3

Wilson’s arms ached. He’d been tied to one of the columns for several hours, his arms pulled back behind him and secured by thick strands of woven fungus.

The night was pitch-­black apart from the faint illumination provided by the moon. He could just make out the pale shape of Kimberley’s body similarly tied a few columns away. He had tried speaking to her, but she wouldn’t answer. She seemed to be well and truly sunk in her personal pit of despair.

He shifted his position in yet another vain attempt to ease the strain on his arms. And he was also dying for a drink of water. It was a hot night and the air was thick with humidity and the fecal odor of the fungus.

He stank of it himself. His whole body was smeared with it, it was in his hair, and he could still taste it from the time they had forced him to eat the stuff and swallow its juices.

After the “ceremony” he and Kimberley had been tied naked to the columns, and their captors had settled down to wait. Wilson had quickly realized what they were waiting for, and so had Kimberley, to judge by her frightened sobbing.

Every so often one of the creatures would come and examine them, looking for signs that the fungus was growing on them. So far the examinations had proved negative, to his intense relief, but he knew it could only be a matter of time before one of them, or both, displayed the inevitable stigmata. What would happen then he had no idea. Presumably they’d be released to be full-­fledged members of this fungus-­loving crowd.

What a total fiasco, he told himself bitterly. Instead of even beginning to search for Jane and her papers he’d ended up in this situation. No transportation, no weapons, not even any clothes . . . and certainly not even the remotest hope of achieving what he’d come here to do. He had begun to realize that the whole mission had been a wild long-­shot from the very start.

He heard a sound, turned and saw a shadowy outline shuffling towards him. Most of their captors seemed to be sleeping now but one or two had obviously stayed awake to carry out the inspections.

Then, as the bulbous figure drew nearer, Wilson saw the moonlight being reflected off something in his hand. Something metallic.

He had a knife.

What was this? Had they got tired of waiting? Or was this some kind of ritual sacrifice? Wilson tried to edge his way around the column, but he was bound too tightly.

He tensed himself as the creature halted beside him, waiting for the awful pain of the knife blow.

“Dr. Wilson, I presume?” wheezed a soft voice.

Wilson was so startled he was unable to reply.

“Dr. Wilson?” repeated the voice. “Dr. Barry Wilson?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking. “Who are you?”

“A great fan of your Flannery books, Dr. Wilson. I thought your last one, The Meaning of Liffey, was marvelous.”

“Uh, thanks.” Wilson couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Was it some fungus-­induced hallucination?

The creature made an odd, rustling sound that Wilson realized he’d heard before. Then, “Sorry, Dr. Wilson. Couldn’t resist my little joke. I still have a sense of humor if not much else. My name is Dr. Bruce Carter. I’ve been waiting for you.” He began slicing through the strands with his knife.

Wilson remembered the Public Health investigator on the video. He felt a surge of renewed hope as he was cut free. “God!” he cried. “How on earth did you find us?”

“Shush, not so loud or you’ll wake our friends. I’ll explain everything later. First let’s get your companion free.”

Kimberley raised her head as they approached her and said in a dull, apathetic voice, “What are you doing?”

“Escaping,” said Wilson, and told her who Carter was.

Her reaction was to mutter, “What’s the use? We might as well stay here. We’re finished. I can feel it growing on me.”

As Carter cut her free of the bindings Wilson quickly ran his hands over her face, torso and limbs. Her skin felt smooth to his touch. “You’re fine,” he told her. “Come on, get up. We’re getting out of here.”

He pulled her to her feet. She leaned against him and groaned. “My leg. I hurt my knee when the truck crashed. I don’t think I can walk.”

“You’d better,” he said roughly. “I certainly can’t carry you.”

With Carter in the lead, and Kimberley hobbling painfully, they picked their way quietly through the mass of sleeping creatures. Even though Wilson knew they were human beings under their fungal shells he was unable to regard them as people any longer. And he was thankful the darkness prevented him from getting a good look at Carter.

They made it to the lane that led through the cemetery to the entrance. As they hurried along it as fast as they could, which wasn’t very fast due to Kimberley’s leg and the fact that Carter couldn’t manage much more than a shuffle, Wilson began to relax a little. He again asked Carter how he’d found them.

“Knew you . . . were coming,” he wheezed with difficulty. “Intercepted radio messages meant for you. Posted lookouts on the main western approaches still open into London . . . there are still a few of us who can call our brains our own, though for how much longer I don’t know. My own thoughts are getting stranger all the time . . . a sign the fungus is affecting my mind.”

He paused to suck in air, making a sound like water going down a drain.

He continued, “The physiological changes the fungi are imposing on their unwilling hosts are quite interesting from the scientific point of view. The effects are many and varied, but there does seem to be a major trend toward the mutating fungi somehow harnessing human intelligence for their own survival purposes.

“But I’m digressing—another indication of mental deterioration, I fear—I was telling you how I came to be here. The look-­out I’d posted south of here heard all the shooting and guessed it might be you. He fired a flare to alert me and I came as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast, I’m afraid. I found your abandoned vehicle and knew it was you.”

“But how did you know we’d be in that weird temple place back there?”

“That’s where they take all their victims. They hunt for people who don’t show any signs of infection. There are a few such around—natural immunity, I gather—but they are very rare. If they still don’t get infected in spite of everything our friends at the temple do to them, they are then killed as heretics. Like one of those old witchcraft trials—you can’t win either way.”

Kimberley gave a piercing shriek. Wilson turned and got a fleeting impression of something rushing at them out of the darkness. He pushed Kimberley to one side and struck blindly at the shape.

He felt his fist make contact with something brittle. There was a sound like a stalk of celery being snapped in two. At the same moment something hard caught him a glancing blow on his left shoulder.

Dazed, he swung his fist again but met nothing but empty air. Then he discovered that his attacker was stretched out on the ground in front of him.

Wilson knelt down and gingerly examined the thing with his fingertips. He said wonderingly, “Damn, its neck’s broken. I didn’t hit it that hard.”

“Many of them are so riddled with the fungus, their bodies are becoming extremely fragile,” said Carter. “They are probably more fungus than human now. I suspect the same thing is happening to me . . . uh oh, listen!”

In the distance, from the direction they’d come, there was a murmur of voices—a kind of angry buzzing as if a bee hive was slowly coming to life.

“I’m afraid the lady’s cry carried too far,” wheezed Carter. “They’ll be coming after us.”

Wilson stood up. He was now holding the iron bar that the creature had attacked him with. He took Kimberley by the arm.

They weren’t far from the entrance. As they emerged into Harrow Road Wilson hesitated. “How far are we from the truck?” he asked Carter urgently. “I was confused on the way here.”

“About half a mile.”

The murmur of angry voices was getting closer now.

“We’ll have to try and make it. Come on, as fast as you can!”

It was downhill, but as the three of them slipped and staggered along the fungus-­covered roadway Wilson realized their pursuers would catch them before they reached the truck.

He voiced his fear to Carter, who was wheezing painfully as he shuffled along. His reply was hard to hear. “Might . . . be . . . able . . . to slow . . . them down,” he gasped. “Noticed . . . some bird’s nest fungi . . . on the way here.”

About 50 yards further on he veered toward the high wall that bounded the cemetery. As Wilson followed him he saw a large number of white, trumpet-­shaped growths protruding from the wall.

“Giant cyathus,” said Wilson as they hurried past the growths. He glanced over his shoulder. The first few pursuers were closing in, though the bulk of the mob was still a fair ­way back. Wilson guessed that the ones leading the pack were less fungus-­riddled than the others and had more control of their limbs.

As they passed the end of the long row of cyathus fungi Carter said, “Strike the wall as hard as you can. With the bar.”

Wilson suddenly saw what he had in mind. He stopped and swung the bar at the wall. The impact jarred his arms. He swung again.

Something like a cricket ball with a spring attached flew out of one of the nearest trumpet-­shaped fungus and shot clear across the road.

He hit the wall several more times and was gratified to see a full-­scale eruption of the things all along the row of fungi. One of their pursuers screamed. Wilson could imagine what was happening to him.

In conventional cyathus fungi there are a dozen or so little round objects called peridioles containing the badio-­spores. The peridioles rest on spring-­like hyphal coils. When the fungus is mature the impact of raindrops falling onto it is enough to activate the mechanism. The peridioles fly out of the trumpet and the trailing spring-­like hyphae sticks to any leaf or twig it touches, coiling itself tightly.

With fungi this size the hyphae must be capable of exerting a tremendous amount of pressure.

And judging by the increasing number of screams in the darkness they were doing just that.

“Good idea,” cried Wilson as he caught up with Carter’s shambling form. He was about to clap him on the shoulder but held back his hand at the last moment, remembering what Carter’s shoulder consisted of.

“A delaying tactic only,” wheezed Carter. “Killed a few, no doubt, but it won’t stop the others for long. What do you have in mind when we reach the truck?”

“It all depends on what’s still there.” He didn’t continue.

Finally the bulk of the Stalwart, lying on its side amid the rubble of the partially demolished building, appeared out of the gloom. Wilson rushed forward and anxiously examined the locker containing the flame-­throwers. It was still intact. There were signs that someone had tried to batter it open but had failed.

Wilson prayed he would be more successful. He could hear the mob approaching down the road.

In a frenzy he attacked the lock with the iron bar. He rained blows on it, ignoring the jarring pain of each impact. Something gave. He was able to wrench the door open.

Hurriedly he dragged out one of the weapons, trying to remember Slocock’s instructions for operating it.

“Oh God,” cried Kimberley in a small, terrified voice. A tall shape covered with what appeared to be tennis balls lurched out of the darkness. Wilson, still struggling to light the thing, thrust the end of the flame-­thrower into the creature’s face. There was a crunch and it fell, mewling, to the ground. But there were several others close behind.

At last! He had found the switch that ignited the after-burner. And now all he had to do was turn a valve—there was a satisfying hiss of pressure—and . . .

The flame shot out with its terrible, ear-­splitting roar, a great, dribbling tongue of fire that was so bright, after all the hours of being in near total darkness, it hurt Wilson’s eyes to look at it.

Its glare illuminated a scene out of a painting by Hierony­mous Bosch. The road, already transformed by the fungus into a surreal landscape, was filled with a mass of creatures that could have only come straight from hell.

It even occurred to Wilson, as he stood there pouring fire into the midst of the screaming horde, that he was actually in hell. That he had perhaps died of a heart attack in his Irish cottage and all that had happened in the past few days had been his personal descent into eternal torment . . .

He cut the flow of fire, remembering Slocock’s instructions to use short bursts only.

Several of the creatures were burning. They ran about in circles, screeching and waving their arms as their fungus-­riddled bodies sizzled and crackled. Wilson looked at them without emotion. He was numb.

He unleashed the fire again.

The crowd broke up, the creatures running in all directions. Some ran with flames streaming in the night air behind them . . .

He moved forward, letting loose another burst of fire—aiming the nozzle high as he would a garden hose and scribing a wide arc of burning liquid in front of him. Then he shut it off and surveyed his handiwork. There were numerous fires all around, and the air stank.

Apart from the things that lay still or feebly kicking in the flames there was no sign of the fungus creatures. The area was deserted.

He turned and headed back to the truck. Kimberley and Carter stood motionless beside it, vaguely illuminated by the flickering red glow from the various fires.

Wilson realized that Carter was indistinguishable from the creatures he’d just burned, and Kimberley scarcely appeared human either. Her hair matted to her skull, her body stained with fungi juices and tarnished red by the glow, she looked like a female demon.

He wondered what he looked like, naked and carrying a flame-­thrower.

Something gave a low, wailing cry as it burned.

He didn’t look round. He suddenly felt very tired.

“What now?” he asked Carter helplessly.

“We go to see your wife,” said Carter.

“My wife?” repeated Wilson, astonished. “You know where Jane is?”

“I’ve known for several days now.”

“She’s still alive! Thank God for that!” cried Wilson. “But what about my kids? My son and daughter? Are they with her?”

“I’m sorry,” wheezed Carter. “I don’t know. I haven’t actually seen your wife. I know where she’s located but I can’t get to her. Her followers guard her too well.”

“What? Her followers? What are you talking about?”

“Your wife’s a very important woman now, Dr. Wilson,” said Carter, and made the dry, rustling sound which was his equivalent of laughter. “In fact you could say she’s gone up in the world. In more ways than one.”