by Ed Kurtz
“Too late for that,” Leon said. “No hope, no hope.”
“Nah-hawp,” Martina muttered mindlessly. Her naked flesh was striped pink from the thrashing she’d taken from every branch and thorny bush she encountered along the trek to the school. As she spoke, a stream of urine ran down her leg.
Leon giggled at her garbled speech, her numb, broken mind.
“You’re making a mess,” he admonished her.
“Heeeeee,” she squealed.
“Nuh—nuh—nahburrrrds,” Lisa stammered.
“Now, Lisa,” Leon said, wagging his finger at her.
Kirk smacked his lips and babbled incoherently. Angelica sniffed and started to cry.
Only Jim managed to keep his silence; he was stuffing his flaccid penis into a hole he’d found in the wall.
“Probably a rat hole, Jim,” Leon warned him.
Jim tittered and commenced pumping his hips, copulating with the wall. Leon shrugged his shoulders and advanced to the stairwell. About halfway up somebody had constructed a barricade, a tangle of ancient school desks, the sort with the chair bolted onto them.
“Mister Zimmerman,” he announced in his best Reagan, “tear down this wall.”
Kirk waddled across the ruins of the school’s front hall, breathing hard and sweating profusely, and climbed the stairs until he reached the barrier. He then commenced seizing desk-chairs, ripping them free and hurling them down below. They crashed against the debris at the bottom, then against one another, kicking up a cloud of dust and filling the air with a deafening racket. At some point during the process his glasses slipped from his slick, flabby face. He crushed them underfoot as he cleared the stairwell, unaware and uncaring. His long, brown hair hung in sweaty twists, having fallen free of its hairband. He looked now like an aging metalhead, which Leon figured he quite probably was, despite his association with the rich folk from Riverside Hills.
Once he finished the arduous task, Kirk stood still on the stairs, facing the wall. Above his dripping head, in angled capital letters, some kid had spraypainted hershal + brandon = fagots. The legend was barely visible in the weak moonlight, and Leon smirked at it, thinking of his father.
“Not nice to call names,” he said to himself. “Bad things can happen to name-callers.”
He laughed and began his ascent up the stairs.
Below him, in the ruins, Angelica shrieked. Leon screwed up his face and peered down at her, finding the woman on her knees and cradling her head between her hands. Her headache had begun, the inevitable result of their communion back at the house.
Soon they would all be screaming.
Leon sighed and continued up the steps. There was still so much to do.
* * *
Four metal wastebaskets, positioned strategically around the room, blazed brightly from the burning paper their respective attendants continually fed into them. There seemed no end to the discarded textbooks on the second floor, outdated social studies books and marbled composition pads and such, which Kirk, Jim, Martina and Lisa tore apart for fuel. Angelica was exempt from the effort by Leon’s decree—he knew her agony all too well and permitted her to squeeze behind a tiny desk to deal with it. Once the flames got going, he instructed his disciples to poke sticks of broken furniture into each wastebasket, of which there was no paucity, either. In little time, the classroom was brightly illuminated by the dancing orange flames. Leon directed the remaining four to their seats.
He crossed in front of the blocky teacher’s desk, its surface decimated by the inferno that consumed the school, and felt something crunch beneath his shoe. He looked down to find a spiderweb of cracked glass, a framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln he’d stepped upon. The webbed crack centered on the president’s left eye and split outward in jagged shapes. For a moment Leon imagined a spindly green stalk wiggling out from the midpoint, Lincoln’s own hitchhiker. He grinned and shook off the reverie.
The room he’d chosen was not random—it was his own second grade classroom, Mrs. Poole’s torture dungeon of horrors, as he’d thought of it all those years ago. Short and fat and cruel, Leon feared his second grade teacher almost as much as he hated her. She’d rapped his knuckles with her yardstick and called him stupid in front of the entire class, yanked his ears and duly informed him what few prospects he was ever going to have. She whittled him down, began the protracted process of shaping a frightened, uncertain child into a drone of a man, a warm body to fill a cubicle, defeating him as if hopeful children were forever at war with an adult world that requires gears and cogs for its cold, gray machines. He half-realized it even then, and even then he felt powerless to do anything about it. Every once in a while, when the walls of his cube seemed to be closing in on him like a trash compactor, Leon had thought back to Mrs. Poole and wondered how pleased she would be now that her pitiless endeavors had paid off. Though probably she was dead, all these years later. Leon always hoped so.
Now, nearly three decades after the fact, the classroom was Leon’s to control. And before too long, each and every one of his new students would be ready to graduate to the next stratum, to the phenomenal release of the entity growing in their heads. Horns would beget horns. And in a world of growing, pulsing horns, of knobby florets and control that spread even as it concentrated amongst a select few, there would be no cubicles, no Mrs. Pooles, no hateful fathers or heartbreaking Amis. Leon regarded his novitiates and saw in them a new town, community, world. Planet Leon.
“Nuhhh,” Angelica moaned, her head on the desk and arms dangling dead at her sides.
“Poor Angelica,” Leon cooed, walking over to where she sat. Glass snapped and cracked beneath his every step; something skittered in a far corner. “My poor child.”
He stroked her hair and wiped a tear from her eye. Angelica shuddered and groaned.
Tapping the end of his finger against her throbbing brow, Leon smiled and said, “I do think that’s going to have to come out.”
30
Before long, Ami found herself using the claw hammer she’d found at Leon’s house like a machete, whacking at the low hanging branches blocking the hidden path like an explorer in an old jungle adventure movie. When there was nothing impeding her way, she sometimes swung the hammer anyway, for she was growing increasingly nervous, paranoid that someone would leap out at her at any moment.
Someone. Leon, who else?
She was well past the lake and deep into the wood when she first smelled the smoke. And the closer she got to its source, the thicker and more astringent it became, clogging her lungs and burning her eyes. Soon enough she saw the flickering light through the trees, a beacon she followed through the dense copses and grabbing underbrush until the woods cleared out and Ami faced the smoldering ruin of a house in the middle of nowhere.
She clicked the flashlight off and approached with caution, her eyes flicking back and forth, ready for any sign of movement beyond the jumping flames. Keeping the hammer raised and her shoulders tensed, Ami stalked up to the inferno, as close as the winding coils of greasy black smoke would allow. And as she drew near, her mother’s voice spoke from the back of her mind:
There was a little village where the only one who could control the fire was also a monster. He had giant teeth and he looked very terrible. Now whenever the people came to his house to ask for his fire, they would laugh at him, and this monster would get so angry that he would eat them up…
“Be quiet, mother,” Ami said aloud to the memory. “There’s no damn monster…”
Her objection to the old Nigerian folktale was cut short upon first sight of the charred body sprawled out in front of the burning house.
Ami jumped, dropped the flashlight. The sweet smell of overcooked meat wafted into her nostrils, against her will, seizing her lungs and making her choke. She staggered back and away, bent over and retched into the dry, dead grass. It came up hot and thick, burned up her throat and pushed into her nose. Yet still she smelled the maddening odor of that poor person’s broiled
flesh.
When at last Ami was fully purged, she stood up and, against her better judgment, returned to the blackened corpse. It was small, its clothes melted and skin bubbled and burned away. The corpse’s teeth were bared horribly, the lips having retracted from them, and a yellowish white substance oozed out of one its eyes. Amy choked at the realization that it was its eye. She shut her own eyes and turned away. She was mostly certain it had been a woman. She was entirely certain that Leon was responsible for her awful death, no matter how indirectly.
What do you want? said the monster. The child said she was there for his fire, but she was afraid. What are you afraid of, child? I am afraid of you. Then the monster gobbled her up.
Ami tightened her grip on the hammer’s handle and went searching for the flashlight. It was easy to find by the light of the house fire.
“Yeah, I’m afraid of the monster, too,” she whispered as she clicked the flash back on and turned its beam on the reemerging woods. “And I can’t even remember how that damned story ends.”
Ami raised the claw hammer to attack level and went forth, back into the woods.
31
Leon was in a playful mood. He pranced about Angelica, a rusty protractor gripped tightly in one fist, which he had found in the teacher’s desk. Kirk rolled around on the floor beneath the blackboard, groaning, while Martina giggled stupidly at him and Jim clawed violently at his own face.
Lisa looked on, bemused. They were getting stupid, and though this much was to be expected in the long run, it wasn’t doing anyone much good. At this rate, she judged, the whole grand party would be over by dawn and she would find herself right back where she started. There was power here, at her fingertips, and Lisa had no intention of wasting it.
“Just get it out,” she barked at Leon, gesturing toward Angelica. The other woman leaned drowsily against the wall, a thin rope of saliva dangling from her lower lip.
“Gehhhhuhowwwt,” Martina babbled.
Lisa grimaced, sighed. She hated being isolated like this, far distant from civilization where they could really play. She should have been more assertive.
No time like the present, she thought.
“Leon—hurry the fuck up. Cut her eye out, or whatever you need to do. She can come with us, but the rest are a lost cause. This place is shit. We need to get back to town, don’t you think?”
“This,” Leon drawled, “is our new home. Our church.”
“Enough with the church bullshit, man. What’s the point of this if we can’t spread it? We ought to own this fucking town, Leon! And we can, but not from here…”
Flames crackled in the wastebaskets from every corner of the room. Leon taunted Angelica, thrusting the protractor at her face over and over until the rust-brown point came within a centimeter of her throbbing, blood-red eye. She did not appear to mind.
Kirk farted loudly. Lisa stomped her foot and growled.
“Now, Leon!”
“Now,” he softly repeated as the metal point pierced Angelica’s eyeball and pushed wetly in, up to the joint. Her lips trembled and viscous, pink tears flooded her cheek. Jim whimpered and poked himself in the same eye.
“A fucking lost cause,” Lisa grumbled. She had grand ambitions, but she was getting nowhere fast with this freakshow. Her best bet, she decided then, was to harvest some of the spores, maybe the whole stalk from Leon’s face, and leave these imbeciles to their own devices. She could find a dance club or a crowded restaurant, get the infections under way in no time. By the end of the week the whole goddamn town would be hers. Lisaville. She grinned.
“Gehhhhuhowwwt,” Martina bellowed suddenly.
With a snarl, Lisa snatched a frayed, hardback dictionary from a desk and slammed its spine against Martina’s face. There was a muted crunch as her nose collapsed in a bloody spurt and she toppled to the floor without another peep.
Lisa hovered over her, eyebrows tightly knit, and gasped when a tiny green bud wormed up from the mess of blood and crushed cartilage.
“Jesus.”
Martina’s leg jerked. The bud wiggled.
“It’s bee-bee-beautiful,” Leon stammered. Lisa turned to look at him and froze—the stalk was squirming further out of his face, curling at the thickening base. Its tip probed at the air while Leon’s one remaining eye rolled back in his skill.
“Bee-yoo-tee-ful,” he said slowly, drool and blood spilling from his mouth.
“Leon?” Lisa took a step toward him. “Leon, are you—?”
The stalk shook and shot out straight, stunning her to silence. It then curved downward and snaked rapidly into Leon’s open mouth. He mumbled incoherently and did nothing to stop it as it disappeared past his bloody lips and his throat distended with the breadth of the thing.
“Oh my god,” Lisa gasped. “It’s…incredible.”
Leon’s fingers went rigid and a dark patch of urine spread across the front of his pants as the stalk continued to pour out of his skull and down his gullet. He was clearly suffocating, but there was no panic in him. Only total submission.
A laugh ratcheted out of Lisa’s throat as she watched Leon become subsumed by the fungal growth. It was a mesmerizing metamorphosis, like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and she could not help but mentally list the people who would be first to get infected.
“Bye-bye, Leon,” she said between peals of laughter. “It’s been a goddamn blast.”
* * * * *
Pausing on the fourth, crumbling step, Ami let a shudder rend its way up her spine as her mind betrayed her with crystal clear images of Naila’s final seconds. In a way, she needed that. She needed the fuel for the fire that burned hot with hate for Leon. Yet still it slowed her ascent up the stairs, toward the muffled, distant sounds she could hear wafting down from the dank second floor. Her heart hurt. Her eyes burned and soaked her already sweat-sticky cheeks. No matter what happened in there, Ami knew she would never be the same person again. She was beyond the point of no return, now.
She climbed the rest of the steps.
* * * * *
By the time Martina stopped spasming, Leon’s head was completely enveloped by the fuzzy green tendrils that had grown out of his brain. Lisa clasped her hands together and giggled at the wretched sight.
“You look like a goddamn chia pet, man,” she chuckled.
His body turned slowly as if on a turntable until he faced her. The skin at his throat undulated and his hands were beginning to turn a sickly green.
“It’s time to go, Leon,” Lisa said with due authority. “We’ve got people to see. A lot of people.”
“I can’t let that happen,” said a hoarse voice in the hallway, and as Lisa spun around she saw Ami advancing into the firelight. “Holy Jesus,” she rasped.
Leon’s arms were slowly rising on either side of him as his fingernails popped back and dropped off like peeled scabs. The pink flesh beneath split, finger by finger, and probing green buds poked forth, twitching in their escape. Lisa looked for a moment at the continued transformation, and then returned her grinning gaze to Ami.
“He’s evolving,” she said. “And he’s mine.”
“You can have him,” Ami growled, and she flung her arm forward, hammer in hand.
Lisa ducked out of the way, but the hammer’s head connected with her right shoulder all the same. Bone crunched and Lisa screeched in pain, dangling her right arm like an empty sleeve as she sidestepped out of Ami’s path. The fabric around her shoulder bloomed red. She curled her upper lips and seethed.
“I can’t let you leave here, Lisa,” Ami snarled. “Any of you. I don’t know what this—” She gestured with her hammer at Leon. “—this horrible shit is, but it stops here.”
“It’s control, you dumb bitch. It’s a fucking miracle. Leon found it, but it got him. Now I’m in control. You’re not taking that away from me. You’re not!”
She turned and lunged for Ami, her one good arm up and fingers curled into claws. Ami swiped at her with the hammer, but
Lisa was ready for it this time. She leapt out of the way, catlike, and swept to Ami’s side where she sank her teeth into Ami’s forearm. Ami cried out and the hammer dropped from her hand, thudded against the floor. She lurched forward, reaching for it, but Lisa looped an arm around her throat and yanked her back. The arm tightened against Ami’s windpipe, cutting off her air.
Beneath her, an obese man sputtered on the floor, his eyes swelling shut with verdurous florets crusting at the corners. The longer she stayed in this room, the more likely she was to become infected herself. And though the thought of perishing in the school before the night was through wasn’t the worst thing Ami could conceive, she had to be sure Leon and his friends were finished first.
With this in mind, Ami jabbed her elbow back, crunching it against Lisa’s ribs. Lisa groaned miserably and let go, allowing Ami to scuttle away to catch her breath. A few feet away from her, a woman with a protractor jutting from a seeping eye slammed her temple against a wall. Leon stood between the woman and Ami, his fingers coming apart as the fungus branched out of them, forming knobby curlicues as they grew. Ami sucked in a ragged breath and charged Lisa, jamming the crown of her head against the other woman’s chest and driving her backward like a linebacker until she collided with the horrendous vegetable thing that had once been Leon Weismann.
