by Hunter Shea
“Now what do we do?” Latrell whispered. Carrie crossed her legs and resumed staring off into space.
“We keep her calm,” Autumn said.
“Who’s going to keep us calm?” Brandon said. He was still holding Tina, the strain showing on his reddening face. “And whatever you do, don’t touch those things on her. Once was enough.”
She was sure he didn’t mean it, but his words stung deep.
“I think she’s back in la-la land anyway,” Brandon said. “Right now, I say I find Seth while you head back on the trail and get some help up here.”
“I’m not leaving Autumn if Carrie flips out like Dan,” Latrell said.
Brandon shook his head. “I’m not talking about you. For all we know, you’re infected. What if those things take you over midway down the trail and you end up zoning out?”
“Why don’t you go, then?”
“Because I’m not going anywhere until I know Seth is all right.”
Latrell waved him off. “Shit, man, I think we all know he’s not going to be all right.”
“Fuck you,” Brandon spat.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said fuck…you. First sign of trouble and you just write people off. I guess all those muscles hide how weak you really are, huh?”
Latrell balled his fists, advancing on Brandon. “You wanna see weak, you candy- ass pothead?”
Autumn leaped between them. “Cut it out! Have you lost your minds?”
The men were in a stare-down, neither looking ready to back off. Autumn knew she had to get their minds off what was obviously a lot of nervous posturing.
“Take off your shirt,” she said to Latrell.
“What? Why?”
“I want to check and make sure you don’t have any of those things growing on you. You too, Brandon.”
“I didn’t touch Dan,” he protested.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head. “If it’s airborne, none of us are safe.”
Tina’s shirt was already off and her skin, though blotchy from where Brandon had been holding her, looked clear.
“It’s fine, you can put me down,” she said to Brandon. Even though he was extra- careful, she hissed in pain the second her foot touched the ground. The amount of discoloration worried Autumn. It might be a sign of internal bleeding.
Latrell’s muscles bulged and twitched. He was still amped up from his confrontation with Brandon. “You see any?” He slowly turned around.
“You’re clear,” Autumn said.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He’s scared, she thought. I’ve never seen Latrell scared…of anything. He has every right to be. But if he’s frightened, how the hell am I supposed to feel?
“What about me?” Brandon said.
The first thing she noticed was how much weight he’d lost. His ribs jutted from his skin, the knobs of his spine like a relief map.
Aside from his looking like he needed to put on twenty pounds, there weren’t any blemishes on his body.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Only good thing I’ve heard today.”
“Baby, you’re good, too,” Latrell said, grabbing his shirt from the ground.
“It’s best if we leave them off,” Autumn said. “That way, there are no surprises later. We can keep an eye on each other.”
And, she thought, on ourselves. She planned to keep a close eye on her body, her gaze lingering over it the way one would prod a sore tooth with their tongue. What she would do other than cry and panic if she found an egg protruding from her flesh she didn’t know.
Brandon looked like he was about to argue the point, but a quick glance at Carrie made him shake his head and drape his shirt over his shoulder.
“I still say Autumn should be the one to get to the trailhead,” Brandon said. “It’ll be safer than being here. Even you can’t disagree with that, Latrell.”
Her fiancé took a deep breath, closed his eyes and nodded. “He’s right.”
“I’ll go find Seth, and Latrell can watch over Tina, make sure Carrie doesn’t go postal and hurt her.”
“I want something to defend myself,” Tina said. Autumn noticed she was taking great pains not to look at her ankle. It was probably a good idea.
“Defend yourself against what?” Brandon said.
She looked to Carrie.
“We can’t let you hurt her,” Autumn said.
“I won’t hurt her if she doesn’t try to do anything to me. Look, you all can run if things get bad. I can’t even walk. I’ll feel better if I have something.”
Autumn didn’t like the idea of them arming themselves. After all, how did you fight a fungus? But she did see Tina’s point. Dan had snapped her ankle in half during his fracas.
She looked around and found a burned shaft of wood, the remnants from someone’s illegal campfire.
“How about this?”
Tina tapped it on the ground to make sure it wouldn’t break. “It’ll do.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll go,” Autumn said. “But first, I want to see if Carrie needs anything. If she can even hear me.”
“Take some water with you,” Latrell said. The bottles of water were scattered everywhere, victims of Dan’s kicking the cooler over. She picked up a couple of bottles and drew as close to Carrie as the alarm bells in her brain would allow.
Sitting on her haunches so she could be eye to eye with her friend, she asked, “Carrie, honey, can you hear me?”
Carrie’s brown eyes were dilated, her mouth open slightly to allow room for the egg sac on her tongue.
“Have some water.” She twisted off the cap, watching her hand tremble as she placed it within Carrie’s reach.
“I’m going to get help,” she continued. Maybe Carrie was like a coma patient. On the outside, she was still and unresponsive. If there was a chance she could hear and comprehend her, Autumn was going to do whatever she could to calm what had to be a mountain of fear. “I won’t be gone long. If you need anything, Latrell and Brandon are right here. Everything’s going to be all right.” She cut short of saying I promise. She hadn’t reached a state of delusion to say such a thing…yet.
Carrie’s eyelids fluttered.
“Latrell…and…Brandon,” she said, her voice raspy, consonants having a hard time pushing past the egg sac.
“Yes, they’re not going to leave you.”
A line of spittle rappelled from her bottom lip.
“Dan?” she croaked.
Autumn paused. What did she tell her? The truth? That Dan was dead, sucked dry by the same things that were covering Carrie? Not a chance.
“You just sit here and relax and think about that day spa we made reservations at for tomorrow. After all this camping, we definitely deserve some pampering.”
“Dan. Where is Dan?”
Autumn reached out to touch Carrie’s arm. Latrell shouted at her. She pulled back with inches to spare. It had been an automatic reflex.
“I want…Dan,” Carrie said, her gaze flooding with clarity.
“He’ll be back soon,” Autumn said, growing concerned.
Because the egg sacs were starting to swell.
And Carrie started to scream.
“I WANT DAN! I WANT DAN! WHERE IS DAN? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO DAN?”
Chapter 11
Carrie jumped to her feet, fingers curled like claws, her face gone feral.
“What did you do to Dan?”
Backpedaling until she fell on her ass, Autumn held out her hands. “We didn’t do anything. You need to calm down, Carrie. There’s nothing to get upset about.”
Her friend chuckled—a low, throaty laugh that turned her spine to jelly. “You think this is nothing to be upset about?” Carrie raised her arms, her burning eyes studying the o
utcroppings of egg sacs.
Oh Jesus, she’s aware of what happened, Autumn thought.
“You want to see Dan?” Latrell said.
Carrie’s head swiveled, the rest of her body following in a strange, jerky ballet. “Where is he?”
Latrell put on a smile as phony as a televangelist’s promise. “Where you left him, Care Bear.”
She cocked her head. “Where I left him.”
“Yeah,” Latrell said. “You said you were going to take us all to him because you found a real cool spot to hang out today.”
“Cool spot?”
Brandon had picked Tina back up, but so far he’d stood his ground. Autumn urged Latrell to keep going. They needed Carrie to remain distracted. It was a stroke of genius on his part to try to get her to lead them to where she and Dan had been last night.
“Hey, I’m just repeating what you said to me,” he said.
“Dan is still there?”
“Yep.”
“I should get him. What if he has this rash, too?”
And there she was back to going spacy again, thinking a hundred flesh bulbs with tentacles visible within them were nothing but a rash. Autumn wondered if the somehow augmented Clathrus archeri weren’t releasing some kind of hallucinogenic chemicals into Carrie’s bloodstream, just like magic mushrooms.
“That—that’s all the more reason why we should go to him,” Autumn said. “I’ll bring the cortisone cream from the first aid kit.”
When Carrie looked at her, Autumn had to bite back a scream. The whites of Carrie’s eyes were turning the color of gray-green mold.
“You’ll make Dan better.”
“I’ll make you both better,” Autumn said, the words bitter fruit on her tongue, knowing there was nothing she herself could do to make things all right.
As if reading her mind, Latrell said, “Hey baby, don’t you need to go with Seth?”
She looked at him quizzically. He made a begging motion for her to go along with him.
“You know how much he wants to try and teach you to fish. I’ll take Carrie so we can get Dan and her all fixed up.”
As much as she wanted to be with Carrie, even a Carrie that was transforming into something very un-Carrie before her eyes, he was right. If she truly wanted to help her, she had to haul ass and get professionals here.
But professional what?
“I almost forgot,” she said. “Yeah, I better go with Seth. You know how whiney he gets if you break plans with him.”
“We have to help Dan,” Carrie said, turning on one heel and heading off in the direction she’d come from earlier. Autumn dashed to her backpack and tossed Latrell a tube of toothpaste.
“What’s this for?” he whispered.
“So it looks like you’re bringing something to help them.”
There was no telling when Carrie would shift from trancelike to lucid. She didn’t want her losing her shit if she saw Latrell behind her empty-handed when he was supposedly going with her to help.
“Got it,” he said, shuffling to catch up with Carrie.
Autumn watched them go, wondering if it would be the last time she’d ever see Latrell again. She’d never even gotten to hold him or tell him she loved him.
Stop thinking like that. He didn’t touch Dan. He’s fine.
But what if Carrie got to him?
He’s strong. And fast. Even amped-up on whatever the fungus was pumping into her, Carrie could never overtake him.
“He’ll be all right,” Brandon said, this time grimacing when he put Tina back down. “He’s man enough for all of us.” He gave her a lopsided grin.
“I know,” she said, watching them walk off to who-knew-where.
“You better get going,” Tina said. “We’ll hold down the fort. Or what’s left of it. Tell them to bring lots of painkillers. And RumChata. That would go great with a Percocet right about now.”
Autumn smiled despite the pang in her heart.
“Are you going to be all right?” she said to Brandon. He’d paled considerably over the last few minutes. His search for Seth would have to wait, too. He couldn’t leave Tina on her own.
“No,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair, throwing his head back and staring at the sky. “What the fuck?”
Tina and Autumn looked up.
The sky was a patchwork of ragged white lines. There were so many above them, it was as if a giant net had been cast over the lake.
“I wonder how long they’ve been there,” Autumn said. They’d been so busy dealing with the madness on the ground, she’d never considered looking for Brandon’s super-secret chemtrails.
At this moment, they didn’t seem so tinfoil-hat paranoid.
“Brandon, you don’t think…”
“It’s an awfully strange coincidence.”
“But, how?”
He only shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe one has nothing to do with the other. And maybe Dan is going to get up and do a keg stand.”
Autumn tucked a water bottle in her pocket. She had to double-time it to the trailhead.
“Autumn!”
Latrell’s voice echoed over the lake. It didn’t sound like he was too far away, either.
The trailhead would have to wait.
Brandon said something to her as she ran to find Latrell. Whatever it was he was trying to tell her, it would have to wait.
* * * *
People joked that Brandon was paranoid because of all the weed he’d smoked.
Little did they know, smoking actually took the edge off his paranoia. For whatever reason, he’d been born with a suspicious nature. He’d bet as an infant, he worried if his mother’s breast milk was food or some substance designed to kill him or make him a mindless zombie.
Well, if babies could grasp the concept of zombies.
“I sure hope he’s not leading her to a trap,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Tina went to touch her ankle, flinching the moment her fingers grazed her swollen flesh.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You really think those are chemtrails?”
She lay on her back, staring at the sky. He supposed it beat even risking a glance at her ankle, which was looking less and less like something that belonged on a human.
“I know they’re chemtrails. The question is, What’s in them and why are they here?”
“Yeah, but they can’t have anything to do with…with this stuff. Can they?”
“Think of them as giant crop dusters. Only in this case, they’re scattering whatever’s in that vapor so high, it’s trickling down across a massive area. There’s a reason they’re up there, and I’m damn sure it has a lot to do with what’s going on down here. Some kind of chemical that genetically modifies plant life, makes an area unlivable. Just think, if you poison the land, the people will follow. Instant and easy takeover and you didn’t even have to put a single boot on the ground. It’s as fucking ingenious as it is insane.”
He was desperate for a smoke. He still had the joint he’d packed for the trip.
No. He had to keep clearheaded. He felt as if he were standing on a live wire, every nerve in his body on edge. They were caught in some giant experiment. Was anyone watching them? Could be pinhole cameras in the trees. No, forget that. They could be watching everything unfold from satellite.
Who the hell were they? Was this some New World Order shit? Bilderbergs? Illuminati? Those crazy-ass North Koreans? Canadians gone rogue? Brandon scratched desperately at his head, his brain a hive of buzzing conspiracies.
Tina started to cry again. “Do you think Seth is okay?”
Brandon didn’t, but before he could whip up a lie, he heard Seth reply, “I’ve been better.”
Seth stepped out from behind a clump of high bushes. T
ina pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Seth!”
He looked like he’d been crying, too. His eyes were red and puffy.
“I’d hug you,” he said to Tina, “but I think it’s better I don’t.”
He lifted his hands, palms out, to show them.
Small, white blisters dotted his palms.
Chapter 12
Autumn and Latrell kept calling out to one another. She followed the sound of his voice, but also the trail of tramped-down grass. She saw Latrell’s bare back, his hands on his hips, looking down at something. There was no sign of Carrie.
“Latrell!” She ran to him, stopping when he put out an arm.
He stood at the edge of a clearing, a dense knot of trees before him.
“Where’s Carrie?”
“I don’t know. She walked into the trees, but I’m not following her.”
Autumn immediately saw why.
The ground between the trees was a solid mass of Clathrus archeri pods. The fungus was even growing on the trees themselves, sheathing the bark. Many of the pods were large and ripe, looking as if they were about to burst. The sunlight piercing the canopy revealed the coiled tentacles within them.
“Oh my God,” she said, feeling as if someone had punched her so hard, her stomach ricocheted off her lower spine.
With a sweep of his hands, Latrell said, “Those things are everywhere. Looks like Carrie and Dan picked the wrong spot to get busy.”
Their clothes were in a pile on the ground.
Just like the clothes Dan had found yesterday!
“They’re not the first,” Carrie said.
Latrell palmed the sweat off his head. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“We have to find Carrie.”
“Not if it means going in there.”
“But we can’t just leave her.”
“I beg to differ. Look, she’s covered from head to toe with those things. You saw what they did to Dan. It’s only a matter of time.”
Autumn shook her head. “No. Maybe my popping the pods is what did it.” Hearing it said out loud made her cringe. “There’s a chance if we leave all the egg sacs on Carrie alone, it won’t happen to her.”
Latrell looked at her with such compassion, she wanted to melt. “Look, baby, I know you love her. I love her, too. But we both know there’s absolutely nothing we can do for her. And I’m not letting you expose yourself to those things just to save someone who is most likely beyond saving.”