Fruiting Bodies

by Guy Riessen

  "And you think what happened to the gloves is similar to what happened to the sample-recovery team?" Agent Stanis asked.

  "Yes. What follows is an experiment from yesterday. If we're quick, and if there are no fruiting bodies in an active spore state, we can safely open the chamber from above. We introduced a rabbit to document what happens when this fungus comes in contact with another biological multicellular organism." Dr. Cains pressed play.

  On screen a white rabbit dropped into frame from above on the left side of the chamber. White threads now covered the entire bottom of the chamber and had grown at least twenty centimeters up the sides.

  The gloves were entirely covered with the white webs and pulsed in a bizarre mimicry of gripping hands. The glass dish in the center was no longer visible and the entire bottom of the chamber bulged and rippled.

  The subject sank a couple centimeters into the soft, semi-liquid sludge and tried to jump clear, but everything was covered with the jelly-like filaments. It sank back into the viscous goo. Thin white lines grew up and around the rabbit's legs almost instantly, and several ropy appendages moved toward it.

  The rabbit struggled as the thicker cords grew narrow and sharp at their tips. They thrust into the immobilized animal, two at the rear haunches and one into its neck. The rabbit continued to struggle; the threads broke off and writhed back into the mass at the bottom of the chamber.

  The rabbit rolled up onto its feet. Its eyes were moving with frantic energy and were bloodshot. The camera zoomed in to frame its head. The visible skin around the eyes and the nose began to turn red and blister, leaking yellow pus. Its fur was pulsing and bulging, like balls rolling under a fur rug. In a matter of moments, the rabbit's size had increased by half and it was leaping around the enclosure.

  When it got to a corner, it rammed its head repeatedly into the glass, over and over. Its bloated rear paws were digging into the fungal webbing that covered the bottom of the chamber, propelling the rabbit again and again into the glass. A final powerful leap crushed and split the skull of the rabbit but it also made a small crack in the glass of the original interior enclosure.

  What was leaked out of the rabbit's skull was not blood, but some kind of yellow viscous fluid. Rather than brains, the inside of the skull was filled with white fibers arrayed like the haphazard web of a black widow.

  The rabbit's hind feet continued to dig and push the rabbit into the corner. After several moments, the animal's movements stopped. The fur began to stretch and writhe, ballooning to more than twice its original size. The skin popped and ripped and the view was obscured by a gray cloud.

  "That cloud consists of fungal spores, and could potentially infect animals, plants, or just form a new part of the colony in the ground."

  As the cloud settled, white tendrils whipped up and out of the torn rabbit skin, some wrapping and cocooning the corpse, the rest moving toward the food medium at the center of the cage. Dr. Lears paused the video.

  "The inner glass which comprised the first enclosure was three centimeters of tempered glass. You could hit it with a baseball bat and not crack it. But, as you saw, the subject was able to crack it."

  "This is similar to the extraction team reports. Petty Officer Kieterman was exhibiting similar abnormal massive growth, fluid-leaking pustules, and extreme aggression and strength. The change was so remarkable that the evac team did not recognize Kieterman as human when they fired on him," Agent Stanis said.

  "There was very little human left. The tissue samples you provided from the scene of Kieterman’s, ah, demise, confirmed that he was wholly infected by the fungus at that point, similar to our subject at the end of the video."

  "You said that liquid nitrogen could be used to kill it?"

  "No, I said that it halted its growth. When the organism came in contact with the liquid nitrogen, it rapidly formed a husk of chitinous material between its primary growth vector and the nitrogen. Working something like the hard shell of a beer cooler, it formed a protective barrier between the fungus and the cold. A similar effect occurs in the presence of extreme heat. I believe, based on our tests, that in the event of a forest fire in its habitat, the fungus would form a chitinous layer between itself and the surface, allowing it to survive even the hottest forest fires. And being a few thousand years old it has lived through numerous fires."

  Agent Stanis said, "I'm the fungus neophyte here, but what about fungicide?"

  "Most fungicides work only as barriers between a plant and the fungus that feeds off that specific plant. There are a few that are actually toxic to fungus, but they need to be applied directly to the entire organism. That wouldn’t be possible since the organism is underground and especially if any of it is under a riverbed as you indicated."

  "What about mass quantities? We could flood the entire area?"

  "From the information you've provided, the organism is well over 100 acres in size and exists down to an unknown depth and possibly under a river. It would be impossible to saturate that amount of area with any certainty of efficacy. I don’t know how you could adequately saturate the area under the river at all. Plus, as you saw on the video, it adapts to changes in the environment. In all likelihood, it would immediately form a chitinous barrier between the surface and its main body."

  "In our tests, we've found just one method which results in eradication." Dr. Cains said, picking up the remote and pressing play.

  The time/date notation in the middle of the screen indicated the test was from last night, 11 PM. The movie started.

  On screen, the fungus now filled half of the reinforced enclosure. The original gloves were no longer visible at all. A timer ticked tenths of a second in the lower right corner. Water sprayed down from somewhere outside the top of the frame. Where the water landed on the organism it instantly blackened and shriveled. Brown chitin formed just below where the blackened filaments were, but the water dripped down, sliding along the tendrils, flowing over the thicker hyphae—everywhere the fluid neared, the fungus turned black and shriveled. As it ran along the chitin, the fungus underneath blackened. When the time clock read thirteen seconds, there were no visible white tendrils, and no visible movement or pulsing from the organism.

  Dr. Cains paused the video at the end-card, "Thirteen seconds. And this looks to be one-hundred-percent effective, but we're still running some additional tests. It appears that even the protective chitin cannot stop it since it doesn't require direct contact."

  "Don't keep us in suspense, Doctor."

  "Radiation. The water sprayed into the tank was highly radioactive. But it would be an unprecedented amount of radiation to dump into the environment at the scale you've indicated. If there are people living or working anywhere near the site, we wouldn't have any way to predict the consequences...short-term or long-term."

  "That is not your concern. Thank you for your time, doctors. Your information has been invaluable to us, the Agency and your country. If there's any change in the data from the radiation experiment and the organism's survivability, please contact the Agency immediately."

  07:35 / March 29, 1979

  Undisclosed Laboratory, Virginia USA

  DR. CAINS SAT AT THE table in the break room, a newspaper under his folded hands. His eyes glued to the TV news playing on the black and white set in the corner. He caught movement in his peripheral vision, "Hey George..." he called to Dr. Lears, "C'mere for a sec. You see this?"

  Dr. Lears stuck his lunch into the refrigerator and, walking over to the table, he said, "You mean the Three-Mile Island accident?"

  "Yeah." He spun the New York Times around so Dr. Lears could read it.

  It was not the top headline, still front-page but middle-center. The paper was obviously trying to keep it understated,

  Radiation Released in Accident at Nuclear Plant, Pennsylvania” —New York Times, March 29, 1979

  "I saw that on the news last night. Some kind of stuck valve or something the preliminary reports said though they're not ruling
out human error. I know they released a substantial amount of radioactive steam to prevent even more damage."

  "Yes, but it was not just steam. They released a large quantity of radioactive water into the Susquehanna River."

  "Radioactive water? Hmm. Do you think it could be related?"

  "I'd never hazard a guess, and certainly not outside the research facility, but jeeze, a week after we verify that radiation kills the fungus, here's the largest nuclear 'accident' in US history?

  “Do you remember if either agent mentioned where the samples came from?”

  “No, or rather, I noticed that there was a distinct lack of location information.”

  “Quite the coincidence."

  Dr. Lears sat down in the chair next to Dr. Cains, skimming the article. He looked over at his colleague of fifteen years, "I wonder how much they released...and was it enough?"

  "I wouldn't hazard a guess on that either, but I'm sure the data that's coming out is optimistic on the total amount released to limit public panic. I'd wager that area is going to be poison for a long, long time."

  Dr. Lears rubbed his chin. "You know, I was thinking about transmission vectors for the fungus. I mean we can assume from the samples the agents brought from Kieterman, and our own experiments with the rabbit, that the fungus could use any number of transmission vectors to get its spores to other favorable locations, just like O. Unilateralis."

  "Sure, but I think the radioactive water probably killed it too quickly for the fungus to respond with vector infection.”

  “No, I was thinking more along the lines of what if it had already sent a vector off."

  "That could be bad, but I don't think an animal or a person who looked anything like our rabbit or Kieterman, would get far. The effects are profound and obvious."

  "Maybe not..."

  “Unlikely it could find the perfect habitat for itself as well.”

  “Possibly, though O. unilateralis keeps its host vector alive and makes it wander until it finds that perfect spot.”

  “True. But it seems like whatever the host vector might be, it would be too horrible-looking to wander around for long. People would see it and report it.”

  “Hmm.”

  "George?"

  "Yeah?"

  "What if it was something that people wouldn’t see? What if it infected a bird?"

  09:30 / November 30, 2017

  Blue Mountains, Oregon USA

  "HEY CASS! CHECK THIS out, here's more!" Yelled Brad Jenkins, a National Forest Service research scientist.

  He wore forest ranger greens and a tan vest covered in pockets, the type you've seen on every war correspondent since Vietnam. Brad pulled a glass jar out of one pocket, spun off the lid, and with large forceps from another pocket, plucked the fungus cap and stem from the mass of white hyphae bulbs that peeked through the forest detritus.

  "Same type, Brad?" Cassia called from about 30 meters away.

  Cassia wore the same outfit and was just tucking a sample jar into one of her own pockets. She crunched through the pine needles and broken bits of bark that covered the ground, heading toward where Brad crouched at the base of a butterscotch pine. Little yellow-white mushrooms poked up near the base of almost every tree.

  "Yep, looks like it's definitely the same, and it’s not Honey Fungus." Brad's voice was muffled; his face down close to the ground.

  "Cap and stalk appear identical. Gills a light blue...the same. Quantity and dispersion of hyphae appears the same too. Hang on...looks like there's some, uh, movement under the hyphae."

  Brad leaned closer, using the forceps to move some of the pine needles covering the buried hyphae.

  Brad cried out.

  Cassia ran, shouting, "Brad! What is it? Brad?"

  Cassia saw Brad rock back on his heels, his hand held up to his cheek.

  As she drew up alongside him, she placed her hand on his shoulder, "Are you okay? What is it?"

  Brad stood up and turned to face Cassia. He rubbed his cheek absently. "Hmm? Yeah, everything's okay. Just stuck my face into a pine needle or something."

  Cassia's relieved smiled dropped as she looked into Brad's eyes, "Oh my god, Brad...did you poke your eye?" Brad's right eye was so very red, and as she leaned in, she could see yellow and white bulges rippling and twisting like worms beneath the sclera.

  Cassia screamed.

  END

  If you enjoyed this, then turn the page, man! What follows is an excerpt from Piercing the Veil

  It’s Lovecraftian Lethal Weapon Cranked to 11—

  A high-octane Occult Thriller about a weapons-grade team of Miskatonic University nerds facing off against a powerful necromantic occultist of the Great Old Ones.

  Piercing the Veil Excerpt

  THEY TURNED AND MOVED down the hallway, stopping when they reached the last wooden door. It slumped in its water-bloated uneven frame in the dim hallway. The paint was peeling off in curled strips like a week-old sunburn, exposing the mildew-rotten wood underneath.

  Howard rocked his weight onto his back foot and kicked his heavy combat boot against the lock plate in the old door.

  With a shattering thud, the frame burst, and the door slammed open, breaking free of its hinges, and flying into the room beyond.

  Howard leaped past the threshold, dropping to one knee, the light on his rifle swept the decrepit bedroom. He glanced at the readout on the QQTV scanner. The screen stayed black.

  With one hand hovering over the big red button on the Pulsar, Derrick followed Howard into the room.

  Moving the rifle and sensor around the room, Howard growled, “Shit. Nothing on scanner.”

  Clouds of dust roiled through Howard’s flashlight beam. The broken door leaned against a four-poster bed, the headboard pushed up against the north wall. At one time, there had been a canopy over the bed, but now the wooden planks, which once suspended the canopy from the tall bedposts, lay in a jumbled heap on the bed’s sunken mattress. Some of the rotten fabric still hung from the posts.

  The bed cover and canopy looked like they were made from the same red velvet material. Strips of fabric lay in torn and blackened tatters across the bed. What had been pillows were now hollow husks, their feather guts strewn about the mattress and floor in brown rotting lumps thick with a yellow jelly that glistened whenever the light slung beneath Howard’s rifle moved across them. Cracked floral wallpaper drooped in limp and blistered sheets, hanging from the wall plaster like half-peeled banana skin.

  The air felt charged, as if a bolt of lightning from the storm outside could blast through the broken window frame at any second. Derrick paused, his stomach churning with fear. Listening, trying to isolate his senses, he said, “I’m still feeling like we’re right on the precipice of something. Something real bad is, like, right here with us, man. Real bad.”

  Howard spun the thumbscrews on the sensor box and pulled it off his rifle. He rattled the QQTV and looked at it, front and back, before holding it up to his ear. “You sure this Quadro-shit works?”

  “Quantum Quadro-Thermosonic Vector sensor. And, it should be working—you didn’t drop it, did you? Point it at me and check the reading.”

  Howard held the box toward Derrick and nodded. “Yep, you’re glowing like a goddamn lava lamp.”

  Rubbing at his chin, Derrick said, “Well, what the heck? Something’s definitely here ...”

  Derrick stepped forward, holding out his hand to take the sensor. Howard tossed it toward him and Derrick tried to grab it but felt it bounce off the edge of his thumb.

  “Dangit, H!”

  As if in slow motion, Derrick watched the silver box tumble end over end, to land on one corner on the floor with a flat metallic tink.

  “Whoops ...” Howard exclaimed as the two halves of the box split the duct tape. A brilliant blue flash shot out from the sensor box, illuminating everything with bright light and black shadows. The room filled with an unworldly sound like Obi Wan Kenobi shutting down the Death Star’s tractor beam.
The screen on the sensor flicked off, and the room dropped to dim light punctuated only with the beams of their flashlights.

  The floorboards in the entire center of the room suddenly sank as if the kitchen downstairs, directly below them according to Derrick’s flawless directional sense, was sucking in a massive breath. Then the wood planks blasted upward like someone planted a grenade under the middle of the floor.

  Derrick was blown back through the door and into the wall in the hallway. His breath whooshed out of his chest in a cloud of white condensation. The temperature dropped so rapidly it felt like someone slapped his cheeks and hands as he gasped to regain his wind.

  Derrick watched giant clawed, skeletal hands dig deep gouges in the wooden floor as a massive skull rose from the jagged hole in the center of the room, lifting through a rain of falling ceiling plaster and clattering splinters. Its ragged, yellow teeth looked impossibly large as they gnashed at the wet chunks of dirt slipping through the gaps between its bones, shattered teeth, and remnants of tissue to splat in dark globs of earth that writhed with beige worms and pale maggots.

  Derrick could hear the thing’s wheezing breath that, even without lungs behind the massive cracked and splintered rib cage, exhaled a charnel stench of rotting viscera mingled with the copper tang of old blood. The smell was putrescent, a thick miasma that coated Derrick’s tongue, crawling to the back of his throat. As the thing heaved itself bit by bit, through the tear in reality, he turned his head and vomited the remnants of his Burger Queen lunch.

  Ah man, why is a skeleton breathing?

  Derrick’s thoughts were slippery and faded almost as quick as they came. He tried to lever himself up against the wall but a pain worse than he’d ever felt exploded from his thigh and his body refused to get up. His vision split and swam, a slow spin that rotated left then snapped back. Double vision and vomiting ... that’s not good.