Now I understood the dry, dusty smell. It wasn’t old paper or a forgotten library book. It was mold, living, flourishing mold, feasting on the body of my wife.
My throat was a desert. It didn’t help that Rachel—my beautiful Rachel, who should have been the one panicking, if either one of us was going to—was looking at me with perfect understanding, like she hadn’t expected any other reaction, yet still couldn’t blame me for following the nature she’d always known I was slave to. She blinked again, and I realized to my horror that the sclera of her left eye was slightly clouded, like something was beginning to block the vitreous humor. Something like the spreading gray mold.
“I must have had a cut on my hand,” she said. “I thought I’d scrubbed hard enough, but I guess I was wrong. And then I rubbed my eye in my sleep…maybe that’s a good thing. The itching woke me up. So we can go to the hospital and they can do whatever it is you do when you get a…a fungal infection, and then it’ll all be okay. Right? I just have to go to the hospital. Right?” There was a fragile edge to her words, like she was standing very close to the place where reason dropped away, leaving only a yawning chasm of blackness underneath.
She looked so sad. My girl. My wife. The woman I had promised to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, amen. And I couldn’t make myself go to her. I tried—no one will ever know how hard I tried—but the muscles in my legs refused to work, and the air in my lungs refused to circulate until I was stepping backward into the doorway, away from the dry, dusty smell of mold growing on human flesh.
“I’ll call the hospital,” I said, and fled for the hall.
• • • •
Nikki woke when the ambulance pulled to a stop in front of our house, flashing lights painting everything they touched bloody red. “Mom?” She appeared on the stairs, holding her robe shut with one hand and squinting through the curtain of her hair. “What’s going on?”
I forced myself to smile at her. The EMTs already had Rachel outside. They’d taken one look at her and swung into action with a speed that impressed even me, producing gloves and sterile masks and anything else they could use to keep themselves from coming into contact with her skin. Even then they’d touched her as little as possible, guiding her with words, not hands, casting anxious looks at each other and then back at me as they moved. I understood their concern, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even force myself to follow them. The dry mold smell filled our bedroom, almost solid in its presence. I wanted to bleach the whole place, would have bleached the whole place, except that I knew Rachel’s treatment might depend on being able to examine the spot where she’d been infected.
“Rachel’s not feeling so well,” I said. “I’m going to follow her to the hospital as soon as they call and tell me it’s all right. I was going to come up and make sure that you were awake before I went.”
Nikki’s eyes got very wide and round. “You’re going to leave me here?”
“No, I’m going to ask Mrs. Levine from next door to keep an eye on you.” I didn’t want to leave her alone in the house, but even more, I didn’t want to take her to the hospital. Not until we knew what the thing on Rachel’s arm was, and whether it was contagious.
It had to be contagious. It had been on the fruit, and then it had been on the table, and Rachel had touched the residue on the table; just touched it, nothing more than that. If this stuff wasn’t contagious, she had been exposed at the same time as the fruit, and Nikki—
Sudden terror seized me. “Honey,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level, “are you feeling all right?”
Nikki’s eyes got even wider. “Why? Is it food poisoning? My stomach feels fine.”
“No, it’s not food poisoning. Hold on.” I flicked on the light, illuminating the hall and stairs in a harsh white glow. Nikki squinted at me, looking affronted. I would worry about her sensibilities later. “Show me your hands.”
“What? Mom—”
“Show me your hands.” I was using the tone Rachel always called “OCD voice”—and she wasn’t kidding, exactly, even if she used the label to soften my admittedly violent reactions, turning them into something that wouldn’t frighten people who weren’t as used to me as she was.
Nikki had grown up with my quirks and issues. She stopped arguing and held her hands out for me to inspect. They were spotlessly clean, with short, close-clipped fingernails that had been manicured with a simple clear coat. Most importantly, there was no mold on them. I swallowed the urge to tell her to disrobe, to prove that she wasn’t infected. Things weren’t that bad. Things weren’t going to get that bad. I wouldn’t let them. I couldn’t help her if I let them. I had to hold onto control with both hands, because if I lost it—
If I lost it, I was going to lose everything. For the first time in my life, the sense of impending doom that followed me around might actually have weight.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Her voice shook a little as she pulled her robe tight around herself once more. “Where are they taking Rachel?”
“I told you. To the hospital.” I turned to look at the front door, and then at the open door to our bedroom. “Go upstairs. You can get online if you want, but I don’t want you down here until I’ve cleaned up a little.” Any mold that was in our bedroom could stay; I could sleep on the couch. But the kitchen? The dining room? My fingers itched, and I rubbed them together to reassure myself that it was just the urge to clean, and not a sign of contamination.
“Okay,” said Nikki meekly, and turned and fled back to her room, where she could barricade the door against me and my insatiable need to scrub the world.
Rachel’s hand. Rachel’s beautiful, delicate hand. Completely obscured by clinging gray.
I turned and walked straight for the closet where we kept the bleach.
• • • •
The hospital called a little after five a.m., four hours after they had loaded Rachel into the back of an ambulance and left me alone with a contaminated house and a teenage daughter who refused to come out of her room. The gray mold had been growing on Rachel’s latest picture, almost obscured by the pastel loops and swirls. I’d stopped when I found it, standing and staring transfixed at the delicate swirls it cut through the color. There was something strangely beautiful about it. It was hardy, and alive, and finding sustenance wherever it could. Even in pastels.
It was eating the last thing my wife had touched before she came to bed and woke me up pleading for help. I had thrown the picture in the trash and was in the process of bleaching the studio walls when the phone rang. My gloves were covered in bleach. I answered anyway. I didn’t trust the receiver. “Hello?”
“May I speak to Megan Riley?”
“Speaking.” It felt like my insides had been bleached along with the walls. Please don’t be calling to tell me that she’s gone, I prayed. Please, please, don’t be calling to tell me that she’s gone.
“Your wife, Rachel Riley, was admitted shortly after one o’clock this morning. She’s resting comfortably, but I have some questions for you about her condition.”
Relief washed the bleach away. “So she’s all right?”
There was an uncomfortable pause. “I don’t want to mislead you, Ms. Riley. Her condition is very serious. Anything you can tell us would be a great help.”
I closed my eyes. “She came into contact with a strange gray mold that was growing on some fruit in our kitchen around five o’clock yesterday afternoon. She woke me up shortly after one with the same mold growing on her hand and eye. Judging by how advanced it was, I would estimate that it had been growing since the afternoon, and had only reached a visible stage after she went to bed. She said that it itched.”
“Have you, or has anyone else in your home, come into contact with this mold?”
Yes. I’ve been chasing it through my house, murdering as much of it as I can find. “No, although I’ve poured a lot of bleach on it,” I said. “My teenage daughter is here with me. She hasn’t touched
any of the mold, and she’s clean. I didn’t sterilize our bedroom. I thought you might need to examine some of the stuff growing in a relatively natural way.”
There was a pause before the doctor asked, “Do you have anyone who can look after your daughter for a short time, Ms. Riley? You may want to come to the hospital.”
“Is Rachel all right?”
“Her condition is stable for the moment.”
We exchanged pleasantries after that, but I didn’t really hear or understand them. When the doctor ended the call I hung up, opening my eyes and leaning against the counter with all my weight on the heels of my hands. My gaze fell on the sink, and on the fruit bowl, which I had scrubbed until my hands were raw before going to bed the night before.
A thick layer of gray mold was growing in the bottom.
• • • •
I relaxed as soon as Nikki and I stepped into the cool, disinfectant-scented lobby of the hospital. Nothing could take away from the sense of cleanliness that pervaded this place, not even the people sitting in the chairs nearest to the admission window, waiting for their turn to see the doctor.
Nikki was wearing her robe over a pair of jeans and a pilled sweatshirt that she should have thrown away at the end of the winter. It swam on her petite frame, making her look smaller and even more fragile. I resisted the urge to put an arm around her, offending her teenage pride and making her reject me. Instead, I walked to the open window, waited for the receptionist to acknowledge me, and said, “Megan and Nikki Riley. We’re here to see Rachel Riley?”
Her eyes went wide with comprehension and something that looked like fear. “Please wait here,” she said, before standing and vanishing behind the dividing wall. I stepped back, rubbing my chapped hands together and wishing I didn’t feel quite so exposed. Something was wrong. I knew it.
“Ms. Riley?”
Nikki and I turned to the sound of our last name. A door had opened behind us, and a doctor was standing there, looking weary and worried, wearing booties and a plastic hair cap in addition to the expected lab coat and scrubs. I stepped forward.
“I’m Megan Riley,” I said.
“Good. I’m Dr. Oshiro. This must be Nicole.” He offered Nikki a tired, vaguely impersonal smile. “There are some snack machines at the end of the corridor, Nicole, if you’d like to go and get something to eat while your mother and I—”
“No.” She grabbed my hand, holding on with surprising force. “I want to see Rachel.”
The doctor looked at me, apparently expecting support. I shook my head. “I told her she could stay home if she wanted to.” Although not in the house, dear God, not in the house; not when mold could grow on a ceramic bowl that had already been bleached and boiled. We’d have to burn the place to the ground before I’d be willing to go back there, and even then, I would probably have avoided contact with the ashes. “She said she wanted to see her mother, and I try to accommodate her wishes.”
The doctor hesitated again, taking in the obvious physical similarities between Nikki and I, and comparing them to dark-skinned, dark-haired Rachel, who couldn’t have looked less like Nikki’s biological mother if she’d tried. Family is a complicated thing. Finally, he said, “I don’t want to discuss Ms. Riley’s condition in public. If you would please come with me…?”
We went with him. For once, I didn’t feel like the people still waiting were watching with envy as I walked away: they had to know what it meant when someone arrived and was seen this quickly. Nothing good ever got you past the gatekeeper in less than half an hour.
The air on the other side of the door was even cooler, and even cleaner. The doctor walked us over to a small waiting area, guiding Nikki to a seat before pulling me a few feet away. Neither of us argued. We were both in shock, to some degree, and cooperation seemed easier than the alternative.
Voice low, he said, “Ms. Riley’s condition is complicated. We have been unable to isolate the fungal infection. To be honest, we’ve never seen anything this virulent outside of laboratory conditions. We’ve managed to stabilize her, and she’s not in much pain, but the fungus has devoured the majority of her left arm, and patches are beginning to appear elsewhere on her body. Barring a miracle, I am afraid that we will have no good news for you here.”
I stared at him. “Say that again.”
Dr. Oshiro visibly quailed. “Ms. Riley…”
“Outside of lab conditions, you said. Is this the sort of thing you’ve seen inside lab conditions?”
He hesitated before saying, “Not this, exactly, but there have been some more virulent strains of candida—the fungus responsible for yeast infections—that have been recorded as behaving in a similar manner under the right conditions. They had all been modified for specific purposes, of course. They didn’t just happen.”
“No,” I said numbly. “Things like this don’t just happen. Excuse me. Is there somewhere around here where I can go to make a phone call?”
“The nurse’s station—”
“Thank you.” And I turned and walked away, ignoring Nikki’s small, confused call of “Mom?” at my receding back.
I just kept walking.
• • • •
The phone at the lab rang and rang; no one answered. I hung up and dialed again: Henry’s home number. He picked up on the second ring, sounding groggy and confused. “Hello?”
“What did you do?” I struggled to make the question sound mild, even conversational, like it wasn’t the end of the world waiting to happen.
“Megan?” Henry was waking up rapidly. Good. I needed him awake. “What are you talking about?”
“What did you do?” All efforts at mildness were gone, abandoned as fast as I had adopted them. “How much fruit is Johnny’s orchard producing? Where have you been sending it?”
And then, to my dismay and rage, Henry laughed. “Oh my God, is that what this is about? You figured it out, and now you want to yell at me for breaking some lab protocol? It can wait until morning.”
“No it can’t.”
Henry wasn’t my teenage daughter: he’d never heard me use that tone before. He went silent, although I could still hear him breathing.
“What did you do? How did you slip her the fruit?” I was a fool. I should have realized as soon as I saw the mold…but maybe I hadn’t wanted to, on some level. I’d already known that it was too late.
God help me, I’d wanted my last perfect night.
“Maria from reception. We had her meet your wife in the parking lot and say she’d bought too many peaches. It was going to get you to come around to our way of thinking, but Megan, the fruit is safe, I promise you—”
“Have there been any issues with contamination of the samples? Mold or fungus or anything like that?”
There was a long pause before Henry said, “That’s classified.”
“What kind of mold, Henry?”
“That’s classified.”
“How fast does it grow?”
“Megan—”
“Does it grow on living flesh?”
Silence. Then, in a small, strained voice, Henry said, “Oh, God.”
“Did it get out? Did something get loose in the orchard? Who decided testing genetically engineered food on human subjects was a good idea? No, wait, don’t tell me, because I don’t care. How do I kill it, Henry? You made it. How do I kill it?”
“It’s a strain of Rhizopus nigricans—bread mold,” said Henry. “We’ve been trying to eliminate it for weeks. I…we thought we had it under control. We didn’t tell you because we thought we had it under control. We didn’t want to trigger one of your episodes.”
“How kind of you,” I said flatly. “How do I kill it?”
His voice was even smaller when he replied, “Fire. Nothing else we’ve found does any good.”
“No anti-fungals? No poisons? Nothing?”
He was silent. I closed my eyes.
“Who decided to give it to my wife?”
“I did.” His voice
was so small I could barely hear it. “Megan, I—”
“You’ve killed her. You’ve killed my wife. She’s melting off her own bones. You may have killed us all. Enjoy your pie.” I hung up the phone and opened my eyes, staring bleakly at the wall for a long moment before realizing that the nurses whose station I’d borrowed were staring at me, mingled expressions of horror and confusion on their faces.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Maybe you should go home now. Be with your families.” There wasn’t much else left for them to do. For any of us to do.
• • • •
Rachel was in a private room, with a plastic airlock between her and the outside world. “The CDC is on their way,” said Dr. Oshiro, watching me and Nikki. Anything to avoid looking at Rachel. “They should be here within the day.”
“Good,” I said. It wasn’t going to help. Not unless they were ready to burn this city to the ground. But it would make the doctors feel like they were doing something, and it was best to die feeling like you might still have a chance.
The bed in Rachel’s room was occupied, but where my wife should have been there was a softly mounded gray thing, devoid of hard lines or distinguishing features. Worst of all, it moved from time to time, shifting just enough that a lock of glossy black hair or a single large brown eye—the right eye, all she had left—would come into view, rising out of the gray like a rumor of the promised land. Nikki’s hand tightened on mine every time that happened, small whimpers that belonged to a much younger child escaping her throat. I couldn’t offer her any real comfort, but I could at least not pull away. It was the only thing I had to give her. I could at least not pull away.
The doctors moved around the thing that had been Rachel, taking samples, checking displays. They were all wearing protective gear—gloves, booties, breathing masks—but it wasn’t going to be enough. This stuff was manmade and meant to survive under any conditions imaginable. They were dancing in the fire, and they were going to get burnt.
The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych) Page 31
