Growth

by Jeff Jacobson

  Sandy thought about everything she knew about the mayor and Sheriff Hoyt. “I seriously doubt they would cancel it. This town will have a parade.”

  “Well, is it okay if we take Kevin?”

  “Of course. Have a great time. I’ll take the boys fishing next weekend, give you and Randy a day to yourselves as a thank-you, as one parent to another. I appreciate it.” Sandy decided not to mention Puffing Bill just yet. “I’ll drop Kevin off in a half hour.”

  Cochran knew it was all his fault. He would admit that much at least. He should never have panicked. Never should have bolted from the first sign of the fungus, never should have run screaming into the night. He should have headed back to his car, instead of running in the completely opposite direction.

  Maybe then he would have escaped.

  Now he was stuck.

  Fear and adrenaline had fueled his flight as he plowed through what felt like miles and miles of cornfields. He realized now, with the morning sun peeking through the wide, thin windows up near the ceiling, that his panic was the reason that he was now trapped. If he only could have kept his head, he would be out on the expressway, practically in the next state by now, leaving this nightmare behind him.

  Instead, he was caught in the dead center of the infection, like a dying fly in a cobweb.

  He’d run and run, slapping cornstalks out of his way, until he burst out of the corn onto somebody’s lawn. He’d fallen and slammed into the long grass. He worried that the fall had torn a gash in the knee of his biohazard suit, but couldn’t tell. Since he’d dropped the damn penlight, he could only see by the faint light of a sliver of the moon and the gleam of stars.

  He staggered to his feet and lurched over the closest structure. From the chicken wire he guessed it was some sort of henhouse. He curled his fingers through the holes in the wire, trying to catch his breath under the riot gas mask. He sounded like Darth Vader having an asthma attack.

  The henhouse looked empty. Until a single wing laying in the dust and chicken shit decided to go berserk, spinning and flapping at the dirt like a fish gasping for air.

  He looked down and found the entire bottom half of the structure covered in white cobwebs. But those pale filaments, the long threads clumped together like cotton candy, they weren’t cobwebs. He’d caught enough of what the Allagro scientists had been trying to say, and knew to step back immediately.

  He moved too late.

  Things that looked like centipedes were already climbing up his boots. He scraped them off, leaving a gray sludge, streaks of wet ashes smeared against the rubber. He turned and started across the wide lawn.

  Even over the gas mask’s rasping breathing, he heard the buzzing from the barn. A couple fluttered in front of his face mask, and he caught a glimpse of a fluttering ball of brown wings. One landed on his arm. Again, like the insects, it looked like the fungus had taken the wings from grasshoppers, cicadas, even wasps. He didn’t look long; he took his gloved hand and smashed it, smearing the insides down the Tyvek material.

  A roaring buzz from above made him look up.

  The cloud of insects above made the stars blink in and out in a twinkling static, and for a moment, he didn’t know where to run. He glanced back to the corn. More of the crawling things came out of the field, like black crabs scuttling up a cold shore. Then the flying creatures were on him, swirling around in a quivering and buzzing storm. He tucked in his chin as far as he could, pressing the respirators to his chest. If they got to the soft skin at his throat, he was finished.

  The farmhouse was his only chance. He couldn’t see it very well through the cloud of insect wings, and it had no lights on inside. He ran up to the back steps and tried the door. It was locked. He stumbled back, knowing that if he broke a window, they would just fly right in behind him.

  The constant jagged humming of the insects swarming over him made it hard to think. He turned and tried to head down the steps but slipped off and fell hard on slanted wood. He realized he’d fallen on the cellar doors. His fingers found purchase and he pulled.

  The right door swung up and he jumped inside, slamming it behind him. He sat in total darkness for a few minutes, just trying to slow his breathing. When he heard or felt one of the insects, he smashed it, but otherwise was content to sit for a long time, trying to listen. He didn’t think that any were getting through the doors. He kept crushing any that he heard fluttering around his head, but they were growing more and more infrequent.

  There was less and less scratching at the door as well. Maybe they had forgotten about him and moved on. Maybe. He didn’t want to open the door and find out. So very, very carefully, he scooted down the stairs until he hit the floor. He stood, waving his hand around for a light switch or chain. He found a chain and pulled. A click. But no light. Either the bulb was burnt out or it was missing. By this time, his eyes had peered into the gloom long enough to spot the whisper of light that allowed him to make out the shapes of the windows up near the ceiling.

  He got closer, stumbling over and through awkward black shapes scattered throughout the small basement until he stood in the faint spill of moonlight, and tried to peer at the biohazard suit. He couldn’t find any more of the insects. If he could just get to his phone, he could use that light to see, but that would involve opening the suit.

  He decided that since he was in no immediate danger, he would simply wait until morning. It couldn’t be that far off. Then, when he could see, he would take a chance on opening his suit where he could get to his phone. And his gun.

  Hours later, when the dark shadows in the basement gradually became gray shapes until golden light finally crept across the rough timbers of the ceiling, Cochran took stock of his situation. He could not find any more bugs on him. Couldn’t find any more bugs in the basement. Maybe the sunlight chased them off. He listened for a while at the cellar doors, but he couldn’t hear anything else.

  He went back to the far wall, put his back against the cement, and unzipped his suit. He quickly pulled out his gun and phone, then zipped back up, straight away. Setting the phone aside for the moment, he checked the clip on his Nighthawk T4. The gun nuts in town might have scoffed that it was only a nine-millimeter, but advances in modern ammunition had made that particular argument irrelevant, as far as Cochran was concerned.

  What he was most worried about was that it only held nine shells.

  That left the phone. He hadn’t wanted to call the men upstairs, not until he had gotten out of town, but now he had no choice. He peeled off his glove, dialed, and as it rang, he put his glove back on.

  “Hello?”

  Was there a wisp of surprise in the voice? Cochran didn’t waste time. “I’m one hundred percent sure.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Very well. We will initiate eradication efforts. An extraction team is on the way. We’ll have you out of there shortly.”

  “Good. I—wait a minute,” Cochran said, staring at the phone. “How do you know I need an extraction?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? We know you have been in the same location for almost five hours, roughly a mile due north from the contamination center. Seems clear that you require assistance.”

  “Of course,” Cochran whispered to himself. He held up his phone and looked at it. They’d been tracking him the entire time. He had been a fool. And now, this extraction team, they were already on their way. He had a feeling that this team wasn’t coming all the way out to this farmhouse to escort him out of the area.

  The next question confirmed it.

  “Paul,” the voice asked. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fucking fantastic,” Cochran said, and whipped the phone into the corner of the basement, where it cracked and bounced back, landing on a square of two-by-fours. It wasn’t enough. He got up and drove his boot heel into the shell of the phone, grinding it into the old wood. He grabbed the pieces and flung them away.

  He stood and was trying to peer throu
gh the grimy windows when he heard a new sound. Something that scratched and scrabbled at wood. He crept toward the cellar doors.

  The sound came again. It wasn’t on the other side of the doors.

  It was from something down in the basement with him.

  He went back and retrieved his gun. It didn’t make him feel any better.

  Something moved in the corner of the basement. He looked to where he had thrown the phone the first time. The square chunk of two-by-fours shifted slightly. Something was moving it from underneath. It moved again, revealing a dark hole.

  A pair of fingers appeared, curling over the edge. A thumb followed. And . . . that was all. The three digits formed a tripod and moved clumsily toward him.

  Cochran couldn’t breathe. The fingers looked like they’d been glued together with black sludge and held tight at the joints with gray tendrils. A fuzzy patch of white cobwebs hung down from the center of where the fingers were joined.

  Another couple of fingers crept over the edge of the hole. This time, it was four fingers and a couple of stubby toes, no thumb. They tipped and swayed as they tried to crawl along.

  Cochran found his feet and edged closer. He still held on to his gun. The fingers seemed to sense him and followed his movement. He nudged the thumb and two fingers back toward the hole with his toe. The other four-finger organism, aware of the proximity of his boot, rushed at him. He brushed that one back into the darkness as well.

  He stood at the edge and peered down in to the hole.

  Too damn dark to see anything.

  He looked around, found an old dresser with a swivel mirror on top. Dragging it closer, he angled the mirror at the windows, now blazing with the morning sun. He tilted it over the hole, and blasted sunlight down into the void.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was like trying to piece together a painting of a human by Picasso; most of the parts were all there, but they didn’t make sense. Until the eyes opened and stared up at him. Then he saw how the head was sunk into an irregular circle of flesh, wreathed in arms, legs, exposed ribs, something that may have been a hipbone, all of it submerged in raw sewage. He tilted the mirror even farther, and saw that the walls of the hole were covered with the finger and toe creatures, along with more of the long, centipede things that scurried along with twenty or thirty different insect legs on each side.

  They were all crawling up the rough cement, up to him.

  For a long moment, Cochran didn’t move. His mind simply couldn’t accept the horrors that dripped with human excrement crawling up out of the rural septic tank. But as soon as a pair of tiny cricket legs crested the edge of the access hatch and the rest of the wriggling creature followed, heading straight for his boot, he jumped backward and aimed the Nighthawk.

  He squeezed off three rounds before he realized it wouldn’t help.

  More of the fungus organisms followed, climbing their way out of the septic tank.

  Cochran started for the cellar doors, but stopped. What if there were more of the bigger things outside, the ones that were using possum and skunk legs? They seemed tougher than the insect creatures. They moved faster too. His eyes went to the old lumber that covered the basement and served as the floorboards for the house above. He could now see faint light between some of the seams, and how several of the two-by-twelves had long cracks running along their length.

  He hefted the handgun. He wasn’t entirely sure how many rounds he’d torched off, but there had to be at least five or six left. Not nearly enough to protect himself against the monsters crawling out of the septic tank. He thought of another use.

  Thick, sloshing sounds were coming out of the access hatch.

  He didn’t want to know if that awful flower thing with the horrible open eyes was trying to get out. His eyes went to the ceiling again, following the cracks. He found a spot where several of the cracks intersected each other and dragged the dresser over and set it right under the section that seemed to be the most vulnerable to damage.

  Then he took the Nighthawk, squinted, and aimed up at the floorboards. He squeezed off round after round, moving his hand in a tight circle. Turned out there were six cartridges left. When the gun was empty, he had an oval punched through the floor above, like some kind of child’s perforated artwork.

  He climbed up on the dresser and used the empty handgun to hammer at the wood in the center of the circle. It took a while, but eventually it started to crack. Within fifteen minutes and bashing the shit out of the two-by-twelve, he smashed a hole into the first floor of the farmhouse.

  He tossed the gun through the hole, grabbed two sides, and hefted himself up. He crawled out of the ragged hole and found himself in the kitchen. He lurched over to the fridge and seized the top corners. Rocking it back and forth, he toppled it over with a crash. The entire floor groaned and made some teeth-clenching cracking noises, but the structure held, and the hole he had climbed through was now covered with a heavy refrigerator.

  He made a quick sweep of the first floor. No firearms. No shells. The driveway was empty, but he knew that his bosses had given his location to the “extraction” team. They had to be close. If he tried to escape on foot, he wouldn’t get far enough.

  He needed backup.

  There was a phone on the wall in the kitchen.

  He dialed 911.

  CHAPTER 19

  Sandy parked her cruiser in Dr. Castle’s lot and walked around to the back of the building. A black awning covered the narrow driveway, protecting a pair of double doors. This was where the two funeral homes in Parker’s Mill picked up the bodies.

  She knocked and stepped back. As she waited, she noticed a sign taped to the inside of the window. “We’re sorry, but we’re closed for the holiday. If this is an emergency, please call 911.”

  She tried the door.

  It was open, and swung wide on well-oiled hinges.

  Sandy stuck her head inside and called out, “Hello?” No immediate answer. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Hello? Anybody around? This is Chief Chisel. Anybody hear me?”

  She went out to the waiting room. It was empty, along with the office behind the counter. She checked the two examination rooms. Nobody. It looked like everybody had gone to the parade.

  She went past the freight elevator to the stairs that led to the basement and called down, “Hello? Dr. Castle?”

  Ugly fluorescent light spilled out of a square little window in the door at the bottom of the stairs. She descended the narrow stairwell and tried the door handle. Part of her expected it to be locked and another part was hoping it would be, so she could leave.

  The handle twisted easily and clicked obediently open. She stepped into the morgue. The place smelled of formaldehyde and bleach. It was a clinical smell, not rotten at all. Sometimes, Dr. Castle had to handle a traffic accident where the body had been laying in the sun for too long, or the occasional suicide that had ripened before being discovered, so he always made sure the morgue was well ventilated and spotless.

  The refrigerated drawers waited off to the left. A stainless steel table with several drains set into it and a large utility sink were set off to the right. Sandy wanted to call out for Dr. Castle again, but it was clear that the room was empty.

  Except for the body bag on the table in the center of the room.

  She’d been in here before, plenty of times, mostly to acknowledge Dr. Castle’s findings and sign on the dotted line. Yes, this person had died instantly when their minivan had struck the Christmas tree truck in a head-on collision. Yes, this person had drowned after getting drunk and falling out of his rowboat into the Mississippi River. Yes, this infant had been beaten to death by her father.

  Sandy didn’t like being down here.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed Dr. Castle’s home number. Nobody picked up. She hung up without leaving a message and took two steps toward the table.

  The black plastic of the body bag crinkled, shifted. Sandy stopped. He
r right hand had dropped to the handle of her Glock, but she had no idea of how her sidearm would help. Still, she didn’t let go.

  Something moved again inside the plastic.

  Despite her training, she got closer. Reached out, pinched a fold of the bag between her thumb and forefinger. She gave it a quick yank, then stood back and brought the Glock out, aimed it at the table.

  A lump in the bag rose up, then fell back. Something that sounded like fingernails scraped the inside of the bag.

  Sandy stepped back, still holding the Glock up and ready. She supposed it was possible that Jerm had been brought here still alive, and he was simply asking for help, inside a cadaver bag. Possible, but not likely. It was also possible that it wasn’t Jerm at all in that bag. Could be that it was someone else entirely.

  Sandy didn’t think so.

  She had no choice. She reached out with her free hand and started to unzip the bag. Something scurried over inside the bag and grabbed at her hand. It felt almost like someone’s hand on the other side of the fabric trying to clutch at her. She shifted to the side and unzipped the bag about eighteen inches in one, long, smooth motion.

  Fingers unfurled from inside the bag and pulled at the plastic.

  Sandy’s immediate thought was that she was watching two hands come crawling out, all on their own, like that pet hand from The Addams Family. Then she realized they weren’t hands exactly. They had fingers and even toes, but no palms; the digits rose up into a mass of gray webbing, like a short, stubby tipi. They scuttled awkwardly out of the bag like spiders that had waded through grain alcohol.

  Other parts of the bag were moving now. Bigger parts. Sandy had seen enough to know that whatever Dr. Castle had seen last night, he had been right.

  She reholstered the Glock, found a large pair of tongs, and picked up one of the finger spiders. It struggled weakly, and as she turned it over, she could see a mass of what looked like white cotton candy underneath, growing out of the upper pads of the fingers and toes. She dropped it in the bag and quickly grabbed the other one. She used the tongs to grab the zipper and zip the bag shut.