“That...” Nonus tried not to shiver as they crowded into the dark hallway along with Whiteside and Mark. “Makes sense, actually.” The lighted doorway he’d seen earlier was dark, now. He wondered who lived or worked in this weird place.
“Won’t someone wonder about the lines?” Whiteside asked, fiddling with his SCBA.
Septimus shrugged. “City lot. Who’s going to ask?”
“True, that,” Mark commented.
Once again, the group lapsed into an uneasy silence. It wasn’t until they heard someone approaching that they looked up again. “Breathers on, people,” Septimus ordered. He did so himself before taking the first tank from the men who had wheeled four backpack tanks and a small drum into the crowded hall.
Nonus struggled with his respirator and hood, then grabbed his own tank. They were going in expecting contact at any point. Even standing in the hall had been fraught, since as he’d pointed out in the briefing, the slime mold used chemotaxis, not light, to guide itself in movement. Retracing his and Septimus’ steps would have been very simple for it, if it wanted to. For that matter, them running blindly through the dark tunnels, keeping silent, hadn’t been strictly necessary either. There was, Nonus decided, something other than the mold down there in the dark, and it would be worse to disturb it. Which is why they weren’t carrying real flamethrowers or something that would create toxic fumes. Not the purported worry about civilians.
Septimus switched on the light that had been strapped to his chest. It was angled downward and only emitted a pale blue glow. It would keep him from stumbling over something without, they’d been told, attracting the mold. That was bullshit, but there weren’t other options offered to them. Nonus triggered his, and held his spray wand tightly. He followed Septimus down the steps.
This time it was worse than the first time. Then, he’d been tripping along like little Red Riding Hood on her way to meet granny, he reflected bitterly. This time, he was laboring with not enough air - or at least the sensation of not enough to breathe - and a lot more very hot garments and weight. This time, he knew what was coming, and what it was capable of. He kept taking the steps one at a time. He’d insisted on coming along. He wasn’t going to back out now. The mold was dangerous and had to be stopped.
At the bottom of the stairs, Nonus could feel his heart pounding. He couldn’t hear anything other than the faint hissing of his air being dispensed slowly. Just enough to keep him alive at a time. He couldn’t see anything other than the glowing lights on each suit, either, but that was comforting. When you saw the bioluminescent jello crap, it was time to set fire to the world.
Septimus gestured them to follow him down the narrow hall. Nonus paid more attention, this time, to how it was constructed. Flat stones, laid like stacks of pancakes, made up the walls. This place was old. Older than the building they were ostensibly underneath. The floor was packed dirt on crude concrete. He wondered who’d added the concrete, when, and why.
He almost ran into Septimus’s back when the other agent stopped dead in the hallway. Nonus cursed to himself, because he hadn’t been paying attention and this could be fatal. He shook his head and tried to take a deep breath. Fatigue was catching up with him. Septimus jerked away violently, and Nonus lost all of his fogged feeling as his teammate was suspended upside down in the hall by a dark tendril of... something.
“Shit!” Mark screamed. “It’s not glowing!”
“It learns!” Nonus yelled back at him. He pointed his sprayer above Septimus’s foot, up where the tendril met the dark ceiling that was now faintly discernible as being wet and rippled. The mold had been waiting for them, hiding, and had taken advantage of the human tendency to look down, not up. He triggered the sprayer, right about the same time Whiteside, behind him, did. He only learned that later, because he hadn’t been looking at the other man when he’d sprayed the ceiling. Mark, on the other hand, he was aware of as he was shoved aside while Mark sprayed wildly down the tunnel.
Which is why Septimus landed on top of the human, instead of the hard floor. Nonus leaped over the tangle of limbs, foaming peroxide reacting with mold, dirt, and anything else organic it landed on, and kept spraying continuously down the tunnel while Whiteside painted the ceiling. Mark’s aim, whether deliberate or not, had revealed the body of the mold when it hit and shimmered over the surface of the thing, blocking the hall tunnel like a gelatinous sheet. It rippled and fell, blobs writhing across the floor while Nonus kept spraying each one he saw moving. The mold on the ceiling was falling like disgusting black rain, coating his protective suit and dribbling over his face shield until he was forced to swipe at it with a gloved hand, smearing the foam and mold away and allowing him a small window of vision again.
His obscured vision is why he didn’t realize at first that his tank had gone dry. A hand on his shoulder made him jump violently, flailing around to try and fend off a mold tendril.
“My turn.” Septimus was nearly shouting to make sure he could hear. “Fall back for refill!”
Nonus stared dumbly at the end of his wand, which was only emitting a small amount of tiny bubbles. “Got it.” He called back before turning toward the stairs. He could hear the crackle of the peroxide hitting mold behind him. The hallway was a nightmare scene of dribbling black ooze, froth, and seething lumps of resisting mold. Nonus dodged one that was sliding toward his boot. Mark splatted it with a squirt of peroxide. “Thanks...” Nonus got out as he skipped to one side, then the other.
Mark didn’t speak, just grunted acknowledgement as he flattened himself against the wall to allow Nonus past.
At the foot of the stairs Nonus found Whiteside, spraying methodically around it. “Go on up to the first landing. There’s no slime past here, for sure.”
Relieved at the respite, Nonus headed up. A man in protective gear with the barrel met him. A pump had been put on the barrel, and the man helped Nonus out of his backpack and filled it quickly. Rearmed, Nonus headed back into Hell. A nice, dry, flaming hell would be preferable, he’d decided. A slimy, cold, dark one was the suck. The depth of suck. He squirted a blob that looked like it had moved.
“Nonus.” Septimus greeted him. “I’m out. Got it?”
Mark had already passed him on the way back for a refill. “Yeah.”
He sprayed the walls, sweeping the wriggling worms of mold ahead of him, watching with satisfaction when they broke into frothing disorganized liquid and ran down onto the floor. He made sure he paid special attention to the ceiling, where the dark sheet ran ahead of his spray like animate fingers, until he wouldn’t see any more. He stood there, panting, holding his wand high above his head, waiting for something to move. Anything to move. The dark stilled around him, only the faint blue glow on his chest holding it back. Nothing moved.
Lab Gremlins on Parade
Steven pushed open the lab door with his foot, balancing a box in his arms. “Julian?” he called, unable to see past the big box for the moment. “Hey, I have the...”
His words caught in his throat. The lab lights had come up automatically when the door was opened. Steven had set that up himself when he’d come back to work. Something about the dark bothered him these days. He’d installed nightlights in his bedroom and shared bathroom, earning him some side-eye from roommates who had kindly been refraining from teasing him recently. About much of anything, not just the nightlight. Going back to work in the lab had seemed like a grand idea to Steven, who just wanted to get his normal life back. Making media endlessly had never seemed like such a good idea.
The lab, which should have been empty because it was dark, was anything but. On the bench in front of him were two large styrofoam shipping boxes. The size of coolers, but with bright red biohazard tape wrapped around and over them, they did not fill Steven with cheer. Neither did the sight of his boss... not the portly scientist he used to report to, and now worked with-but-not-under (whatever Julian seemed to think), but the small, ferocious, and green one.
Snirblefritz gree
ted him with a cheerful grin. Steven’s heart sank further. Fritzy happy was not a good sign. “I brought you presents!”
“Um.” Steven maneuvered the big box he’d been holding into the receiving area behind the lab door. “I see...”
“First,” she went on like he hadn’t even spoken. “You have the samples you requested.”
“Samples? Requested?” Steven could only repeat her words stupidly. He didn’t remember...
“You said you wanted to know how the mold protected itself against the chemicals, yes?”
Steven couldn’t remember saying anything nearly so stupid. Suicidal, and stupid. “No. Is that... are there...”
“Mold specimens?” She patted the styrofoam nearest her. “Yep, one of each lime jello and venom black.”
Steven couldn’t help it. He boggled at her.
Fritzy started to giggle helplessly. “I... I didn’t name them.”
“No, that would be me.” Another gremlin, slightly taller than Fritzy, and wearing a white lab coat with the initials VC embroidered over his chest pocket, stepped around the corner of the bench. He swept a small bow in Steven’s direction. “Vulframcoonidge, at your service, and delighted to finally meet you in person.”
Steven picked up his dropped jaw, metaphorically, and managed an awkward bow of his own. “I’m, um, happy to see you up and walking.”
“Fit as a frog!” The gremlin scientist was not, Steven noted, as fluent in English idiom as Fritzy. “Feeling a little foolish for having come to such a ignominious end while playing along with Julian’s prank, but that’s water down the spout, eh? Now, we were saying...”
Fritzy raised an eyebrow and shot Steven a speaking glance. Steven tried not to burst into inappropriate laughter.
Vulframcoonidge kept talking without batting an eye at the interaction. “We have two very interesting specimens. My hope is to learn from them, and possibly have a way to combat the mold when we encounter it again.”
“Again?” Steven couldn’t help himself. The word just popped out before he could stop it, and loudly.
Vulframcoonidge stopped this time and blinked. “Why, yes, of course. The mass of it in the tunnel was destroyed, certainly, but slime molds are very interesting, beng both...”
Steven interrupted him dolefully. “Multicellular and unicellular, plus spore forming. You think it had time to encapsulate.”
“Exactly.” The gremlin rubbed his hands together. “It is going to be a privilege to work with you, I can tell.”
“Work with Dr. Thompson, don’t you mean?” Steven recalled that the gremlin had been Julian’s research partner.
But both Vulfram and Fritzy were shaking their heads. Vulfram spoke first. “No, Dr. Thompson has been reassigned. Something about vat steaks, and artificial bull. You and I will be teaming up on this project, and before you worry, we have helpers.”
“Gremlin technicians will cut down on awkward questions,” Fritzy offered, with a dirty look at Vulfram. Steven wondered what that was about.
“Anyway, let me introduce you,” Vulfram took a step back and looked behind the bench with an annoyed glance. “Don’t be so shy.”
Steven thought that he’d be hiding, had he been forewarned of this, too. “Um. Hi?”
At this tentative greeting, three more gremlins came slowly around the bench, all wearing coats with initials just like Vulfram was. He pointed at each of them. “Mirgplux, Dirmdang, and Pugbin.”
Steven stopped himself with an effort from extending a hand. “I’m Steven.” He offered with a small bow. They all bowed back, and then there was a small awkward silence. Steven cleared his throat. This was going to be difficult. “So, um, about these samples...”
“In liquid nitrogen.” Fritzy looked amused. Steven wondered if she realized they were scaring him shitless. “Vulf assures me they are still viable, while being safe from, er, escape.”
“My dear, I really do not like to use words like escape.” The gremlin was definitely a doctorate, Steven mused. His frown and pedantic tone were dead giveaways. “It is not, by definition, capable of planning and coherent thought, much less sapience.”
Steven couldn’t stop the shiver this time. “You weren’t in the tunnel with it. It wasn’t... insensate.”
To his surprise, this didn’t piss the gremlin off. Instead he broke into a broad smile and started nodding enthusiastically. “Which is why this is going to be a fascinating collaboration, Steven! I am very much looking forward to our work!”
Steven just looked from the lineup of gremlins, to the boxes, and back again. So much for a nice, normal lab life... he took a deep breath. “So... where do we start?”
The End
(or is it?)
Author Bio
Cedar Sanderson was born a military brat in Nebraska and spent her childhood enroute to new duty stations. Her formative years after her father left the Air Force were spent being home-schooled on the Alaskan frontier. She removed to the "more urban" climes of New Hampshire at the beginning of high school. She has had the usual eclectic range of jobs for Fantasy/ SF authors, ranging from balloon twister and body artist to apprentice shepherdess. She counts the latter as more useful in keeping track of her four children and First Reader. Her fascination with science dates to her early childhood, spent with her grandmother on the Oregon coast studying the flora and fauna and learning to prepare a meal from what she could glean from a tidal pool and the Pacific Rainforest. This led to a lifelong interest in science, cooking, and becoming a tough old lady.
She is now working her dream job as a Scientist while running a household, an art and design business, and writing multiple novels on the side with occasional forays into coloring books and children’s stories. This has the result of leaving those watching her indefatigable efforts panting in exhaustion.
You can catch up with Cedar, see news about her upcoming books, and find a free ebook at her website, CedarWrites. Check out her author page to find the rest of her books.
Other Titles by Cedar Sanderson
Pixie For Hire Series:
Pixie Noir
Trickster Noir
Dragon Noir
Pixie for Hire Omnibus (all three titles)
The East Witch (Forthcoming)
The Tanager Series:
Jade Star (a novella)
Tanager’s Fledglings
Tanager in Flight (forthcoming)
Children of Myth Duology:
Vulcan’s Kittens
The God’s Wolfling
Short Fiction:
Snow in Her Eyes
The Twisted Breath of God
Little Red-Hood and the Wolf-man
One-Eyed Dragon
The Eternity Symbiote
Memories of the Abyss
Snow Angel
Sugar Skull
Stargazer
The Dwarf’s Dryad
Plant Life
Fairy Little Sister
Mindflow (published by Something Wicked)
Milkweed (published by Mythic Delirium)
Lab Gremlins Page 8
