by Hunter Shea
She gaped in panic when she saw two of the tentacles on his belly flop to the ground. The other five reacted, twitching like garden hoses set on full blast.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed.
Seth stared at the writhing tentacles as they slapped at his torso and legs in a silent paroxysm.
“You fucking bitch,” he seethed.
As if his anger was the catalyst that fueled the hatching of the Devil’s Fingers, the egg sacs burst open one after the other. Seth reared his head back and wailed until blood shot from his damaged throat.
Autumn swung the machete again, aiming for the remaining big limbs on his stomach. She nicked a few; black, green, and red bile spilling from the wounds.
Seth went into a rage, fists raised and charging.
For once, her clumsiness saved her. As she tripped on her own feet, she fell onto her side. Seth grasped thin air, growling like a wounded animal.
She sliced at the back of his legs, severing the Achilles tendon in his left foot.
He should have collapsed like a building on demolition day.
But somehow, impossibly, he remained standing.
Autumn got to her knees and hacked desperately, doing anything to keep him away from her. The machete whooshed with each miss.
When she heard the heavy thunk and felt the machete’s handle vibrate painfully, she knew she’d hit bone. Seth howled.
The blade was buried in his knee. His arms, neck, and face were alive with writhing tentacles.
Tina crawled toward them, though whether to help Seth or her she hadn’t a clue.
She heard Latrell and Brandon calling her name but couldn’t see them.
Seth slumped to the ground, hands snaking out to grab her. Autumn jumped up, reached down and yanked the machete from his knee.
He bolted up, but she reflexively sliced at his chest, the machete glancing off his chest, cutting deep.
She didn’t stop there. She couldn’t stop there because he was not going down. It seemed that with each blow she dealt, the fungus was able to infuse his body with enough adrenaline to recover.
Hacking at his shoulders, Autumn hammered at Seth, severing tentacles and flesh with each blow. She had to do this while dancing backwards in order to avoid his advancing embrace.
Slicing upwards, she cut off one of his hands. On the downstroke, she bisected his other hand. Again and again she slashed at Seth, or the thing that had consumed Seth, unaware that he was no longer moving until the machete was pulled from her hand.
Brandon tucked it behind his back, shouting her name. Latrell was beside him, asking her if she was all right.
She was as far from all right as the sun was from Pluto.
Autumn looked down by her feet and saw the melting mess of her friend. Great chunks of him were scattered about the dusty ground, his blood and the pus from the Devil’s Fingers poisoning the earth.
“Jesus, Autumn,” Brandon said, wheezing like an old truck motor.
Then he screamed.
Chapter 17
“Get her off me! Get her off me!” Brandon wailed.
Tina had latched onto his leg, pulling herself up toward his bare torso. He backpedaled, but she clung to him as if they’d been surgically attached. Egg sacs brushed against his skin but didn’t break.
Latrell wrapped his arms around Tina’s waist and pulled her free.
Tina shook her head wildly. Autumn had gone numb, watching everything as if it were on a movie screen. She saw Tina jab Latrell in the chest with her elbow, a pod exploding, tentacle juice splashing the both of them. She watched Brandon drop the machete, staring in horror at where Tina had touched him.
Tina managed to roll away from Latrell. Resting on all fours, she looked up at Autumn and did the unthinkable.
She bit down on the giant egg sac in her mouth.
It popped with a gut-wrenching hiss. She chewed at the tentacles in her mouth while pulling at the ones on her face, screaming in agony with every bite. Spitting out shreds of the fungus, she didn’t stop until there was nothing left but the broken pod dangling from her ruined cheek.
“I couldn’t…take it anymore,” she said, breathing wetly, gobs of horrid-looking juices spilling over her lower lip.
She locked her eyes on Autumn.
“You have to kill me.”
She couldn’t reply if she wanted to. Autumn wasn’t even sure any of this was real. If she couldn’t feel her body, did that mean this was all a dream?
“You’re right,” Tina said. “If we go back to town, everyone will die. It’s taking over me, eating my brain. It doesn’t think. Not like we do. But I know what it wants. To spread. To live. To thrive.”
“She infected me,” Brandon said. “She infected me!”
“Autumn, you have to kill me. It’s coming and I can’t hold it back much longer. Once it does, it’s going to head down that trail and do what it has to do.”
Latrell hovered over Tina, ready to hold her back if she tried to attack anyone.
“Please, end this,” Tina said.
Autumn’s fingers wrapped around the machete’s handle. It was lighter than air because, of course, this wasn’t real.
“Autumn, don’t,” Latrell said.
Brandon looked at her and held out his hand. Tina had delivered him a death blow with just a brush of her hand and he wanted revenge.
But she asked me, Autumn thought.
And why not? She’d already killed two of her friends. She was obviously qualified to do it.
Ignoring Latrell and Brandon, she brought the machete down on the crown of Tina’s head. She thought she heard her mutter, “Thank you” before all of the pods on her body erupted.
Better move fast before they keep her going!
Autumn battered away on Tina until her head was in small pieces, the evil Devil’s Fingers never having time to wreak havoc, sizzling as her life bled out.
Feeling that this part of the dream was done, she let the machete go, the tip of the blade sticking in the back of Tina’s ravaged neck. She spotted some firewood sprinkled around the campsite. Walking past Latrell, seeing him talk but hearing nothing, she arranged the wood to make a fire.
* * * *
“She’s checked out, dude,” Brandon said. It felt like his stomach was on fire, but he was pretty sure it was just his imagination. At least he prayed it was his imagination.
“That makes her the lucky one.”
Autumn had built a fire and was now sitting beside it, staring into the flame.
The bloodied remains of Seth and Tina were quickly melting away.
It was a goddamn bloodbath, and Autumn of all people had been the one to do it.
They had truly stepped into some kind of alternate reality—one that even Brandon hadn’t been able to slip into no matter what he ingested in the past.
Latrell didn’t look so good. It was as if he was a cartoon and someone had popped his mighty muscles with an oversized stickpin. Ever since they’d come upon Autumn slashing her way through Seth and Tina, Latrell had shrunken into himself. If he had hair, Brandon would wager good money it would be white as snow now.
He kept checking his skin, waiting for the first little white bumps that would become Devil’s Fingers eggs to appear. He didn’t see any yet. A great racking cough bent him double.
“You got a joint?” Latrell asked.
“I only brought the one,” Brandon said when he recovered. “I gave it to Tina.”
Latrell looked back at where what little remained of Tina was being soaked into the ground. “Kind of a waste.”
“She needed it way more than me, dude. Way more.”
“Maybe not.”
Would he know when the eggs started to grow? Would they make his skin itch? Would he feel them sprout from his pores? Brandon wished to hell he
still had that joint and a whole lot more.
“Yo, Autumn!” Latrell said.
She didn’t respond, her gaze locked on the fire.
“Maybe it’s best you leave her be. It’s better to not know what the hell is going on.”
“If she never comes out of it, how will I say good-bye?”
“What are you planning to do?”
Latrell tossed a twig in the fire. “I don’t know. Maybe just get up and go, make sure I’m far enough away so I don’t come back here like Carrie. But then another part of me can’t bear to be apart from Autumn. We were supposed to start planning our wedding when we got back from this trip. Well, she was really going to do most of the planning.”
Brandon chuckled, enjoying the warmth of the fire. “Guys rent tuxes and shoes. We’re not halfway as invested as the fairer half.”
“I was ready to do anything she asked. I love her, man. Like more than I ever thought it was possible to love another person. And now I can’t even touch her because I don’t know if she’s infected by those things or not. Fuck, I can’t talk to her because she’s somewhere else.”
Brandon got up and stretched. “I wish I had something positive to tell you, but I’m having a hard time keeping my own shit together.” He looked up at a night sky blazing with stars. There wasn’t a trace of chemtrails anywhere. And why should there be? If they wanted to destroy everything around Merritt Lake, they had done their job with German efficiency.
He walked over to Autumn and stood over her. Now, even he couldn’t touch her. It was so strange, being close to people, people you loved, and not being able to come in contact with them.
Seth is gone, he thought. It didn’t sound right, didn’t feel right. He was too numb to feel it, but that would wear off. He hoped his bedraggled brain could hold off until after the infection had run its course.
Jesus, when will those eggs start growing? I’ll have to do what Latrell said and just walk off when they do. The last thing Autumn needs is to take out another one of us.
“She’s seen and done enough,” he said, the campfire crackling. “We can only hope she’s clean, you know? Maybe when all is said and done, she can just get up and walk the hell out of here.”
Latrell couldn’t take his eyes off her. “You know how they give a condemned man a chance to say his last words?”
Brandon nodded.
“I’ll make mine a wish. I wish everything you said comes true. And I wish she can move on with her life, but every now and then, she thinks of me.”
A lone tear snaked down Latrell’s cheek. Brandon noticed how many of the egg sacs had grown considerably on his friend. When Latrell moved to wipe the tear away, Brandon could see the tentacles within the pods on his arm quiver.
“Well, we came here to mourn, and we’re going to leave being mourned,” Brandon said.
Latrell gave a quiet laugh. “I almost envy Seth’s dad.”
“Yeah. A fatal heart attack is way better than being taken over by a freaking fungus.”
“The Devil’s Fingers. It makes you wonder if the guy who gave it the nickname could see into the future.”
“Like Nostra-fucking-damus.”
They sat quietly, joining Autumn in being entranced by the fire dance. What more could there be to say? Sure, they could break into maudlin musings on the good times and how much they loved each other—how the future they’d all planned would never come to pass. But what was the point?
So they sat, the trio of survivors mesmerized by the fire, making sure to stay far enough away from each other so they couldn’t touch no matter how far they could stretch their arms. Brandon wished he had a pocketful of peyote, anything that would take him to where Autumn was orbiting.
They still had beer.
It had been dumped from the cooler by the crazed Dan-thing hours ago and would be warm as piss, but it would do. Brandon got up to collect the cans, chugging one without taking a breath.
“You want one?” he asked Latrell. “It’s hotter than mother’s milk, but that doesn’t affect the alcohol content.”
When Latrell didn’t answer, he walked over to his fruiting buddy, holding out a can.
Latrell’s eyes had rolled up in his head and his body convulsed.
He let out a piercing wail that was so shrill, Brandon had to clamp his hands over his ears.
Chapter 18
Autumn heard shouting from so far away, it was almost easy to ignore.
So much screaming. So much…
All she wanted to do was sleep. Sleep in the dancing light before her. It looked so warm, so cleansing, so pure, so…encompassing. She needed to be encompassed now. To be scooped into warm, tender arms and whisked away from…from what? She couldn’t recall. But in her soul, she knew it was bad.
Things were happening around her, outside of her. Inside of her. She couldn’t tell anymore. Reality and the impossible, the dream world, had melded into one confused miasma centuries ago.
She was home, sitting before her fireplace. Her parents were on the sofa behind her. Mom was reading a book. Dad had file folders on his lap. They sat in silence. This was home. This was perfection. All that was required of her was to sit by the fire and bask in its warmth. There would be school tomorrow, but that was so long off, she couldn’t connect with the drudgery of getting up and slogging off to class.
The fire. Her parents. The warmth of their love and shelter.
Heaven wasn’t a place to aspire to. It had always been here, right under her nose.
“Autumn!”
Her father called out to her. Why did he have to shout? He was right there, only a few feet away.
Autumn turned. Her father’s face was buried in his work, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.
“Autumn! Help me!”
Her father got up from the couch, file folders slipping off his lap, their contents spilling onto the floor. Her mother put her book down and followed him out of the room.
“Mom? Dad?”
“Autumn, wake the fuck up!”
The living room whooshed away. Suddenly, she was sitting before a blazing campfire.
She turned toward the sound of the man calling her name.
“Brandon?”
He straddled Latrell, pinning his shoulders to the ground.
Latrell’s body bucked and jounced, trying to throw Brandon off.
Autumn’s heart sank as her vision cleared.
Egg sacs had hatched on Latrell’s chest and arms. Wet, flopping Devil’s Fingers batted Brandon as he struggled to keep Latrell immobilized.
“He’s having a seizure,” Brandon barked.
It was like fighting through molasses, this process of getting to her feet and walking to Brandon. Latrell’s legs spasmed. He’d kicked one of his boots off. Tiny pods sprouted from under the elastic band of his socks.
Latrell!
Autumn’s perfect dream world was pulled out from under her. She got on top of his legs, trying to keep him from hurting himself.
“What happened?”
“I think he’s fighting it,” Brandon said.
Fighting it?
Oh yes, the Clathrus archeri. The Devil’s Fingers. Nothing Satan concocted could come close to the living hell of those evil fungi.
“Switch places,” she said, suddenly in her body and in the flow as if she’d never checked out.
Brandon released his hold on Latrell long enough for her to slip over his chest. He was infected but she no longer cared. She grabbed his arms, hands clamped over the swollen egg sacs.
“Latrell, can you hear me?” she said.
He was gone. Long gone. Pale pods dotted his lips, his eyelids, sprouted from his nostrils.
An egg sac sprouted tentacles from his chest. She grabbed the tentacles from the root and pulled them off, tossing them i
n the fire. The flames hissed and popped.
“I love you,” Autumn said, the tears flowing freely. “I’m here, baby. I’m not going to leave you.”
Every time a new pod exploded, she grabbed the offspring limb as if they were weeds in the garden, plucking them free and feeding them to the flames.
It got so she wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the fruiting Devil’s Fingers. Brandon did his best to keep Latrell from bucking him off.
“I need the machete,” Autumn said.
“No.”
“Get it…now!”
Latrell was doing his best to fight the surge of anger and mania the Devil’s Fingers induced in their host. He opened his mouth to scream. His tongue was plagued by small pods, bursting when they scraped against his teeth, tentacles filling his mouth.
It wouldn’t be long until Latrell would give in.
“The machete!” Autumn shouted.
She felt Brandon roll off Latrell’s legs.
A long tentacle shot from the back of Latrell’s throat, coming within inches of touching Autumn’s nose.
“Just hold on, baby. I’ll make it go away. Stay strong. Keep fighting.”
Brandon tapped the machete against her arm.
“I can’t look,” he said.
As if she could.
But she had no choice. She was going to kill her fiancé because she loved him.
Tentacles were birthed on Latrell’s arms. She felt their wet embrace. Gripping the blade with both hands, she raised it over Latrell’s face.
“I love you, Latrell. I’ll always love you.”
He screeched, an alien cry ripping from his bowels.
Autumn brought the blade down on his mouth with all of her weight behind it.
“Raaaaaaggghhhhh!”
The machete sliced through his palate as if it were made of warm butter. She pushed and pushed until the blade bit the ground beneath his head. With a pained roar and flick of the blade, she separated the top of his head from his body. It rolled into the fire where it was greedily consumed, the Devil’s Fingers sizzling from the heat.
