Outside, it was raining—unobtrusively but relentlessly. The early afternoon was drab, but in the little park across the hospital courtyard, there was color. The circular beds of pink roses, of multi-colored pansies, of bluebells seemed brighter for the rain which beat so gently at them.
Wing heard the muted twittering of birds as he stood on the hospital steps. He looked up into the lowering sky and let the raindrops beat at his bandaged face. The door behind him opened and Dead-Eye came stumbling out.
Wing breathed deeply of the wet air, felt it clearing the heat and pain from his mind.
He looked at Dead-Eye, then toward the east where the blue radiance suffused the sky.
"Let's go," he said simply.
They hadn't trudged far in the rain before they found out what Pat Packer's unemotional voice had meant.
Terror was riding through the city, whipping the men and women of Earth into madness and death.
As the two of them moved closer to the edge of the blue flower, wild-eyed humans fled past them, casting fearful glances behind.
These panic-stricken humans ran silently, except for the gasps which burst from tortured throats. Abandoned children sobbed as they ran, not knowing nor caring where they went—driven by the fear of what was behind them.
Behind them, flames from burning houses were growing brighter and dull explosions were growing louder. Soon there were no more humans running, but as Wing Commander Curt Wing and Dead-Eye plodded on, they saw charred and broken corpses and the smell of burnt flesh was mingling with the stench of wood and plastic and paint.