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76.
By his second day in the Manchester Hyatt Hotel , Jack found a special access ladder leading to a hatch that opened onto the roof. Cautiously, he opened the hatch and looked about. No sign of any gill men. There were a few small mushrooms around, but none of the grotesque giants down on the street.
It was midafter noon and the sun was starting to move past its midpoint in the Western sky. Wind whipped around Jack's thinning hair. Reddish-golden sunlight felt good on his skin.
He pulled the hatch shut, locked it from inside, and clambered back down the ladder. The kids were where he'd left them—wrapped in oversized waiters' coats and sipping hot chocolate while looking down at the city from high above.
"How did you kids get that red stuff all over you?" he asked.
"It was blowing all over in the wind," Jimmy said.
"Didn't you notice?" Maribel said. She laughed and took a paper napkin, dipped it in water, and rubbed Jack's face. She showed him the napkin, which was soaked and covered with a kind of brick-red fungal rot.
"Argh," he said, wiping his face.
"No, leave it on," Jimmy said, "we found that it kept the spores off our skin. It's some kind of magic dust."
Jack stared at them. Of course!
He phoned Linsey. "Honey, the antidote to this fungus plague is another fungus. It's this red stuff that's spreading in the wind already coming from the Lima Voyager."
She was excited. "I'm a step ahead of you as usual, honey. We have a lifetime supply of the stuff, and we've already started spraying. In the big picture, we'll use the marine layer and the daily fogs. We'll get those cloud seeding planes of Collwood's from Volcan Mountain, and we'll crop dust the entire city with this red stuff. I'm pretty sure this is very powerful stuff and will stop all this chaos in its tracks. The Offensor and Defensor will neutralize each other, and we can proceed to scrub the city clean so that life can get back to normal."
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