened tongue that looked creepily hurotesque JPEGs of a cat that had fused with a book

Other photos were of kids, h the boy called Orc looked like afrom his palms She hated the picture because the expression on his face as he demonstrated his power for her camera was so sad

Astrid clicked opened the worm pictures and used the zoom function to take a closer look

Little Pete came in, followed by Sam

“Look at that mouth,” Astrid said, awestruck The worm had a mouth like a shark It was impossible to count the hundreds of tiny teeth The wor