2

Chaos. Pain. Confusion.

Wilson was battered by all three as he floated up from unconsciousness. His head throbbed and there was a taste of blood in his mouth. What had happened? And what was making that terrible noise?

He opened his eyes, trying to orientate himself. It took him several seconds to realize that the Stalwart was now lying on its side. It had tipped over onto the passenger side and he was wedged up against the door.

There was no sign of Slocock. The emergency hatch was still sealed, so that meant he must have gone through to the rear compartment.

Clang. The cab vibrated from yet another violent impact. It sounded as if someone was using a sledge-­hammer. He could also hear hoarse cries and yells. Lots of them.

He couldn’t see anything through the windshield—it had frosted over from the crash—and all he could see through the window on the driver’s side, now above him, was the evening sky.

Wilson struggled to extricate himself from his awkward position. At the same time he groped for the Sterling submachine gun. He couldn’t find it. It was gone. So was the .38.

Something filled the window above him. He looked up and saw a head that resembled a Halloween pumpkin. It hissed at him. At that moment the windshield caved inward and Wilson was showered with powdered glass. He shut his eyes and raised an arm to protect himself.

He felt a rush of warm, moist air and then there were hands pulling at his body. Hands that seemed to be encased in thick, soft mittens.

He tried to fend them off, his flesh crawling at their touch and at the thought of the infection they carried, but there were too many of them. Despite his struggles he was inexorably dragged out of the cab through the shattered windshield. Like a turtle being ripped out of its shell, he thought. I’m totally defenseless now. They’ve got me.

They were everywhere he looked. Caricatures of human beings. The pure stuff of nightmare. Some were doubled over from the weight of fungal growth they carried on their bodies, some were thin and partially eaten away, covered in only a sheen of mold. And others were so deformed by the fungus it was hard to believe they were of human origin at all.

Making nerve-­jangling cries they hustled him over the rubble to the rear of the truck. He glimpsed a white suit in the midst of another throng of the creatures ahead, then saw the familiar short black hair and pale face. He shouted Kimberley’s name and heard her cry his in return. But then she was swallowed up in the mass of obscenely soft, fungus-­coated bodies.

At least she was still alive, he thought as he was half-shoved, half-­carried along the Harrow Road, back along the way they’d come, but what had happened to Slocock?

Slocock fought to control his panic. His biggest fear was that the truck would be hit by another petrol bomb. He wanted to get out through the emergency hatch and get as far away from this death trap as he could, but his soldier’s conditioning warned him to resist the urge. It would be, he knew, suicide to venture out there unarmed.

So he forced himself to take a deep breath, and then began to hunt around under Wilson’s crumpled body for the Sterling. As he did this, to his surprise, Wilson groaned. He’d presumed he was dead. Well, thought Slocock, he soon would be, and good riddance. He located the Sterling and also the revolver. For a moment he was tempted to put a bullet through Wilson’s head, but decided not to bother. Why waste ammunition?

Ammunition. Again he stopped himself from using the emergency hatch. Instead he maneuvered open, with difficulty, the hatch leading into the back of the truck and crawled through.

The rear compartment was a shambles. Kimberley, still in her anti-­contamination suit, was moving feebly under an oxygen cylinder that had come loose from its wall bracket.

He pulled the cylinder off her, then ignored her as he set about collecting several full clips of 9mm ammunition for the Sterling. He shoved them into his belt and was about to open the rear door when he thought of something else.

His prayers were answered. One bottle of whiskey had survived the crash. He picked it up and smiled at it as if greeting his dearest friend.

By then Kimberley had taken her helmet off and was struggling to stand up. “What happened?” she gasped.

“Bit of an accident. Drove into the side of a house,” he said as he got the door to the airlock open. “Better get moving if you’re coming with me.”

Kimberley gave a groan of pain as her left leg buckled beneath her and she fell. “My leg!” she cried. “You’re going to have to help me!”

“Sorry. It’s every man for himself. Beside, you’d only slow me down.” He hauled himself up into the airlock, which now lay horizontal at chest height, taking care not to break the bottle of whiskey.

“You can’t just leave me!”

“Watch me.” He pushed the outer door open, slid through the airlock, then jumped down to the ground. He almost slipped on the fungal matting but managed to keep his balance. It was fortunate that he did. Three lumbering figures were coming straight toward him, clubs in their hands. They were less than five yards away.

Operating the Sterling with just one hand—he was holding the scotch in the other—he sprayed them with bullets. All three of them dropped but in the grey twilight he could see more of them coming down the Harrow Road towards the crashed Stalwart.

He hurried across the intersection and into Ladbroke Grove. It was difficult running on the slippery, yielding surface but by adopting a kind of sliding shuffle he found he could keep up a fair pace.

He crossed over the bridge that spanned the Grand Union Canal. The canal itself couldn’t be seen. It was concealed beneath a thick profusion of different fungi, some of them quite huge. The plentiful supply of water had obviously allowed the fungi to grow even larger than usual along the canal’s route. The giant, brightly colored toadstools marched in both directions in straight columns as if someone had deliberately arranged them in formation.

Slocock hurried on and then took cover beside a fungus draped building that he felt instinctively had once been a pub. He set his bottle down carefully between his feet and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

They came hurrying along the road, using the same sort of shuffle he had. There were only about a dozen of them. He guessed the rest of the mob he’d seen were concentrating on the truck. He felt a momentary pang of regret at having had to leave Kimberley behind, but quickly suppressed it.

When the shuffling group had passed his hiding place he stepped out and opened fire. He got most of them with the long burst but two were still standing when he’d emptied the clip.

Unhurriedly he pulled the empty clip out, threw it away and replaced it with a fresh one. The two creatures hesitated, then started toward him. He felt strangely calm and detached as they approached. Even when one of them spoke, unexpectedly, in a clear, educated woman’s voice he experienced no real surprise. He was beyond surprise.

“Don’t shoot,” she said. “We just want to talk to you.”

He let them get closer. One of them was holding a crowbar. When they were about six feet away and he could plainly see the loathsome details of the crusts that covered them he opened fire.

As the bullets smashed into them they were both sent sprawling backward, but the one with the crow-­bar flung it at Slocock as he, or she, fell. He dodged to one side and the bar missed him. But then it bounced off the fibrous wall behind and landed right on the whiskey bottle.

Slocock stared down in distress at the shattered remains. He felt like crying.

He walked over to the two fallen fungus victims and kicked the nearest one in the side. His boot penetrated the crust and body beneath it by several inches, making a dry snap sound. When he pulled the boot free he saw a greenish liquid begin to trickle out of the cavity he’d made.

Incuriously he examined the other corpse. This one was lying in a pool of ordinary red blood. He wondered if this was the woman. He also wondered, if he ripped off all the fungal crusts, whether he’d find the body of a perfectly ordinary woman underneath.

He doubted it, but the idea made him think of his wife Marge. They’d had some good times together, at first. But then he’d realized their sexual needs were out of sync. He’d never thought of himself as undersexed, but she had made him feel that way after a while. She wanted it every night, no matter what. And when he couldn’t manage it every night, or at least without being able to conceal the effort it took, she began to nag and taunt him about it, which only made the situation worse. And after that things just went to pieces.

Where was she now? he wondered idly. He knew she’d moved to London after leaving Aldershot, but she’d never sent him her new address. Was she still alive, and if so, did she look like one of these things lying on the ground in front of him?

His thoughts turned to Kimberley and their love-­making of the night before. Again he felt regret at having to leave her behind and briefly considered returning to the truck, but he dismissed it as a suicidal idea. There had been too many of the things coming down the road and, hell, it was probably too late now.

But the thought that he might never see again a plague-­free, naked woman in whatever time he had left depressed him profoundly. “Christ, I need a drink,” he muttered and stared wistfully at the broken bottle.

Then he walked back to the building and peered in through the strands of fungus that clung to the window. It was a pub, he realized.

He picked up the crowbar and started to prise the door open. The wood, riddled with fungus, disintegrated immediately and he was able to step into the gloomy interior. The stink in there was bad and he held his nose while he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Despite the spongy growths that looked like giant green egg yolks covering the walls, ceiling and floor, Slocock saw that he was in a bar. A shapeless mound by one wall had to be the bar itself.

He made his way to it, stepping warily around the circular growths on the floor. He was about to step behind the bar when a hand grabbed his ankle.

He glanced down and saw what appeared to be an emaciated human arm protruding from an oblong mound of fungus on the floor. He pulled his leg free and stepped back, the Sterling ready to fire.

A reedy, whispery voice said to him, “Help me . . . please help me.”

Slocock began to make out what the shape on the floor was. It was a man, or rather the remains of a man. His body seemed to be part of the fungus growing out of the floor, though apart from his head, his torso, and one arm there wasn’t much left of him.

“Help me,” the thing whispered.

“Sure thing,” said Slocock with a smile and pulled the trigger. “Closing time, pal.”

He then went behind the bar and began wiping aside the moss-­like growths covering the bottles and glasses. The labels had been eaten away but he was soon able to identify a full bottle of scotch. He opened it and took a long drink. “Canadian Club,” he told himself happily.

He went to the front of the bar and perched himself on top of a fungus-­draped bar stool. Its upholstery was gone but its tubular steel frame was still solid. The fungus squelched under his buttocks.

He placed the Sterling on the pulpy surface of the bar and then laid out the spare clips of ammunition beside it. There were four of them left. Thirty-­two rounds in each. One hundred and twenty-­eight bullets, plus what was left in the clip on the gun. Oh, and the four bullets left in the .38. He smiled and took another long drink from the bottle. He’d be able to kill a hell of a lot of things with all that, provided he used the ammunition sparingly.

It was going to be a good night.

Wilson had given up trying to resist. Now he just let himself be carried away by the tide of shoving and pulling creatures. He was dimly aware that he and Kimberley—he got brief glimpses of her up ahead—had been dragged back up along the Harrow Road to the spot where they’d first encountered the big mob.

And now he was being hustled through some gateway and down a lane. In the fading light he saw that they were inside a large, sprawling cemetery, the tombstones still visible among the fungi. He was mildly surprised; he’d driven along the Harrow Road many times but had never really noticed the existence of this large place before.

The horde of creatures surrounding them seemed to be increasing in size as they were carried along a lane bounded on both sides by a profusion of fungal growths amid tall obelisks and blockhouse-­like mausoleums. Wilson guessed that the ceme­tery was a more than ideal source of nourishment for the fungi.

The lane widened and Wilson saw that they were approaching a strange building that seemed to be a Victorian reproduction of a Greek or Roman temple. In spite of the fungus growing on it he could see the rows of columns extending out on either side from a tall central structure, forming a square with one side open.

Dominating this curious scene was the biggest fungus Wilson had ever seen. It grew in the center of the square beside the main building which it easily dwarfed. It was either a mushroom or a toadstool and it stood at least 40 to 50 feet high.

He saw several of the fungus victims fall on their knees as they approached it and he realized, with a shock, that they were praying to it.

Then the mob formed a circle in front of the giant fungus, or rather beneath it as its huge cap was about 100 feet in diameter.

Wilson saw Kimberley thrust into the center of the circle. She staggered a few feet and fell. She was obviously having trouble walking. He struggled against the ones who held him, but couldn’t break free. He was forced to watch helplessly as several of the creatures converged on Kimberley.

They pulled the contamination suit off her, then stripped her of her clothes. After that they pinned her on her back on the ground, her body spread-­eagled.

What were they going to do to her, he wondered frantically. Rape her?

No; he soon saw that the violation of her body they intended was not a sexual one.

One of the creatures came forward carrying an armful of colored fungus. He kneeled beside Kimberley and began to rub chunks of the material over her body.

Kimberley screamed and struggled but soon her body was soaked with juices from the fungus.

And then they forced pieces of the stuff down her throat.

After that they backed away from her, watching her as she writhed on the ground, choking and retching.

Wilson was suddenly propelled forward into the circle.

It was his turn now.