“Whoa.”
On the other side of the window, three massive spiders creep along an intricate web. They’re the size of my fist, with dazzling yellow stripes running down each side of their bulging black abdomens.
Lennox opens his mouth and runs in the direction of a wriggling leg. “They’re as big as you. Not a good snack.”
I normally don’t mind bugs, but a gang of overgrown arachnids boogying on my windowsill is pushing it. I give the web a sideways glance. A distinct zigzag pattern runs down the center. I know the species that makes it––yellow garden spiders, a kind of orb-weaver. I’ve accidentally walked into their webs a bunch of times. Only these guys look like they’ve been pumping some serious iron.
As they add more silky strands to their web, I remember another fact about orb-weavers.
They always hunt alone.
I grab Lennox and plop him back in the terrarium. There’s gotta be a scientific explanation for the arachnid dance party outside my window. Maybe it’s some kind of mating ritual or a defense mechanism for scaring away predators.
I walk back to the window as a dragonfly glides by. Its wings barely brush the sticky web and the spiders spring to action, charging the center of the web and shooting out strand after strand of silvery thread. In less than ten seconds, the dragonfly is bound tight in a coil of deadly silk.
My breath catches as the dragonfly’s head gives a final twitch before disappearing in white. Maybe I’ve somehow got the species wrong or maybe this particular group is really good at being team players. I snag the magnifying glass from my nightstand and hold it over a particularly large specimen. It’s got eight long, jointed legs, and a bulging black abdomen. All normal.
But there’s still something off about these guys. I grab the mason jar filled with my nightcrawler cash, dump it, and head for the front door. First, there was the bumblebee moth and then the doberman. Now these spiders. Strange critters are scooting around Shady Pines, and it’s my scientific duty to find out why.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The web stretches from the top of my window all the way to the ledge. It’s easily the biggest, thickest one I’ve ever seen. And the spiders creep out from the center in slow, orderly steps. Like they’re all part of some spidery cuckoo clock that rotates them automatically.
I hold the mason jar under the wriggling web. When it touches their silk, the spiders launch toward my hand. A hulking one with an abdomen the size of a walnut reaches the jar first. It plunks to the bottom then starts to scuttle back up the glass. Before it can make a getaway, I screw the lid on tight.
Back inside, I grab a butcher knife and head to my room. I poke three holes in the lid for air. The spider’s spindly legs tink against the glass.
It crawls up the side of the jar then slips down. I glance to the window. The spiders outside climb up their web then glide down. I give the jar a little shake and the captured spider scurries in a circle. Along the web, the remaining two race around like they’re running laps at track.
These guys are seriously weird. I grab a pen and reach for the journal.
Spiders Exhibit Strange Characteristics
Larger than average size
Hanging out in a group instead of alone
Synchronized movements
I once read a Nat Geo article about hive mind. Creatures like ants, birds, and fish use it to organize activity in their groups. But these spiders aren’t even together anymore and they’re still pulling off a choreographed routine. If I could figure out why, that would really be something worth telling the Vitaccino board about.
I snap a few photos, including a close-up of the mummified dragonfly. I’m adjusting the lens when the floorboard in the hall creaks. It only makes that sound when someone’s trying hard to be stealthy.
I poke my head out the door and catch Ezra slinking by. He’s traded his usual skinny jeans and sneakers for rain boots and baggy cargo shorts.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” He gives me an innocent blink that might fool Gramma but only confirms he’s up to no good.
“Do you always wear rain boots when you’re doing nothing?”
“What? I’ve got some stuff to do outside.”
The only thing Ezra ever does outside is skateboard and those boots would be a sure way to bust an ankle. I’ve got a powerful feeling Ezra’s planning something really dumb. “Please tell me you’re not going back there.”
“Shhhhh.” He peeks down the hall. Twangy country music drifts from Gramma’s partially open door. “Maybe I am. So what?”
“But why?”
Ezra’s eyes are glassy like he’s fighting off a bad cold. “I had some crazy dreams last night. I kept seeing Bell. He was screaming at the trees. Like he actually expected someone to answer him. And now that I know he died, I need to go back. See the place again in the daytime.”
“The sheriff might still be hanging around. You could get in trouble.”
“I can’t explain it, Mags, but I have to do this.” Ezra pauses. “You could come with me. Get some more pictures or whatever.”
I chew my lip. Part of me wants to stuff my feet into sneakers and tag along. I can’t even remember the last time Ezra invited me to do something with him.
“Come on, Mags. Live a little.” Ezra gives me a half smile.
A creeping feeling skates up my spine. I haven’t forgotten the murmurs in the woods or the way the dogs ran scared to Old Man Bell. Going back there is a bad idea. “How about a movie instead? I could make some extra-buttery popcorn.”
Ezra’s smile crumples. “Forget it.” He heads for the door without another word.
I lean against the doorframe, feeling an achy pang in my chest. Even if it’s a dumb move, Ezra’s still my brother and I don’t like the idea of him out there alone. Before I can trot out the door after him, Gramma sashays out of her bedroom in her white cook’s uniform. She glances toward the front door. “I suppose Ezra’s gone gallivanting around town without worrying about doing any chores?”
“Something like that.”
Gramma tilts her wrist and glances at her watch. “Well, I’ve gotta be making my way to Sunny Day for the evening shift. I’m leaving a cheeseburger pie in the fridge for dinner. Twenty minutes at three-fifty. And while I’m thinking of it, could you take out the trash? The kitchen’s starting to smell like a kitty litter and banana peel sandwich.”
I sneak a look out the front window. Ezra’s just about to go over the hill and out of sight. “Could I do it later?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Chores make your bones grow stronger. Now hop to it.”
I sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”
By the time I’m done, it’ll be too late to catch up with Ezra. I’ve just gotta hope that he doesn’t do anything too stupid while he’s there. Which is basically the same thing as hoping for a miracle.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I glance out my window. The sun hovers low in the sky, casting rays of orange and raspberry sherbet over my bedspread. Ezra called a few minutes ago and said he was staying the night at Zion’s. I asked him what he did in the woods, but all he said was, “Not much.” Typical Ezra.
Even after scouring my collection of science magazines and scanning oodles of online nature articles, I couldn’t find anything about orb-weavers forming a hunting party.
I mosey to the living room and click on the TV. A Medical Mysteries rerun is on. It’s about a marathon runner who started hearing a weird buzzing in her chest. Then she got a cough. It turned out she’d inhaled a beetle and the thing was stuck in her lung. I peer down the dark hall. Ezra hasn’t sucked in any bugs, but a mouthful of spores might not be much better.
I turn the TV off and head down the hall. Ezra’s door is shut but there’s a low hum coming from inside. I slink in as silent as a world-class sneak.
The room’s muggy––the way the shower feels after I’ve let the steam build up too much. The humidifier Gramma gets out when we have colds
gyrates in a slow circle on Ezra’s desk. The trailer’s already too hot and sticky without Ezra making things worse. I turn it off and scan the rest of the room. Something shiny pokes out from behind his blinds. I pull the cord, hoping I’m not gonna bump into another mondo web. Instead, there’s a layer of aluminum foil spread across the glass, blocking out every last scrap of daylight. Ezra’s probably trying to be all cool and rock-star-like with a dark, dreary room.
I shut the blinds and peek under his bed. The rusty silver bucket I spotted earlier is gone but there’s a fuzzy green circle and a musty smell in its place.
“Ew.” Brothers are disgusting.
I shut the door and head back to the living room. I pour myself a glass of sweet tea and grab Dad’s journal, flipping through some of my latest entries.
Field Observations
Bioluminescent fungi inhabit Old Man Bell’s woods
Spiders show signs of hive mind
Then in smaller letters down at the bottom of the page:
Oaf Yo Core Dee Sups
Old Man Bell’s last words. I’d sorta forgotten about them, with everything else going on. My eyes slide to the swirling blue lights of the computer’s screen saver. It seems like a long shot that a bit of gibberish will help, but like Dad says, “You’ll never know unless you try.”
I type “Oaf Yo Core Dee Sups.”
Ads for surfboards and websites in other languages load.
I try “Ofio Core Di Seps.”
More random web pages.
I take a gulp of tea and give it a last-ditch effort. “Ofio Cordi Ceps.”
The results load and the tea makes a wrong turn in my windpipe. Beneath a couple of ads, there’s a photo of a mangled ant covered in gnarly white fuzz. It’s got a skinny stalk poking up from the top of its head. “Ophiocordyceps Infects South American Carpenter Ants.”
I peer down at my notes. Oaf Yo Core Dee Sups. And then back at the screen. Ophio-cordy-ceps.
That’s too close to be a coincidence.
I click the link and more pictures load. In every one, the same dusty stalk sprouts out of an ant’s head. There’s something strangely familiar about it all. I flip a few pages back in my notebook. There’s an entry on the bumblebee moth with the third antenna and the doberman with the bean sprout growth.
Stalks, antennas, bean sprouts. The first inklings of a crazy hypothesis are churning in my head.
I read down the page.
“Using a cocktail of toxins, Ophiocordyceps takes over the carpenter ant’s central nervous system. As the fungus spreads, a stroma stalk filled with spores forms. Because of its ability to control its host’s mind, Ophiocordyceps has been dubbed the zombie ant fungus.”
ZOMBIE ANT FUNGUS.
I feel like Nate’s somehow hacked my computer and shoved this article straight to my screen. I click on a photo of an ant hanging upside down on a leaf. Its body is shriveled and totally gunked up with a thick layer of white fuzz. Its mouthparts lock into the leaf as it gets ready to release gazillions of spores on its fellow ants. “The fungus compels its hosts to infect countless others and thrives in the humid climate of the rain forest.”
That’s messed up. Even for nature.
The ant’s cloudy eyes stare at me through the screen. The stalks are bad enough, but the thought of these ants turning on their own colonies is brutal.
Worst of all, this stuff might be cropping up in Shady Pines.
I click on an image of the spore stalk under a microscope. It fans out wide like some exotic poisonous jellyfish. I sketch the shape in Dad’s journal, wondering how the stuff could’ve made it all the way to our little town.
Pascal waltzes into the room from some hidden corner where he’s probably been snoozing and dreaming of shredding giant dust bunnies. He weaves his way to the front door and lets out a loud meow.
“It’s late,” I say. “You can roam tomorrow.”
He pokes out his claws and makes a single scratch mark across the door.
“Pascal! Do you want Gramma to kill me?” I hurry over and crack the door wide enough for him to slip out. “Make it snappy.”
His tail swishes as he drifts into the darkness. A faint light flashes nearby, a firefly maybe. I take a tiny step out onto the porch. Pascal’s already in full prowl mode, his head ducking low as he stalks something in the grass.
He darts forward. Two small circles gleam from the lawn. Then another pair and another. Six shining green orbs blink up at me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There’s a hiss and then a throaty growl, but it isn’t Pascal who’s in a tizzy. It’s a mother opossum with two gerbil-size babies clinging to her back.
Two trailers down, branches rattle and a dark mass shifts. It’s something way bigger than these rope-tailed marsupials.
“Pascal, get back here!” I scramble down the porch steps.
There’s a crunch of gravel underfoot, then the shadow moves into the glow of Nate’s porch light.
“Ezra! What are you doing out here? I thought you were staying at Zion’s.”
He shrugs. “Changed my mind.”
The mother opossum peels back her lip and hisses before skulking away. Ezra stuffs his hands in his pockets, not even glancing in its direction. There’s dirt smudged across his cargo shorts and his arms are streaked with green.
“So, are you gonna tell me what you really did at Bell’s place?”
“Just looked around,” Ezra answers, then his chest shakes as a hacking fit comes over him. When he finishes, he looks wiped out. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“You’re coughing again.”
“People cough. It’s not a big deal.” Ezra wipes a hand across his mouth. His fingers glow dimly blue.
Ezra shouldn’t be coughing, or glowing, or sneaking around Old Man Bell’s creepy woods. “I figured out what Bell was trying to tell us. It wasn’t anything about Old Fido’s Corvette. It was Ophiocordyceps.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a parasitic fungus that takes over ants’ minds and makes them infect their own colonies.” I bite my lip. This is the part where things get a little iffy. “They call it the zombie ant fungus, but I’m pretty sure it’s infecting other species in Shady Pines. Moths, dogs. Maybe other stuff too.”
Ezra gives a lifeless laugh. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Nate. Zombies are in movies, not real life.”
“This fungus is the real deal, Ezra.”
“Do we really need to talk about this right now? I’m tired. Plus, you sound like a crazy person.”
Ezra looks more than tired. He looks like he needs a giant bottle of vitamin C and a weeklong nap.
And then it hits me.
What if this jungle fungus doesn’t just infect animals? What if…
Ezra tries to scoot past me, but I stretch out both arms, blocking his path. “Bell was coughing a ton that night. Then he died. And you breathed in a bunch of the glowing stuff from him.”
“Mags, come on. I’m not infected with some zombie fungus.”
I cross my arms. “You can’t go back there.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. I’ve got my own plans and they’re just as important as yours.”
I scrunch my nose. “I’m trying to bring Dad home. All you’ve been doing is slinking around town making trouble.”
Pascal emerges from the honeysuckle bush and twirls himself around my ankles. He peers up at Ezra, then pins his ears back and gives a low hiss.
Ezra frowns. “If Dad wanted to move back, he’d have done it by now.”
“It’s not that easy. There aren’t a ton of jobs around here.”
“Dad was ready to leave Shady Pines way before he got fired.”
“Shady Pines is his home,” I say, feeling my throat clench up the way it always does when Ezra starts in on Dad.
“It’s also a little dump of a town with nothing but trees and bugs.”
“We’re here. That’s not nothing.”
Ezra stares at the trailer’s aluminum roof like it’s who he’s been talking to all along. “Dad always wanted to see the world. To discover stuff nobody else had. Now he’s surrounded by geysers and wolves and all sorts of wild things. You really think he’s gonna come running back to Raccoon Creek Trailer Park?”
“He’ll be back. You’ll see.” Ezra’s wrong about Dad. He’s wrong about everything.
“Think what you want.” He stomps up the porch steps. “I’m going to bed.”
A cloud passes over the moon and the night feels darker than ever, like morning may decide not to come around at all.
I trudge to my room and give the mason jar with the oversize orb-weaver a little shake. It skitters around the jar on long, dark legs. I remember the synchronized dance it did with its spider clan on the window. Ophiocordyceps might explain their hive mind. I find the photo of the doberman and rest it against the mason jar. They’re the best evidence I’ve got that something strange is happening in Shady Pines.
If my hypothesis is right, this is a serious problem. A fungus that can turn creatures into spore-shooting zombies would be beyond dangerous. Especially if it’s mutated and spreading to new species.
I flip to a blank page in Dad’s journal.
Action Plan for Tackling Possible Mutant Fungus Invasion
Step One: Keep Ezra away from Bell’s place until further notice.
Step Two: Observe the spider for signs of infection.
Step Three: Present findings to the board.
I pull my sheet up to my chin and close my eyes, waiting for sleep to wipe away the day.
Words bumble around in my head. Mind-controlled ants. Ezra. The woods.
Zombies.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I wake up, my room is bright and blazing hot. I toss off my sheet and grab the journal. I’ve got a lot to do, starting with keeping tabs on the captured orb-weaver. I snag a pen and hurry to my desk. But when I get there, all I find is an empty jar. My eyes dart side to side, and I half wonder whether the spider’s pals let him out in the middle of the night. But arachnids don’t have opposable thumbs. My face flushes hot. No-good, dirty, rotten older brothers do.
The Mutant Mushroom Takeover Page 5
