Michael Malone - Weebly

dropped there on Tuesday. And then finally they came
upon the black strip of strange charred earth.
Polly at first thought they had already reached the
site of the government compound she was trying to find
again, concluding that its buildings somehow had been
incinerated. Luke at first thought of napalm. Neither
thought of anything besides fire, not of blight and
pestilence, of shallow beds beneath the strip in which
were buried the discarded experiments of scientific
research, lethal wastes working their way through the
earth, leaving their impress on it. The boy focused his
camera on the dead land.
For over an hour they trekked in the wet sedge
beyond the end of the path. Marsh grass was
sometimes as high as their waists, and Polly feared a
snake might slither out at her unseen.
"Are we lost? How much farther?" Luke's tennis
shoes were sodden and his jeans heavy with mud.
"I don't know," she confessed.
But then suddenly her discovery was there, just
within the woods' edge, as if deliberately hidden from
sight. The chain fence, the aluminum buildings, even the