by Hunter Shea
Seth looked to him as if seeing him for the first time. “Why are you carrying Tina?”
“I think my ankle’s broken,” she said, breath hitching.
His eyes moved down her body to her legs. He winced when he saw her swollen ankle. “How did you break your ankle?”
She looked at Dan.
He looked at Dan.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Autumn said. “I—I tried to remove those things from his back and something happened. He went crazy. But it wasn’t him. I don’t even think he knows what’s going on.”
“And those?” Seth asked, pointing at the eggs.
“She thinks it’s that fungus we saw in that field,” Latrell said.
“Devil’s Fingers?”
Latrell nodded.
“They really nailed the name.” He absently scratched at his arms. Autumn noticed little red welts erupt with each pass of his nails. “But didn’t you say it was a plant or something?”
“Yes,” Autumn said. “A fungus.”
“I’ve been coming here all my life and I never saw them before. And I’ve never heard of a plant growing on a person. That’s not possible, right?”
Keeping her eyes on Seth’s skin, Autumn said, “It’s not. At least I didn’t think so. Those things may only look like Devil’s Fingers. They could be something completely different. Or some bizarre mutation.”
“That’s a mutation, all right,” Brandon said, his voice sounding strained. “Didn’t a pea grow in someone’s lungs recently?”
“I know I read that somewhere,” Seth said. “I just can’t remember if it was at a legitimate site or not.”
“He’s right,” Latrell said. “Some dude had a whole pea plant growing in his lung. He didn’t even know it until his lung collapsed and they had to take him to get X-rays.”
“You mind?” Brandon said to Tina. She nodded and he gently set her down, careful not to place her on top of anything Dan had touched. “Unfortunately, those are definitely not peas.”
“So now what do we do?” Seth asked. He looked scared, and he had every right to be.
“We need to get someone out here to help us,” Tina said. She looked at Autumn and Brandon. “It has to be one of you. I can’t walk, we don’t know if Latrell touched Dan and Seth…” A wellspring of tears cascaded down her cheeks. “Baby, we’re going to get you home and taken care of. I promise.”
“I’m more concerned about you,” Seth said. When he went to touch her, she pulled away.
Hands on his hips, he stormed back to the lake to immerse his burning arms in the cold water.
“Would water make them grow faster?” Brandon asked, but not loud enough to carry over to where Seth crouched on the shore.
Autumn raised her hands. “I don’t fucking know, Brandon. I don’t think anyone on the planet knows.”
“Guys,” Latrell said.
He was staring at Dan.
“Unh-unh. No way, dude. No freaking way.”
Dan was deflating, his chest slowly caving in, thighs withering, the corded muscles in his arms turning to mush. His cheeks sunk, teeth bared like a de-fleshed skull.
Worst was his eyes. His lids settled deeper into his sockets until they were tiny curtains pulled open to reveal the dark nothingness that had been hiding behind them.
“Oh Jesus, Dan,” Latrell said, hands stretching toward his friend, stopping short of actually coming in contact with his decompressing body.
Seth returned from the lake, saw Dan collapse into himself and let loose with a string of expletives that echoed across the still body of water.
Once Dan’s flesh was pulled tight as a death mask over his frame, his bones began to snap. Ribs caved in, femurs shattered. When his forehead cracked, nose and cheekbones following, Autumn battled against the incessant pull of numb nothingness.
They formed a loose circle around Dan, aghast at the rapid wasting of what was once a body tuned to perfection. She heard someone crying, as if from across a great distance. Unable to take her eyes off the incredible disappearing Dan, she couldn’t tell if it was Tina, Brandon or Seth who was bawling.
It’s Latrell, a small voice from her deep recesses piped in. Don’t look at him. If you do, you’re going to lose it, girl, and there may be no coming back from that trip.
Just as abruptly as it began, the ravaging of Dan’s body instantly ceased. What remained was a man-shaped wineskin left under a tree, fungi taking root, the earth laying claim to what it had craved since his birth.
“Just fucking shoot me,” Seth said, swaying on legs that looked ready to buckle.
Despite all they had seen, no one was prepared for the next phase.
When it came, Autumn realized Dan had been the most fortunate of them all.
Chapter 9
It started with a small pop. Nothing more earth-shattering than the sound of one corner of a sheet of Bubble Wrap pressed between two fingers.
Seth’s pink, raw hands flew to his mouth as he stared at something on Dan’s side.
Brandon couldn’t see what fresh horror had alarmed his friend. Not from his vantage point on the other side of the throw rug that Dan had become, thanks to those cursed fungi.
Pop! Pop! Poppoppoppoppoppop! POP! POPPOP!
It was as if the first tiny explosions were the blast from a starter’s pistol.
One after the other, the egg sacs erupted. Pink and red tentacles burst into the light, erect poles of slime-slicked fungus, expanding inch by inch, as if they wouldn’t stop until they touched the sun.
The wretched stench stung their eyes and stabbed their lungs. Brandon’s diaphragm hitched uncontrollably as he fought both for air and to stop himself from breathing it in.
The overpowering smell quickly burned itself out, evaporating into the cool, fresh mountain air.
In mere seconds, Dan’s corpse was the seat of hundreds of hellish limbs, the black spots on their undersides weeping clots of blood.
Dan’s blood.
Seth saw it and ran.
Latrell watched the eggs hatch, exposing their nightmare fetuses, in total paralysis.
Autumn had skittered away from Dan when the pods started popping. After all of the fresh tentacles were exposed, she moved a little closer, studying the newborn fungi…if that’s what they truly were.
Brandon had protectively gotten his body between the ruins of Dan and Tina. The fact that he didn’t like Tina wasn’t even a thought or cause for hesitation. Suddenly, any differences they all had no longer mattered. It was them against…against whatever this was, and he didn’t like their current odds in the least.
Seth, who had often boasted of wanting to be the next Survivorman, had lost it. Brandon wanted to run for him, but he couldn’t leave Tina.
Not the first time I’ve been dealt a shit hand this year, he thought, feeling Tina burying her face in his back. This trip, even though the reason for it was sad, was supposed to be a kind of reboot for him.
Well, he’d gotten a reboot. Just not the kind he’d been hoping for.
“It’s those things from the field,” Latrell said, hands clenching.
Autumn kept a good five feet from the bed of Devil’s Fingers.
“It does look exactly like them,” she said. “But they’re too big.”
Brandon watched the tentacles continue to expand, puffing up like cow tongues, stretching tall and straight like beach grass. Some of them were at least two feet high and about as thick as his wrist. There was no time-lapse video needed for these Devil’s Fingers.
But how far could they go?
“I want to go home,” Tina whimpered.
“I know. We all do,” Brandon said.
Not before a stop at the CDC or something like it, he thought. They had no idea how the fungus had gotten on Dan and Carrie o
r how it spread. For all he knew, their pores were at this very moment seedbeds for Devil’s Fingers. How long would it take until they ended up like Dan?
Brandon shook his head, telling his mind to shut the hell up. If he let it go in that direction, he’d be fit for a rubber room.
“Better a rubber room than that,” he said too softly for anyone to hear. He couldn’t even see Dan’s skin anymore. All that was left were broken egg skins and those dreadful tentacles.
“They’re stopping,” Autumn said.
The hundred or so fat Devil’s Fingers were so big and densely packed, they blocked Brandon’s view of Merritt Lake behind them. Autumn was right. It appeared that their insane growth cycle had come to an end.
“My phone,” Autumn said. “I should have been recording it. They’re going to need to know.”
Who they were was anyone’s guess. Brandon figured she meant her parents, specifically her father, who worked with all kinds of strange diseases. She once told them that he’d consulted at the Plum Island infectious disease facility in Long Island many years ago. That was the place where it was rumored Lyme disease was born, along with a few other highly toxic maladies. Brandon read about the place. If her father had been there, he had firsthand knowledge and access to some world-ending plague shit.
They really needed her father here right now. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. Brandon’s generation had grown up in a state of perpetual connection with the world. Not having access was both jarring and terrifying. How could they know what to do if they couldn’t Google it or FaceTime the authorities to get them out here pronto?
“My battery’s dead,” Autumn said, pocketing her phone.
Brandon fumbled for his in his thigh pocket. He tossed it to her. “Plenty of juice in mine.”
“Thanks.”
While the rest of them looked ready for the oversized butterfly nets, Autumn remained calm, studiously capturing all she could on Brandon’s phone, muttering to herself.
“Where’s Seth?” Tina said. She still refused to look around Brandon.
“He took off. Maybe he went back into the water.”
But they didn’t hear any splashing. He’d bugged the fuck out and could be anywhere right now. Brandon hoped he didn’t keep running, veering off the trail until he was lost. They had more than enough on their plate at the moment.
Through everything, they had completely forgotten about Carrie.
Brandon looked behind them. She was still there, still standing in place. The only good news was that there didn’t seem to be more of those eggs sprouting on her and the ones that were there hadn’t grown or hatched.
Had Autumn’s opening the eggs on Dan been the catalyst for his awful death?
He was sure she was too wrapped up in trying to find out what they were dealing with to consider the possibility. He hoped it didn’t hit her until they were well and good away from this hellhole.
“That’s close enough,” Latrell warned her. Brandon couldn’t tell if he meant her proximity to the Devil’s Fingers or her fiancé. They both should be looked at as hot zones now.
Seth, too.
Brandon felt as if he’d been hollowed out.
“What’s that?” Latrell said. He pointed to a thin column of smoke or vapor spiraling from one of the tentacle clusters.
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a release of gases from—”
She looked down at the Dan-shaped outline on the ground.
The tentacles started to wilt, looking more like lolling tongues than ever. Bending backwards, they drooped like the limbs on a willow tree. The only sound they made was the slightest ruffling, a shifting of feet under the sheets in bed.
More smoke exuded from the ribbed central mouths that connected each cluster of tentacles.
Autumn quickly stuffed Brandon’s phone in her pocket, lifting her shirt over her nose and mouth, exposing the black bra she wore underneath.
“Everyone get upwind, now!” she shouted.
Upwind meant they had to go right past the smoldering patch of Devil’s Fingers.
“Help me,” Tina said. She’d taken her shirt off entirely, balling it in her palm and pressing it against her face until only her eyes were visible.
Brandon couldn’t carry her and cover his face at the same time.
But he certainly couldn’t just leave her here.
Lifting her up, he said, “Share your shirt.”
Shifting her in his arms so her face was close to his, he pressed his nose and mouth into the cloth, looking as if they were sharing some strange sort of chaste kiss.
He stumbled on loose rocks, nearly dropping her just a few feet from the Devil’s Fingers. Tina flailed to keep her hold on Brandon’s neck, the T-shirt slipping for a terrifying moment. Brandon held his breath until he steadied himself, the vile tentacles burning in his periphery.
“The shirt…the shirt,” he barked, expelling the dregs of air in his lungs.
Tina stuffed it between them. He took a deep breath, breathing in her sweat and perfume. Nothing had ever smelled better in his life.
They made it to the shoreline in one piece, Autumn and Latrell huffing but keeping their distance from one another.
Brandon scanned the lake but could see no sign of Seth. Where the hell had he run off to?
The wilting fungi emitted enough smoke to double for a barbecue. That smoke wafted toward Carrie.
“I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure plants don’t smoke like that. Not unless someone’s dropped a match on them,” Brandon said, his voice muffled by Tina’s shirt.
“No,” Autumn said. “No, they don’t.”
As they stood by the lake, Brandon noticed that there were no birds. At this time of day, out in Mother Nature’s front yard, the trees and sky should be alive with them.
They’re smarter than we are, he thought. And more mobile.
As a kid, he used to want to fly just like Superman. By the time he was eight, he’d left Superman behind, going whole-hog into wrestling. Why fantasize about being a fake superhero when you had actual living man-beasts battling it out like acrobatic gladiators?
He sure wished he was Superman now.
He’d settle for being a sparrow.
The smoke dissipated several minutes later, the tongues of the Devil’s Fingers turning black and deflating just as Dan’s body had earlier.
“Is that blood?” Latrell asked.
A tide of red leaked from the dying fungi. Brandon could only assume that all of Dan’s blood the Devil’s Fingers had consumed to get themselves to hatch now had nowhere else to go. The tainted blood, streaked with smears of gray and green, seeped out around the patch of fungi like a diseased aura, the dry earth eager to soak it up.
The smell was awful, but nothing like when the Devil’s Fingers hatched.
“Guys? What’s wrong with me?”
Brandon looked up from the shirt, exposing himself.
Carrie had broken from her trance and was headed for them.
Chapter 10
Autumn watched, aghast, as her best friend parted the fading vapors exuding from the dying Devil’s Fingers.
At least she hoped to hell they were dying and not moving on to another growth phase. The cycle of death and rebirth was what made the plant world thrive. With the rapid maturation of the Dev—No! she thought. Stop thinking of them as that. They’re Clathrus archeri. They’re not some mythical beast from Sunday school. They’re just fungi. Not devils.
Seeing Carrie covered in those egg sacs, all signs that Dan was a living, breathing person erased in minutes, it was hard for the academic part of her brain to convince the rest of her that they hadn’t stumbled upon something preternatural: One of Sister Joyce’s warnings in fourth grade come to life if they didn’t obey their parents and teachers, pray every night, and go to confessio
n every week.
“Autumn?” Carrie said, her name sounding strange because of the growth on her friend’s tongue. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
They couldn’t help staring. Or taking a reflexive step backwards when Carrie got closer. She stopped to look down at the black and red puddle that had been her boyfriend.
“What is that?”
“Honey, why don’t you sit down over there,” Autumn said, pointing to a sleeping bag Dan had tried to rip in two.
“I think my skin is having some kind of reaction,” Carrie said, her fingers brushing over the egg sacs on her arms and stomach. She still hadn’t realized she was naked in front of everyone, her voice tinged with a dreamlike timbre.
“I think so, too,” Autumn said. “You should probably sit down before you get dizzy and fall. I’ll find something to put on it.”
Carrie’s eyes narrowed at them. “What happened to Tina?”
“She twisted her ankle,” Brandon said. “She’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about me,” Tina said, the grime on her face streaked from her tears.
“Where’s Seth? Did he do the ashes thing already?”
“He did,” Latrell said. “He got up real early. It was still dark out when he did it.”
Latrell looked ready to tackle Carrie if she came any closer. Now that they had her talking, at least she’d stopped walking.
“I missed it?” Carrie’s head tilted, as if she were trying to jar a memory loose. “That was pretty thoughtless of me.”
“We all missed it,” Autumn said. “He did it while we were all sleeping. Guess he wanted to be alone, you know?”
The last thing she wanted was for Carrie to get upset. Not after what Dan did when she pierced that tentacle with the machete.
Carrie grabbed her stomach, pressing down on the eggs growing there. “I don’t feel so good.”
“All the more reason to sit,” Autumn said. “You do that and I’ll get you something to drink.”
Dreamily shuffling to the sleeping bag, Carrie dropped onto it, shattering the eggs that were on her buttocks. They made a nauseating squelch, thick fluids staining the sleeping bag.
