by Luke Kondor
Colin took a deep breath and looked up. He noticed a black circle on the ceiling. A spot of mould. He sighed.
He ran his hand over the rough skin of his freshly shaved chin before moving down to the chain around his neck He lifted it and inspected the wedding band. He rubbed away an oily patch with his thumb and thought about taking it off the chain and putting on his finger.
The thought dissipated as Fletch started to cry. Rachel could be heard telling him off about something. He caught the odd word. Something about some friend’s party that he wasn’t allowed to go to.
Colin hummed a tune and stretched his arms above his head. His neck cracked as he stood up. He heard the footsteps now. Closer. Closer.
He checked himself in the reflection of the TV screen. Smart casual. Jeans and a shirt and tie. An important dinner. He needed the work. He needed to look the part.
Closer again.
He hated dinners in the city.
Closer and the crying stopped.
He reminded himself that it wouldn’t be too long. Out for a quick handshake and a bit of meat and veg and then back and on with the rest of his life.
Closer until the door opened and Fletcher walked in, a little red around the eyes but still his beautiful blond self, dressed in a white shirt bought for this very night, quickly followed by Rachel. She looked good. Even with that baby bump, she managed to look the cat’s pyjamas.
She gave Colin the eyes that screamed ‘why-are-you-just-sitting-there?’
“You ready?” she said, calmly.
“Yes, I think I am,” Colin said as he looked over to his family and clapped his hands together. “Let’s go.”
~ 9 ~
You never appreciate shoes until you’ve gone a few hours without them. Even socks would be something better than Colin’s bare soles against the roughage – a combination of nettles, sticks, and stones burrowing up into his skin. Into the open wound where the china shard had buried itself deep. He’d removed the stray chunk hours ago now, and the blood was doing its best to clot the wound, yet each fresh step seemed to unzip the skin and send a fresh blast of pain up through his heel and into the base of his calf. On a more hydrated day he might’ve worried that the countryside’s various fungi and bacteria might find their way into his system, but at that moment he only cared about one thing – making distance.
He had had a hell of a ride. The Saab had done its job. He guessed he must’ve put at least twenty miles behind him before the ‘Engine Alert’ lights flashed and the car began to kangaroo down the weed-pocked roads. Another mile and the vehicle came to rest towards the edge of what looked like a sparsely populated forest. Colin said his goodbyes, called for Wheat and limped into the trees. It was just gone midday, his belly rumbled, and his mouth was feather-dry.
At some point, he thought he might run into some running water. A stream or a river perhaps.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, Wheatie-boy,” he said, the retriever walking faithfully alongside. His ears folded, and shoulders slumped low. There was grief in the old canine’s eyes, as though he knew that he would never see his masters again. Dogs were smart like that. “At least we’ve got each other.”
It was warming up. The cool air of the winter morning gave way to a tepid afternoon. Somehow, the further away from the farmhouse they got the warmer it became. There were even blooms of flowers here and there. Purples and yellows and reds. Plants that had, and would continue to live through their cycles, unaffected by the mess of the human condition, and the changing tides of the world.
After walking for an hour or so, they came across a stream. Colin waited while Wheat lapped at the tinkling water and felt another pang of guilt in his chest as Wheat’s tail refused to wag. He sat for a moment with his back against the thick trunk of the tree and closed his eyes, immediately seeing the LeShards’ smiling faces, quickly melting into the cold vacant stares after the Millers had had their way. The running of the stream turning to the sound of the blood tapping the kitchen floor. Even after he opened his eyes again he could see them, the menacing face of Patrick and the others, gathered together before the car screeched and saved his life.
He daydreamed about pressing his thumbs into the bastard’s yellowing eyes, popping them under his thumbnails.
I swear if I ever see you again… he thought.
Colin scratched at his neck feeling flakes and crusts of dry blood under his palm. Whose blood was it? He didn’t care anymore. It was only after exiting the car that he felt the bruises and the cuts from the night before. He’d made makeshift bandages for some areas, ripping chunks from his clothes to wrap as cloth to stem the bleeding. It didn’t help his peace of mind to see how dirty the wounds were becoming.
For now, his biggest concern was: where the hell am I?
If he’d had to guess, Colin would say he was about fifty or sixty miles towards the south-east of London.
He’d never been one for navigating by the moon and sun, but every idiot knew that the fireball in the sky rose in the east and settled in the west. With that in mind, he’d done his best to head west. He had driven with the rising light on his right most of the way (the roads were only so forgiving) and gone as far as he could. Kitty’s instructions were his compass, and that was all he knew. It was the only way to go right now. Though, the further north the roads led him, the more his thoughts turned to the quarantine zone that enclosed the big city. And that was really the last place he felt like going.
As Colin was deep in thought, Wheat trotted over, mouth damp from the stream. Colin stroked his fur and looked longingly at the running water. He was sorely tempted to drink for himself but knew a dog’s stomach was much less fussy than a human’s. That’s all he’d need. To contract a stomach bug and find himself on the floor in nauseated fits with spasming bowels.
“You’re a good boy, Wheat. You know that? Without you, I probably wouldn’t be alive right now.”
Wheat licked his face in response, forcing Colin to look up into the tree’s boughs. His expression dropped, and he pushed himself to his feet.
Up in the air, tucked into junctions where large branches grew out from the trees’ main trunks, were dried flaps of leather, wrapped up in little orbs, like giant, decayed beehives. Or perhaps even deflated mouldered footballs turned thin and crusty and now sitting solemnly, glued to the bark. They were grey in colour. Each one bearing large holes exposed on one side as if something had forced its way out, insects from their cocoons. On some of the trees there were three, maybe four all bonded together. With each new one spotted he found two or three more waiting behind. He’d never seen so many clusters in one place.
His heart quickened and he looked wildly around for any sign of potential danger.
There was nothing. No movement. Only the sound of the wind and the leaves. He couldn’t imagine how long the spore-clusters had been there, or how many had spawned in this wood, but the mere sight of them made him uneasy.
He started walking again, following the path where the clusters led.
They were essentially sacks, at one point. A smarter man once told him about the rotter’s reproduction process. A fully matured rotter would bond with a human host, driving its fungus-like strands into the poor soul’s nervous system and brain, abusing and tearing the skin to fit its own requirements, latching onto as many other bodies as it could find, and when it reached its full maturity, it forced the victims to climb to the highest place it could find. Once settled in a tree, a crane, or the top of some great building, the soft shell would develop – a spore-cluster – a soft embryonic sack around itself that broke the human body down into liquid to feed the spores, multiplying and growing inside the bubble. After a few days – or if the sack was disturbed at any point – the seal would break, and out would rain a handful of freshly formed fungal parasites, ready to crawl along the floor as a blackened mess to seek new hosts.
It was a strange concept, but not as uncommon as you’d believe. There was a si
milar fungus in the insect world – Cordyceps. Traditionally only found to attack insects and bugs. Back when there was still a media, the TV news teams went crazy with theories as to where the rot had come from, and how it had managed to cross to our species. Biologists went mad with research (before those that came into direct contact became victims themselves), with one interview sticking in Colin’s mind. A dry old woman with a PhD in some long-titled field. “You’d never expect a fungus to act like that. To have the survival instinct to make sure it claimed its next victim, and with humans being so large too, it seems nearly impossible.”
But Colin had considered it no different to that innate desire a human male has to go out and fuck everything he sees. It ain’t passion, honey. It’s in the DNA. Spread the seed. Make more. It was hard-wired into them. It was the same reason a woman might see a baby and get broody for her own. The same reason a man might find his groin tingling at the slightest touch of female skin.
Not passion. Not love. Just Mother Nature.
The clusters were spread far and wide, each one with its own unique shape and shade of colour. Colin followed where they led, marvelling at how many of the ghostly grey balloons had made their way into the wood. The rotters couldn’t have gotten far after their sacks burst. For how could there have been enough food to feed all of these clusters? Perhaps they had fed off each other, or even just crawled and died? Yet there was a haunting beauty in following the trail. Colin kicked crisp leaves beneath his feet, checking every now and then for Wheat, until he reached a clearing where the trees parted. He stood for a moment letting the warm sun bathe him, blinking stupidly at its brightness until his eyes adjusted. He looked down at the ground and saw scorch marks, ancient history now, but this ground had been levelled to nothingness with fire. The grass was patchy at best. Colin knelt to the ground and filtered the soil through his fingers.
“What do you reckon, Wheat?” The dog circled Colin, a low whine coming from his mouth. Colin rubbed his ears. “You don’t need to worry boy. It looks like the fire did its job. Must’ve been years ago now.”
He looked around the clearing for any sign of direction, anything that may have caused the scorches.
Wheat suddenly let out a howl.
“What is it?”
Behind them, something moved in the clearing. Colin heard the quick padding of feet and the snapping of branches, and was only just able to turn around before the weight of the creature smacked into him, and bowled him over.
~ 10 ~
The beast bounced off Colin and toppled forward, sagging its head with a one, two, before leaping up again towards Colin’s middle, snapping and snarling at the air. Colin paced backwards just far enough to bring his clenched fist down onto its snout, sending the white-furred thing to the ground.
It was a pit bull. Worse still, it looked to be the pit bull, The Millers’ loyal dog that had given chase as the Saab had kicked up gravel. Out in the open it was shorter than Colin’s knee-line but stocky and thick as if the muscles had been pumped in through a series of pipes. It barked before taking a step towards him.
Colin reached for his pocket. The movement spurring the dog, and before he could reach his knife the dog leapt, snapping down onto his wrist. The jumper sleeve didn’t offer much protection as the dog’s teeth punctured through the cloth and the skin. It dropped its weight towards the floor and pulled Colin forwards. They were both on the floor now. The sunlight bright in the dog’s eyes, reflecting as if his irises were aflame. There was no malice or anger in the dog’s eyes. It wasn’t doing this out of spite. For whatever reason, the dog had been trained to be a soldier, to hunt down, and kill those its masters commanded it to – and it had chased him here.
It clamped down harder and Colin screamed.
It was a good soldier.
Its mouth locked as its teeth touched bone.
Colin howled in pain.
It was a good boy, indeed.
The pit bull shook its head left to right to left like the arm was some chew toy Colin had stolen. He tried to pull his hand away but with each yank the beast pulled harder, tearing more of the skin. The beast’s breath stroked his beard. With a quick readjustment, the beast could likely get a hold of Colin’s neck and then it would truly be over. And as the dog pulled him back the way they’d come, he couldn’t help but feel his blood run cold as he thought of the Millers. If the dog was here, were they far behind? Could they be only metres away right now? Or had the dog ran through the night, following the trail of oil, blood, and sweat?
Spotting a fist-sized lump of rock to his left, he reached out with his free hand. It was too far away. He could likely still get it but it would mean pushing forward, moving closer to the dog’s jaws. He could already smell the raw meat stains from its breath and he knew getting closer would be a mistake.
He opened his eyes to a flurry of golden hair biting into the rump of the beast.
That was enough. The beast let go and turned for Wheat, gnashing at the fur around his neck. A yelp escaped as the pit bull caught Wheat’s flesh. Within a second Colin grabbed the loose stone, twisted and hit the beast with the rock. It was strong and unfazed. Colin lifted once more, smashing the stone over its head. Then again. Again and again. Each time dislodging chunks of brain power, confusing the creature. Colin roared, picturing each Miller face in turn, letting the anger drive him as each fresh thump with the rock eased the pain. The blood started to fall and the dog’s teeth unclamped. A few more seconds later and its body went limp and fell, now nothing more than a mess on the charred floor.
Colin fell to the floor beside the beast and wept. Wheat panting as he paced back and forth, blood clumped around his neck. They must’ve been there for close to ten minutes before remembering what the presence of the pit bull might mean, that danger may be close behind. He got to his feet, hoisted Wheat to his chest, and started running.
*
Colin’s eyes were damp and heavy, like old rags over a headlight. Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion creating a hallucinogenic cocktail. He ran until his legs ached and the sun had left. The stitch in his side clawed at his body, urging him to take a break, but Colin didn’t feel he could. Not yet anyway. The trees blurred as dark patches appeared on either side of his vision. Maybe his arms ached. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe he’d lost the dog. He didn’t feel present in the slightest, urged on only by the thought of getting as far away as possible. What if the Millers had more? What then? Will he ever be allowed a chance to rest?
Colin?
A voice spoke. Barely a whisper. Almost as if the wind itself had pursed its invisible lips and formed a noise that sounded like his name. He shivered at the sound. Up in the sky, the moon wobbled as if it were its own reflection in a starlit pool.
Colin…
The voice spoke again and he looked down at his hands, stained with blood. Wheat wasn’t breathing. He dropped to his knees and rested Wheat’s still body on the floor.
You let them die…
“No… I… it wasn’t my fault.”
At some point, the thick boughs of the trees gave way to silver birches, the spore-clusters long behind. Their trunks breathed in the moonlight, glowing a ghostly white all around him. Tears formed in his eyes as he looked down the corridor of the silver birches. There were shapes in the distance. The outline of the small boy. He was waving this time, taunting Colin through shadows.
“Fletch?”
No…
He turned and saw a woman. The same clothes as the day he lost her. The same black cocktail dress with the black gauze cardigan draped over her shoulders. Her hair freshly curled and her makeup still fresh.
“Rachel?” he said through a swelling of tears. “I don’t understand.”
She approached him, so close that he could almost touch her. But he dared not, in case she vanished like smoke. She knelt beside Wheat and stroked his side which instantly began to inflate with a lungful of air under her magic touch. The dog breathed again. He dropped his face into Whe
at’s fur, crying into it and kissed his neck. He raised his head and Rachel was gone, only the smell of her perfume remaining. Further out in the wood Fletch had vanished too.
“What?… I don’t understand.”
Something moved beneath his hands. Movement in Wheat’s fur. Small at first, but then it undulated, the skin beneath warbling as if each individual strand were alive.
Wheat lifted his head and looked at him with terrified eyes as fine, white, silky strings poked outwards from holes in his neck. The fur on his side made the noise of a door creaking before splitting open, revealing glistening insides as the white strands tore through.
The dog’s face no longer belonged to Wheat – the eyes shook in their sockets as more of the stitching threads pulled forwards. The gurgling, rolling noise, exploding around him.
Colin screamed as the fibrous strings latched onto the skin of his hands and his face, threading into him, worming their way up through and around the network of veins and arteries, digging into them and swallowing his DNA, changing him, morphing him.
One final scream as the dog’s body leapt up, unnaturally from its side, and wrapped around his face, engulfing him in the white.
Good morning Mr Bolton.
…
Good morning…
…
*
“Good morning,” Colin said, opening his eyes suddenly, finding himself lying on his front. Buried deep in the grass. He lifted his face, peeling it from where it had dried into the dirt. Bits of detritus fell from his chin and he looked ahead.