“He was not an evil man. He’d simply been trapped and had done what any man in his position might do: he’d run.”

The omniscient narrator allows the reader access into Tom Padgett’s mind here to show that Padgett is not the novel’s true villain, so eliminating him will not neutralize the threat. Padgett is a man who has been infected with a deadly virus—therefore, though he is certainly dangerous, the danger does not end with him. He is not fundamentally different from the other characters who will become infected as well.

“A bark of laughter from the bunkroom […] Tim let it go. At their age, boys were creatures of enormous energy: machines that ran on testosterone and raw adrenaline.”

Even before the introduction of the parasitic worms, the novel complicates the distinction between humans and animals by describing humans with metaphors or similes that compare them to animals. These early instances introduce the theme of The Murky Categories of Human, Animal, and Monster. For example, here, the boys are called “creatures,” and their laughter is described as a “bark,” suggesting they are more like dogs than humans. Dr. Tim Riggs seems to think that age has something to do with the distinction between animals and humans, viewing the boys as more animalistic than he is because they’re younger.

“A shape materialized from the tangled foliage. Tim inhaled sharply. By the light of the uncommonly bright moon, he beheld a creature stepped fully formed from his blackest childhood nightmares: a rotted monster who’d dragged itself from the sea.

It wasn’t much more than a skeleton lashed by ropes of waterlogged muscle, its flesh falling off its bones in gray, lace-edged rags. It lumbered forward, mumbling dully to itself. Tim’s terror pinned him in place.

The thing shambled through a shaft of moonlight that danced along the tall grass; the light transformed the nightmare into what it truly was: a man so horrifyingly thin it was a miracle he was still alive.”

This passage, where Tim first spots Tom Padgett, further blurs the distinction between humans, animals, and monsters and therefore relates to the theme of