Fuzzy Mud

by Louis Sachar

  Dr. June Lee: That’s true. Scientists have identified only about five percent of all the microbes in our biosphere.

  Senator Foote: So isn’t it possible that the organisms found in the fuzzy mud could have evolved naturally from one of these unknown microbes?

  Dr. June Lee: No, that is highly unlikely.

  Senator Foote: But not impossible?

  Dr. June Lee: Highly unlikely. If it had evolved naturally, then almost certainly it would have adapted to the cold climate.

  Senator Foote: What caused the mutation? How did it happen?

  Dr. June Lee: I can’t say. Every time a cell divides, there’s the very small possibility of a mutation. But with billions upon billions of divisions occurring all the time, mutations will happen. It’s inevitable.

  Senator Foote: How did this supposedly mutated ergonym get from SunRay Farm to the woods of Heath Cliff?

  Dr. June Lee: Again, we don’t know. A bug, a bird, a wind current—anything could have brought it.

  Senator Wright: Even if all you say is true, Dr. Lee, the important question is this: Is the original ergonym dangerous? I’m talking about the one currently used in Biolene, not the mutation. Is it dangerous either to people or to the environment?

  Dr. June Lee: No, since the original ergonym cannot survive in oxygen, it poses no danger. But like I said, mutations will occur. As far as what those future mutations may be, I cannot say. But there will be more mutations. That is a certainty.

  Senator Wright: Thank you, Doctor, for your testimony, and for your work at NIH. The country is very grateful that you and your agency were able to find a cure for this horrible disease.

  Dr. June Lee: Thank you, but actually it was Dr. Crumbly, a local veterinarian, who discovered the cure. We at NIH helped in the testing and mass production, but it is Dr. Crumbly who deserves your thanks.

  Senator Haltings: Excuse me, did you just say Dr. Crumbly is a vet?

  Dr. June Lee: Animals suffered just as badly as humans. If it weren’t for Dr. Crumbly, I suppose in the future the earth would have been ruled by turtles.

  The man who rescued Tamaya did find out soon enough. The whole world found out about the mud.

  Within hours of the children’s rescue, everyone who had been involved in the search began showing signs of the rash: redness, small bumps, a tingling sensation. By the next morning, many of these bumps had turned into blisters, and people awoke to find a mysterious powder the color of their skin on their bedsheets. As it turned out, the powder was their skin, or what was left of it after the mutated ergonyms ate “the good parts.”

  One week after Tamaya, Chad, and Marshall were found in the woods, there were more than five hundred cases of the rash in the town of Heath Cliff. After two weeks, the number had grown to fifteen thousand.

  Many people didn’t seek treatment until it was too late. One of the most insidious things about the rash was that there was no pain, just a mild tingling sensation. Normally nerve cells send a pain message to the brain, but the microorganisms ate through the portion of the cell that transmits the message. It was like a telephone line had been cut. The nerve cells were screaming, “Help! Alert! Danger!” but the brain never got the message.

  About the same time that Tamaya, Marshall, and Chad were being loaded into an ambulance, the searchers found the dead body of a person who had been living in the woods, a man with a very long beard.

  —

  The three lost children were rushed to Heath Cliff Regional Hospital. Samples of the mud were taken from Tamaya’s hair and clothes and sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Photos of her hand and arm, as well as Chad’s face, were emailed to those agencies as well.

  The doctors at the hospital searched the medical books and Internet but could find no record of this type of rash. There was no known cure. The best they could do for Tamaya was to keep her extremely clean.

  She was thoroughly washed. Her hair was cut off and her head was shaved. For the next few weeks she was given round-the-clock sponge baths. Every two hours, morning, noon, and night, a nurse would wash her with rubbing alcohol. After each bath she had to rinse her mouth with a special mouthwash. It stung and tasted terrible, and she had to keep it in her mouth for a minute before they allowed her to spit it out. She didn’t mind one bit. It tasted strong.

  Her mother, and then later her father, came to visit, although they weren’t allowed to touch her. She told them she was sorry, but they kept on telling her how proud they were of her.

  Later, as the epidemic spread through Heath Cliff, all visitors were banned from the hospital, including her parents. She could still talk to them on her cell phone, which her father had given to her.

  Her vision didn’t deteriorate any further. If she held her hand in front of her face, she could see it was her hand, but that might have been because she already knew it was her hand. Her doctor tried various other shapes and objects. She could correctly identify a circle, a square, and a triangle, but when he held up a woman’s high-heeled shoe, she guessed it was a banana.

  She asked often about Marshall and Chad. She heard Marshall was doing fairly well, but she wasn’t allowed to see him.

  Chad was in very serious condition. That was all she could find out about him. She was told that if he had arrived at the hospital even twenty minutes later, he probably wouldn’t have survived.

  She never complained. Sometimes, when she felt scared, she’d repeat to herself the ten virtues that she’d been made to memorize at Woodridge Academy: Charity. Cleanliness. Courage. Empathy. Grace. Humility. Integrity. Patience. Prudence. Temperance. Partly, she thought that if she was really, really good, then the rash would go away and she’d be able to see again. Deep down, she was also preparing herself for the worst. In case she didn’t get better, she wanted to be able to face the world with courage, patience, and grace.

  She learned to recognize her different nurses, not only by their voices but also by the sounds they made when they entered her room to give her another sponge bath. Everyone continued to assure her that the best scientists in the country were working on a cure.

  Everyone acted so calm and reassuring around her. It was only when she talked to Monica that she found out that the rest of the world was totally freaked out.

  “The fuzzy mud’s everywhere!” Monica told her. “School’s closed. Not just Woodridge. All schools. No one goes outside. I’m not even supposed to talk to you, because my mom’s afraid the frankengerms will come through the phone!”

  —

  Everyone called it “fuzzy mud,” the term Tamaya had used when she’d arrived at the hospital. Even the scientists, who could be seen throughout Heath Cliff dressed in their hazmat suits, called it that. Dr. Humbard, a former employee of SunRay Farm, appeared on all the cable news shows, which was probably why the mutated organisms were now being called frankengerms.

  The hospitals ran out of room, and schools were turned into rash treatment centers. Cots were set up in the classrooms and cafeterias. Sheets were hung to provide privacy for the round-the-clock sponge baths, administered by dedicated nurses who also wore full hazmat suits.

  The president ordered that Heath Cliff and the surrounding area be put under quarantine. No one was allowed to leave, whether or not they showed symptoms of the rash. The airport and railroad stations were closed. The Pennsylvania National Guard patrolled the roads and highways.

  Miss Marple lay in a crate in Dr. Robert Crumbly’s office. Dr. Crumbly stood alongside the crate, a hypodermic needle in his hand. He was glad the poor dog was sleeping. She didn’t suffer when she was asleep.

  Part Australian shepherd, part chow, and part who-knows-what, Miss Marple used to have thick, gray fur with white, black, and brown spots. Most of her fur had fallen out. Her naked skin was covered in blisters. She’d become deaf and blind.

  In her dream, Missy was running through the woods. All senses were on full ale
rt as she searched for the lost children. Leaves flew up as she dashed over them. She barked in joyful triumph and licked the lost girl’s face.

  To Dr. Crumbly, the triumphant barks of her dream sounded like pathetic whimpers. He carefully opened her crate so as not to wake her.

  He worked alone now. Two of his vet techs had come down with the rash, and he’d ordered the others to stay home. He wore gloves and boots but not a hazmat suit. He didn’t want to scare the animals.

  Miss Marple somehow sensed his presence. Her tail gave a weak thump against the bottom of her crate.

  “Hey, girl,” he said, and petted the dog, wishing he didn’t have to wear gloves. He thought, at the very least, the dog deserved to feel a warm, human touch.

  He readied the needle.

  Animals suffered from the rash worse than people, since they didn’t take baths. It wasn’t only dogs and cats. Dr. Crumbly had seen many different infected animals, including hamsters, rabbits, a ferret, and even a skunk named Penelope.

  Sadly, he’d been unable to do anything for them except put a final end to their suffering. Over the past two weeks he’d put down more than twenty pets.

  There had been one animal, however, that had shown no ill effects from the fuzzy mud. Dr. Crumbly owned a land turtle named Maurice. Maurice had gotten stuck in a patch of fuzzy mud in his backyard, and he’d had to pry him out with a shovel. Three days later, the turtle still hadn’t shown any symptoms of the rash.

  Peering through the microscope in his small office laboratory, Dr. Crumbly had compared samples of Maurice’s skin with skin samples he’d taken from some of the infected animals. He’d discovered an enzyme in Maurice’s skin cell that didn’t appear in any of the other animals’ skin cells.

  Miss Marple turned her head toward him.

  “You’re a good dog,” he said.

  He inserted the needle into her right hind leg, injecting her with a concentration of the turtle enzymes.

  Tamaya was the first human test case. Her parents had spoken to the doctor in charge of the experiment, who had cautioned them that just because the cure had worked on animals, there was no guarantee that it would work on people too. Still, what choice did they have?

  Tamaya tried not to let her hopes get too high, although she was very glad to learn that Miss Marple had made a full recovery. She loved that dog.

  She received two injections of the turtle enzymes each day. Various doctors and nurses were constantly coming into her hospital room to check on her. They always asked her name, which began to bug her after a while. She realized there were lots of other patients and the doctors were very busy, but still, it was a very important experiment. They could at least remember her name!

  She mentioned that to Ronda, her favorite nurse, who just laughed.

  “They know your name,” Ronda told her. “They’re just testing your memory. Human beings don’t normally have these types of enzymes in their bodies, and the doctors are worried about possible bad side effects.”

  “Maybe I’ll grow a shell, like a turtle,” Tamaya joked.

  Ronda laughed again. “That’d be cute,” she said. “And practical,” she added.

  “Whenever I get tired, I could just duck inside my shell and go to sleep,” Tamaya agreed.

  Tamaya’s other nurses tried to be cheerful and positive around her, but she could tell they were faking it. She didn’t blame them. She realized how horrible she must look with no hair and her skin all blistered. But Ronda didn’t fake it. She talked and joked with Tamaya like she was just a normal person.

  Besides asking her to say her name, her doctors also had her tell them her address and phone number. They asked her who George Washington was. They had her do math problems in her head: five times seven, twenty-six divided by two.

  They listened to her heart and lungs. They took her temperature and checked her blood pressure. They made her walk around in a circle and touch her toes.

  She began to get better at identifying the various objects her doctor held in front of her face. Still, that didn’t mean the treatment was necessarily working. After weeks of practice, her brain might simply have learned how to decipher the blurry images. She also hardly noticed the tingling sensation anymore, but again, that could have been because her brain had learned to block it out.

  “How long did it take for Miss Marple to get better?” she asked one of the doctors.

  “People and dogs are different,” the doctor replied, not answering the question.

  She asked him about Chad but was told that Chad had been moved to another part of the hospital. She worried about what that meant.

  She slept at odd times, never for very long. She was constantly being awakened, if not for a sponge bath, then for a shot or more tests.

  One night, or it might have been during the day, she had a very odd dream. There was a man in her room. He didn’t seem to be a doctor, but she didn’t know who he was. He said his name was Fitzy.

  “That’s a strange name.”

  “I’m a strange person,” he said with a laugh.

  Every time he spoke, his voice came from another part of the room. He could have just been moving around, but it gave Tamaya the impression of some kind of floating spirit.

  “You want anything?” he asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?” he asked. “When I say anything, I mean anything! I’m about to become really rich. Like, the richest man in the world, maybe.”

  There was a sudden clattering noise.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  It sounded like he was down on the floor now.

  “I just knocked over a jar of those wooden things you stick into your mouth and say ah.”

  “It sounds like you’re putting them back into the jar.”

  “I don’t want to make a mess.”

  “You probably should throw them away,” Tamaya told him. “I don’t think you should put them in somebody’s mouth after they’ve been on the floor.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he agreed.

  She heard them being dumped into the garbage.

  “So, can I buy you anything?” His voice was very close now.

  “No thanks.”

  “I don’t want anything either,” he said. He sounded sad. “You’d think someone with lots of money would want to buy something, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  His voice was now far away.

  “I just like figuring things out. I like science. You like science?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What’s your favorite subject?”

  “Reading, I guess,” she told him. “I like to write too. I think I want to be a writer someday.”

  “That’s good. You can still do that, can’t you? I mean, even if you can’t see? You can talk into a computer and it will write for you.”

  “I don’t know. I write different than I talk.”

  “I know what you mean. I think different than I talk. It’s like my brain’s filled with all these ideas, but sometimes I don’t even recognize the words that come out of my mouth.”

  “You make sense to me,” said Tamaya.

  “That’s good. You sure I can’t buy you anything? A piano? A grandfather clock?”

  “I just want to get better.”

  “Me too. I want everyone to get better. I wanted to help people, not start a worldwide epidemic.”

  He sounded very sad. Tamaya wished there were something she wanted. “Oh, I know!” she suddenly remembered. “I need a new school sweater.”

  —

  She woke up sometime after that while Ronda was giving her a sponge bath. She thought about her dream and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Ronda asked.

  “Nothing.” A grandfather clock? A piano?

  The sponge bath felt nice.

  Often, she didn’t know if her eyes were open or shut. It was something she had to think about.
She opened them now.

  The world was full of light and color. Ronda had red hair and dark eyes. The walls were yellow.

  Tamaya started to tremble.

  “What’s wrong?” Ronda asked.

  Everything still looked very blurry, but it was a well-lit blur.

  “Tamaya, are you okay?” Ronda asked again.

  She was afraid she might still be dreaming. She spoke tentatively, almost afraid that if she spoke, the world would go dark again.

  “Ronda, I can see you,” she said, and when the world didn’t disappear, she trembled even harder. “I can see.”

  Ronda began shaking too. She hugged Tamaya very hard, which was against the rules.

  “You need to call your mother!” she declared. “I’ll get the doctor. You call your mother!”

  She hugged Tamaya again, and then got her cell phone for her from the table by the bed.

  “What time is it?” Tamaya asked. “Are you sure it’s not too late?”

  “It doesn’t matter what time it is,” Ronda said. “Call her now!”

  —

  At three-forty-five in the morning, Tamaya’s mother was startled awake by the ringing of the phone. Instantly her heart filled with terror. It took all her courage to answer it, as she tried to prepare herself for the worst.

  “Yes?”

  “Hey, Mom, guess what?”

  Two days later, the first snow fell. Tamaya still couldn’t make out the individual snowflakes, but she was able to see zigzagging streaks of gray and white outside her hospital window.

  It was beautiful. The whole world looked beautiful to her, even the bright green Jell-O that came with her lunch, with coleslaw magically suspended inside.

  Ronda led her onto the outdoor patio next to the cafeteria. Wearing a ski hat over her closely cropped hair, she lay on the cement and caught snowflakes with her tongue.

  —

  It snowed for four straight days. Tamaya learned that Marshall had begun getting Dr. Crumbly’s injections and that he was showing great improvement. Nobody seemed to know anything about Chad, and she was afraid to push it, afraid what she might find out.