Growth

by Jeff Jacobson

  He had been standing back behind the stage, and now pushed and elbowed people aside to reach the curb. The mayor was up at the microphone, making calming gestures and talking, but the mike wasn’t turned on. Nobody was paying much attention anyway; they were all standing and pointing down the street.

  Sheriff Hoyt took a step off the curb and saw that some idiot was driving a goddamn combine corn harvester up the middle of the street, scattering panicked Boy Scouts before the giant tractor like it was a sleepy dog that had wandered into a rabbit warren. The driver must have been drunk, because the massive combine was drifting across both lanes, scraping the shit out of the parked cars on either side of the street.

  He started toward it. Somebody had to stop the dumb son of a bitch. In nearly thirty years of law enforcement, Sheriff Hoyt had never seen anything quite like this. He’d arrested drunks driving nearly every make and model of vehicle on the highway, hauled in punks drinking on those troublesome ATVs, even had to put the cuffs on a wasted cowboy on a horse. The only thing that even came close to this mess was when he caught a couple of Mexicans drunk on a John Deere, but that was in a field, not even on one of the back-county roads.

  This, this took the goddamn cake.

  Sheriff Hoyt hit the button on his radio. “Chisel, you sit tight. I’ll deal with you soon enough. We got a situation in town that requires real law enforcement.” He didn’t bother to listen to her response and turned his radio off for the time being. Just until he got this new mess sorted out.

  He got close enough to see inside the combine’s cab. It almost looked like that was Bob Morton himself in there. Shit. Well, this situation just got a hell of a lot more complicated. Sheriff Hoyt resnapped his holster. He’d been thinking he might have to make an impression on the driver, but now that he saw it was Bob Morton, well, his job was going to require a bit more finesse than simply sticking a pistol in somebody’s face and telling him to grab the pavement.

  He looked up and down the street, but the only law enforcement he could see right away was that pussy town deputy, Hendricks. He raised his arm, got the numbskull’s attention, and pointed at the combine. The dumbshit waved back. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. It was a wonder the man hadn’t shot himself cleaning his own weapon.

  At least they didn’t have to jump onto a moving vehicle. Bob took care of that.

  The combine veered away from the left side of the street, scaring away a whole flock of parade watchers, and smashed the twelve-row header right into Phil Larkins’s 1957 Chevy pickup. Four of the header’s conical snouts impaled the poor old antique like a pitchfork sinking into a bale of hay. Sheriff Hoyt winced. Larkins’s insurance guys were going to raise holy hell. The trailer couldn’t take the sudden turn and twisted helplessly behind the combine, spilling two acres’ worth of corn into the street.

  Bob sat in the cab and it didn’t look like he was moving much.

  Deputy Hendricks finally got the hint that he was supposed to help out. He joined Sheriff Hoyt at the foot of the huge, bright green John Deere combine. Damn thing had tank-like treads for the front drivers, instead of regular wheels. A six-foot ladder rose to the cab. Hendricks hung back and made it clear that he didn’t want to be the first one up there.

  Neither paid much attention to the gray cloud that swirled from the spilled corn and rolled out across Main Street.

  Sheriff Hoyt started up the steep stairs. He got up to the catwalk and was surprised to find the windows of the cab fogging up or something. It was hard to see inside and he could just make out Bob’s shape, sitting in the bucket seat. He gave it a minute, giving the man a chance to collect himself before he came out and embarrassed himself in front of the whole damn town.

  When Bob didn’t move, Sheriff Hoyt knocked on the glass, still polite. He gave it a few moments, but his patience was running out. He knocked again. “Mr. Morton? Bob, that you? Fun’s over. Time to come out now.”

  Sheriff Hoyt looked down the ladder at Hendricks, who shrugged. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. The deputy was about as useless as tits on a boar. He took hold of the door handle, when some instinct, born out of decades of standing guard at the threshold of law and order, keeping the forces of chaos and wild, merciless rage at bay, whispered quietly in the back of his mind. It was the kind of voice he would listen to very carefully if it spoke to him when approaching a strange vehicle or knocking on a quiet door. A sixth sense that he took seriously, but would never acknowledge out loud.

  Only this time it had Sandy’s voice.

  So he ignored it and opened the cab door.

  It took Sheriff Hoyt a few seconds to recognize Bob Morton. He’d never seen anybody this bloated and gray still sitting upright. If he hadn’t seen the man only the day before, Sheriff Hoyt would have sworn that Bob had been pulled out of the Mississippi River after a week or two of festering on the bottom. His first thought was that this was some kind of sick joke, and somebody had stuffed Bob’s dead body in the combine cab.

  But then Bob moved his head, and tried to say something.

  Sheriff Hoyt leaned closer to listen.

  Unintelligible words came out as a kind of wheezing moan. It didn’t look like Bob could fully retract his tongue, and so it poked out from between black teeth, swollen and discolored. He opened his mouth wider and Sheriff Hoyt could see dozens upon dozens of little gray nubs erupting out of his tongue, his gums, the insides of his cheeks. The smallest were the diameter of a single grain of rice, the largest the rounded end of a Q-tip.

  Up close, Sheriff Hoyt could now see more of the tiny buds sticking out of Bob’s nostrils, his ears, even pushing out of his eyelids. Bob couldn’t even blink with all those things in the way. From a distance, it looked like someone in a hurry had applied cheap, clumping eyeliner to the farmer’s eyes.

  Bob had never been a fitness model, but he had kept himself relatively trim for a man in his fifties. Now, though, his distended stomach almost reached the steering wheel. His fingers were swollen, like sausages that had been left on the grill too long. He wheezed again, his arm flopping against the control console.

  Sheriff Hoyt realized he should remove the keys, just in case Bob hit the wrong button. He didn’t want to get any closer, but reached in and as his fingers brushed against the keys, Bob started to make deep, retching sounds.

  And just as Sheriff Hoyt managed to twist the keys and kill the engine, Bob’s head exploded in a dry mist, as if someone violently twisted a desiccated orange, popping it open, spitting dried seeds and dusty pulp into the air.

  Bob’s torso was next, splitting open in four or five wrenching cracks, spraying the inside of the cab with a dark, wet cloud. Gray slime slid down the windows and dripped from the ergonomic controls.

  Sheriff Hoyt caught the blast full in the face and was dead before his knees collapsed. He pitched off the combine and landed on his head in the middle of Main Street.

  Deputy Hendricks leaned over him and asked, “You okay, Sheriff?”

  The gentle winds took the gray cloud from the cab and the trailer and pushed it playfully every which way into the crowds, up and down the street. There was a single scream, but the spores were met primarily with stupefied confusion. A few people understood that something bad was blowing through the town and tried to gather their families and run.

  By then, it was all too late.

  Sandy spun in a circle, taking it in, the hulking barn, the burning house, the smoldering cars, the dead man on the lawn, and surrounding it all, the green, whispering, waiting corn. She’d seen Cochran’s monsters crawling over the man in the basement, and now she had no doubt that the fields were full of them. And maybe even worse things.

  She had to get to town to find Kevin. Something in Sheriff Hoyt’s voice, just before he clicked off, had raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She had no doubt that whatever havoc this corn fungus was wreaking out in the fields had spread somehow to the center of Parker’s Mill.

  But she had no vehicle, no phone, and even the radio
was useless now, thanks to Sheriff Hoyt. She took one last glance around, making sure she wasn’t forgetting something, and started down the driveway at a jog. As she ran, she kept her eyes at the edge of the corn on either side of the gravel driveway. She hoped Cochran was right about the things wanting to stay out of the sunlight. Either way, she stayed in the center of the driveway all the way out to the highway.

  The Johnsons had to have heard all the shooting and Sandy wouldn’t have been surprised if Meredith had been keeping an eye on all the unfamiliar traffic heading up the driveway to the Einhorn farm. Sandy hoped she had already called 911 again. The call would have been rerouted to the Manchester County Sheriff’s Department, but she didn’t care as long as they sent somebody out to investigate.

  Sandy crossed Highway 17 and ran up to the front door. The possibility that the Johnsons were at the parade occurred to her as she ran. Sandy didn’t know if that would be considered too secular or just patriotic. If they were in town, she didn’t think it would be difficult to smash a window and climb inside to use their phone. Meredith would undoubtedly file some sort of official complaint, but Sandy didn’t particularly give a damn.

  Sandy hit the doorbell and listened for movement inside. They had to know she was here. She knocked first, then pounded on the door. No response. The house was silent.

  She knew this place didn’t have a basement and went to the big picture windows, cupped her hands to her eyes, and peered inside. The windows looked out from the combination living and dining room. The living room had a simple couch and a recliner. The ancient TV was still a piece of furniture in and of itself, wedged into a corner near the front door. A small, circular table filled the dining room. A beige and yellow kitchen waited beyond. All were empty.

  She ran around to the back and saw that the big Suburban was still parked in front of the garage and a huge pile of firewood. It looked like they were still home. She went up to the sliding glass back door, stopping a moment when she noticed a stack of fire extinguishers on the patio. Peering at the gauges, she saw that they were all empty.

  Sandy tried the sliding glass back door and it slid open. She stepped inside. “Meredith? Albert? You guys home?” It felt like an echo of the Einhorn farmhouse; no one was there. She left the door open and searched through the rest of the first floor. It smelled like something had died under the house. The kids’ rooms were full of bunk beds and crayon drawings of Jesus, but no children.

  She stopped at the bottom of the staircase. Knocked on the wall. She’d learned the hard way not to sneak up on people in rural areas. Too many carried loaded firearms, and were liable to shoot you if you surprised them. “Hello? Meredith? Albert?”

  No answer.

  Sandy took her Taser out and went cautiously up the stairs. At the top, she checked the first door on the left. Bathroom. It was a mess, but empty. Sandy recoiled from the stench, raised her wrist to her nose, and tried to breathe through her mouth.

  Unraveled brown and gray bandages had been strewn across the sink. Strips of medical tape festooned the counter like shriveled snakeskins. The gray crust that coated everything reminded her of what she had seen on the floor in the Einhorn kitchen. Clumps of toilet paper had been scattered throughout the bathroom as if somebody had been throwing them like confetti. They coalesced into a tiny mountain near the toilet at the far end. The pile of white paper had stuck together in winding lines, as if the darkened, soiled globs had drawn together like magnets. This left the clean tufted edges of toilet paper to unfurl like pale wisps of flowers on knotty gray vines.

  Sandy wished she had her latex gloves but the box was back in the cruiser. She thought back to that night when Meredith had called 911 on Kurt Einhorn. Albert had been bitten or something. Sandy tried to remember. He’d said it was a possum. She’d been worried about rabies, but now she wondered if it had something to do with the fungus.

  She didn’t touch anything and backed out of the bathroom. At the end of the short hall, there was one door left. It was closed, of course. It had to be Meredith and Albert’s bedroom. Suddenly, she didn’t want to open it. Didn’t care what was on the other side. She wanted to run downstairs and find the phone in the kitchen and call in the county boys. But they’d ask her if she’d checked the whole house and she didn’t want to have to tell them that she’d lost her nerve.

  So she opened the door. Slow and careful.

  The room was almost completely dark. Heavy curtains covered the windows. She couldn’t quite tell in the dim light, but it almost looked like they had been duct-taped to the window frame. The door continued to swing open, spilling more light into the room.

  There was a circular pile of bodies on the bed. She realized it wasn’t bodies, not exactly. A tangle of children’s arms and legs were wrapped around a central gray mound. For some reason, the mound seemed fragile, like the crown of a jellyfish. It was nearly three feet across and fluttered with the slight wave of air that came as the door swung open.

  Surrounding it, the arms and legs intertwined each other in a horrible, frozen wreath. Sandy looked closer and knew why she hadn’t seen a dog or cat in the house; their legs intermingled with the humans’. The whole thing was like looking at some rotten pustule skulking in a badly infected wound. Even after trying to make sense of the thing for several seconds, she still couldn’t see any heads. Instead, it was just limbs wrapped around a strangely raw, unfinished center that was covered with a thin gray membrane, like some half-cooked rotten egg, sunny-side up.

  Sandy couldn’t tell if the number of arms and legs accounted for all the children or not. She tried to get a rough count, but it was impossible. They were far too tangled, twisted around each other in shapes that could never be achieved when they were alive. She doubted anybody would know how many of the family had been absorbed into this huge mound until they performed a careful autopsy. She knew that this was something they would be studying for years.

  She stopped. Did that arm move? She watched it a while, but it was still.

  This was definitely above her pay scale. It was time to call somebody.

  The door flew at her, knocking her back into the doorframe. Meredith popped into view from behind it with wild eyes, swinging a fire extinguisher across her body, like an amateur swinging a tennis racket. The bottom rim caught Sandy in the shoulder and slammed her into the wall. With a speed only possessed by the truly disturbed, Meredith raised the tank over her head and brought it down like a sledgehammer.

  If Sandy hadn’t gotten her arm up, it would have crushed her skull. As it was, it damn near broke the two bones in her forearm, and drove her to the floor.

  Meredith shrieked, “They are going to heaven. They have been saved!”

  At the sound of her voice, the twisted mosaic of limbs shivered and twitched. A fragment peeled away from the rough circle, and a number of children’s arms and legs unfurled from a central gray tentacle, like a palm frond that had decided to reach out and go exploring. When the gray, pulpy mass that ran along the center of the branch could no longer support the weight of the tiny limbs, it drifted down to the floor and the arms and legs grabbed hold of the shag carpet and pulled the tentacle forward. It rippled awkwardly along, searching for the voice.

  “No, no, not Mommy,” Meredith said sweetly, and gave the crawling thing a quick blast from the fire extinguisher. “Over there. I brought you some food. To give you strength to reach heaven, my darlings.” The tendril shrank away from the puff of frost.

  More branches were starting to unfold from the center mass, crawling off the bed, using the children’s arms and legs to propel the tendrils in the same way Sandy had seen the centipede creatures in the Einhorn basement use insect legs. The bigger ones down there had worked the same way, growing into individual fingers and toes and making them dance, connecting two long chains of human fingers and toes and rat and squirrel legs that scurried along in ragged waves, alternating sides as to snake along for prey in S-shaped patterns.

  Eight or nine tendril
s pulled themselves away from the jelly-like mass and came after Meredith. She gave Sandy a kick and slammed the door, preventing Sandy from getting out. She jumped back to the first corner of the bed and gave the crawling tentacles quick flashes from the extinguisher, directing them at the door and Sandy.

  Sandy got mad and rolled to her knees, raised the Taser. Fired. The barbs grabbed hold of Meredith’s right hip and breast and dropped her like a dead tree in a tornado.

  A tip of tendril bumped into the bedroom door, rebounded, and then curled up toward her. The tip was a misshapen child’s fist. Too many little fingers unfurled from the center and grabbed at her.

  Sandy exhaled, and knew the trick was to keep moving. But two other tendrils joined the first, the floor between the bed and wall bristling with irregular lines of children’s limbs.

  She went with her first motion and lunged for the closet. She ripped it open with her left hand and yanked out the pepper spray with her right. The tentacles didn’t like when she blasted them; the fingers curled back together, and the tendrils shrunk into themselves, each pulling back into itself like a firefighter’s collapsible ladder. The space between each of the children’s arms and legs grew shorter and shorter until the limbs slapped against other, back against the main bubble on the bed.

  They were still for a moment, as if the center was tasting the pepper spray. Different tentacles crawled off the bed and came for her.

  Sandy jumped inside the closet and pulled the door shut. She backed into long dresses and sweaters. The thin strip of light at the bottom broke apart as the things came closer. She held onto the door handle just in case those chubby digits could open doors and heard Meredith whimper.

  Sandy knew it wouldn’t be long before Meredith simply walked over and opened the closet to let her family inside.

  But Meredith said, “Oh babies. Oh no. No. Please. Not this. Over there.” Her voice took on a pleading, strident tone. “Please. Not me. Babies. Please.”