Nothing but roiling blackness outside, and the stink of fungal growth indoors. With the windows sealed it wasn’t too bad—foul smelling but survivable. Some of the refugees came down with a cough, and the medics treating it almost caused a riot talking about an airborne infection. The doctors had to explain they meant a lung infection, fungal spores trying to colonize the lungs, not a parasitic infection. The wind died down and the dust fell out of the air, barely in time for the sunset’s light to reveal the East River’s waters stained black and scarlet. It was still dangerous in places, especially where dust had piled up into drifts—walking through could kick up fresh fungal spores—but the storm hadn’t been as apocalyptic as Miller had feared. Almost everyone seemed to be wheezing or coughing up dirty mucus through the night, but it appeared that almost everyone who’d been able to stay indoors had survived. Outdoors, there were bodies in the streets. It wasn’t as bad as the famine’s first peak, just a few scattered bodies half-buried in the dust.
