Chapter 21 Summary

Two weeks later Jody and Penny are doing all they can to salvage something of their crops, but it does not look good. Sweet potatoes are rotting in the ground and the hay is moldy. Penny goes to the newly named "Mullet Prairie" where they saw mullet jumping a few weeks ago, and cuts marsh grass, leaving it to cure. There he and Jody smell the stench of rotting dead fish, but Penny senses that there is something else wrong. It seems that the animals are continuing to die. Two weeks later, in early October, they return for the cured marsh grass. They find a feeble wildcat, dying and unable to protect itself. Returning home, as they reach the sinkhole, they discover a buck deer dying. Now Penny sees that the plague, Black Tongue, has hit the creatures. When they find three more...