Fuzzy Mud

by Louis Sachar

  “Chaaaad!” she shouted.

  She didn’t have a very loud or strong voice. Ms. Filbert was constantly trying to get her to pro-ject. “You have a lot of good ideas, Tamaya. You need to speak with authority.” Whenever it was her turn to read aloud in class, everyone always complained that they couldn’t hear. And out on the playground, sometimes she’d shout at Monica or Hope, and they wouldn’t hear her, even though they were just on the other side of the dodgeball circle.

  She tried again, this time putting extra oomph behind it. “Chaa—aad!”

  The extra oomph just made her voice crack.

  She spotted a tree with white bark and just a few dead leaves left in its branches. One of the branches seemed to be pointing the way back to school. She fixed it in her memory.

  A little beyond the tree, she noticed a dark muddy area. There was a layer of scummy fuzz floating just on top of the mud.

  She slowly made her way toward it.

  She didn’t think it was the same mud puddle from the day before. She remembered now that that had been on the side of a hill. The ground around here was fairly level.

  She hooked her lunch sack onto a branch, then moved close to the mud. Just like before, there were no leaves on top of the mud, but they had fallen all around it. She knelt beside the edge of the puddle and could feel warmth radiating from the fuzzy mud. Her skin tingled, but that might just have been the heebie-jeebies playing with her mind.

  She picked up a leaf, about the same size as her hand. Holding it by the stem, she slowly lowered it into the fuzz. When she lifted it back up, the top half was completely gone. She let it drop, then backed away as she stood up.

  She was getting her lunch sack when she saw another puddle of the fuzzy mud just a little farther off. Beyond that, she could see what looked like two more.

  She returned to the white tree, its branch pointing the way back to school.

  It wasn’t too late to go back. If she hurried, she might not get in trouble. She could go see Mrs. Latherly, take the allergy pill, and get her hand rebandaged. Then Mrs. Latherly could give her a note, excusing her for being late to class.

  The tree branch pointed one way. Tamaya went the other.

  “Chaaaaaaad!” she hollered. This time her voice didn’t crack. She continued deeper into the woods.

  2 × 65,536 = 131,072

  2 × 131,072 = 262,144

  In February of the following year, three months after Tamaya went back into the woods to search for Chad, the Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment held a new set of hearings. These hearings were not secret. By this time the entire world knew about SunRay Farm, Biolene, and the disaster that had occurred in Heath Cliff, Pennsylvania.

  Dr. Peter Smythe, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave the following testimony at these Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings:

  Senator Wright: Were you able to identify this microorganism?

  Dr. Peter Smythe: No, not at that time. It didn’t match anything in our database.

  Senator Wright: Had you or anyone else at the CDC seen this type of rash before?

  Dr. Peter Smythe: Again, no. Nor did we know how to treat it. There was no cure.

  Senator Wright: And so you ordered the quarantine?

  Dr. Peter Smythe: The president ordered the quarantine based on my recommendation. No one was allowed to leave Heath Cliff or the surrounding area. That included our own doctors and scientists. Once they entered the quarantine zone, they could not return. Thousands of people were infected. Five people had already died—the one found in the woods, and then four more who were infected later.

  Senator Foote: All because of one little girl?

  Dr. Peter Smythe: One week after Tamaya Dhilwaddi went into the woods, more than five hundred people showed signs of the rash, including many of her classmates. But it would be wrong to assume that it was caused by Tamaya. The invading organisms had simply overwhelmed the environment. By the time the first snow fell, this so-called fuzzy mud had spread to lawns and flower beds all over Heath Cliff.

  A dead tree lay on its side, partially propped up by its broken branches. An image flashed in Tamaya’s head of Marshall standing atop a tree that had fallen over. She hurried toward it.

  Up close, the tree seemed larger than she remembered. There was a thick branch sticking almost straight up from the trunk, with lots of smaller branches coming off it. She doubted it was the same tree.

  Some of the bark crumbled away as she grabbed the base of the largest branch. She pulled herself up, then looked around, just as Marshall had done. Ahead, the ground sloped steeply down to a gully. Rising up from the other side of the gully were two hills.

  One of those hills could have been where they’d left Chad. She cupped her hands around her mouth, like a megaphone, and tried to make her tiny voice project across the vast woodlands. “Chaaaaaaaad!”

  Her eyes scanned the two hillsides, hoping to see Marshall’s rocky ledge, but all she could see were trees and more trees. She hopped down.

  The ground went splat beneath her left foot.

  Even before she looked, she realized what she had done. She stared down in horror at her left foot, ankle-deep in fuzzy mud. She tried to step free, but her foot wouldn’t budge. The mud held tight. She could feel the warmth oozing through her sock.

  Her right foot had landed safely, just on the edge of the mud puddle. She took a long stride back toward the fallen tree and grabbed one of the small dead branches. Its rough and pointy edges ripped through her blisters as she desperately pulled with all her might.

  The branch broke at the same moment her foot pulled free. She nearly fell backward into the mud but managed to force her momentum sideways and landed on the dry, leaf-covered ground.

  She instantly yanked off her sneaker, and then her muddy sock. She now had mud on her fingers, and she wiped them on her sweater and skirt.

  She took off her sweater and used it as best as she could to clean her leg and foot. She pulled the cloth back and forth between her toes and continued to rub even after she didn’t see any more of the mud on her. She was more worried about what she couldn’t see.

  She left her muddy sweater on top of the dead tree. Lunch sack in hand, one shoe off, one shoe on, she continued down the slope toward the gully.

  “Chaa-aaaa-aad!”

  2 × 262,144 = 524,288

  2 × 524,288 = 1,048,576

  At the beginning of each school year, a parent or guardian of every student at Woodridge Academy was required to fill out a bunch of forms. Among other things, they were to provide the school with their various telephone numbers and emergency contact information.

  Those numbers were now being called grade by grade, in alphabetical order. From inside her office, Mrs. Thaxton could hear Mr. Franks and Mrs. Latherly as they made one call after another.

  “There’s been an incident.…”

  “Your child is perfectly safe. We’re just taking extra precautions.…”

  “No, we need you to personally pick up your daughter. Your babysitter’s name is not in our files. If you want to fax or email your signed authorization…”

  “No decision has been made yet about tomorrow. We will be sending out a mass email.”

  Mrs. Thaxton knew she should have been making the calls too, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had just gotten off the phone with Tamaya’s mother, who had telephoned the school after receiving Mrs. Latherly’s message.

  No, she had not picked Tamaya up after lunch. Yes, she knew about the rash and was planning to take Tamaya to the doctor, but not until after school. What’s this all about? Where’s Tamaya?

  Mrs. Dhilwaddi was on her way home now. Their best hope was that Tamaya had decided to go home after lunch without telling anyone. But they also knew Tamaya wouldn’t have done that.

  Mrs. Thaxton’s chin trembled, and her eyes were blurry with tears. She blamed herself for not putting the school on lockdown the moment she’d heard th
at Chad Hilligas was missing. She should have done it right then! Better to overreact than to underreact.

  But she knew the type of boy Chad was. Whatever had happened to him, wherever he was, she hadn’t thought it had anything to do with the rest of the school. Not that she hadn’t been concerned about him. She had been very concerned. She just hadn’t taken his disappearance as a danger sign for the other students.

  She remembered when Chad and his mother first came to her office. His mother wrote out a check for the tuition, handed it to her, and then, right in front of Chad declared, “He’s your problem now.”

  Tamaya was different. She was the exact opposite of Chad. She was respectful of her teachers and considerate of others. She followed the rules. She was the type of student a teacher might easily ignore, and that, Mrs. Thaxton now realized, might be why she had gone missing without anyone noticing.

  Mrs. Thaxton shut her eyes very tight. She knew she needed to be strong in this time of crisis.

  Two missing children. Two missing children, in two days.

  She did not yet know that a third child would also be discovered missing. She assumed Marshall was safely back in class. Mr. Davison assumed he was still with the headmistress.

  No one was worried about poor Marshall.

  The ground was mostly soft under Tamaya’s cold bare foot, but she had to step carefully to avoid the sticks and sharp rocks buried beneath the fallen leaves. Her rash had spread the full length of her arm, and she could see small red bumps on her other hand now too. She tingled all over, although she couldn’t be sure if that was caused by the mud or by her own heebie-jeebies. It seemed wherever she looked, there were more mud puddles.

  Yet, as bad as it was for her, she knew it had to be ten times worse for Chad. At least she’d been able to go home yesterday. She’d been able to take a bath and change her clothes.

  “Chaaa—” she started to shout, then gasped and brought her hand almost to her mouth. Just ahead lay some kind of dead animal, half covered in muck and fuzz. She quickly turned her head away.

  It could have been a raccoon, or possibly a small dog. The mud made it hard to know, and she didn’t want to look.

  She made a wide circle around it, carefully watching every step before gently setting her foot down.

  She wondered if there was anybody else, anywhere, who knew about the fuzzy mud. She had tried to tell Mrs. Latherly, but the school nurse had been more worried about peanut butter! Even Marshall hadn’t seemed to get it.

  Was it possible that she was the only one in the whole world who knew? The thought scared her, but it was also what made her keep going.

  If not her, who?

  She was determined to make it to the hills on the other side of the gully. “Chaaa-aaad!” she shouted. “Are you out here?”

  As the slope of the hill became steeper, she needed to grab onto branches to keep from losing her balance. She bounced from tree to tree, down toward the gully.

  There were fewer trees close to the gully, and the ground became even steeper. Tamaya could see down directly into the gully. It was more than half filled with fuzzy mud.

  She eased herself into a sitting position and rolled up the top of her lunch sack so nothing would spill. She slid down toward the mud, using her sneakered foot as a brake to keep from going too fast.

  The ground was too steep, and she started to turn sideways. She pulled at a clump of weeds to steady herself, but the weeds ripped out of the ground and she flipped over onto her stomach. Her knees scraped across jagged rocks; then her foot slammed into a large boulder, finally stopping her.

  She clutched another clump of weeds to try to hold herself in place as she carefully moved her other foot to the boulder for more support. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that she was only a few feet from the edge of the gully. A thin layer of fuzzy scum rose up from it, like smoke.

  Not too far away, she could see the flat top of a rock embedded in the dirt. It would make a good jumping-off spot. It looked to be about a six-foot jump from one side of the gully to the other.

  She moved, crablike, along the slope toward the flat-topped rock. She dug her fingernails into the dirt to keep from slipping.

  She knew she’d have to move quickly. If she hesitated for even a half second, she could end up in the mud.

  She pushed herself up, spun around, and slammed her sneakered foot down on the rock. She jumped and hit the other side only inches above the mud. Using her momentum, she scrambled upward, away from the gully.

  It wasn’t until she was walking again, following a dry creek bed, that she noticed the pain from all the bruises on her hands, arms, knees, and legs. Her shirt had rolled up a bit during her slide, and she had scratches and scrapes on her stomach as well. Still, she knew her pain was nothing compared to Chad’s.

  “Chaaa-aaad!”

  The creek bed wound its way upward between the two hills she had seen from the other side of the gully. She kept looking from one hill to the other, hoping to see Marshall’s rocky ledge. Although she knew that even if she found it, that didn’t mean Chad was still nearby.

  “Chaaaaad!” Her throat was dry, and her weak voice had gotten even weaker.

  For a second she thought she heard something. She stopped and listened.

  The woods were silent. Looking back the way she had come, she wondered if she’d ever find her way out of there. She didn’t want to have to cross the gully again.

  She heard a noise. Twigs were breaking, and then footsteps. The steps were uneven, like someone was stomping and staggering.

  Then she saw him. He crashed his way through a tangle of twigs and thin branches.

  She froze.

  “I’m here!” he called, but his voice was little more than a raspy whisper.

  He took several deep, uneven breaths, then continued to push his way toward her. “I’m here,” he repeated weakly.

  His face was a mass of blisters, crusted with pus and dried blood, and so badly swollen, she could hardly see his eyes.

  She started to bring her hand to her mouth, then stopped herself, not wanting to get the rash on her lips or tongue.

  He came closer. “Where’d you go?” he called from only a few feet away. He sank to his knees. “I’m right here,” he whimpered. “Where’d you go?”

  She felt overwhelmed with feelings of horror, revulsion, and pity. When she spoke, she spoke softly.

  “Are you hungry?”

  2 × 1,048,576 = 2,097,152

  2 × 2,097,152 = 4,194,304

  Three months after Tamaya found Chad in the woods, Jonathan Fitzman was subpoenaed to testify at the Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings.

  Donna Jones, a lawyer from SunRay Farm, was seated by Fitzy’s side. Ms. Jones had instructed Jonathan Fitzman never to use the word disaster. Instead, he was to refer to it as “the situation in Heath Cliff.”

  Donna Jones, Esq.: There is no evidence of any connection between Biolene and the situation in Heath Cliff.

  Senator Wright: That is what we are trying to determine. About a year and a half ago, Mr. Fitzman, when you first testified before this committee, you stated that your ergonyms could not live in the natural environment. Correct? You said the oxygen in the air would kill them. Poof.

  Jonathan Fitzman: That’s right. That’s what I’ve been saying. The disaster—I mean, the situation in Heath Cliff is horrible, and I feel really terrible when I think of those people, but it couldn’t have been my ergies.

  Senator Wright: Just to be clear. After you grow these ergonyms, they are combined with other substances and made into Biolene, is that correct?

  Jonathan Fitzman: There’s a lot more to it than that, but I guess that’s close enough.

  Senator Wright: My question is this: Are the ergonyms in the Biolene solution still alive?

  Donna Jones, Esq.: There is no evidence of any connection between Biolene and the situation in Heath Cliff.

  Senator Wright: I just want to know, are the ergonyms in Biolene living?<
br />
  Jonathan Fitzman: Yes, that’s what gives them their energy. It’s their vitality.

  Senator Wright: And are they still reproducing every thirty-six minutes?

  Jonathan Fitzman: No. Once they’ve been congealed in the Biolene, there’s no more cell division. Otherwise the ratio would be all wrong. Look, you have to understand, if I thought my ergies would kill someone, I would never, ever have let them out into the world. Biolene is supposed to save mankind, not destroy us.

  Senator Wright: Mr. Fitzman, please try not to wave your arms so much. You almost hit your lawyer.

  Donna Jones, Esq.: I’m used to it, Senator. I’ve learned when to duck.

  Senator Haltings: I know you’ve said you have all kinds of safety precautions, but just suppose, Mr. Fitzman—just suppose that some Biolene is spilled. I presume most of the liquid would then evaporate.

  Jonathan Fitzman: Yes, and the ergies would disintegrate.

  Senator Haltings: But if they didn’t die? Would these now free ergonyms be able to start reproducing again?

  Jonathan Fitzman: I don’t know. Maybe, if they were still alive, but by the time all the liquid evaporated, the air would have already killed them. Any car that runs on Biolene has to be equipped with a vacuum fuel injection system. I’m now working on a way to make sure the fuel tanks remain warm in winter, even if the engine is turned off and a car is parked outside in the ice and snow.

  Senator Haltings: You testified last year that an ergonym engages in cell division every thirty-six minutes.

  Jonathan Fitzman: Yes, until they’ve been congealed in Biolene.

  Senator Haltings: With trillions upon trillions of cells dividing all the time, aren’t there ever mutations?

  Donna Jones, Esq.: There is no evidence of any connection between Biolene and the situation in Heath Cliff.