Infestation

by Frank Peretti

  Intermittently but growing louder, nearer, Andi’s voice drew us forward while the orbs, by chance or by strategy, blocked any retreat. We passed through the old auditorium—and were startled by the shadow of a cat dashing up the aisle. We kept close together, eyes outward, watching ahead, behind, to either side.

  We went out the other side of the auditorium, turned down the hall.

  We heard the dog first, clicking and padding on the tile. Then the ponderous frame of a mastiff crossed into a patch of light. The beast was eyeless, drooling green slobber. As if it could see, it spotted us and its hackles bristled like spear grass. We backed away. It charged, its thunderous bark reverberating off the hard walls. We did the only thing we could do: we ran the other way.

  The hallway came to a T. An orb and two hissing, eyeless cats blocked a turn to the left; we ran to the right. Orbs closed in behind us, blocked a side exit, kept us moving. The orbs, the dogs, the cats, were all moving with orchestrated precision. We were being herded.

  A chocolate lab like Abby, eyeless, blocked the hallway ahead of us. We veered sideways into a stairwell.

  Well done! The dead-end stairwell immediately flooded with pale golden light as at least ten orbs, the mastiff and the lab, and cats, some visible, some moving and wailing in the dark, formed a barrier. The earthy stench of the fungus closed in on us.

  A figure emerged from the blackness behind the orbs. It was Mathis, or whatever was left of him. The walk was stiff, unnatural, the torso bloated. The eye sockets were spilling green powder.

  “This is it,” I told the others. “The burst stage.”

  That was when Tank changed the rules. Abruptly, with a loud, startling growl, he charged, hit Mathis full force, and would have brought him down in a flying tackle if Mathis were still Mathis. Instead, the shell that was once Mathis exploded on impact and Tank disappeared into a choking, spreading cloud of green powder. Brenda and I would have been enveloped as well if we hadn’t seen a gap between the cloud and the stairway and dived for it. Crawling out the other side into the hall, we managed to remain in clear air, but were still plainly visible to the orbs, the dogs, and the cats. We clambered for safe distance as Tank, invisible in the green murk, screamed in pain and horror. The fungus was taking him over.

  “No, no, ain’t gonna happen!” Brenda was ready for a scrap, but any move would be the wrong one unless . . .

  With Tank in such agony, the orbs’ attention was divided. “Go for that orb, the one closest,” I told her. “Distract it.”

  She ran right up to it and slapped it sideways. It turned from watching Tank’s suffering and got back to business, eyeing her, trying to herd her. She led it along, right toward our own little trap.

  I pounced from the dark, threw my jacket over it.

  It was like netting a wildcat. The thing spun, lurched, battered against me through the jacket. Before long it would break my arms or knock me unconscious. Brenda got into the fight, containing it in her arms and holding it against her body while it shook her, hammered her, hurt her. Gathering the sleeves, hem, and collar of the jacket together, I managed to form a pouch. With a firm grip established, I nodded to Brenda. “Okay!”

  She let go. The orb nearly flew away with me, but fortunately, weight was on my side. I began to spin, arms extended. Now centrifugal force was on my side. I spun faster.

  Wham! Another orb came after me, and I scored a lucky hit, smacking it with my spinning captive. It spun crazily away.

  A quick sidestep, and on my next rotation I smashed the orb into the wall. There were sparks, electrical pops. The thing fell like a cracked egg to the floor. I yanked the jacket away, rolled the orb about, searching, searching.

  “Prof, look out!” Brenda screamed.

  The mastiff came toward me, not charging, not growling—it just came toward me. Stiffly. The body bloating. The sockets and the dangling tongue dripping green.

  I found a panel on the side of the orb opposite the lens. It was cracked. I pried it off.

  Somewhere in the dark, Tank was crying out to Jesus, arguing with a nebulous, personal evil we could not see or hear.

  I backed away from the mastiff. It kept coming.

  From another side, Tank staggered toward us out of the green murk. “No, no, Auto-guano or whatever your name is. You’re not God! Yeah? Well, stick it in your ear.” He was coated in green and fighting not to approach us even as he did. “Prof, Brenda, get out of here!” His voice was hoarse, choking. “Don’t let me getcha!”

  I groped about inside the wrecked orb for anything: a wire, a lever, a trip switch, a test button—

  Brenda screamed and ran to me, grabbing up my jacket for a shield, threatened from behind by a mangy eyeless cat.

  The mastiff was relentless, pushing, pushing, pushing us back, the body swelling.

  “Oh, Lord Jesus, don’t let ’em win!” Tank cried, staggering, reaching as if to grab us.

  In that instant, as if there really was a God, my fingertip found a button. I pressed it.

  The orb’s lens fired a dazzling beam of blue right into Tank’s eyes. He screamed, covered his face.

  “Look at the light, Tank!” I shouted.

  There was a dull thud as the mastiff exploded in a cloud of green. Brenda and I jumped backward—

  The eyeless cat pounced, claws bared.

  Brenda blocked it with my jacket. It clung to the jacket by its claws.

  I shined the light at the cloud before us. Green turned brown and began settling to the floor.

  Brenda slapped the jacket against the wall—

  Another explosion of green!

  We ducked away as I brought the light around. Green turned to brown.

  Tank was on his knees, bent over, gagging. In a hoarse, gravelly voice he kept crying out, “Jesus! Jesus!”

  “Look up, Tank!” I shouted, shining the light his way.

  He dropped his hands from his face and forced his eyes open, crying, flinching in pain.

  The green on his face turned to brown. His eyes ran with tears but he kept them open. I swept the light up and down, all over his body. The green turned to brown the moment the light hit it.

  Once again, we heard a faraway Andi calling, “Abby! Here, Abby!” We could hear the clicking of the chocolate lab’s claws trotting away in the dark. Abruptly, the orbs spun and followed, leaving us alone in the hallway.

  Gradually, visibly, Tank became himself again, dusting the brown powder from his clothing, wiping it from his face, shaking it from his hair. “It isn’t over,” he said, blinking, wiping his face with a handkerchief, trying to clear his head. “I saw it! I saw everything! It’s like they all have the same mind, they’re all connected by the fungus. They were trying to trap us and spread the fungus to us, but it didn’t work.”

  “So what about Andi?” I asked.

  “They have a Plan B. They’re going to use her to spread the fungus somewhere else, maybe with the dog. They’ve got her thinking that dog is Abby.”

  “Where? Where is she going?”

  Tank shook his head. “I didn’t see that.”

  But he did see something. The mind. The freaks from space. Demons. Whatever they were, they had the answers, and there was only one way to tap into this mind of theirs. I looked at Tank and Brenda. Could I trust them?

  I would have to. “We need to know the rest.”

  Some green fungus still remained from the Mathis explosion. I ran to the stairwell, scraped some together, scooped it up, and slapped it into my mouth.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Other Dimensions

  Sensations streamed one after another: dry mold on my tongue, then slime, then a fire raging from mouth to throat to stomach and sparks of lightning at every nerve ending. Somewhere beyond all the immediate agony I heard myself screaming, and then . . .

  As if passing through a veil, I passed beyond pain into a shattering of consciousness: I was myself, there, in the present, vaguely aware of the cold tile floor, but I
also existed elsewhere, behind the visible, before and after the present. Brenda and Tank were shouting at me, or at one of me, and that one of me wanted to answer but was so far away, so unimportant against all the greater forms and beings I was, that I remained silent.

  With such a sudden loss of who I was I could have panicked, but instead I was fascinated, enthralled. I was no longer in the old high school; I was the old high school. I could see the halls and rooms as a floor plan of myself, but not just the high school. The entire city of Tampa was enveloped by my being, the pulse of the city, the lights, the other tiny entities all cells of my own body. My awareness expanded like a fireball. . . .

  And from a point somewhere above the atmosphere, as I realized my oneness with the earth, I began to see the dissolution of distinction between what was and what I was, and how all things were one and I was all things, how I was divinity itself. . . .

  Until an illumination came to me: What a ludicrous heap of bunkum and balderdash!

  A being appeared and came toward me, crossing through dimensions as through successive curtains of cellophane, seen more clearly as it passed through each curtain. It glowed like a god, was dressed like a stereotypical alien, and spoke. “I am Tonnofan, an ascended god of wisdom and knowledge. Welcome to our fellowship. You are God. . . .”

  I answered, “That would mean I don’t believe in me, which is absurd!”

  “Professor?” It was Tank’s voice from somewhere. “Prof, don’t do this! Look at the light!”

  “No!” I shouted from somewhere outside myself. “Don’t shine that light at me, I have to see what the fungus sees!”

  Incredible! As if I spoke it into existence, the halls of the high school appeared before me, and not just the immediate halls, but the rooms, the cafeteria, the street outside. I had become the orbs, the dogs and cats. Their eyes, their minds, were mine. I could see and I could know through them.

  Brenda spoke from somewhere, “Prof, you’ll die! Once you lose your eyes—”

  “Then let’s hurry!” I shouted. “I can see things. I know things. I might see where she went.”

  Now I could see Tank, Brenda, and between them, myself—from beside me, from above, from far away. Brenda draped my jacket over my shoulders. They helped me to my feet, each shouldering an arm.

  “Which way?” asked Tank.

  Instantly I saw the quickest way out; I saw us going there before we were there. “Left, then right. The door before the cafeteria.”

  I was an orb, in stealth mode, following just above and behind us in the dark.

  I was a cat slinking along the wall. I wanted to pounce, to claw, to shred—

  “Tank, go through that door.”

  “But that’s the gym,” said Tank.

  I knew because I’d been there before. “There’s a baseball bat just inside. Grab it!”

  Tank left me teetering, hanging from Brenda’s shoulder. He dashed into the gym and came back wielding the bat.

  I could see the cat and see what the fungus saw through it. “Kitty cat at six o’clock.”

  Brenda dropped me—I didn’t mind—and turned the light behind us. Tank’s mighty swing turned the cat into a missile trailing green that faded to brown.

  “Orb at eight o’clock high!”

  Tank swung. Missed. Brenda caught the sneaky little globe in the light. Tank swung. This orb exploded with a loud pop and the innards clattered to the floor. That view of us winked out of my awareness, but I got to my feet and we made it outside.

  It was all I could do to overrule the thoughts encroaching on me: I was the fungus. I wanted to grow, spread, fill the world. My hubris was without limit; I was unstoppable!

  I could see us from above and in front, through the orb that hovered there, and I knew it was going to fire a beam of blue light at me. I shut my eyes; I covered them with my arm. “They’re trying to take me out of the game!”

  Tank and Brenda stepped between the orb and me to shield me even as the first beam of light blasted down, then another, then another. No, you don’t! I thought. Not until we know.

  Not until we knew where Andi was going, which, in my strange, multidimensional world, was where I was going. Brenda threw my jacket over my head to keep me in the dark, blind to any more blue lights as my feet pounded the pavement, striding with strength and purpose. She and Tank were hurrying, nearly running, to keep up.

  “Where’re we goin’?” Brenda huffed.

  “Senior Center,” I think I said. Images, sounds, knowledge was streaming so rapidly through my mind I hadn’t time to sort it; I just had to accept and follow. Another voice from another mind came out of me: “But you can’t stop us! You can only be in so many places, but we can be everywhere!”

  Don’t listen to me, I thought but could not speak. Stay with me. See it through.

  I was inside an orb, then another one, then another, seeing what they saw as they hovered and bobbed in the dark around a quaint old meeting hall surrounded by parklike grounds. Through the open door, through the windows, I saw good old folks, lots of them, enjoying a party in a large, decorated room.

  Jacob and Sadie were there. It was someone’s anniversary.

  I felt my guts, my many beings screaming, “They are yours! Take them! Live in them!”

  The gods, glowing, masquerading as aliens—and all, I was certain, with ridiculous names from some fantasy novel—were watching, following me on the sidewalk, lingering above the Senior Center, calling to me—

  But . . . no. Not only to me. To another mind the fungus was controlling.

  Andi. The gods were calling to Andi, “They are yours! Take them! Live in them!”

  I could see through Andi’s eyes the chocolate lab, apparently the nephew’s missing dog, trotting beside her as if trotting beside me. The sockets were spilling green powder; the flanks were distending. “Come on,” Andi said to the dog, “let’s go see Sabba and Safta.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Explosion

  Splendid, coursed the thoughts through my being. All those people, so trusting, who know so many other people. From here I can go everywhere and the gods will rule.

  Andi quickened her step, and the dog trotted along. Through her eyes I could see the Senior Center just a block away. Festive. Unsuspecting.

  I was thrilled.

  What was I thinking? How could I think it? What was I doing?

  “Prof,” said Tank, hurrying beside me, “you still with us?”

  I turned, swung at him. “Go away! You’ve done enough damage!” I could have been striking against iron, and the pain brought back some lucidity. “Keep going, Tank! Don’t let me stop you!”

  “Don’t worry.” With the baseball bat in one hand, he took me in a strong grip with the other and we hurried along.

  Words, like vomit, erupted from my mouth. “Stop! Give this up, you will fail, you will all die!” Tank, bless his heart, just kept going, and fighting him off was futile.

  We made it to the sidewalk in front of the Center, raising a hubbub that caught the attention of the folks visiting on the Center’s veranda.

  But Andi and the dog had turned up the walkway that traversed the expansive lawn and were heading for the front steps.

  I was the dog, looking up at the curious seniors gathering on the veranda. I was ready. Any moment now . . .

  From out front I, whoever I was, could see the dog walking stiffly, no longer an animal but a shell, a walking carrier of fungus.

  Andi called, “Sabba! Safta!”

  No. NO! Yes! Do it!

  I yanked the jacket from my face as my stupid, mindless mouth bellowed, “Come closer! Your granddaughter has something to show you!”

  “No,” Tank hollered, throwing my jacket over me again, “stay back!”

  “Safta! Sabba!” said Andi. “Look, Abby can do a new trick!”

  Her grandparents, all love and concern, came down the stairs. “Andi,” said Sadie, “sweetheart, are you all right?”

 
; “NO!” shouted Tank. “Don’t get any closer!”

  The fool! The menace! I could see Tank through other eyes and pounced to silence him. The Gate, the demons, the gods, the aliens, whoever the heck they were, could have chosen a mightier stooge than I. It was like trying to tackle a marble statue.

  “Oh no!” said Sadie, now noticing, “Her eyes are gone! But . . . no, this isn’t Abby!”

  While pounding and wrestling with Tank the Immovable, I saw, I felt, I knew the fungus was gathering, consolidating from a dozen directions. I could feel the Mind stretching out across the street, up the block, drawing other minds, other eyes. More dogs and more cats were gathering, every creature infested since the nephew’s pets escaped. Two escapees from the behavioral health unit, a demented man and a suicidal woman, came up the street looking whammy-eyed and robotic.

  In the Mind, I was walking with the last—and most lethal—arrival: I rounded the corner in that person’s eyes. I floated above that walking shell in the eyes of an orb. I recognized who it was from where I grappled vainly with Tank. Physician’s Assistant Matilda Fornby was no longer within the skin that walked stiffly up the sidewalk. In her place was a bomb, seconds from its appointed time.

  “Sadie!” Tank shouted, still trying to break my grip without breaking my arm, “Sadie, get back!”

  Well! My little diversion, no matter how futile, kept Tank occupied so Matilda Fornby could slip past and go up the front walk.

  “Matilda,” said Sadie. “Matilda, is that you?” Sadie gasped. “Her eyes are gone, too!”

  Brenda ran up the walkway. Tank wrapped his free arm around me and, to my anger and astonishment, carried me along as he ran after Brenda.

  “Unhand me, you fool!” I screamed, and I admit that most of me meant it.

  “Sorry, Prof,” he said. “You’re with us, like it or not!”

  Brenda, Tank, and I, Tank’s kicking passenger, ran up the walkway, outdistanced Matilda Fornby, and put ourselves right in Andi’s face. Brenda lifted the crippled orb and triggered the beam.