Spore Series (Book 1): Spore

by Soward, Kenny

  “Will do, Nancy,” Tom said.

  “Great. Let’s meet again in eight hours. Good luck, people.”

  The video feed cut off, leaving Kim sitting in the air-conditioned silence. She’d not been able to bring her phone into quarantine with her, though she could use the facility’s communication system to reach the outside world.

  She clicked on the phone application and dialed the number for home. She hoped her husband was still awake.

  He picked up almost immediately. “Kim?”

  “It’s me, babe.”

  “It’s great to hear your voice,” Bishop replied, his words ending in a quiet sigh. “I missed your voice.”

  Kim grinned. Bishop had always liked her Fayette County twang, more of a mountain accent than deep south.

  “And I missed yours,” Kim said. Bishop had a deep, resonant voice, and she secretly loved to snuggle on the couch with him, ear pressed to his chest as he spoke.

  “I was worried,” Bishop said, emotion choking his voice. “I mean, the news is scary.”

  “I know.”

  “Is it as bad as they say?”

  “It seems pretty bad,” Kim conceded. “But we don’t have a lot of information right now.” She didn’t want her husband worrying too much, so she changed the subject. “How are the kids?”

  “They’re great. In bed, sleeping. They haven’t heard the news, yet.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Do you think we’re at risk out here?” Bishop asked, sounding concerned. “They’re talking about spore clouds floating around. Could one of those reach us?”

  “Normally, I wouldn’t think the spores could stay airborne in the arid west,” Kim said, though she twisted her mouth with doubt as she recalled the spore tendrils drifting over downtown Washington. “But these are different. They’re tougher than your average fungi.”

  “Sounds like we need to get ready,” he said.

  “Absolutely,” Kim nodded.

  “So, do we wrap the house in plastic, or what?”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Kim laughed. “Weird, but interesting.”

  “I’m a writer, babe.” Bishop’s grin resonated in his voice. “It’s my job to think about weird and interesting things.”

  “That’s why I love you.” Kim grinned fondly, though her lips dipped into a frown as she glimpsed her husband with bulging red eyes as he strained to breathe. She quickly pushed the thought away. “I have to be honest, though. I’m in quarantine right now.”

  “Quarantine? Are you sick, honey?”

  “No, I’m fine!” Kim half-scoffed, but his concern touched her. She hadn’t told him about her adventures in the streets of Washington. Small steps. “It’s just a precaution. We’re safe here. This place is state-of-the-art, you know that. We’ve got our own air filtration and—”

  “Okay, I get it,” Bishop laughed. “Now, how do I prepare for this thing?”

  “That question coming from the man who wrote an entire pandemic series?” Bishop was an incredible writer, and his novels kept Kim on the edge of her seat, though he liked to stretch reality like taffy sometimes.

  “That was a science fiction series I wrote two years ago, hon,” Bishop reminded her. “This is reality. As much as you helped me with my research, I’ll still defer to you for any changes in protocol.”

  Grateful for his appreciation, Kim went over some basic facts. “Fungal spores are big compared to viruses and smoke, and the ones we’re dealing with are larger than average. So, we just need to keep them out of the house by sealing it and filtering any air intake.”

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Got a pen and paper?”

  “I’m sitting in front of my laptop.”

  “You need to make a trip to the hardware store,” Kim said. She ran down the list of things she thought her family would need.

  Chapter 14

  Kim Shields, Washington, D.C.

  “Thanks, Tom,” Kim said as he placed the food tray into the sterile chamber and shut the door on his side. A square control panel lit green, and Kim opened the door on her side and removed the tray. He brought her a pot of coffee, cream and sugar, and a bagel with cream cheese. “How long do you think I’ll need to stay in here?”

  “It won’t be long,” Tom stepped back, crossed his arms, and watched her through the big pane of glass that ran the length of the quarantine room. He offered a comforting smile. “At least through tonight. We’ll do one more blood test on you. If that’s clear, I’ll come in and give you a complete physical. If you don’t show any signs of infection, I’ll set you free. Then you can sit in the control center with me and play god.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Kim scoffed, taking her tray over to her computer desk. “It’s cozy in here.”

  Tom chuckled. “I’m glad you’re comfortable.”

  Kim sat down at the computer desk in front of her three screens and poured herself a cup of coffee. She’d only slept three hours between the time she’d arrived at the facility yesterday afternoon and the meeting with the Atlanta team thirty minutes earlier. She would need a lot of high-octane caffeine to get through the morning.

  “You didn’t tell me a little boy died in your arms,” Tom said with softness.

  “You didn’t tell me you had an infected CDC employee.”

  “I’d gotten her stabilized before you came in.” His tone shifted from caring to apologetic. “And it was more important that I get you looking at her blood work.”

  “I was a little tired and out of sorts when I first started looking,” Kim admitted. “The Asphyxia is tearing through her blood like a bull in a china shop. Her white cell count is astronomically high, and her heightened auto-immune response will lead to sepsis, if it hasn’t already.”

  “It hasn’t,” Tom assured her. “Can you look again today?”

  “I will,” Kim nodded. “But I’d rather be out in the field, looking for survivors in the area. Give me some protective gear and a handful of soldiers and I’ll be happy.”

  “Kim, you’re not even out of quarantine yet.”

  “When I get out—”

  “You’re all I’ve got,” Tom held his hands out helplessly.

  “No, I get it,” Kim agreed. “I’ll have my hands full between you and Bob over in Atlanta.”

  “Better to be busy than bored,” Tom assured her. “Now, tell me. What are your thoughts about the fungus we’re dealing with?”

  Kim turned back to her three computer screens. She opened a half-dozen fungi-related files from the CDC database and moved them from the primary screen to the one on the left. Glancing over the first one, she spoke her thoughts out loud. “That this is a fungus presents some unique challenges. Fungi are incredibly adaptable.”

  “People think they can only grow in moist environments,” Tom stated, “but that’s only partially true. They can spread to arid parts of the country quite easily, even if they prefer damp basements. Mycelium threads work their way into the hardest of surfaces, and their networks can spread across several acres right under our feet. We need to take all that into account.”

  “Spores can colonize almost every ecological environment,” Kim added with a sense of awe. “They’ve survived ice ages and several animal extinctions.”

  “They are tough customers,” Tom agreed. “Remarkable, I think. I suppose that’s why they are a separate and unique animal kingdom all on their own. Any theories about the outbreak?”

  Kim twisted her mouth in thought, her eyes narrowing at the screen. “If I had to guess, I’d say the variety of agricultural fungi we’re used to seeing experienced a shared mutation.”

  Tom’s brow furrowed. “How could different fungi strains share the same mutation?”

  “What’s the common factor here?” Kim waited for a response, and when she didn’t get one, she continued. “The antifungals, right? We’ve got three major chemical companies spraying in every corner of the country multiple times per year. They
’re competing with one another, standardizing, stealing each other’s formulas.”

  “So, the chemical spraying forced the fungi to genetically mutate across strains in different parts of the country?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Tom rubbed his chin. “It’s a brilliant theory.”

  “It would take years of field study to prove,” Kim replied, pleased at the compliment. “We may narrow down the root cause of the gene mutation once Mr. Birkenhoff gets here. I’ve got a lot of questions for him.”

  “You and me both. Hey, I dropped some potential solution mappings in our shared folder. Can you look at those and help me work on completing them?”

  “To test on your patient?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure that’s ethical, Dr. Flannery?” Kim didn’t bother to hide her discomfort with the idea. “We’d be using her as a guinea pig.”

  “We don’t have a choice at this point.” Tom pointed out. “This could be an extinction level event, you know that.”

  Kim nodded. “I’ll look right away.”

  “All right,” Tom said with a grim nod. “I’m going back to the control room.”

  “Hey, Tom,” Kim said, getting up from her desk and moving to the glass.

  Tom paused and looked back. “Yes?”

  “Do you have any family anywhere? I mean, are you worried about anyone right now?”

  The doctor turned back to the glass and slid his hands into his lab coat pockets. “Yes, of course.” He tilted his head and gave a smile. “I have a son and daughter in Seattle, and I’ve already called and let them know to be careful. I think they’ll be all right if our offices out west take the proper precautions like we’ve outlined for them.

  “What about your wife?”

  Tom made a partial grimace. “Mrs. Flannery passed away three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kim placed her hand against the glass and gave the doctor a sympathetic look.

  “It was a rare blood condition,” Tom said, shaking his head. “We did everything we could for her, but she couldn’t beat it.”

  “I’m really, really, sorry, Tom.” Kim felt a lump form in her throat.

  “I’d like to say it’s fine, but the truth is, I miss Marta.” The doctor shrugged. “At least she was there when I received my Distinguished Service Award from the National Medical Association. She was so proud of me and would have loved seeing me become the first black CDC Director.”

  Kim shook her head but smiled. “I didn’t know you were the first. Congrats.”

  “I don’t like to make a big deal out of things like that,” Tom said with a humble bow of his head. “I’d rather keep working and leave the awards and accolades to others. But Marta cared about things like that. She reminded me every day that I was breaking new ground for the young men and women coming after me.”

  “She wasn’t wrong,” Kim raised her eyebrows with a hopeful expression.

  Doctor Flannery paused for a moment before he lifted his eyes to Kim. “How about you? You have a husband and kids, too, if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right,” Kim said with a smile. “Bishop is my husband, and my kids are Riley and Trevor. They’re still back in Ft. Collins. They’d planned on being here by the end of the summer, but...” Kim let her voice trail off.

  “Make sure you tell them to stay where they are,” Tom said, pointedly. “Ft. Collins should be prepared should the spore cloud make it out there.”

  “I’ve let them know,” Kim acknowledged. “I’ll have a team of soldiers go check up on them, too.”

  “Good idea,” Tom said, then he smiled. “Good talk, Kim.”

  “Agreed.” Kim gave him a single positive nod. “Talk to you soon.”

  Dr. Flannery disappeared down the long hallway, and Kim turned to her breakfast. She poured herself a cup of coffee, added a sizeable amount of cream, and a bit of sugar. The first sip was hot and strong, and Kim closed her eyes for the moment of simple reprieve before she got into her work.

  She pulled up some blood samples of the CDC employee on her left-hand computer screen and looked at them while she spread cream cheese on her bagel. She took a bite, eyes narrowed at the screen while she chewed.

  Kim picked out the flowery-looking Asphyxia fungal cells as they slowly destroyed and consumed red blood cells. She increased the video speed and watched the patient’s immune cells respond, attempting to clean up the mess left behind by Asphyxia. The white cells were only partially successful, cleaning up some ruined red cells but unable to penetrate Asphyxia’s strong cell wall.

  “You are one tough critter,” Kim said, taking the last bite of her bagel.

  She shifted her attention to the computer screen on her right where she kept her email visible. She found the latest email from Bob over at the Atlanta CDC, and she opened it. There was a listing of every CDC field unit, their location, equipment, and a link to their live satellite feed.

  “Might as well get caught up with the teams in the field while I work,” Kim murmured. She clicked the first link for CDC Field Unit One, poured herself another cup of coffee, and watched.

  Chapter 15

  Corporal Benjamin, CDC Field Unit One, Cleveland, Ohio

  “Do you see anything, Benjamin?”

  Corporal Benjamin leaned forward and peered down at the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs from the back of the UH-6 Black Hawk. Trails of smoke rose across the city as several dozen homes and buildings burned beneath the gray clouds. Human-shaped lumps littered the streets, and there were more car crashes than he could count on ten hands. There was no traffic, and no signs of life that he could see.

  He shifted in his heavy Tyvek coveralls, moving his eyes across the horizon. “Captain, the spore cloud seems to have moved on.” Benjamin spoke into his headset mic. “But there are bodies everywhere.”

  “Can you give me a count?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “I don’t think I can, captain.”

  “Well, try!”

  Benjamin knew the population of Cleveland was around four-hundred thousand people, give or take. However, to get an estimate on casualties, they had to find someone alive. If they couldn’t, he’d have to report a total loss. He tried to imagine the words “four-hundred thousand dead” rolling off his tongue, and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “One second, captain. We’ll do a flyby over downtown.”

  “Roger that, Benjamin. Standing by.”

  The soldier directed the pilot to take a northeasterly course before he turned back inside the crew area to check on the CDC field agent who sat strapped into her seat. While she was a little pale from the swaying chopper, she gave Benjamin the thumbs up. They were the forward scouts for CDC Field Unit One, and the rest of the forty-person team would make their way into the outskirts of the city soon.

  Benjamin turned his attention back to the screaming wind, his gloved hands clutching handles on the sides of the door frame and roof as the pilot banked the chopper hard to the right and rose higher. They skirted Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and followed a railroad line toward the city.

  Sprawling industrial complexes lay off to the left, but Benjamin focused on the subdivisions down on their right. They passed over I-480, and Benjamin moved to the left side of the crew cabin and peered down at the more densely packed subdivisions there.

  A sea of blue-collar homes stretched out before them, fires rising high, streets filled with dead bodies. The beautiful blue of Lake Erie to the north should have lifted Benjamin’s spirits, but he was running out of hope. The soldier’s eyes scanned the ground, desperate to see someone alive. It wasn’t lost on him that he was not only witnessing the complete death of a city but the destruction of the country he loved. Benjamin took a deep breath and sighed in anxious frustration, stomach turning beneath a swell of emotions.

  “Captain, I don’t know how to say this, but—” Something caught Benjamin’s attention before it disappeared behind
the chopper’s nose. He moved to the right side of the crew cabin and looked again.

  “What is it, Benjamin? Spit it out, soldier.”

  “Pilot, check your three,” Benjamin said with a rising note. “On the apartment building roof. The blinking light. Do you see it?”

  “Affirmative,” the pilot replied. “Heading that way now.”

  The chopper banked again, and they swooped in over a three-story apartment building. As they got closer, Benjamin’s hopes rose through the roof. “Captain, it appears there are ten children between the ages of, um, eight and fifteen huddled together on the roof. One of them is flashing a shop light at us.”

  “Great news, Benjamin.” The captain sounded thrilled. “Go pick them up.”

  “Roger that, captain.”

  Benjamin directed the pilot to set down on the far end of the roof. They landed, sending waves of wind over the frightened children. Benjamin and the CDC field worker climbed out of the helicopter and crouch-walked across the long roof to where the kids waited. The field worker began checking the children over while Benjamin surveyed the scene, imagining how it must have played out.

  “The parents are up here with them,” Benjamin said.

  “Well, bring them in, too. Do you need another air unit?”

  “Negative.” Benjamin looked with sad eyes across the row of corpses leaning against one of the big HVAC units. Black mold spores peppered the skin around their lips and mouths. Their eyes were wide open, bulging and horrible. “The parents are dead. It appears they gave the filtration masks to the kids and went without.”

  There was a moment’s pause while the captain digested the information. “Why didn’t they stay inside?”

  “No clue, sir. Maybe they knew what was coming and...” Benjamin didn’t want to say any more. It was too depressing to speculate. And when the field agent called him over to help, he dropped the subject. It didn’t matter why the parents had done what they’d done, only that the children were safe. “Sir, I’m going to aid the CDC field agent now.”