Burning Mold

by Jefferson Nunn

  “What is wrong with you? Your fellow soldiers are dying trying to defend everyone from this crazed man and suddenly you are having second thoughts about your obligations and duties?” asked Chad. Aries had not joined the military with that purpose in mind, but he could also not deny that he had that obligation and had failed to do something about it.

  Aries turned on the bus and got himself pumped up and ready to do what he had to do.

  “We are about to do something very stupid. Are you sure?” asked Aries. Chad also hesitated for a moment but he would rather see himself trying to stop Steve and the mold and die trying than not having done anything at all.

  “He’s here,” whispered Jean. She could clearly see Steve walking close to her but she was not sure if he had seen her or not. She had a mix of disgust and terror when seeing the man who just a few hours ago had been a normal human being she could somewhat relate to. Now he was just a complete monster of a man covered in that horrible mold that was eating at him. Half of him was already gone to the mold and what was left was still being devoured by that black infernal mold.

  “I can feel you,” said Steve with that terrible voice that was more of a croak. She panicked but could not move from her location. “I know you are here.”

  “Aries, do it!” said Chad at the top of his lungs. Aries got the bus on the move and prepared to ram through and get Steve with the whole of the bus.

  --

  “Sir, there is a bus on the tarmac moving full speed at the airport,” said one of the engineers, pointing at the vehicle gaining speed. Colonel Baker moved into a position where he could see the beaten-up bus continue its way non-stop.

  “Everyone, move the hell out of the way of that thing,” said Colonel Baker through the comms, but his unit could not do anything about it. They were already engaged with the moldies that Steve had sent to them and were having problems maintaining cohesion under such a situation in order to move away in such a way that no one would die.

  Then it happened. Colonel Baker saw with pain in his heart how his unit slowly collapsed and was devoured by the beasts sent forward. As much as they tried they could not get through these creatures.

  “This is Colonel Baker. To any units remaining in the field, return to the communication array. We make our final stand here,” said Colonel Baker as he could see some of the things coming their way. The engineers panicked at the sight, but Colonel Baker ordered them to arm themselves from the crate at their location and to defend themselves to their last drop of blood. “This is where we make it or we make ourselves a new home six feet under… if there is anything left of us.”

  --

  “It’s a damn massacre. Look at those things!” said Chad. Aries was trying to push through with the bus but they had damaged it enough that it could not pick up speed as fast as Aries would like it to.

  Steve had caught up with their intentions and had pushed through with a mass of the moldies in order to stop them from reaching the airport. Moldies would be run over and the horrifying sound they would make was so chilling that Chad could still continue to hear them even as they moved on.

  From that horde of moldies came an assortment of things Aries tried to avoid, including baggage carts, wheelchairs, chairs and tables and other types of furniture, metal, and stone, but what initially caught Aries by surprise was a hot dog cart which flew straight into the windshield and broke it almost in its entirety.

  All was manageable by Aries at that point. Chad was impressed at how much damage the bus had managed to stand but saw in the distance a helicopter that was flying deceptively low and moving towards them.

  “Chopper, chopper!” said Chad at the top of his lungs while pointing at it. Aries saw it and pushed the bus to run as fast as it could.

  “What am I supposed to do, spit at it?” asked Aries at the top of his lungs as the bus managed to pick up enough speed to barely escape the crash and the following explosion from the helicopter. They rammed full speed through the large glasses and conveyor belts. And as Aries had planned it, they moved against that horrible creature which Steve had become.

  --

  “Aries?” A soft voice could be heard far away in the distance. Aries felt as if he was floating in the ocean. Looking around him he saw nothing but darkness and a faint beam of light too far away for him to make out what it was. “Aries?”

  He noticed that he was still in control of himself (or something that he could call himself). He could walk, swim, jump, but he was still too far away from that beam of light which caught his eyes.

  What was it and who was calling for him?

  “Aries, wake up.” The voice kept calling for him. Was it his mother? Was he again late for school? It did not sound too familiar to him, but Aries wanted to know. He had to know who was calling for him when he was this far away.

  He moved toward the light and the voice. Slowly he could hear it clearer. With it came a strange ringing noise and colors, images, even a faint smell that he could not identify but was something like bleach and gasoline.

  As he came to being himself again, Aries was back in the bus. He had been expelled from the driver’s seat all the way to the back of the vehicle. Chad and Jean were next to him, with Chad showing him a broken face covered in some small shards of glass. Jean was covered in debris and blood, with rebar coming out of her left shoulder. As for Aries he could not feel his legs. Looking below he noticed that he still had them but they were cut up very badly.

  “What?” asked Aries, barely able to talk. The faces of Jean and Chad immediately changed and both sighed in relief. They showed happiness from having him back in the world of the living.

  “Aries, you made it,” said Jean. Aries was not fully understanding what Jean was talking about but he simply nodded while raising his right thumb.

  “Cool,” said Aries as he dropped his hand again. In the distance, he could see someone else but did not think much of it until he could make out the figure of a man in bad shape. “Who?”

  Aries raised his right index finger and pointed behind Jean and Chad. Both could not fully make out what he was saying but he kept muttering the same word, again and again. He rapidly came back to being himself and saw the horrible creature that was left of Steve, half beaten up but slowly recovering, with the mold following him and putting him back together.

  “Steve,” said Aries, raising his hand, even more. Jean and Chad turned back and were shocked to see the man stand just a few feet from them, still walking and with a vicious purpose in mind.

  “Jean,” said Steve. His voice sounded like stones grinding together. That croak of a voice had turned into something that could no longer be considered human. “Jean.”

  “We need to get out,” said Chad. He tried beating the side door open but it would not bulge. He did not have enough strength in him to do it on his own. “We need to get out!”

  “Aries,” said Jean, moving back as much as she could, putting herself against the battered wall while looking at Aries. In turn, he looked back at her and then he saw it. His Beretta was there at the back of the bus.

  In a desperate move, Aries managed to get the handgun with his left hand and fire it without properly aiming at Steve. At first he thought he had not hit him, then tried again. This time the bullet managed to get him right in the chest, but the mold had made sure to protect their host and devour it.

  The trio witnessed in shock how the bullet disintegrated. Chad fell next to the door as he saw the mass of mold continue to push through at a very slow pace, suddenly twitching, slight groans coming from Steve as he pushed his way through.

  For a moment he had stopped. The beast was no longer moving but no one could understand what had happened. Steve continued twitching and began coughing. At first it was strange as he would spit pieces of the mold and then it became violent. He could not stop himself from coughing, which was eventually followed by vomit which consisted of a mixture of blood and large chunks of blood.

  Jean realized that abov
e Steve was a barrel that was leaking something on the ground. The bus had slightly tilted and with it, some of the barrels had become dislodged from their position. One of these barrels was partially stuck in one of the bars above them and was releasing something to the ground. Jean immediately recognized the indications on the side and knew what it was.

  “Aries, shoot the barrel,” said Jean as calmly as she could. Aries turned to Jean and then back at Steve, who continued coughing and twitching in place with the mold rapidly trying to replace the amounts he had lost.

  As Aries saw the barrel above Steve, he took aim. As he took the shot he heard the gun get stuck in a position with the casing blocking the weapon in place. The bullet had struck the side of the barrel, rapidly pouring its contents to the site where Steve was standing.

  Steve screamed in pain in a combination of groans, human screams that pierced through the heart and a sound that the three could only describe as hot wind blowing violently against a surface. As the liquid continued to pour onto him, he slowly began to melt into the ground from the top, the side, the bottom.

  “Jean…” muttered Steve as he continued to melt into the ground. “Jean…”

  For a moment the three thought that he would somehow come back, that this thing would reform and push through again, but Steve had completely melted onto the floor of the bus. There was little left of him aside from a pink handkerchief.

  “Oh, God…” said Chad as he saw the remains of Steve. He looked back at Jean and Aries, who were amazed at what had happened. The trio began to laugh, but their joy was cut short as part of the second floor of the airport began to collapse and the flames came down with it.

  “Aries, let’s go,” said Chad as he and Jean picked up Aries. The three made it out of the bus through the main door and out of the airport as the entire structure began to collapse. Outside a contingent of military soldiers had begun moving towards the airport with a large set of combat jets passing through at high speed, releasing large clouds of chemicals close to the airport.

  Soldiers rapidly came to them and moved them away from the general area as the soldiers tried to reach the inside but failed to do so. As they were looking for additional pathways the entirety of the structure collapsed and flames engulfed everything inside.

  Epilogue

  The End of The

  Beginning of The End

  “Then it was all over,” said Andy's dad. Andy was somewhat entertained by the story but at the same time, his dad tended to drag along too much when talking about the times before the Migration. “Steve was gone, the mold was gone in Dallas and the airport was unfortunately completely destroyed.”

  “And then?” asked Andy. His dad shook his head at the question and sighed.

  “It is very complicated. We were taken to a special care unit where we went through a large set of tests. We remained there for weeks. Chad wasn’t happy about it,” said Andy’s dad. “Or rather his wife. He never told her about what he had done back then and she was crying when they finally let her see him.”

  “What about you?” asked Andy. Aries thought hard about how to explain to Andy what had transpired afterward.

  He could not tell him about the people that had survived the event. When the chlorine dioxide dropped onto the airport, the mold died and the people under the control of Steve were released from his control as soon as this had happened. They discovered that applying the chemical would release the infected areas and that without Steve they could not coordinate.

  Then it was the horror that followed. Most of these people were forever damaged beyond repair, with their lungs working in most cases at half their capacity. Some had to live in intensive care for months or years before passing away. The reach of Steve was horrifying and even years after his death Aries could not forget about the mad man.

  “I was in intensive care for a while so I could recover. Crashing a bus and surviving isn’t something that a lot of people did back in the day, you know?” asked Aries. Andy nodded but he could not comprehend the magnitude of a lot of things that Aries had mentioned to him since he had only seen them in holograms or read about them.

  “I guess so,” said Andy. “Is that when you became a Colonel?”

  Aries laughed at the thought. He had reached the rank of Colonel due to a sheer amount of luck that was related to many events from before and during the Migration, but in this time it meant nothing to have such a rank or military experience. It was still useful during particular situations and he still trained people from time to time but it was all meaningless in such a small environment.

  At least this was his thought after everything he had seen. If he never had to see another weapon or firearm he could live the rest of his life happily and peacefully.

  “That happened a while later. Back then I was almost court-martialed for completely going out of my way to do what I just told you. It was thanks to General Marshalls and some of his friends in Washington that I was saved,” said Aries. Andy raised an eyebrow. “What’s on your mind?”

  “General Marshalls isn’t the name of that building next to the school?” asked Andy. He was referring to the main Civilian Engineering building which was dedicated to overseeing all planning, construction, and maintenance of the structures around Antarctica.

  “That’s right. It’s dedicated to General Marshalls because of his effort to save humanity from the brink of extinction. For a man with a military career he had a lot of vision and definitely was way ahead of his time,” said Aries. What he could not mention to Andy was that General Marshalls was a polar figure. During this time he was known as a hero but for those who lived during that period of time, he was seen as a horrible figure and a tyrant.

  To Aries, regardless of popular opinion, General Marshalls would always be the man that saved him and put him on the right track.

  “What about Uncle Baker?” asked Andy.

  “General Baker? It was a miracle that he and two of his men survived, an engineer and a medic. He was scarred for life after that event and…” said Aries but stopped himself. He could not tell Andy, or at least not yet, that Baker suffered for years from PTSD and coped with it by the abuse of prescribed drugs and alcohol. He kept blaming himself for the deaths of all the men that had gone down fighting Steve, but at the same time had learned many valuable lessons.

  After this incident, he was promoted to Brigadier General and had been assigned to the creation of a large unit dedicated especially to study and combat any further incidents like the mold.

  “Yes?” asked Andy, curious to know more about the grim details of the past. Aries knew that Andy liked to hear the truth of what transpired back in those days because the current teaching material made sure not to talk about this until students reached a specific age.

  “You will have to ask your uncle about that. He is better at telling that story than me,” said Aries. Andy sighed

  “Uncle Baker never talks about these things,” said Andy. Aries shrugged and placed his left hand over Andy’s right shoulder.

  “Some things are better left like that, Andy. You will know about it when you are older. But I can give you something, though. Just don’t tell your mom, all right?” asked Aries and Andy nodded excitedly. From his neck, Aries removed a small collar with a casing that he gave to Andy.

  “Promise me you will take a lot of care with this, Andy. I mean it,” said Aries. Andy looked at it, confused, as he had never seen anything like this before. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No,” answered Andy. He looked at the casing and moved it around, seeing a date, and then the words DEATH, then LOVE. “What is this?”

  “That is the casing of the bullet that killed Steve,” said Aries. Andy felt goosebumps run through him as he moved it around. It was slightly bent on one side but it retained most of its previous form. “The date is when that happened. It is also the date when I met your mom.”

  “Wow,” said Andy. Aries helped him put the small chain around his neck. “Thanks,
Dad.”

  “Don’t mention it, son. Just don’t go around showing it to your friends. A lot of people used to ask me to look at it in the past and I almost lost it once. Your mom almost killed me because of it,” said Aries. Andy nodded again and rubbed the casing with his left thumb and index finger. “Promise?”

  “Promise,” answered Andy and they both shook hands. Aries laughed and gave him a pat on the back.

  “Take a bath and get ready for dinner. Your mom will be back any minute and I don’t want her yelling at you because you are all dirty and smelly,” said Aries. Andy nodded and was about to go to the bathroom but for a moment he remained there. “Something wrong?”

  “So… what does this have to do with the migration here?” asked Andy. Aries groaned at the question and looked at Andy sternly.

  “Andy, that’s a very long story and we can talk about it later. Go take a bath. I don’t want Jean to be yelling at me, too, for not making you take a bath,” said Aries. Andy followed through, slightly disappointed but at the same time fulfilled that he now knew more about the past history of humanity before the migration.

  As Andy moved into the bathroom, Aries sighed. He had never told Andy the story about how he had met Jean and he was sure that Jean would berate him for it, but they had had many discussions about it and Aries was insistent that it was about time Andy knew more about the past and the reality of things.

  Aries had omitted a considerable amount of details in his story. He could not tell her that he had considerable damage to his back and that he was having problems walking again. Jean knew because she had helped him during that period but technology could only help him so much at this point and the augmentations he had acquired before the migration were way out of their expected lifetime.

  He did not want to end up in a wheelchair but he could not let Andy know about that. He already had to deal with the eyepatch on his left eye and Andy had been very insistent on knowing about what had happened back then, but that was something he was not ready to talk about. Only Jean knew and that was one of the few things they had both agreed to never speak of again.