Fungal Tide

by Ian Woodhead

  The living room looked even worse than the kitchen. None of the mess bothered him one bit though. Considering he looked like he just gone swimming in an ocean of filth, he actually felt right at home here; at least it look familiar. Gavin shivered again, at least human hand had built this.

  Those endless tunnels had buffered and bullied his senses, giving him the overwhelming impression that none of them were human built. Nothing about his feeling made much sense. The floor’s gentle curvature made it so difficult to traverse from an upright position, plus the weird incompressible symbols gave him a constant headache. now that he had been able to catch a few moments of peace of quiet

  He’d lost count of the times that he’d caught his feet in the randomly placed holes cut into the floor or slipped when the gradient became to great. Of course, he wouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that the tunnels were any but human in design if he hadn’t found any of the bones, heaped in piles, at regular intervals. The bones certainly were human. Gavin collapsed in an armchair opposite an electric fire.

  The silence complimented the lack of movement in the house and outside, such a change from the heart-rending feeling of trying to stay alive below ground. The silence was as profound as it was up here but it didn’t signify that he was safe, a distinct contrast to those tunnels.

  The occupants in that Astra stayed seated when the car smashed into the rocks in the pit, a few feet below the road. The seat belts had stopped their bodies smashing against the car’s interior; it also saved Gavin’s life as he experienced first hand what was to happen to every other human that he would meet. Both the man and the woman writhed in their seats, crying out in utter agony as their skins expanded, ballooning to three times their normal size, stretching their clothing, fabric tearing and ripping as the bloated flesh pushed out through the tears, like expanding soap bubbles. The only place where the flesh couldn’t grow was under the seat belt, the material must have been too tough.

  Gavin couldn’t pull his eyes away from the nauseating spectacle, his mind tiling to the side when both bodies detonated, spraying out scraps of flesh, skin and bones out through every broken window, falling like lumpy rain across Gavin’s back as he fell to the floor and curled up in a tight ball.

  Him and what remained of the couple were the only ones stuck down here. He dared to look up and saw movement further down the open tunnel, yet none of them appeared to be in much of a hurry to find a way out. What struck him as even more weird was he could only hear the sound of his own harsh breathing. None of the others down here were making a single sound.

  The quiet felt more like being in the middle of the eye of a storm, Gavin’s body prickled, like having a mild case of pins and needles across every part of his flesh. He blinked rapidly as the sensation spread over his eyeballs. His own discomfort was momentarily forgotten when a quiet, low moan reached his ears. He pushed a knuckle into his eye, pressing down hard, letting a genuine pain embrace him. When tears welled up, Gavin wiped away the moisture and saw two more figures in the distance bloat to twice their size before their bodies detonated, spraying blood and gore across the breadth of the grey walls. Three other people close by were drenched in their bloodied scraps but didn’t move.

  Gavin had to get out of here, the prickling sensation continued to affect him. Could this be the onset of the phenomena that those people experienced before their bodies went off like fucking grenades? He ran up to the wall and jumped up, desperately trying to reach the edge, but it was just too far. He wasn’t going to get out of here without a ladder. He turned around, seeing for the first time that he and several other survivors looked as though they’d fallen into a trench. He rushed over to the nearest person, hoping that the other guy would have a clue to what was happening or had a plan to get back onto the surface. He looked up one more time, wondering why he couldn’t see any faces up there. Hell, the town was packed with shoppers, surely some of them should be up there, peering down. His mind shifted even further away from sanity when he reached the man and saw every scrap of his exposed skin, covered in a fine down of white fur. A million lightbulbs flashed in his head and he bolted along the trench, screaming himself raw.

  Judging from the amount of flies caught in the dozens of webs strung along the bars, that electric fire hadn’t been used in a long time. Gavin thrust his head back against the fabric, smelling the dry mould embedded in the fabric. He’d been smelling that foul aroma for hours now but this was the natural smell of mould, the normal stuff that only grew in warm, moist places if left undisturbed for some time. It certainly wasn’t like this weird shit that attacked, grew and – changed anything organic. He inspected his flesh yet again for the thousandth time before finally standing up. He couldn’t stay in here, no matter how safe he felt. Gavin had to get back home; he had to see if his sister was alright.

  His brief rest had helped to restore a portion of the old doorman that could inject fear and trepidation into the most hardened of clubgoer. He paused by a mirror hanging off the dark blue wallpaper, wiped away the surface grease and dust and leaned closer to peer at his reflection. Right now, the only person he could scare would be himself; Christ on a bike, he hardly recognised himself. “You never mess with the man in black.”

  Even his voice didn’t sound like himself.

  “Of all the people to bump into.”

  Gavin spun around, saw the two ‘things’ stood just inside the open outer door and fell back against the wall, his movement causing the mirror to fall from the wall and smash against the tip of Gavin’s shoe.

  “That’s seven years bad luck, Mr. very hard bouncer.” The creature shook itself, sending out a cloud of white spores. Its companion repeated the movement, filling the narrow space between their heads and the low ceiling. Gavin took his eyes off the monster, watching the spores continue to drift towards the rotting plaster; within seconds the stuff had already coated half the room. Both creatures took one step closer to Gavin.

  “Do you believe in providence, bouncer? I’m guessing that you have no idea who I am. Even if I wasn’t infected with this stuff, I doubt that you’d remember me.”

  The other creature ran forward and fastened both of its hands around Gavin’s throat and held him tight. The creature’s sudden movement caused another cloud of spores to fly from it, this time it followed the creature, landing all over Gavin’s body. He so wanted to open his mouth and cry out but dare not in case any of the stuff entered his mouth.

  “Me and my friend are unique, you know, you see we know that we’re infected, oh, the stuff is quite harmless to us and I believe it means no harm, unlike the other strains of course.” The other creature moved forward, stopping by Gavin’s side. “I’m going to make an exception with you though, bouncer, basically because you almost twisted off my bollocks, and to make matters even worse, you fucking screwed my bastard girlfriend!”

  The creature gripped Gavin’s jaw and forced open his mouth before pushing it’s entire hand into his mouth. “I think the stuff in me will be able to reconstruct my form after I finished with you.”

  Gavin pleaded with his eyes, his tongue pressed flat against the bottom of his mouth. The thousands of slimy nodules pushed against the inside of his mouth, all moving in unison, caressing Gavin’s flesh.

  The creature leaned forward. “The two other species will soon be invading this area of the town, bouncer. Most of the food close to the source has already been consumed.” It gripped Gavin’s jaw and slammed his mouth shut, his teeth cut through it flesh as easily as biting into an overripe peach. “Your flesh is going to rot down, bouncer, but it won’t disappear into a puddle of mush. Oh no, you’ll just soften up.

  His eyes bulged as they held Gavin secure while massaging the severed arm down his throat. He mentally shrieked, feeling the arm’s infected flesh sloughing away, filling his mouth and throat with gelatinous mush. The man’s body desperately tried to reject the foul substance and Gavin gagged repeatedly but the creature’s determination to get it all pas
t Gavin’s throat held sway.

  Both the creatures released his body and he dropped to the floor, circling up in a tight ball, his body still gagging, but all that came up were the soft, black spikes, still attached to tendrils of old flesh that dissolved as he coughed it out. Something inside Gavin’s stomach turned around, it felt like he had a large snake soiled up inside him.

  “Will you look at that!” The creature held out his arm. “You see, I knew it would grow back.” He crouched beside him. “It’s been emotional,” he said, chuckling. “Its going to hurt, by the way, it’s going to hurt a lot. You see, that’s a part of me inside you now. Thing is, well, we’re a bit like worms. Cut bits off us and those bits grow into other versions. That’s what you have in you.” The creature stood up. “Don’t mess with the men in white, bouncer.”

  Gavin rolled onto his back, listening to the two creatures leave the house. Silence returned. He rested his arms on his guts, wondering if the other things would be able to get to him before this thing burst out of him.

  8

  A hundred miles away

  His superior would expect to receive these new pictures the second that the computer had finished extrapolating the relevant data. Thomson Jones leaned closer to the screen, watching with interest as the maps revealed the true extent of the outbreak. The satellite photographs of Radfield were still coming in at regular five minute intervals, building up a fascinating scenario. Although the release had caught everybody at the institute by complete surprise, only data from the first hour hadn’t been caught. Thankfully, they’d checked and double checked all the equipment only five hours ago, ready for the scheduled outbreak at six in the morning.

  Not one of the staff could come up with a logical explanation as to why the fungal spores were released tonight. Even the suggestion that one of the over eager archaeologists had started to dig before the allotted time was debunked after their analysts had tracked down everybody involved with the project.

  The last segment of colours were now in place, he pulled off the printed hard copy and laid it in front of him, tracing the boundary lines with the tip of his finger. As expected, the two invasive species had claimed the most territory but what surprised Thomson was just how much of Radfield was now taken up with the benevolent white strain. He wasn’t sure how this had happened, their extensive tests showed them that both the green killers and the slime fed upon the white carpet, preferring their fellow fungal species to all other food, including basic animal. From what this picture showed him, this clearly wasn’t the case.

  He hurriedly rolled up the document and ran out of the lab. The major needed to see this document before leaving for the town. Something had gone seriously wrong with their experiment.

  Thomson paused before leaving the lab to tap on a huge circular glass cylinder filled with opaque blue fluid. Even before he lifted his index finger from the thick glass, a green, ribbed appendage whipped out from the murky depths of the fluid and flattened against the curved surface. Thomson gulped hard when he saw the three dozen rows of barbed hooks running down the length of the appendage. Where the hell had all those come from? Only three hours ago their ‘pet’ had just eight flexible hooks dangling from the inside of it’s appendage, not enough to hold onto a small gold fish. By the looks of it, their own green killer could take on a fucking elephant!

  “Suddenly, you’ve become a big boy?” Where had it found the material to create all of those? More to the point, how had it found enough material to convert into cartilage? He backed away and ran through the door, this needed reporting as well. It couldn’t be just a coincidence that the green killer had somehow found a way to increase it’s body mass as well as arming itself within the space of a couple of hours, right after their final test had gone live.

  Thomson hurried along the darkened glass corridor, his footfalls echoing on the polished wooden floor. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, not daring to gaze beyond the corridor at the two mile long rooms, both containing thousands of large circular glass tubes.

  9 Guessing Games

  Even with the glow of the full moon and the light from the streetlamp directly outside the park, Ryan still found the sight before him took his breath away. He crouched at the edge of the huge network of trenches now cutting through the park and ran his fingers along the tightly woven strand of white fibre that stopped growing right at the edge of the trench. He kept still, hardly daring to breathe when he caught sight of a patch of black goo sliver out of the darkness, the moon’s white disk reflecting off its flat surface. It had flowed down the trunk of a large oak tree, landing on a narrow patch of grass that surrounded the tree. It flowed like mercury, covering some of the white fibre. Ryan felt the strands under his fingers tense before some of the weave loosened and contracted.

  The black patch moved forward, leaving a patch of clean soil in its wake. The stuff was feeding, like a cow grazing on grass. Ryan stumbled when the stuff beneath his feet rippled. The movement knocked him on his back. When Ryan managed to get back on his feet, the white fibre had turned the table on the thick fluid by rolling over it like a huge wave. It tightened it grip and squeezed, pushing out the slime through the tiny gaps between the fibres.

  He stared in utter amazement as the strings of black slime turned into clouds of vapour when it made contact with the surface. Jesus, Ryan tried to picture grass doing that to the cows and shuddered.

  The vile image of the stuff pulling Sierra out of his hand made an unwelcome return. Ryan blinked away tears before getting back onto his feet.

  Jesus, what the hell was he going to do now? The full comprehension of his situation had now hit him square in the chest. Ryan turned his back on what all that white stuff was doing to its killer turned prey and looked back over to the park entrance, so wishing that Sierra had told him exactly where her mother lived before she died. He knew she lived close, and there weren’t that many houses within sight. He’d just have to check every one of them. “I owe you that, Sierra,” he whispered.

  He felt that at least now he had a purpose. Ryan moved towards the gates, watching where he placed his feet. The white fibres no longer felt so benevolent. The stuff had certainly become more active since it consumed that other organism, the noise of the rough strands sliding through the weave reached his ears.

  “You move like maggots,” he murmured. Ryan felt his own flesh tingle when he remembered seeing a huge clump of the things wiggling through a rotting oxen carcass back in India a few years ago. He looked around him, realising that the total silence at that remote dig site had followed him here as well. Unlike his India experience, he didn’t relish the absence of noise. He’d give his right leg to hear the sound of a bus. Even the town clock chiming would help Ryan lift his disheartened emotions, anything to prove that he was no longer alone.

  The gates were only a few metres away now.

  He abruptly stopped, just a few metres from the park gates when another noise worked its way into his skull. It sounded like somebody humming an out of tune song. “Who’s there?” Ryan spun back towards the direction of the trenches, hoping to God that he hadn’t imagined it. Was there another human, close by?

  Ryan spun around and quickly stepped away from a thick patch of white fibres; they weren’t there a few seconds ago. He swallowed hard, thinking that perhaps his mind really was playing tricks with him. What he did know was if he stayed here any longer there was a good chance that this stuff really would decide to see him as another snack, already every trace of soil now lay under the white carpet.

  Ryan paused. From where he stood, he saw what looked like a severed hand and he almost yelled out when the fingers jerked. Ryan gave the gate one last look before running towards the hand. As he neared, Ryan saw that there was a body attached to it. The body was standing up in one of the deep trenches.

  “Hello to you too, Ryan,” replied the grey haired man, looking up at Ryan. “Come on, son, jump down here, I think you’re going to find this very interesting.”


  Ryan just gaped. After a moment, he finally remembered how to speak. “Mark? Jesus Christ, Mark. I honestly thought that I was the only one left.”

  “Not at all. I’ve seen quite a few not yet claimed by the three species. Now, I would suggest that you do climb down here, Ryan. Your movement is exciting the Carpet Fungus.”

  The older man stepped back from the edge, allowing Ryan to fully appreciate the intricate designs embedding in the walls of the trench. “This was under our feet all the time?” He turned and slid down the smooth, stone wall, grateful that the white stuff wasn’t following him down.”

  “Not quite, Ryan. Our original dig was a few metres to the left of this spot. I’m sure that the tunnels don’t extend that far.” The man momentarily lost his cold persona and gave Ryan a warm smile. “I am happy to see you though. I won’t lie to you, the last few hours have been most taxing.”

  Mark walked over to a narrow ledge expanding out from the wall and sat down heavily. Ryan watched the man’s familiar shell of rationality descend again and waited for Mark to start his usual routine of spewing out a torrent of veiled threats and insinuations, no doubt blaming Ryan for everything that has happened. After everything that he’d endured since the first incident in the café, Ryan wouldn’t have been able to retort. All of this fucking shitstorm probably was his fault anyway. This infection just had to be the result of their team’s digging; it was the only thing that made any sense.

  “How much have you worked out, Ryan?” Mark looked up towards the lips of the trench. “Apart from the obvious.”