“I think you’re gonna want to come and see it,” Mac says. “It’s really something.”
Nate moans. “I can feel the pop mutating my innards. I’m zombifying one organ at a time.”
Then again, sitting around here isn’t doing much good. I grab my backpack and shove Dad’s journal inside. “We’ll be there in a half hour.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Other than Bubba Bass flipping his tail back and forth, The Wormery is quiet. Mac stands at the counter, hands folded like he’s been frozen, waiting for us ever since his call. “Afternoon, kiddos.”
“We got here as quick as we could,” I say.
“You made good time. Come on back and I’ll show you everything under the scope.” Mac takes a few backward steps through the doorway.
Maybe Mac could call the sheriff for us. If a grown-up talks to him about the fungus, he just might be willing to take a patrol car out to the woods. If he saw the workers doing their sleepwalking routine, even he’d have to admit the woods were infected.
“Uh, Maggie,” Nate calls. “I think you’d better take a look at this.”
“Just a sec.” I turn to Mac, who’s lingering in the corner of the workroom. “Where are the samples you wanted to show us?”
“In that drawer over there.” Mac points to a beat-up filing cabinet.
“Mags, I’m serious. Come here!” Nate hollers again.
“Just give it a pull,” Mac says.
A drip of green runs down the side of the cabinet, and there’s a funky smell. Like Elmer’s glue mixed with pond water. I give the drawer a tiny tug. Fluorescent green fuzz bubbles out and sploshes down the sides like a glow-in-the-dark volcano erupting.
I scuttle back. The Wormery’s infected. “We need to get out of here, Mac. Your place isn’t safe.”
“But you haven’t even looked at the specimens under the scope,” Mac says. His eyes are dull and his mouth droops slightly on one side. He shifts his body and I finally catch a glimpse of the back of him. A long, rope-like stalk protrudes from the nape of his neck. A dusty bulb the size of a baseball swells from the end. I stumble back, falling into a bin of fishing reels.
“You all right, Magnolia?” He shuffles closer.
I scramble to my feet, race past Mac, and push out the workroom door.
“There you are! You gotta see this.” Nate motions to a wall coated in shimmery mushroom caps the color of green apple Kool-Aid.
“That’s not the worst of it.” I tug his arm. “Run!”
Mac lumbers after us, bumping into a display of fishing poles and sending them crashing to the ground. “Magnolia? Nate? Don’t run off just yet. I need to talk to ya.”
Nate turns, his eyes landing on Mac. “Ah!!! What the––”
The bulb at the end of Mac’s stalk pulses and a faint mist of spores drifts up.
“No time to talk,” I say, and flip the sign in the front window from OPEN to CLOSED. We burst out the doors and I squat, yanking the laces from my sneakers. I tie the handles of the double doors together in a tight loop. “Mac is gonna need to stay put for a while.”
We jump on our bikes and I steal a glance back at The Wormery. For the first time, I notice a luminous teal break in the ground. It’s a foot wide and stretches from the drippy green puddle under the vending machine all the way to the side of the shop. Fleshy fungus sprouts out of the opening.
It wasn’t just the stuff in the bags that made Mac sick. It was the Vitaccino seeping into the earth all around him. Just then, a splatter of white flies toward the glass and coats The Wormery’s windows in a thick layer of spores.
We zoom away and a slow-motion video kicks off inside my head. Flashes of all the times Mac’s offered up an ice-cold root beer on a hot day or told me all about a feather or bug I couldn’t identify. He didn’t deserve that stalk.
We ride until my legs are mush and my mouth is drier than the Sahara. Up ahead, the late-afternoon sun glistens off Murphy’s Pond. We just left a highly infectious area wearing no protection. My eyes meet Nate’s, and he nods. We pedal right up to the banks, jump off our bikes, and leap into the brown water.
“I’m feeling itchy, Mags,” Nate says between splashes of pond water. “I’m pretty sure one of those things is about to erupt out of the back of my head.”
“Just keep washing.” I dunk myself under, then grab a floating lily pad and scrub my hands and face.
Nate submerges himself for a solid thirty seconds. When he finally bursts to the surface, muddy streaks run down his face. “That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine how famous I’d be if I’d gotten it on film?”
“I’m glad you didn’t. I don’t ever want to see any of that again.” But even when I squeeze my eyes shut, the images are still there, like graffiti sprayed across my brain.
“We’re seriously in deep dookie.” Nate moves toward shallower water. “Mac’s in full-on zombie mode. He totally called us there to spread his spores. The fungapocalypse is upon us!”
My throat feels thick, like I’ve swallowed down a cup of paste. “We should’ve warned him that Ophio was dangerous.”
Nate wrings water from his T-shirt. “If you want to blame somebody, blame those Vitaccino jerks. They’re the ones who knew about the fungus and coulda done something a long time ago instead of growing fields of the junk. We’re just a couple of kids caught up in this mess.”
“Maybe so, but if I’d called him and told him what we knew, Mac might still be okay.”
Nate drops down onto a log along the shore. “Is this the moment where we admit defeat and wait for the end?”
If we walk away now, then Mac’s on his own. And Ezra and the rest of the workers are still in danger. If we don’t help them, they may have stalks growing out of their necks soon too. “People need us, Nate. Now we’ve got real-deal evidence of an outbreak. We’re talking to the sheriff. The Wormery’s all the proof we need.”
We ride hard into downtown Shady Pines. No chitchat or stopping for air the whole way. Once the sheriff checks out the bait shop, there will be no denying that something has to be done.
We hit Main Street and are in luck. The sheriff’s truck is pulled off on the side of the road, red lights flashing. Deputy Ronald leans in at the driver’s-side window of a van parked in front of them.
“Looks like they’re giving someone a ticket,” Nate says.
“Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“Sporemageddon trumps all,” Nate says, then follows it up with a round of coughing that sets my heart to pounding. We’ve got no time to waste.
“Deputy Ronald!” He doesn’t turn around. I eye the back of the van. The doors are open, and the sheriff is rustling around inside. “Sheriff Huxley?”
He glances over his shoulder but doesn’t answer. He’s cutting open a stack of boxes.
“There’s been an incident at The Wormery,” I say. “You need to get some hazmat suits and check it out. Mac Washington is in trouble. He’s got a––”
“Mac’ll have to wait,” the sheriff drawls. “Shipment’s gotta go out, but some of these here supplies ain’t quite right.” He reaches into a box and pulls out a green can, then calls, “Fellas, I could use a hand over here if you got a sec.”
The deputy shuffles toward the back of the van, his face obscured by his wide-brim cowboy hat.
“You know, Mags, I just remembered I need to babysit the twins,” Nate calls.
“Twins?” I turn toward Nate. Then I see the side of the van. The smiling woman holding a frosty can of Vitaccino.
The driver’s-side door opens. A pair of dusty black boots steps out. “Hello there, Maggie. The officers are busy at the moment. Allow me to assist you.” Albert Eldridge glides toward us. His jacket flutters, revealing a ribbed inside that looks just like a mushroom’s gills. Puffs of swirling spores seep from the dark folds as he approaches.
“It’s you.” I skitter back. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re preparing a s
hipment. But the recipe’s been updated and some of these drinks don’t have the right ingredients.”
“Lemme guess, the new recipe is one hundred percent, not from concentrate, spore juice?” Nate asks.
Albert smiles and the edges of his mouth stretch wide across his cheeks. “Precisely.”
“Did the Crofts tell you to do this?” I ask.
“Their assistance is unnecessary.” Albert plucks a Vitaccino can from one of the boxes. He cracks it open and inhales. His face contorts like he’s just breathed in a whiff of roadkill. He crushes the can, spraying out Vitaccino, and then launches the entire box halfway down the street. “Get rid of all of them.”
The sheriff nods, and he and the deputy start tossing more boxes onto the street. Nate and I race to our bikes. Albert saunters after us. Frilly turquoise mushrooms sprout up on the road following his steps.
“I think it’s safe to assume Vitaccino’s under new management,” Nate says as we wheel past the van.
“Our workforce is growing daily. Join us anytime,” Albert calls, and kicks a box into the street. It barely misses my back tire.
In a matter of hours, everything has gone horribly, terribly, irrevocably wrong. Shady Pines is falling apart. I feel like I’m gonna be sick, but I’m too scared to quit pedaling and pull off the road. So I press one arm tight against my belly and steer one-handed.
We skid through the Raccoon Creek entrance and toss the bikes between our trailers. I’m panting from the hard ride home, but Nate’s borderline wheezing. When he finally drops to his porch, his eyes are shiny. “This is way worse than I thought was possible, and I’m a guy who thinks a lot of bad stuff is possible.”
I collapse next to him. My head’s still trying to catch up with what my eyes just saw. I’ve spent years thinking I had a better grip on reality than Nate. Now I’m not so sure.
“That guy throws spores out like confetti at a Fourth of July parade,” Nate says. “We can’t win this one.”
“We’ll call the CDC again or the FBI or somebody,” I say, but my voice is shaky and small. I think about the gleaming mushrooms in the woods. The clouds of spores swirling like dust devils. The moaning through the trees. Old Man Bell knew it was Albert. He knew what Albert was, and he was scared.
“It’s too late for that. By the time they got here, we’d all be zombies.”
If we give up, all of us––Ezra, Nate, me, the whole town––will end up like Mac. We have to come up with a new plan, but I don’t know what. “You’re worn out from the ride. Let’s grab a snack and then we’ll come up with something. We always do.”
“This time’s different, Mags.”
“Come on, you know tons about zombie apocalypses, right? There’s gotta be something in one of your books that can help.”
Nate slumps against the porch. “I know enough to see the odds are against us. The zombie wasps got me. I drank the sporified Vitaccinos. Now I’ve got the cough and Albert Eldridge is swooping through town with his horde. We gotta face it, doomsday is at our door.”
“We’ll find a way to stop Albert.”
“We’re not superheroes, Mags. We’re just a couple of kids from Raccoon Creek Trailer Park. Nothing’s going to be all right.” He stands, heading for his door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It’s not like Nate to give up in the face of danger. Maybe the zombie wasps and guzzling all that Vitaccino really did do something to his brain.
The cuckoo clock in the living room chirps five times. I peer down the hall for Ezra, but his light is off and his room is empty. I have a feeling I know exactly where he is, and it isn’t good. I bolt the front door and push a chair against it.
I call Gramma’s cell phone, but it goes straight to voice mail. She’s not the best about keeping it charged but pretty good about listening to her messages. “Gramma, it’s me. You need to come home right away. Don’t go into town. Don’t trust anyone. This is serious. I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”
I try Dad again but get his voice mail too. “I don’t know when you’ll hear this, but something bad’s happened. There’s a fungus called Ophiocordyceps. And this is gonna be hard to believe, but it turns people into zombies. Ezra’s sick and so are a lot of other people. I wish you were here with me.” I shake a bit of dried mud off my T-shirt. “I’m going to try to stop it. I think that’s what you’d do. I hope I get it right.”
My skin is clammy from the dip in Murphy’s Pond. I strip down and crank the shower nearly as hot as it’ll go. It stings, but if I can keep at it, maybe I can melt away all the terrible things that are reeling through my mind. I squeeze my eyes tight and imagine Dad coming through the door. Telling me he’s got all the answers. The formula that fixes every broken, messed-up thing that’s happening right now.
But the water runs cold and there’s no knock on the door or phone ringing. I turn the faucet off. I’m shivering and alone.
I put on fresh clothes, then fall down on my bed. I shove my head under the pillow. This is really bad. And I’m scared. I don’t have a team of doctors or even my own microscope. I can’t fix this or save anybody. Nate was right. We are doomed.
I let the tears come until my pillow is wet against my cheeks. When I finally lift my head, the light in my room has faded to dingy gray. Lennox scampers up his terrarium glass and I give him a pinch of dried crickets. He licks his eyeball appreciatively.
There’s a chirpy meow and Pascal slinks into the room. “Hey.” I kneel and scratch behind his tangerine-colored ears. He purrs. “Be glad you’re a cat and don’t have to worry about anything.” I press my face into his long, silky fur. I wish I could go back in time six months. Back to when things made sense. Before Dad moved away and everything started to come apart.
Pascal’s body suddenly tenses, and he releases a spitty hiss next to my ear. “What’s wrong, boy?” His gaze locks on the carpet. A fuzzy brown spider the size of a quarter creeps across the floor. Pascal leaps from my lap.
I jump after him. “Don’t touch that!”
Pascal pounces, and his jaws snap around the spider before I can grab him. Wriggling legs protrude from his mouth. “Pascal! Spit that out!”
Instead of dropping the spider, he bites down again and with a few ferocious chomps, swallows it.
“Oh, Pascal, you shouldn’t have!” I moan as he licks the fur around his mouth.
He looks up at me with such pride that I can’t hold back a slight smile. There was no long skinny stalk that I could see or explosion of powdery spores. The spider is dead and we’re okay. Pascal slinks around my legs, his tail held regally high.
I scratch the back of his neck. “You’re pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
His golden eyes are filled with satisfaction. With another meow, he slinks off down the hall. I stand and peer around my room. My eyes land on the sun catcher hanging by the window. Fragments of forest green light splay over my bedspread. The glass Hemaris diffinis floats daintily above the colored circles and rocks. Dad’s not here, but he’s not altogether gone, either. I can still hear his voice in my head. He wouldn’t quit. He’d come up with a plan. Maybe people would say it’s crazy or would never work, but it would.
I pull Dad’s journal out of my backpack and flip through the pages. There are notes on his failed hydroponic garden, half-baked plans for a homemade beehive, and a sketch of the rats in the Vitaccino supply. Dad’s run into plenty of problems, but he always kept going.
I pace the floor. Dad says science is more than formulas and charts. It’s curiosity and answering the questions that are right in front of you. I’ve got a huge question right now—how can I save Shady Pines—and I need a really big answer.
I glance at my desk. The envelope of cash from the board is still sitting there, just waiting to be spent. I grab the bills and shove them into my pocket. It’s not exactly an answer, but like Gramma says, “You gotta play the cards you’re dealt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I pour a glass of orange juice and grab a cheese stick from the deli drawer. A highly infectious mutant fungus is galloping through town and I’ve got a pocketful of money but no idea how to stop it. I munch and pace.
I swallow down another bite of cheese and open the journal to a fresh page. I jot down everything I know about the outbreak. When I’m finished, five pages are covered with purple ink. It’s all a hodgepodge of puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together.
Things I Know About Ophiocordyceps
Prefers humid biome
Infection rate varies
Human symptoms: cough, occasional glowing, slow-walk, obeying A.E.
The first victim: Old Man Bell
I circle that last bit.
Bell knew about the threat and he was scared. But up until a couple of weeks ago, nobody was glowing or hacking out spores. Something changed when he died. Everything that was locked up in those woods got out.
From my research, I know different treatments work on different fungi. Maybe I could go to Goodman’s Pharmacy and buy every anti-fungal cream and spray they’ve got. With the Merit Award cash, I have enough money to get a pretty good supply. I chew my lip. I’ve got a feeling it’ll take more than a squeeze of Lotrimin to take down a guy who drips mushrooms when he walks.
I rake through the journal again. As I do, my eyes land on the word “Geronimo”––the name painted on Old Man Bell’s crop duster. Every day for years, he flew that plane over the woods. The day he died that all stopped.
I sit up bolt straight. That’s it.
Old Man Bell must have been spraying the land with some kind of fungicide. That way Ophio stayed locked behind his NO TRESPASSING signs. I push away from the table and race out my front door.
I dash up Nate’s porch steps and ring the bell. As I wait, there’s a low growl. Glory rustles out from the bushes. Her long, floppy ears radiate cerulean and white foam drips from her jowls. She takes a slow step my way.
The Mutant Mushroom Takeover Page 12
