by Dan Smith
Mr Craven stumbled but kept on coming. Pete and Nancy side stepped to let him past, then turned to watch him lose control of his legs and go down. Mr Craven crashed into the dirt and lay twitching in the mud.
Pete and Nancy didn’t stop to see what he did next. They dashed towards the entrance of the main building. But more of the Infected were emerging from the shadows. The air was filled with their screams, and the reply from the crowd behind them was getting closer.
“Quick!” Pete shouted.
Nancy tried to get to the door as Pete fired left and right. He battled to keep the Infected back, but more of them kept coming, blocking the way.
A body hurtled out of the darkness and slammed into Pete. It sent him sprawling. The Aqua Zap flew from Pete’s hands and spun away into the dirt.
Nancy gave up trying to reach the door and turned to raise her water gun, but it was too late. The Infected were everywhere. There were too many of them to fight. They surrounded Nancy from all sides, grabbing her, overpowering her, forcing her to the ground.
*
The crowd of Infected hauled Pete and Nancy to their feet. The red van was parked in front of them.
The Infected were silent now. Waiting.
The van door opened, and Mr Finney climbed out.
“Dad. Please,” Nancy begged as he approached. “Wake up, Dad. It’s me.”
Mr Finney was terrifying to look at. His skin was pale and his eyes were clouded over. Strands of grey green fibres covered his lips and nostrils.
“Come inside,” Mr Finney said. “It’s time for you to be like us. Soon everyone will be like us.” His voice was muffled, as if he was speaking with a mouthful of cotton wool.
The Infected dragged Pete and Nancy into the BioMesa building, where the fungus had erupted from underground. Mr Finney went to one of the strange claws and plucked a pod from its grip. It came away with a soft, wet squelch.
“This is for you,” Mr Finney said as he brought it close to the struggling children.
And it burst.
POP!
CHAPTER 13
All Together
Everything happened at once. Pete took a deep breath just before the pod burst, but he didn’t have to hold it for long. As the spores filled the air, he heard a metallic bang behind him, followed by someone shouting his name.
“Pete! Nancy!” Krish yelled.
The hands gripping Pete relaxed, just a bit, and he took his chance. Pete pulled away from the Infected, dropped to the ground and rolled. When he jumped up, he turned to see the crowd moving as one, heading for the door where Krish was standing.
“Catch!” Krish shouted.
A moment later, an Aqua Zap sailed over the crowd.
Pete shifted to a better position as he watched the gun descend. He wasn’t the best catcher, and Krish wasn’t the best thrower, but it was right on target. All Pete had to do was—
Yes!
As soon as the Aqua Zap was in his hands, Pete spun around and sprayed the crowd of Infected.
In just a few seconds, they were screaming and writhing in pain.
A light flared close by as Nancy held out her phone torch, aiming it at anyone who came close.
In the bright white light, Pete saw the purple pods shrivel in the mist of Mould Blaster. The claws retracted as if trying to escape its effects. The whole room shifted and squirmed as the fungus reacted.
“The roots!” Krish shouted as he pushed through the crowd towards Pete. “Spray the roots.”
They both aimed their water guns at the base of the weird growth and fired.
The Infected and the fungus screamed as one. The twisting sinewy vines withdrew from the ceiling and the walls. They shrivelled and turned grey, breaking into dust like old dry leaves. And in that dust was something that turned Pete’s blood to ice. Deep down, close to the hole in the earth, he saw a screaming human face. It was only there for a moment, then it turned to powder and crumbled away as if it had never existed.
All around the building, the Infected collapsed, becoming silent and still. Pete and Krish emptied their water guns at the base of the growth.
“I think that’s it,” Nancy said as she pointed her torch at the shrivelled mass. “I think it’s dead now.”
“What about them?” Krish asked, looking at the villagers lying on the floor.
Nancy went to her dad and knelt beside him. She put her hand to the side of his neck. “He’s alive,” she said as she checked the others. “I think they all are.”
CHAPTER 14
Aftermath
The following week, Pete, Krish and Nancy sat on their bikes as they watched what was happening at Carpenter’s Field. There were workers everywhere, dismantling the drilling tower and loading containers onto BioMesa trucks. By the end of the day, everything would be gone.
“It’ll look like nothing ever happened,” Pete said.
“As far as anyone’s concerned, not much did happen,” Krish replied. He had his phone out and was looking at a news article about the events in Crooked Oak last week. “It says no one’s sure why everyone woke up at the fracking site. They think maybe it was a mass hallucination caused by contaminated water – chemicals from the fracking process. So BioMesa’s closing the site properly now and had to make a big apology. And they’re going to pay half a million pounds to clean up Carpenter’s Field. It’ll be ours again.”
“So how come none of the Infected remembers?” Nancy asked. “Apart from you?”
“It must be because Pete sprayed me so quickly after I was infected,” Krish said. “I can remember the feeling of it taking over my mind, and then I was waking up on the carpet. After that I followed the Infected here and saved your skins.”
“What did it feel like?” Pete asked as he watched a van drive up the bank and disappear along the lane. “To be infected?”
“I could feel everyone.” Krish took off his glasses. “It was like … like I couldn’t control my thoughts. And I wanted everyone to be like that. I wanted everyone to be infected.”
“Why?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t know.” Krish put his glasses back on. “I think the fungus just wanted to survive and spread, like the fungus that takes over ants and makes them explode. Except it didn’t make us explode.”
“Not straight away,” Pete said. “But that face I saw in the earth … That must have been a person once. Maybe someone from BioMesa. And maybe that’s what would’ve happened to everyone eventually. We would have all turned into one of those things.”
“That’s why we had to kill it,” Krish said.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Nancy said. “I mean, my mum and dad must’ve been infected when they came down here to collect those files that night. And then they infected a few people when they took them on that tour of the fracking site a couple of nights later, right?”
“Right.”
“So why didn’t they infect me right away?” Nancy asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Krish said. “And the only thing that makes sense is that the fungus was weaker then. It was still growing, still learning how to control people. They were still your mum and dad … just a bit … and they couldn’t bring themselves to infect you. But I guess we’ll never know for sure – it’s a mystery.”
“Like on The Mystery Shed,” Pete said.
“Well, whatever the reason, it feels good to have them back to normal,” Nancy said. She spun her pedals, ready to ride away. “And no more smell.”
“You can say that again.” Pete smiled. “And now I think I’d like it to stay boring in Crooked Oak. For a little while, anyway.”
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