Just off the highway in New Mexico,
But now these precious fields lie green, not brown,
Beneath the sun. Best tourists never know
The secret of this land’s fertility . . .
O Serpent-Skirted One Who Should Not Be!
Ann K. Schwader’s most recent collection of dark verse, Twisted in Dream, was published in Dec. 2011 by Hippocampus Press. Her previous collection, Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam’s Dot), was a Bram Stoker Award finalist for 2010. Objects from the Gilman-Waite Collection, a tale of art and betrayal, is forthcoming in Book of Cthulhu II. Ann lives, writes, & volunteers at her local branch library in suburban Colorado. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
About her poem, Ann says: ”Coatlicue is one of the bloodier female deities in the Aztec pantheon (are there any nice ones?), and it just struck me that Yig might have been one of her children. She is the mother of other gods, so why not? I really enjoy digging into mythology to find the Secret History of the Mythos – it’s amazing how often you can find something useful. I also love trying things with the Zelia Bishop collaboration stories, because ZB was a woman of the West, writing about the West.”
Story illustration by Ronnie Tucker.
Return to Table of Contents
God Serum
Wendy N. Wagner
Annika held her breath as she worked her pick in the lock. It yielded all too easily–a certain sign of the mushrooms’ vanity. If the intel was right, behind this door lay a trove of ancient records, the history of the Unraveling, a resource the mushroom-men simply left protected by a mere pin-tumbler lock. She didn’t spare a glance over her shoulder to see if any mushroom-men saw her push open the door. If anyone was curious enough to follow her, she’d be happy to kill them. It was that kind of mission today. Catman artillery fire, still distant, rattled the university’s windows as she swung the door shut behind her.
Narrow stairs greeted her, and she padded down them. The air smelled of ancient fungus, the kind that lurks quietly in the basements of the world instead of taking it over. It was a bitter smell and strange in these times. If she’d had more fur, her whole body would have prickled. But of course, her near-human appearance was what had gotten her started in the business of spying and sneaking in the first place.
She crept down, down, down. She kept count of the flights like a good recon kitty. Three, then four, then another, shorter and broader, the stonework changing to the coarse pebbled stuff she’d seen in some of the abandoned cities of the mountain. The Elders called it concrete. It didn’t last long under the onslaught of wind and fungus; its appearance had to be a good sign that she’d found the bowels of history. The explosives in her pocket felt suddenly much heavier.
The concrete steps ended at a silver-colored door, rust staining the rivets along its seams. Red letters spelled out: “Fire Door.” She touched it with cautious fingertips, but no alarm gave her away. She pushed harder and shook her head, disgusted when it opened. That kind of security would never pass in a cat town.
A rush of air, cool and musty, pushed out through the ancient door. It stirred grit on the stairs behind her, little scrabblings like feet sliding on stone. She glanced over her shoulder, just in case. Just grit. Just air. The cold pale light ahead called her forward.
She’d never seen light like this, steady and strong without any flickering. Even the gas lamps the mushroom-men used to light their palazzos didn’t shine like this. Annika leaned against the door and let the blue tones wash over her. It was as cold as snow down here, like the deep caves where the ice stayed year-round. And the dry stink of the place stung her nose.
No one had ever imagined the records room would look like this, bright lights and glass cases and neatly lettered signs everywhere just begging to be read. The room reminded Annika a bit of a project Lenya the Eldest had begun this spring, her museum of the cat-people. All those paintings and journals arranged and tagged on shelves. But everything here was much shinier. Annika crept forward to read the first sign.
“Doctor, hero, savior,” she read. It marked a glass case full of white suits and photographs of a man wearing them. A black two-headed eagle stood out on the pocket of the suit. A stethoscope gleamed on a tiny glass shelf within the case. “Doctor,” she repeated. There were few catman doctors. Most of the missions she’d run down here in the city were medicine runs, although how the mushrooms still had medical reserves was a mystery. They didn’t doctor their own. Mushroom-men rarely sickened, and anyone hurt in an accident was quickly set outside the city walls to rot away. Cruel people, if they could even be called people any longer.
Annika shook her head and examined the next case, full of newspaper clippings and more photos. A ribbon for Lifetime Achievement in Biochemistry. Nothing that explained the Unraveling, nothing that could be used to fight the wave of fungi.
“Lady, thanks for opening the door. You here to slake your curiosity, too?”
She spun with her claws at full extension, facing down a gray creature half a head shorter than herself. It cringed backward, and she hissed with revulsion.
“You’re one of those cat people,” the mushroom whispered. Its lips were like two motile flaps in its featureless face; no nose or cheekbones bent the flat expanse. Two shining black beads blinked back at her, the closest thing to human in its appearance. It was hard to believe her father had loved one of these monsters. This one’s limbs looked lumpy and malformed beneath its loose garments. Its hand, made of three spongy grippers, stretched out to her.
She swatted it away.
“Hey, be gentle!” It stared at her. “Whoah. You’re a hybrid. Catshroom. But you’re built like a real human. I bet you get lots of looks.”
Annika said nothing. It was true. She had her father’s cat eyes and cat claws, her mother’s tough gray skin, but more than anything, she looked human.
“Wow,” it murmured. “A real throwback.”
Annika lashed out at its head, missing as it ducked with surprising speed. The glass case behind it cracked.
“Sludge!” The mushroom fumbled in the pocket of its coat and drew out a roll of duct tape. Annika knew it from the books in Lenya’s library. “I’m going to be in big trouble. No one’s supposed to come down here unless they’ve been given clearance. If spores get in here, this is all going to fall apart.”
She backed away from the creature busily taping up the front of the case. She still had a job to do, and no awkward mushroom could be allowed to interfere. She should have killed it already. It turned back to look at her, blinking its brightly gleaming eyes. There was something endearing about its soft face, something childlike, she realized.
“You’re a kid, aren’t you?”
“I’m no kid. I’m a free-moving fruiting body, aren’t I? A fully adult man.”
“When did you fruit free? Must not have been too long ago.” Annika moved steadily around the corner of the exhibit, putting the bulk of a display of medical equipment between her and the mushroom. She’d seen adolescent mushrooms before, their legs still freshly uprooted from the subterranean mycelia. The mushroom-men’s lives were short, twenty-five to thirty years as autonomous structures. Then they spored, and died in puddles of black slime.
This one must be very young still. His legs wobbled beneath him, new and spindly.
“Look, I just thought I’d see the historical records with my own eyes. It’s so different from the shared memories…” It brushed its fingers across the glass case, its lips stretching in something close to a human smile. “Being aboveground is remarkable. This way of living is thrilling.”
Annika studied its face. It wasn’t as hard to read as she had thought. “You’re afraid of the fight out there, aren’t you? You’re too young yet to have weapons training. And losing this body so soon frightens you.”
“I’m not afraid of anything!”
The charge took her by surprise. The mushroom boy launched its full weight at her, throwing her backward and topp
ling the cases at her back. Glass crunched and tinkled as the pair hit the ground. Snarling, she clawed and bit her way free. Her mouth filled with the dirt-taste of mushroom flesh. She’d tasted it enough times to appreciate the flavor.
The mushroom boy groaned. Annika ignored it, checking the explosives in her pocket for damage–there was no reason to be blown up with this mess, not if she could help it. But the charges looked fine. She used her teeth to pull a chunk of glass out of her shoulder and then licked the wound clean. Over the scent of blood, both cat and mushroom, the smell of age and mildew had gotten stronger.
“Hey, what did we ever do to you?”
She eyed the mushroom boy. It panted as it struggled to sit up, black blood trickling from cuts and bites. Glass bristled from its gray hide.
“Besides running my people out of our city? Besides taking all the supplies and all the books and leaving us to rot? Besides all that?” She spat a glob of bloody spit. “My mother was shroom. She looked more human than me, but she was still one of your people. And for having a catman’s baby, they put her out on the mycelium fields and spored her. Just staked her out and let the wild fungi eat her. You bastards deserve to die.”
Even this far down, she felt a shock wave as cat artillery fire struck something massive and shook the earth. The mission was progressing nicely. She grinned at the battered creature.
“Now if you excuse me, I have some intelligence to collect. But it doesn’t look like you’ll be moving much, anyway.”
She spared the thing no further glances as she picked her way around the last remaining glass cases. Her attention was held by a massive display on the back wall, a montage of old photographs stretching from floor to ceiling. Imposed above it all, a larger-than-life-sized image of the doctor man holding a naked baby. The doctor’s white coat could not compete with the blinding paleness of the child.
“The first of us.”
She jumped. Despite the damage it had taken, the mushroom boy had found its feet and joined her. It wrenched a piece of glass from its cheek and pressed its palm to the wound to hold back the black blood.
Intrigued by his claim, she studied the picture of the baby. It looked as fully human as the doctor holding it. “It doesn’t look like a mushroom.”
“Not us. The first Unraveled Ones. Dogmen. Sheepmen. Catmen. Mushroom men. All of us.”
Annika wondered if he was right. She wrinkled her nose. The stink of the room had worsened. The hair on her body prickled. But she had a job to do, information to bring home. She crept closer to the display. Beneath the photos, a glass plinth protected a book, richly bound, the color of old earth.
“Don’t touch it!” The boy stopped her hand with his lobster claw.
“Why not?”
“I can’t remember.” He screwed up his eyes. “Sometimes the memories are absorbed in pieces. We all get them, we all try to fill in their gaps. But the oldest memories are too broken to fix. Too human.”
“You all have the same memories?” She couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice. She’d thought that the fruiting bodies, at least, were individuals, like children born from the mycelia. Not part of it, roaming free for a time.
But it explained so much: the casual carelessness with individual bodies, the remarkable organization that had conquered all the other peoples of the earth. She’d never known a dogman or a sheepman, although she’d seen a few mushroom folk whose long tails or curly hair had suggested the lost species. She looked at her own hand, still stretched toward the plinth. The gray hide was a close match for the mushroom boy’s.
A breeze rippled the fuzz on her wrist. She stiffened. “There’s another entrance.”
“No, of course not.” The boy shook his head. He opened his eyes and frowned at the pictures. “I don’t understand what all this has to do with us. The doctor, these men–” he pointed out a photo of men in white hoods, and then the mass of pale-face figures in black uniforms. Then at the baby. “The shared memories are all focused on the color white. Maybe it has something to do with the doctor’s jacket.”
Annika pivoted, remembering something in one of the display cases. Despite the rumble of the artillery, and her discomfort over a second entrance to the museum, her mission demanded she figure this out. “Here,” she called.
The boy bounded to her side. “White race saved,” he read. “What does that even mean?”
She shook her head. The photograph in this case showed the doctor again, standing before a snow-covered pyramid. He held the book over his head, his face triumphant. The design on the book seemed to leer out at her, the patterns in the leather like an evil face beneath ropy strands of hair.
The boy skimmed out loud: “Antarctic Aryan city discovered …secret of purity in ancient DNA … race-inhibiting serum developed … I don’t get it.”
Annika scanned the display for more clues. “God Serum?”
“It says he found the final clues to this serum in this ancient religious text, kept here in this museum.” He followed the text, his claw pressed to the glass. “Administered by secret operatives in the water supply? Oh, sludge. This is starting to make sense.”
Behind them, something grated, rock on rock.
“Someone’s in here!” Annika drew her gun from her holster. She’d taken an automatic stance, her shoulders and hips squared, her body blocking the boy’s. Stupid. She should have taken him as a shield.
She could feel him shaking even though only their arms touched.
“What is it?” He barely whispered.
She eased forward, peering around the case. A black seam ran down the edge of the photo montage, and something long and ropy wriggled its way through the narrow gap. Annika gagged on the stench seeping out of the opening.
Steeling herself, she peeked again.
“Shit.”
She whipped back behind the case.
“What?”
“It’s going for the book. Some kind of tentacle or something.”
A clatter of glass breaking warned that the tentacle had succeeded. The mushroom boy shook his head. “We can’t let that thing get the book. Don’t you see? The book is what started the Unraveling. We have to get it back!”
Annika stole a look around the corner; the tentacle wriggled back toward the gap in the wall, the book firmly wrapped in its grasp.
“It went back in the wall!”
“Then hurry!” The mushroom boy scrambled over Annika and debris, wedging itself into the crack. “I think this is meant to open. Help me.”
She dug her claws into the cement of the wall and wrenched backward. Her feet skidded on the cold floor. A huge crash overhead shook the ceiling, and a tile smashed on the ground, just missing Annika. She braced her leg against the motionless side of the wall and pulled harder.
“It’s working!” The boy wriggled deeper into the crack, adding his weight to Annika’s. With a puff of dust and rank stench, the panel swung open wide enough for both of them.
The lights flickered once and faded to black.
“We don’t have much time,” Annika growled, pulling an emergency flare from her pocket and striking it on the wall. The boy nodded. A pattern of glowing green dots showed around his eyes and the hand-claw he held to the wall. Annika resisted an urge to touch it. The cold glow of bioluminescence was beautiful.
Ahead of them and behind them, darkness pressed down with a palpable weight. Annika’s flare barely stirred it.
The boy pointed out a trail along the floor, dark, tacky, damp. “I think that’s its trail.” He moved ahead, staying within the circle of Annika’s light, his own glow too faint to reveal the ground ahead.
She breathed as shallowly as she dared. The hideous smell, the weight of the darkness, the sense that somewhere something waited: it was far more terrifying than any raid she’d ever led on a mushroom city. She hoped she didn’t tremble like the boy did.
The passage took a corner. Annika grabbed the boy’s jacket, pulling him backward before he plunged onward
.
“Are you crazy? You can’t just dart ahead or you’ll get killed!”
He stared back at her, his round eyes reflecting back at her the pale glow of her own eyes. For a second she was back on the mountain, training new scouts. They always had attitude, newbies. She narrowed her eyes and tightened her grip on his shoulders.
He looked away first. “Thanks.”
“Okay. Let’s do this my way.” Annika handed him the flare and felt for her back-up chem flash. She snapped the glowstick and tossed it around the corner. “Watch.”
They knelt and leaned around the corner. The glowstick filled the hallway with green brightness.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
“Raided an old warehouse. Amazing the things humans kept handy.” She squeezed the mushroom boy’s arm to warn him to silence. Something moved at the edge of the glowstick’s range of light.
The tentacle wriggled forward, its edges limned in a faint yellow light like a sick cousin of the boy’s glow. It circled the edge of the glowstick’s range and then shot forward, snapping the stick. Green spattered everywhere.
In the darkness, something shrieked.
The tentacle shot backward as if burned.
Annika yanked the boy around the corner. “It’s fast,” she breathed.
“It didn’t like the chemicals in the lightstick. Or maybe just really sensitive to light.”
“Right. If we’re going to sneak up on it, we’re going to have to leave the flare.”
The boy raised the flare to eye level. He met Annika’s eyes. “I think I’ve worked it out. The serum that doctor made, using what he learned from that book? The God Serum? It broke down the stuff inside each kind of creature that made it unique. That stuff made us mix.”
Annika nodded. It made sense. Once there had been many kinds of creatures. Now, there were still birds and fish, but of the creatures that roamed the land, there were mushroom-men and catmen. No humans. No mushrooms. No cats. Just their strange hybrids.
“Did you look at the picture of the doctor, holding the book?”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 Page 28
