Fungoid

by William Meikle

  As she finally turned away she saw that the skyline to the northeast—over the downtown area of the city—was tinged in reds and yellows. They were still having fires of their own over there—and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know how much was burning.

  She went back inside, closed the porch door firmly, and sat in the big chair, drinking more rye and staring, unseeing, at the television while untended tears ran down her cheeks.

  11

  Shaun tried to keep his driving smooth, cruising at or near the speed limit. He still had a long haul ahead of him. He figured on probably three days drive—and that was just to get to Montreal. And given the reports of shootings and rioting he was hearing, it might be best to keep as far away from larger population centers as he could—for a while at least.

  He was starting to regret leaving Calgary—although there were no reports of any flights being allowed up, the Canadian government spokesman on the most recent news broadcast had suggested that the situation was well in hand and that normal service would resume shortly. Then again, it was a government man talking, and Shaun trusted them as much as he did a wet fart. He’d aim for Montreal—and if the news improved, he might be able to ditch the pickup at the airport there and fly straight home. He certainly hoped so, his concern for Becky and the boys growing in his mind all the time and the worry ate hard at him.

  He hadn’t seen any more accidents since that last big one—hadn’t seen much of any traffic at all—there was only him, his smokes and what he could make out in the headlights. If it wasn’t for the news on the radio, he might even enjoy the drive. He’d tried more ZZ Top, and then some rock FM channels, but the need to know grew bigger than the need not to so he kept the news on. It meant he smoked more to compensate, but he’d stopped feeling guilty about that vice hours ago.

  As he drove on into the night, the news reports grew increasingly frantic. He didn’t have the benefit of pictures, but the reporters did more than enough to help him imagine the scenes of mayhem and carnage in the cities—and the slow, almost silent, destruction of the green places of the world. He remembered the forest clearing, and the deathly quiet they’d found there.

  Is that what’s waiting for us all?

  At least some details of what was happening were now coming out. The general consensus was that it was fungal. The cause of its sudden appearance was somewhat more obscure, but that didn’t stop the talking heads from speculating, from GMO gone bad, to global warming to fucking aliens and all points in between. What was indisputable was that it was happening on a grand scale, a planet-wide phenomenon that was bringing war and confusion along with it. The veneer of civilization hadn’t taken long to be stripped away, especially in the hot spots where it had been thin to start with. The worrying thing was that the commentators had started to speculate who would be the first country to throw a nuke into the mix—and they weren’t talking about if—they were talking about when.

  What nobody seemed to be talking about was how to stop the spread of the infection. Cross-border cooperation on a grand scale was necessary, but nobody had stepped up to the plate to start organizing any such campaign, with each country being too busy firefighting in its own jurisdiction.

  It was while he was listening to that particular sound bite that he noticed he had started to drift across the road, and had to swerve to compensate, glad that there was no one in the outside lane. Tiredness was starting to seep in.

  And I’m no use to Becky and the kids if I get smeared all over the highway.

  He turned the air conditioning to cool—normally he’d open a window, but he was tired, not stupid. He was good for maybe another hour—he knew that from experience—so he started looking for somewhere he could pull off and rest up—and fill the tank again.

  * * *

  He saw the lights in the distance half an hour later and pulled off at the slip road when he saw the sign that proclaimed it to be the last services for the next hundred kilometers.

  The forecourt was brightly lit—almost dazzling after the relative darkness out on the highway. All the pumps were free—he was the only customer, but that wasn’t unusual for this hour of the night.

  He checked overhead, and out on the concrete he could see under the lights—all seemed dry—before stepping out of the car, and he filled up the tank with one eye on the carport canopy above. It looked solid enough, but if it started raining he didn’t want to be under any drips.

  The tank sucked another eighty bucks’ worth—if it kept draining his wallet at this rate, he was going to be pushed to make it anywhere near home with the cash at hand. He considered getting back in the pickup and driving off—but the last thing he needed was a cop on his tail, even if he thought the chances were slim that there would be anyone willing to chase him. He locked the pickup—better safe than sorry tonight—and went inside the station to pay up.

  He quickly wished he’d given in to his first instinct.

  Like the scene at his first stop, the shelves of the station store had been emptied of everything of worth. But where things had seemed to have happened in an orderly fashion earlier, this place had clearly been looted, and with some force, for there was blood spatter on the liquor cabinet, and a smeared trail on the floor near the till. It was the trail that caught his attention—it was obviously blood—or had been, for it was now equally something else—brown threads ran through it, and even from a distance he saw that they were most definitely still alive, sinuously weaving their way through the red.

  He followed the trail around the counter—and found the youngster that had been in charge of the station for the night. The shotgun wounds in his chest had probably killed him, but the brown threads were quickly making sure there wasn’t anything left worth burying.

  The till lay open—and empty, the money too having been looted. Shaun was already starting to wonder whether his cash was going to be of much use anymore. There was certainly no one here who was in any state to accept payment for the gas.

  He backed out of the store, vigilant against the slightest sound or movement, but there was only the faintest flicker of neon, the soft hissing of the tubes the sole sound in the too-quiet night.

  He was paying so much attention to what might come at him from inside the store that he didn’t spot the man at his back until it was almost too late. He heard a voice first.

  “I’m going to need the keys for that truck of yours, mister.”

  The words sounded slurred, as if the speaker might be drunk—but on turning round to face the man, Shaun saw immediately the cause of the speech impediment. It was a tall rangy man in denims and cowboy boots. That was below the waist—where he still looked like a man. Above that his clothes were awash with drying blood—and more of the brown threads of infection. Threads crawled over his chest, up the left side of his neck, and over that whole half of his face, creeping into the corner of his mouth, up his left nostril, and thankfully covering the eye on that side, although the socket already looked sunken, and hollow. Shaun saw all that almost before he spotted the shotgun that aimed at his chest.

  “I said, I’m going to need your truck, mister,” the man said. One of the hands on the gun was also covered in the brown filaments. Fine threads ran over fingers, thumb and wrist to where it then grew, not up the man’s sleeve, but over it, meshing and matting into what had once been a leather jacket but was just more of the brownish tissue. The man looked barely able to stand—the barrel of the shotgun had already headed south, now pointing at somewhere around Shaun’s knees.

  “Are you deaf, fucker?” the man said, and tried to lift the weapon, but the weight of it had become too much for him. Shaun took his chance and stepped forward, kicking out and knocking the stock out of the man’s hand—dismayingly, it took a chunk of meat with it, leaving the attacker staring dumbly at a hand that was now reduced to only a thumb and forefinger. There was no blood, just more of the brown tissue.

  Shaun stepped back quickly as the man threw a punch. The act sent th
e tall cowboy off balance, teetering into the wall of the service station to fall in a heap on the concrete. He showed no sign of trying to get up. He held the ravaged hand up in front of his good eye, and studied it as dispassionately as if it were a piece of steak. He seemed to have forgotten Shaun completely.

  The shotgun lay some three feet away. Shaun considered taking it—but it still had bits of flesh adhered to the stock, and Shaun hadn’t suddenly gone stupid. He kicked the weapon away sending it skittering across the concrete to vanish into the darkness beyond the limits of the carport. The prone man didn’t make any effort to complain. He still wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to get up either, and Shaun was in no mood to give him any help.

  He turned away, heading for the pickup. That did get the cowboy’s attention.

  “You’ll see it for yourself soon enough,” he called out as Shaun kept walking away. “You’ll see the blue hills and the things that live there. And then you’ll know.”

  Shaun kept walking and didn’t look back.

  Two minutes later, as he drove the pickup out of the service station, he saw that the cowboy had started to crawl across the concrete, heading for the darkness, pulling himself along with his arms—and leaving a trail of brown and red slime behind him as he went.

  12

  Somehow Rohit had become the man in charge of the small group who spent the night around the television in the cafeteria. Three students—and the coffee shop assistant, Irene—all looked to him whenever any kind of decision needed to be made, whether it was about the safety of using the washrooms, the need for more coffee, or the undesirability of venturing beyond the doors of the building. There was also the fact that just watching the news brought far more questions than answers. Rohit explained what he knew about how fungal infections spread; about how it might be contained, and how much trouble he thought they were in. But it seemed to go in one ear and out the other for the listeners, as if their fear had stripped all of their faculties for retaining the information.

  More than anything, Rohit wanted to head upstairs to his lab, disinfect the area, and lock himself in with enough food to last for a while. But the group around the television—the students in particular—seemed a lot younger than they had before the situation went to hell, as if the terror and chaos laid bare their true selves.

  I cannot abandon them.

  His original plan had been to see out the night—drink coffee, watch news and wait for the cavalry to arrive and save the day. But from what they saw on the television, it was apparent that the authorities had more than enough on their plates without worrying about people who were hiding in relative safety.

  And then there was the elephant in the room—or rather, the body in the car park. Rohit saw the students—all of them at one point or another over the course of the night—look in that direction, then just as quickly look away. No one spoke of the dead girl, no one mentioned what had happened, and if anyone was bothered by the stinging smell of bleach that hung around the cafeteria, nobody mentioned it. Instead the television became the main focus of attention as it reeled off catastrophe after catastrophe, crisis after crisis until Rohit felt quite numb and incapable of further surprise, as if he’d watched too many big dumb action movies in too short a time period.

  One of the students—Steve, he was starting to get the names straight now—banged his phone on the table, hard enough to crack the case.

  “Piece of shitty, shit shit,” he shouted, threw the phone away across the floor, and buried his face in his hands, weeping. Nobody moved to comfort him. It wasn’t the first outburst of the night—it was almost as if they’d been taking turns. Rohit felt like joining in every time it happened, but his composure held—so far.

  Besides, we’re well-off compared to those poor souls on the news.

  The worldwide death toll was already estimated to be well into the tens of millions, and rising every second. Los Angeles was in flames, as was Berlin, Paris and large parts of London. There was a war on in the Far East, but details were sketchy and chaotic at best. And the next nuke had been deployed—China again, and a city of two million people downwind from the original site—a city that was now just a pile of ash and ruin.

  Somewhere, it rained.

  * * *

  He had checked his hands for infection every five minutes since moving the body outside, half expecting at any moment to see the first faint trace of brown that would tell him that death was coming. But he was clean—so far.

  He had the rest of the group check themselves at intervals—everybody was still clear—they’d been lucky, and contained it before it could spread. But Rohit was all too aware of the insidious nature of this threat—fungi got everywhere. Most people rarely noticed it until it became a problem, but it was there—in timbers and joists, in flooring, lurking just under the surface in lawns and gardens, inside walls and climbing up trees. It did what it did—and it did it well.

  And now, it has learned to do it even better.

  He was brought out of a reverie by a shout from another of the students.

  “Dr. Patel—there’s something weird on the television.”

  That’s a bit of an understatement.

  But the girl was right—this latest report was stranger still than anything that had gone before. The reporter looked grave and solemn as he read from what was obviously a prepared message.

  “The public is being asked to report any knowledge they may glean about the Blue Hills. I repeat, please use the number at the bottom of your screens to report any knowledge or information pertinent to the Blue Hills.”

  A 555 number rolled across the bottom of the picture—Rohit committed it to memory, just in case, but he couldn’t figure out the meaning of the request, although something stirred at the back of his mind.

  “So what are the Blue Hills?” the girl—Anna, he remembered—asked, looking straight at Rohit, who could only shrug.

  “I can’t say yet. But it rings a bell. I need to go up to my lab. Sit tight and don’t do anything stupid—I won’t be more than ten minutes.”

  Nobody wanted to go with him, the rest being more than happy to stay in the light and warmth around the television set. That suited Rohit just fine—his solitary nature meant that he’d already used up his quota of being around people for the month—if not the year—and he needed some quiet time alone to think—possibly even to plan.

  Just the act of climbing up through the quiet—almost too quiet—stairwell did much to reestablish his distance from events both in the cafeteria and in the wider world outside. And five minutes on his laptop—the WiFi to the outside world was still alive—reminded him of the connection his mind had been trying to make for several minutes.

  He’d heard of the Blue Hills in a book—he’d picked it up because it had some giant mushrooms looking over dwarfed human figures on the cover—a potboiler, Edwardian adventure that he’d found rather silly but surprisingly entertaining. He still had the book on his shelf and took it out, flicking through looking for the appropriate paragraph.

  Finally he found it.

  * * *

  “I should start by telling you something you don’t want to hear,” Carnacki said, lighting a cheroot. “Your bosses will never print what I’m about to tell you. Indeed, you may never even write it up, for I am pretty dashed sure that you will not believe me. Nevertheless, it is all true, if a tad strange to unenlightened ears.

  “I am a student of the arcane,” he began. “A searcher after secrets lost over time in ancient books and scrolls. My studies have, over the years, brought me into direct contact with what I believe the layman would call ghosts and ghoulies, denizens of the Outer Darkness that surrounds us.”

  I put up a hand to stop him.

  “You’ve lost me already,” I said. “And I should tell you that I don’t believe in any of that hocus-pocus.”

  He smiled at me.

  “I am long used to that response, “ he said. “But hear me out. In the end, it may or m
ay not make sense to you, but at least you will understand why I was in the greenhouse tonight, and what I was doing there.

  “The story begins this morning. I was in my library, testing out a new dynamo and ensuring that the valves on the Electric Pentacle were still functional, when I became aware of a fluctuation in the field. I immediately set up a circle on the floor and sat inside. I called up a spell I have memorized from the Sigsand mss, and the fluctuation resolved itself into a high mesmeric singing that was most pleasant but at the same time rather disconcerting, for there was no apparent source of the sound.

  “You may also be pleased to know that I had but ten minutes previously read your article on the opening of the greenhouse. I put two and two together, and immediately set on a course of research into these singing Mongolian mushrooms of which you seemed so enamoured.

  “It took me several hours, but the more I uncovered, the less I liked what I had found. There are several legends from widespread places around the world that deal with these fungi, and none of them have much, if anything, good to say about them. The details vary considerably, but on one thing there is perfect agreement. On no account should they be cultivated, or allowed to sporulate, for they are voracious in their appetite, and devious in their methods. Now this would be jolly bad news even if that were all that was involved. But the old texts told more, of a spiritual dimension to the fungi, and of even older tales of their origin millennia ago on the high plains of Leng in the shade of the Blue Hills. Now all of this will sound arcane, if not ridiculous, to your modern sensibilities, Malone. But trust me, I learned enough this afternoon to put me in an awful funk. I came to realize that the singing you found so melodious was merely a precursor to the main event. The fungi were preparing to spore, and if they were allowed to do so, an apocalypse of biblical proportions would quickly engulf this city, this country, perhaps even the whole planet.”