Fungoid

by William Meikle

  The man nodded, and went on.

  “The name’s Jim Wozniak by the way—I figure you should know that, if we’re going to do something incredibly stupid together in the next ten minutes.”

  “You’re a pilot?”

  “Well, I can fly. I didn’t keep up with the hours to maintain my license—but yeah—I can fly—if we can find a plane.”

  “Like you said,” Shaun replied. “It’s an airport—how hard can it be?”

  “So you’re saying you’re in?”

  Shaun nodded in reply, the decision hadn’t been difficult—inaction was threatening to drive him to distraction, and from what he saw around him, the armed men’s only plan was to herd people into the lounge and leave them there. Something had to give, and Shaun was of a mind to make sure that it was under his terms, rather than those of the men in the hazmat suits.

  “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  * * *

  Five minutes later Shaun got up, patted Jim Wozniak on the shoulder as if saying good-bye, and headed for the washroom at the rear of the lounge. He took the cigarette pack and his lighter from his pocket—if he was stopped, he would say he was looking for somewhere to have a smoke—which wasn’t going to be too far from the truth anyway.

  But no one paid him any heed—the armed guards were too busy with a new influx of people at the main entrance, and Shaun walked right past the washrooms to the door at the end of the corridor. Even then, he expected it to be locked, but someone had been lax in the security arrangements—the door opened out onto a clear expanse of holding bays with a row of hangars a hundred yards away across the tarmac.

  They’d agreed on five minutes, so Shaun tried to make himself invisible in the doorway and lit up a smoke. He almost leapt in the air when the door opened at his back, but it was only Wozniak.

  “Any trouble?”

  “None—so far. But there’s no ride here.”

  “Let’s try the hangars—and we’d best be quick—there’s trouble brewing inside.”

  Wozniak didn’t elaborate, but he set off across the tarmac as if he was fleeing for his life. Shaun thought it circumspect to follow.

  The man went straight for the nearest hangar, and Shaun caught up with him just in time to see Wozniak break into a broad smile.

  “See—I told you. And these are Mustangs—they’ll get us to Montreal before we need to stop.” There were four Cessna jets lined up along the left side of the hangar. “Give me a couple minutes. I’ll check if any are ready to go. Keep an eye out and shout if anyone spots us.”

  Shaun watched the door to the terminal they’d come through, but there was no sign that anyone had noticed their escape—that’s how Shaun was thinking of it—it felt like a prison break, and he was sure there’d be punishment ahead should they be caught.

  “Got one,” he heard Wozniak shout. He just turned toward the man when the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire burst across the tarmac—followed immediately by the equally unmistakable sound of panicked screams.

  “Time to go,” Wozniak shouted.

  Shaun walked over to join him.

  “We’re going to steal this, right?” he said. “How much is one of these things worth?”

  “About three million bucks when new,” Wozniak said, and smiled. “Welcome to the big time. Now, are you coming, or do you want to stay here and get shot?”

  * * *

  Shaun followed Wozniak to the farthest jet in line and went up the short set of steps. Once they were inside, Wozniak nudged Shaun out of the way to raise the steps and close the door—also closing out the sound of more, and more rapid, gunfire.

  “Most of the comfort is here in the back,” the man said, waving a hand at the cabin—four plush seats, a head and a television set, hung on a hinge from the ceiling. “But I’d like some company up front if you don’t mind—I’m not afraid to admit to being a bit spooked by all this.”

  “Join the club,” Shaun replied, and followed Wozniak up to the pilot’s cabin. It too was plush and well-appointed, and filled with what, to Shaun’s eyes anyway, looked like a bewildering array of knobs, dials, screens and what seemed more like gaming controls than anything that might be used to fly an aircraft.

  “You’re sure about this, right?” he said.

  The man turned and smiled.

  “Please ensure your seat backs and tray tables are in their upright and locked positions. Give me a minute, then we can be on our way.”

  Wozniak took the left-hand seat, so Shaun dropped into the right one. In doing so he looked out of the window and had a clear view out of the hangar door they had come in—and saw two armed men walking across the holding bay from the terminal, coming straight for the hangar.

  “It’s definitely time to go,” he said, trying to keep calm. “We’ve got company.”

  Wozniak threw a switch. He put both hands on the controls. With an initial lurch that almost threw Shaun out of his seat, the Cessna rolled forward. The men outside started to run toward the hangar. Wozniak turned the plane till it was facing straight at them, and pushed the throttle, hard.

  The left-hand man tried to raise his weapon, but was too slow—he was hit by a wingtip and went down, hard. The other man wasn’t even so fortunate—the front of the fuselage smacked right into him—Shaun saw a spray of blood rise in the air, then felt a bump as the man went under the front wheel.

  “Sorry, guys,” Wozniak said calmly. “I’ve got a dinner appointment with the wife and kids and I’m running late already.”

  Shaun was able to take a look back as Wozniak turned the plane toward the runway. Two bodies lay flat on the tarmac—and neither moved.

  “It was them or us—you get that, right?” Wozniak said as he lined them up and punched the throttle hard enough to force Shaun back in his seat. The plane roared and bucked, and Shaun’s heart leapt to his mouth before, with only the slightest of bumps, they rose into the air and banked over the airport.

  He caught one last glimpse of the two suited men on the ground.

  They still weren’t moving.

  20

  Rohit spent the next few hours in his lab, his whole attention on the sample he’d taken from the dead youth in the doorway. At one point the coffee lady—her name was Irene but to Rohit she’d always be the coffee lady—brought him a mug and two cheese sandwiches.

  “We have ham but I couldn’t remember if you… you know…”

  Rohit nodded.

  “Cheese is just fine. How are the other two?”

  The woman sat down on the stool nearest Rohit, head down, not looking at him as she spoke. It all came out of her at once, as if she couldn’t keep it bottled up any longer.

  “About what you’d expect, given what’s going on. I think they’re in shock—I know I am. Frazzled—that’s a good word for it. And that poor boy is still slumped against the door—what’s left of him anyway—he’s all eaten up and sunk in at the chest and…” She had to pause as her breathing decided to catch up with her, and her chest hitched in quiet sobbing before she continued. “And they’re saying on the news that anyone who goes outside will be subject to martial law—whatever that means.”

  “It means you’d probably get shot,” Rohit said, his mouth working faster than his brain, and causing the woman’s shoulders to slump. She started sobbing more loudly, and Rohit was all too aware of the distance between them—he couldn’t comfort her without getting off his own stool—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. They sat there awkwardly for long seconds before she fell quiet, rubbed her sleeve over her damp eyes, and sniffed.

  “Sorry. I’ve been trying to keep it together for the kids downstairs but…”

  “…it’s hard. I know,” Rohit replied. “I’ve been living on nerves and fumes myself.”

  The woman—Irene, he remembered, again—managed a thin smile.

  “We old folks have to stick together.”

  She motioned at his microscope, and the Petri-dishes on the right-hand side.


  “Have you found anything that might help?”

  Rohit turned back toward the scope. He had indeed found something—but had no clue how to explain it to anyone without using too many overly scientific words, or seeming condescending in over-simplifying. His gaze went to the sealed cabinet on the right wall.

  “It’s probably best if I show you,” he said. “Over here.”

  He was surprised when she took his hand in hers as she walked over to join him, but did not let go—it felt good, natural even. Certainly more natural than the things he had growing in the cabinet.

  There were two of them—two puffballs, each no bigger than Rohit’s thumb, one at each end of the cabinet. Despite the fact that the glass was industrial grade and the cabinets well sealed, he still did not venture too close—he’d done so ten minutes before, and the drone had been clearly audible, and powerful enough to set off a dizzy spell. He tightened his grip on Irene’s hand and held her away from the glass.

  “Best to look from here. These two grew in less than an hour from hyphae I put on the substrate.”

  He saw the first of what he knew might be several blank looks.

  “I grew them,” he elaborated. “And they grew, too fast for it to be remotely normal. I don’t think there’s much about this fungus that is natural—I think it was made—designed.”

  “It’s a biological weapon?”

  “Well, it is now,” Rohit replied, hearing the bitterness in his tone. “I think it might have started out as an attempt to engineer a new, mass-produced foodstuff, but it got out of hand—first in China, and now, everywhere. But that’s not the worst of it.”

  “There’s worse?”

  Rohit hesitated. He didn’t see how sharing what he knew with someone who was already frightened was going to help—but she deserved to know. Everybody deserved to know.

  “I’ve been experimenting with trying to dampen the sonic drone,” he said. “I hoped that I might be able to cancel out its effects on us, at least enough for us to be able to venture outside the building. But it counters everything I do—and responds with a stronger alternative.”

  “What are you saying? Are you saying it knows what you’re doing?”

  “In a sense, yes. It’s learning fast. As I said already, this thing was built, not evolved. And it might well have started out as a food substitute—but along the line someone went a lot further. There’s a cell structure in its matrix that looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before—but I know what it resembles most—ganglion and synapses—nerve clusters and nodules. It looks like brain tissue.”

  * * *

  Now that he’d given voice to the thought, Rohit realized how ridiculous it sounded.

  “I’m not saying that it thinks,” he said.

  Irene laughed—he thought there might be a hint of hysteria in it too.

  “I should hope not. But how smart is it—any idea? Is it like an ant—or a dog?”

  Rohit shrugged.

  “It’s different from anything I’ve ever seen—I can’t even begin to guess.”

  “Why would somebody do such a thing?”

  Rohit thought he knew the answer—but because I could or because I wanted to see what would happen wasn’t anything Irene would want to hear. Even then, both those thoughts were preferable to the idea that this was indeed a weapon—something somebody had considered a good idea—until it got out in the wild. Oppenheimer had called himself and his team destroyer of worlds. This thing had a chance of doing a better job of it.

  He realized that he was still holding the woman’s hand, but when he slightly loosened his grip, she held on tighter.

  “Does anything you’ve found out help? Can we stop it spreading? Can anyone stop it spreading?”

  “I’m sure there’s scientists all over the planet thinking the same thing,” Rohit said, with more confidence than he actually felt. “It’s just a fungus, after all.”

  “But is it?” Irene replied. “For what you’ve told me, this isn’t just anything.”

  He had no answer.

  “I need to keep looking,” was all he could say. “There’s things I can try—and I need to be doing something.”

  “So do the kids downstairs,” Irene replied. “Is there anything you can get them to help you with to stop them climbing the walls?”

  “As long as they have the television, they’re better off down there—safer too—I don’t know how secure my equipment is against the spread of the infection.”

  Irene looked shocked.

  “Then you need to stop. Right now.”

  “No,” Rohit replied, and gently disengaged his hand from hers before turning back toward the microscope. “I need to start—start paying closer attention—and start finding a way of keeping us alive.”

  21

  Jim Noble drifted.

  Part of him was aware that he was driving the truck over the Airport Heights road, and another part of him was appalled at a memory of killing the kid in a washroom—although surely that hadn’t happened? But most of his attention was on a high plain between Blue Hills under a purple sky.

  The crop needed him—it wanted to grow and spread the song. The song was everything and everything was the song.

  It was the only thing that mattered.

  It was louder now, more confident, with many more voices joined in the choir. Not all could hold a tune, many could scarcely vocalize at all, but the song was the thing and the slow but steady drift of it to fill all the empty places of the world was well underway.

  Soon Jim would play his part in that—soon.

  But for now he was content to go with the flow.

  His head swam, and the scene around him—the truck, the crew, the road ahead—all melted and ran, receding into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint in a blanket of darkness. Jim was drifting in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the song.

  He danced.

  Shapes moved beside him in the dark, black shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic and they joined, two, four, eight, sixteen, ever growing, ever doubling.

  They grew. And they danced, there in the dark, danced in time with the song.

  They all danced.

  * * *

  Kerry looked askance at him as the truck finally came to a halt at Hamilton Park School Hall.

  “You sure you’re okay, Jim? You’ve hardly said a word all day.”

  Jim waved him away. The right words seemed to come from the darkness, and he spoke without the need to understand.

  “I’ll be fine. Beer and hockey will see me all right.”

  That elicited a laugh from Kerry—something else Jim no longer understood, but he knew it was good—he was still not suspected—he was still dancing.

  He felt a thrill of anticipation as they approached the main hall—many had been brought here, many would-be singers and dancers. But as soon as they entered and the drone inside him responded in turn he knew—the song was already here, had already been joined. The floor of the school hall was a mass of brown threaded tissue, clumps here and there showing where the singers had joined the throng, the seed-bearers grown large and plump and ripe, thrumming and vibrating in time, ready to spread the joy.

  He heard Kerry retch and start to weep, but Jim felt no sorrow in this place. They were in the song now.

  All were in the song.

  All would dance.

  22

  Rebecca was surprised to find the cabin had both power and water supply. Since her mum passed, they’d only ever used the place as a summer weekend getaway spot, and every year Shaun had to get the local council to switch on the utilities for them in May before their first visit—obviously someone had preempted them this year and done it early. Not that she was complaining; the boys now had the television set on which to play their games—anything that kept them distracted was fine by her.

  She had a working stove, and a shower un
it, which she took advantage of as soon as she knew the boys were settled—if not entirely happy. Having the utilities working made her think of Shaun again, but the phones still weren’t getting any signal, and the cabin wasn’t equipped with an Internet connection, so WiFi was out of the question. She could only trust that he would get her earlier message, and hope that he was on his way.

  I don’t know if I can get through this without him.

  She made herself a mug of coffee and took it over to the picture window, looking out over Trinity Bay to the Atlantic Ocean.

  She’d always loved the view.

  Shame about the rest of the place.

  Growing up she’d hated the sight of the house—too small, too remote, too far from school, too windy—too much of all the wrong things, too few of any of the good ones. She hadn’t been able to leave for college in St. John’s fast enough, and after she met Shaun her visits home grew few and far between, despite her mother’s long protestations at being abandoned.

  Now, here she was again, feeling the old nagging guilt but at the same time the familiar horror at being so remotely removed from society.

  But now, today, maybe that’s a good thing.

  From the cabin’s high spot on the cliff she had a view down a cliff face to a rocky bay, then out to sea—there was no sign of the brown infection in her current field of vision.

  She was more than happy for it to stay that way for a while, but her calm was broken almost before she had time to settle into it. The boys had gone quiet—she hadn’t noticed, lost in her own reverie, and she only became aware of it when Mark spoke softly, breaking the silence.

  “Mum—you need to see this.”

  She walked round so that she could see where he was pointing at the television. They weren’t playing games anymore—although given the carnage on screen, they might as well have been.