Fungoid

by William Meikle

  “Let the family in,” Rohit said to Irene, who hadn’t left his side this whole time. “We need to ask their permission.”

  “Permission for what?” Irene asked.

  “Permission to inject the boy. It might be his only chance.”

  * * *

  “Can I hold him?” the mother—Becky, her husband said—asked.

  Rohit shook his head.

  “It’s not safe. And even after the injection—if you agree to it—he will have to be kept isolated for a while—just to be safe."

  “But the injection will work?” the husband asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the boy, and tears weren’t far from the surface.

  “It worked on Noble—at least partially,” Rohit replied, and motioned at the other prone man.

  It was only then that the wife paid attention to the other body.

  “Shaun—look—he’s like that one in the supermarket—where we saw those roots.”

  Now it was Rohit’s turn to pay attention.

  “If you’ve seen this before—and the roots—I’ll need to know everything. But first—do I have your permission for the injection?”

  The couple looked at each other, and the husband nodded. Rohit injected a seven percent solution into the boy’s arm. His eyelids fluttered but there was no other movement.

  “What now?” Becky asked.

  “Now we wait—I’ll have some coffee brought through and you can tell me everything.”

  * * *

  The captain planned to cast off and get going on the next tide. Rohit realized that he might have to ask for more time after hearing the family’s story. He went to the bridge to try to explain his thinking. Yet again, Irene followed at his side. The family stayed with their lad—he still hadn’t shown any signs of movement—but the infection had not spread any further in the last fifteen minutes, so there was hope.

  “It’s using people as carriers for the…brains…for want of a better word,” Rohit said to the captain. “Noble brought a nerve cluster on board with him and it spread into the hold—you’ve seen the root system and the…brain. That’s how it spreads—at least that’s how it spreads the part of it that knows how to react and adapt. If we can stop that, then the rest of it is just tissue—the rest of it can be eradicated.”

  The captain looked as tired as any man he’d ever seen.

  “And can you stop it? Do you have a plan?”

  “I do. But you’re not going to like it. I want to try to wake Noble up—then press-gang him into something that’ll probably kill him.”

  41

  The pain had faded now, leaving behind a dull ache. Everything seemed flat and colorless. There was no song, no dancing, and Noble missed them—needed them, a junkie needing his fix. His body felt as if ants crawled all over it, but he couldn’t move to scratch. A face loomed over his—dark skinned, Asian—he didn’t recognize the man, and had to struggle to remember how to make sense of what was being said.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Noble?”

  Noble struggled, couldn’t find speech—his chest and throat felt too solid, like rock, refusing to move to his command. He managed to move his head, a single nod, but it seemed to please the man speaking to him.

  “We think we’ve found a way to stop it spreading,” the man said. “But we need your help. We’re going to inject you with more of the toxin—it has successfully brought you back this far. But this will be a bigger dose—we want you to go back down onto the hold and make contact with the thing you left there—we want you to poison it. Understand—this may kill you—but the infection has riddled you already, and either way, you don’t have much time. Nod again if you agree.”

  Noble understood none of it apart from one thing—they wanted to put him back in the dark, back with the dance.

  There was nothing he’d like more.

  He nodded.

  42

  Shaun couldn’t take it anymore. The sight of Adam lying on the trestle, as helpless as the day he’d been born, was too much to bear. When the doctor—Rohit—said he was going down to the hold to see if his theory was right, if there was a way to stop the infection in its tracks, he volunteered to go and help, if he could.

  Becky was furious—at first.

  “We said it, didn’t we—we’d never be parted again.”

  “And I meant it,” he replied. “I’ll be right below here—just a flight of stairs away—and I’m not about to do anything stupid. I’m all out of stupid. Besides, it might help Adam.”

  She punched him on the shoulder, hard—and he knew she would let him go—she understood better than anyone how much it was tearing him up to stand around doing nothing while Adam lay there.

  Rohit administered an injection to the man on the other table. Shaun didn’t understand what was going on—only that the man, badly infected, had volunteered to take a poison, and then to deliver it to something in the hold—something that Shaun thought might be the same as the thing he’d seen in the supermarket.

  I managed to fight it then—I might be of help in fighting it now.

  When Rohit asked for help in getting Noble down to the hold, Shaun went to his side.

  “Wash your skin with the alcohol,” Rohit said. “It’ll stop you being infected.”

  “Maybe I should have a smoke too?” Shaun replied, with a smile for Becky’s benefit. Rohit surprised him by taking the suggestion seriously.

  “You may be onto something there,” the doctor replied. “Nicotine, in concentration, is known to be effective as a neurotoxin. In fact, it might work even better than the ethanol. When we have a chance, I must test that too. But first, let’s get Noble downstairs—if this works, it’ll be our first bit of good news. I think we could all use some.”

  Shaun swabbed his hands—and face—with ethanol. The smell of it brought about an instinctive craving for a smoke that he had to push down.

  Smokes and booze are a hell of a way to go about saving the world.

  * * *

  On the way down below, Shaun braced himself for a return of the light-headedness, listening for the swell of the droning song, watching out for the flicker and dance of the rainbow aurora. But there was nothing, just the clump of their footsteps on the decks. He had Noble’s left side, Rohit was on the right and the other woman—Irene—just behind them. She wore one of the backpacks, and Shaun saw her knuckles whiten where she gripped the pistol trigger.

  Rohit stopped at a door—the entrance to the hold.

  “If this doesn’t work, we need to get out fast. If I say run, you run. No heroics.”

  Shaun almost laughed.

  “I guarantee you, Doc—I’ll be first out.”

  Rohit smiled back, then led them into the gloom of the hold. The whole place stank of alcohol. There were crates and boxes of food piled high, but all ruined, infested with the black slime that remained of the perished mycelia. The thing they had come for—the thing they wanted to reintroduce Noble to—was lodged in the far corner—a thick, woody mass of tissue.

  “It is the same,” Shaun whispered, then spoke louder so Rohit could hear him. “It’s the same as the thing in the supermarket.”

  Rohit nodded.

  “If I’m right, these are the brains—the control centers—of the infestation. Let’s see if we can level the field and make it stupid.”

  As they approached the mass of roots, Noble grew more animated, and pulled against Shaun’s grip, seemingly eager to approach the corner.

  “Let him go,” Rohit said. “This is why we came.”

  Shaun and Rohit both let go of Noble and stepped back to stand alongside Irene, who kept the spray gun trained on the man’s back as he half-walked, half-stumbled into the corner of the hold, falling onto the mass of brown trunk and root.

  Almost immediately the drone started, and dancing lights in blue and green rose from around Noble’s body. He started to tear at his hazmat suit, ripping it off. The colors flowed out of him, around him—and across the divide, seeping into
the body of the root system. Irene stepped forward and raised the spray gun, but Rohit held her back.

  “Wait, we need to see what happens.”

  Shaun felt slightly woozy, but no worse than if he’d had a few beers. The droning song stayed low, far off, and he felt no compulsion to step closer to the rainbow aurora. Noble went still and quiet; his body inside the suit collapsed in on itself with a moist gurgle, and black fluid leaked onto the trunk and root. The main body of the infection reacted immediately, bubbling and seething, like vinegar on baking soda. The reaction spread quickly, through the trunk—and along the root system, sending a stench of rot so strong that the three of them were forced to step back, all the way to the door of the hold.

  43

  The dark and the dance called.

  Noble went to it, gladly.

  44

  “Well, that seemed to work,” Irene said. She lowered the spray gun and took Rohit’s hand. “You were right.”

  Rohit went back into the depths of the hold, walked over and looked down at what was left of Noble—it wasn’t pretty, just a corroded mass of dark, moist tissue that was still bubbling. The drone faded and died, and the last of the dancing lights sputtered, flared briefly, then faded completely. The stench didn’t fade though, and was bad enough that they had to back out of the hold.

  The captain stood on the other side of the doorway.

  “Now what?” he said, and Rohit saw that the question, yet again, had been aimed at him.

  “Now we adapt,” Rohit said. “I want to see if it works out in the wild. I need to go to that supermarket.”

  Any further discussion was halted by a shout from above—the woman, Becky.

  “Doctor—come quick.”

  Her husband was first to reach the medical room but Rohit wasn’t far behind.

  The boy was worse than ever. Brown filaments drew thin lines across his cheeks and over his hands and his breathing was fast and panting, his chest heaving as if under immense pressure.

  “Do something, Doc,” Becky shouted. “Save my boy.”

  Rohit turned to the captain, who stood in the doorway.

  “I need to go to where these folks saw the other one—he’s linked to the place of infection—I think that’s how this stuff works. If we kill the nodes, we kill all the infection in that area.”

  “I can’t ask anyone to go back out there,” the captain said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “And it’s not your son,” Becky replied. She stepped forward. “Tell us what you need, Doc. Just do it quick, I’m getting my boy back, one way or the other.”

  Ten minutes later they were in the truck—Rohit, Irene and the family all crammed in up front. Becky had the stricken lad in her lap—they’d got the boy into full hazmat gear and mask, containing the infection inside.

  Shaun drove while Rohit held Irene’s hand in his left, and carried a large syringe containing a concentrated dose of ethanol in his right.

  “What’s the plan, Doc?” Shaun said.

  “We find the man you saw in the survival suit, we inject him with this, and we introduce him back to the nerve cluster. It’ll probably kill him, but I can’t think of another option right now.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we hope—if it works, then all the infection controlled by that cluster should die and rot. If that’s the case, we tell the world, and start adapting to the new way of things—we fight back.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Becky asked.

  This time it was Irene who answered.

  “Then we’re all fucked.”

  * * *

  It was obvious as they made their way up Church Street that the fungus was now in complete control. Every building was little more than a mound of filaments—siding or roof peeking through in places to show what was underneath—what was being consumed. Tall puffballs, some as high as the eaves of the buildings, filled all the spaces that had once been green vegetation, all crammed together tightly, like ranked pins in a surreal bowling alley.

  The noise of the truck was enough to bring a flurry of activity—as they passed, the puffballs swelled and contracted, sending out dense clouds of spore that rattled like hail on the hood and roof of the truck. As they went down the incline out of the main part of town toward the Foodlands forecourt, some of the fungus detached from its hold on the ground and rolled with them. They drove downhill accompanied by a score or more of the rough balls, one of which went under the wheels. The truck squashed it without a bump, but it got Rohit thinking of the way the family’s SUV had been infected in the first place—into the tires and up the wheel wells. If his plan didn’t work, they might all be infected before they got back to the boat.

  It was starting to feel more and more like a last throw of the dice.

  * * *

  That feeling grew even stronger as they rolled into the Foodlands’ forecourt. Rohit didn’t need the family to tell him that they’d found their man—a red-suited figure lay, facedown, on the concrete. He wasn’t going anywhere—a two-foot-high puffball grew up proudly out of his back and spurted a spray of spores over the truck as they pulled up at the wrecked window of the forecourt.

  “What now?” Shaun asked.

  Becky laughed bitterly.

  “I think Irene got it right earlier.”

  Rohit looked out of the window, into the store. He could see the root system, even from here.

  “We need an infected person.”

  He saw Becky instinctively pull her boy closer to her.

  “You can’t have him,” Shaun said.

  “That wasn’t my plan at all,” Rohit said, and before he could talk himself out of it, he let go of Irene’s hand, opened the truck door, stepped out and over to the puffball, and gave it a kick.

  Spores filled the air around him.

  He breathed deeply.

  45

  “What in blazes did you do that for?” Shaun shouted from inside the truck. He felt like giving the doctor a good shaking—but as he’d said earlier, he was all out of stupid. There were too many spores in the air out there—anyone in them was giving themselves a death sentence—and he’d promised Becky they wouldn’t be parted again.

  The droning hum started up again and Shaun’s head spun.

  “Shut the door, quickly now,” Rohit said. He held up the syringe. “In two minutes I’ll give myself this and walk inside to say hello. If it works, all infection in the area will die when the node dies—and your boy should recover. If it doesn’t work…”

  Irene spoke first.

  “I told you that one already,” she said, and she too stepped out of the truck, closing the door behind her before joining Rohit. The drone lessened, and Shaun’s head cleared almost immediately. Irene gave the puffball another kick, and took a deep breath as Rohit clasped her hand. The doctor injected himself at the wrist with half the contents of the syringe—Shaun saw him grimace and wince at the sudden pain before he got it under control. Irene put her arm out to be injected, and afterwards Rohit held her as tears ran down her cheeks.

  The pair embraced for a long time before parting. With one last wave good-bye, they turned and headed into the store, still hand in hand.

  46

  “Do you feel it?” Irene said as they stepped through the smashed front window.

  Rohit nodded. His head floated, the beat of the song pounding in his empty skull. Inside the store brown filaments coated all of the stacks, giving it the appearance of a hedge-maze in winter. Light danced everywhere he looked; blues and greens and yellows and gold, cavorting in time to a beat that even now called Rohit onward, into the dark, into the dance.

  “You’re sure about this?” he said to Irene, hearing his voice echo, far off, as if spoken by someone else. She didn’t speak, just gripped his hand tighter as they walked among the shelves.

  His vision doubled—brown maze overlaid with Blue Hills and a high plain. Tall puffballs—impossibly high—threw dense clouds of spores upward, clouds that
writhed and spun in rainbow spirals and whorls; clouds that danced.

  Fire burned inside him, white flame and heat, coursing through him.

  The toxin—it’s working.

  That was his last coherent thought.

  They walked out of the maze of shelves and into the storeroom beyond—a bulbous woody thing, twenty feet across, waited for them—it sat on the high plain between the Blue Hills. Rohit saw that its roots intertwined with others of its kind, a vast network that stretched into and through everything, a network that sang and danced and glowed in a rainbow arching high, filling the sky with the dance. It was beautiful.

  Hand in hand, what was left of Rohit and Irene went together into the dark, dancing.

  47

  “I’ve got to go to help them,” Shaun said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

  Rebecca looked up at him.

  “I know. I think it’s too late for all of us anyway—I think this might be the end of the road.”

  “I love you,” Shaun said.

  She smiled back at him as Mark leaned over to join them in a family embrace.

  “I know that too,” she said, unable to see Shaun through her tears.