Spores

by Ian Woodhead

  “Bollocks, man. Give it up, you’re killing the song.”

  This was so unfucking cool. No matter what he did to this bloody guitar, he just couldn’t get it to sound like the one he’d left behind in the now famous exodus. Dustin laughed aloud. He would have written a song about that journey if he could stop this useless piece of modern crap sounding like an old washboard.

  Dustin dropped the instrument onto the wet grass. He knew that he should have swiped the guitar he liked instead of going for the most expensive one.

  “Perhaps I should have taken both.”

  He could always take it back and demand a refund. A quiet giggle escaped from his mouth. Dustin looked down at the guitar, “Stupid modern piece of shit.”

  “I wish I still had my old guitar. I should have stayed in Huddersfield, for all the good it did me.”

  Dustin sighed, he felt the euphoria slipping away like a paid up whore. He bent forward, waited a moment for his equilibrium to catch up and picked out another bottle from his rapidly diminishing supply. Dustin prised the cap off with his teeth and took a tentative sip. Considering that he’d never heard of the make, it didn’t taste too bad, weak as piss but what else did he expect? He had supped all the strong stuff a few days ago.

  He stopped in mid gulp when a mournful cry echoed through the silent city. Was that another human or a moaner? It was difficult to tell, not that it was his problem; it was unlikely they’d call in on good old Dustin. He quickly stood up and looked around the city park, just in case. He wasn’t in the mood for any more visitors today, or any day for that matter, unless they were female of course. He swigged back the beer, while keeping his eyes and ears open for any signs of movement.

  Dustin fell back on the bench, and dropped the bottle on the grass, suddenly remembering that he was going to check his possessions, Dustin leaned over and pulled out the thick cardboard box, noticing that the wet grass was turning the bottom of his box into wet mush. Dustin knew that he should have picked up a plastic box instead. He removed a tin of peaches and a tin of stewed steak first, that would do for his dinner, and then counted everything else. It seemed to be all there. He hadn’t really thought that his visitor would have stolen anything and even if he had, it’s not as if he’d managed to get very far.

  Dustin looked down at his dinner; he didn’t want to eat anything but it just wasn’t an option, he needed to eat to continue drinking. Keeping his mind nice and foggy was the ultimate priority; it stopped him from mulling over his situation, his immediate future and most importantly, the beer blunted his urges.

  He thanked the Gods of karma yet again for the invention of the ring pull can and dug into his tasteless dinner. As he was licking gravy off his fingers, he heard another cry. That one was definitely human. Dustin threw the half eaten tin behind him and reached for the peaches; it was uber weird at how blasé he become these past few days at the sound of another soul running from a moaner. He shrugged to himself.

  “Whatever.”

  Peach flavoured gravy was yummy but what he really craved was a fresh banana, but he knew that the chances of him ever seeing one of those lovely yellow crescent shaped fruits in the flesh, so to speak, was very unlikely; weird, really. Dustin never really bothered with eating fruit before the whole world had turned to shit.

  The screaming voice closed in on his location, God, just how irritating was Mr. Noisy? Where was that fucking moaner? Those things were just like buses, there were never any around when you really needed one.

  “For crying out loud, will you shut the fuck up!” he shouted. “You’re putting me off my dinner!”

  Dustin pushed a peach segment into his mouth then licked his fingers once more. If he had a straw at least then he could put his fingers in his ears. Maybe he’d show a little more empathy if he knew that the screamer was female. Fat chance of that happening though, he knew for a fact that the Institute had rounded them all up at the beginning of the outbreak, at least, that’s what they’d told him.

  He threw the other tin onto the grass beside the guitar and reached for another beer. Thinking about the Institute sobered him up.

  It was their fault that he was in this fucking situation in the first place; he thought he’d landed on his feet when he got in with that crowd. His own room, two hot meals every day and best of all, the place was just crawling with hot nubile girls, all desperate for a slice of Dustin love. Debra, Adele, Patsy, Jennifer, he’d lost track of the other names after the first couple of days. God, he’d been like a dog with two dicks until someone, no doubt some uncool breadhead jealous of his virility, had complained to the powers that be. He couldn’t believe it when the sad fuckers had cast him out like Jesus; he was surprised that the fuckers hadn’t tried to stone him either. Apparently, trying to repopulate the human race single-handed was bad form. He drained the bottle and threw that one down too, then picked up another.

  “Bastards!” he shouted, “You’re all bastards.”

  Dustin drained the bottle, burped, then threw it as hard as he could over the wrought iron fence; he watched it disappear into the mist before a couple of seconds later, it smashed. He grinned savagely as a car alarm competed for dominance with the shrieking man.

  Bottlehenge and his next creation could go fuck themselves now, God he was mad. Dustin needed something a lot stronger than beer. There must be somewhere in the fair city of Leeds where he could score some dope. What a complete bummer, he so wished that he was back in Huddersfield, he still had a baggie under his mattress.

  How long would it take him to walk home from here? Two, maybe three hours tops. He attempted to work out just how long he’d been here, at least a week, that was for sure. It was difficult to tell, as some days, the spore cloud had been so dense he couldn’t tell whether it was day or night.

  “Over a week without a shag.”

  Dustin looked at his remaining bottles in disgust; would he still be doing this in five years or even ten? He tried to imagine a thousand bottlehenge creations scattered around the city, he tried to imagine ten years without being able to caress a beautiful woman, or any woman for that matter. He stood up and waited for his balance to catch up with him before taking a couple of steps away from the park bench that had been his home for the past few days,

  “Fuck it all,” he announced. “I’m going home.”

  He wouldn’t be sorry to see any of this stuff again.

  “Good riddance to all of you,” he muttered.

  He should have buggered back home as soon as those squares chucked him out of the Institute.

  “This is all your fault, Mr. Beer bottle.”

  Well it was. The nice lady dropped him off right outside that off licence and as his karma had just been shot to fuckery, he just had to have a beer or five to get his emotions away from those jagged peaks. Ironic, considering it was beer that put him in this position in the first place.

  It seemed like the way distant past now. The world outside had gotten mega trippy. Bad karma had begun to spoil even Dustin’s relatively calm persona. Folks in the commune where he had been currently hanging out were getting sick and dropping like flies. He’d taken the momentous decision to get the hell out of Dodge and move back in with his mum on the other side of town.

  He figured that all this drama would be over in a few days and everything would get back to normal. All that spaced out optimistic bullshit flew right out of the window when Dustin had finally arrived back home. He’d found his only relative lying on the bed, or at least what was left of her. There was just a matt black covering of dust in her shape on the bedspread; he’d assumed that the rest of her was floating around the bedroom, which probably accounted for why it had been so cloudy in there.

  Dustin had of course taken the correct procedure. He had run down the stairs and cracked open the first of many bottles of beer he found in the bottom of the fridge. His mum always kept the fridge stocked up with his favourite brands just in case her only son, on the rare occasions that he did, came to
visit her.

  The pounding on his mother’s front door happened when Dustin was three quarters of the way through his ninth beer. He’d been more than a little confused to see a coach parked outside the house when he peered through the window. The nice young man who was standing on the porch had explained that they were on an exodus to Leeds; apparently they had some form of working government. All the other words that spilled from the man’s lips just turned into meaningless babble. Dustin had seen the other passengers, mainly women. Some young, some old but he didn’t care. It had been simply ages since he’d placed his hands around a female body.

  Of course, the square driving the magical mystery tour wouldn’t allow Dustin to bring any of his beloved beer with him so he proceeded to drink them one by one. He hadn’t remembered getting on the bus or any of the journey. The first thought he’d had when he came to was why they had redecorated the coach whilst he’d been in the land of drunken nod. He quickly found that it wasn’t paint though, it was blood, gallons of the stuff, not to mention the numerous lumps of raw meat stuck to the windows, floor and roof. Dustin had done the right thing and got the hell out of there.

  Dustin shuddered, he must be sobering up; it wasn’t often that he allowed himself to dwell on the interior of the bus or why even that he was the only one who’d escaped intact.

  “I need to get the fuck out of here.”

  Flash bulbs went off in his head. He remembered Denise and Andrea. He used to hang around with them before he got lofty ideas and joined that commune. The chicks were way past their use by date but at least the girls were still under forty so they would have escaped the infection, although whether they managed to live through the monster attacks was another matter.

  He wasn’t going to find out bumming around here though. He grinned at the thought of having sex again after such a long time.

  “I’ll be hearing a different kind of moaning pretty soon.”

  He knew most of the places where they used to hang out; he doubted they’d have changed their habits despite the fact that this was like The End of Days. They would be only too happy to look after good old Dustin, maybe even cook for him, hell, it’s not like they’d have anything else to do. That and sex of course.

  His carnal thoughts shattered when he heard someone or something ploughing through his completed bottlehenge.

  “You clumsy bastard!” he screamed.

  Dustin saw a blurred human shape stop dead and look towards him. He couldn’t believe how bloody mad he was now.

  “Help me!” cried the figure. He stumbled forward, another bottle crashed to the floor.

  “Stop pissing moving!” cried Dustin. “You’re ruining my fucking sculpture!”

  Incredibly, the figure did stop.

  “It’s vandalism,” Dustin muttered, “That’s all it is.”

  He needed another drink; he just couldn’t cope with this amount of intense emotional content. Dustin noticed that the spore clouds were thickening up again, it was turning into another pea souper.

  “Bugger, that’s all I bloody need. How am I supposed to go anywhere now?”

  The man had now disappeared behind that bank of thick cloud. He moved a little closer, wondering why the man had still not moved, he hadn’t spoken either.

  “Are you still there?”

  What a stupid thing to say, of course he was still there, no more bottles had been kicked over. The cloudbank was still getting thicker; he couldn’t see his own feet now.

  “Hello? Why aren’t you talking?”

  Dustin’s foot kicked over a bottle, the man should be here, right next to him. Despite every nerve in his body ordering him to turn around right now and run like a drugged racehorse, Dustin lifted his left leg and placed it down in front of him.

  It wasn’t hard concrete that greeted the sole of his boot; it felt as though he’d just trod in a pile of thick jelly. Dustin swallowed down the hot bile that had risen up from his stomach when the realisation of what he’d just put his foot in finally hit home. He’d just desecrated all that was left of that man who asked him for help. Oh Jesus, what was happening to him, was he turning into some kind of monster as well? Dustin slid his foot back until he reached a hard surface again and sighed loudly.

  “I’m sorry dude, I didn’t mean to say all that hurtful shit, you know.” He closed his eyes, “I know it’s not much of an epitaph, Mr. Whoever you were, but I think you’re in a better place than I am now.”

  Dustin’s eyes jerked open, were there chicks in heaven? He’d spent his life after his balls had dropped obsessing about sex to give the idea of an afterlife any consideration. That and travelling to other planets on whatever drugs he could get his hands on.

  One thing was for sure, if it did exist, there were bound to be plenty of hot women up there now, as there sure weren’t many down here anymore. Dustin sighed again and kicked his foot forward, intending to smash one of the bottles. His foot didn’t connect with glass but something spongy. He gasped aloud, knowing deep down just what was next to him.

  A low rumbling vibrated through his bones, he watched the spore cloud around him begin to dissipate, and he finally saw just what had appeared next to him.

  Dustin was in the middle of what looked like thick, black electrical wiring, the stuff slithered around his legs, Dustin forced his head slowly upward when a large shadow cast over his face. He saw a humanlike head attached to a glossy serpentine neck appear above him through the mist. Its grey chin and chisel-like teeth were coated with blood and lumps of soft tissue, but to Dustin that was irrelevant as he saw something else. This creature was female.

  He smiled. “Oh my God, you are so beautiful,” he raised his hand and gently stroked her rough cheek. Dustin sighed with pleasure as it began to purr like a kitten.

  Chapter Two

  Amber Barlow hurried along the dull grey corridor. Grey was such a horrible colour, it was the colour they painted prisons. How on earth were the survivors going to climb out of their pit of misery when they were forced to look at dull grey every day of their lives?

  She’d have to put down tubs of bright emulsion paint down on her itinerary. Amber hoped that she’d be able to remember all this. She knew that doing a spot of painting wasn’t really the most important task to work on when they were in the middle of the apocalypse but it would give some of the frightened people currently sheltering in the Institute something better to do than wallow in their despair. There were quite a few unskilled people pacing around the lower levels with far too much time on their hands. Not everyone here had important roles to fulfil in the saving of the human race. Her mother always used to say that idle hands were the devil’s workshop. This place would look simply smashing covered in vivid colours

  Her hands certainly weren’t idle, neither was her mind. The amount of tasks that the ad hoc Institute committee had piled on her since she’d volunteered to take up the post of morale officer was just unreal. Amber chuckled to herself. To think that she used to bitch about the amount of workload her boss used to pile on her desk when she worked as Reachout juvenile employment officer at Leeds Council. All that paled in comparison to what she had to get through here on a day-to-day basis.

  She considered herself lucky, really. Amber had come through The Wasting, relatively unscathed. She had never known her real parents, and at twenty-two she had not yet decided to settle down to raise a family. Amber hadn’t even had a steady boyfriend for six months.

  Some of her new friends here in the Institute had watched The Wasting take their entire families. Amber shuddered, trying to imagine the anguish they must have gone through, the misery sketched upon the faces she spoke to every day told her that it was probably best not to put herself in their place. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d been fostered until the age of nineteen. As far as everyone was concerned, she had lost her parents to The Wasting too.

  At the time, making up a fictional history seemed like the wise choice; how could she help the people through their suffer
ing if she couldn’t relate? She shook her head and shrugged. It’s not like anyone would ever find out and even if they did, she was sure that they’d understand the logic behind her decision.

  Amber passed a row of light bulbs held together with long black wire and insulation tape, and by the looks of it, a bit of spit and chance. Talk about shoddy work. Oh good Lord, she could even see a couple of bare wires. It was a good job that there were no children in the Institute, they were being held in two crèches on the other side of the city. This would just have to be reported. Amber glanced at her watch. Oh no. She was late for the meeting, Amber felt a tinge of shame colour her cheeks; now who was being shoddy? The first meeting that she’d had the privilege of joining and she was late.

  She picked up the pace, remembering to add insulating tape next to the paint in her mental itinerary. It did seem a little strange though. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why all the committee members would be called to the reception hall.

  Amber hoped that the meeting wouldn’t be too long, there were just heaps of jobs to do, she was also supposed to be in the arrivals lounge in ten minutes. Another group of survivors had managed to get to the Institute and as the new morale officer it was her job to help them acclimatise to their new life. It was amazing just how effective a warm smile and a hot cup of tea could be. Of course, it did help if that warm smile was on the face of a pretty blonde.

  It was just like the director of the Institute to pull a stunt like this. She had a boss at her old job who liked to do the same, pull people out of their tasks, just to announce yet another meaningless directive that had absolutely no relevance to their jobs. Maybe that was a little harsh. The Institute director, Stephen Browning, wasn’t that bad. He might be a bit of an arse but he did know how to get tasks done. Thanks to him, they now at least had fresh air to breathe again. It was Stephen who had worked out why all the air filters had suddenly decided to stop working. She certainly had no wish to wander through the Institute wearing one of those horrible chemical protection suits again.