by Ian Woodhead
Some of the antiseptic missed the lip of the funnel and splashed onto the floor. Pete called himself a clumsy idiot, then the whole room shook, and he grabbed hold of the table. What the hell was going on? Since when did Holburn become an earthquake zone? Then, as quickly as it started, the shaking stopped. If it wasn’t for the fine dust covering his arms he could have sworn that he’d imagined it.
Pete screwed the top of the bottle back on and moved towards the stairs; he decided against waiting for Dave to come to the shop, he was eager to find out what had just happened; Dave was bound to know. Even if he didn’t, he was bound to have an opinion, he always did.
Pete stopped before the first step and looked down, puzzled. They were not there when he’d first come down; he was willing to put money on it. There was a small colony of bright green toadstools growing out of the cracks in the concrete. They looked ugly, vile and slimy. Pete wanted to stamp on the loathsome things but he knew that the sensation of putting his foot down on them would be like standing on a pile of slugs and he knew he’d throw up. He held the bottle out in front of him and depressed the trigger.
“Take that you bastards,” he muttered.
As the drops of liquid touched the toadstools, they fizzed and popped releasing a cloud of tiny spores. Pete clamped his hand over his mouth and nose then ran up the steps, gagging at the revolting stench that accompanied the drifting cloud. He drenched the top of the stairs with the contents of the bottle before he dared to remove his hand. Jesus that smelt fucking rank. Picking up the torch hanging on the wall beside him, he shone the beam down the side of the stairs.
The stuff was everywhere; he’d never seen anything like this before. The spores that had shot out had floated down and settled along the cracks in the concrete, the fungus was sprouting as he watched it.
He shoved the torch into his back pocket and ran back into the shop. Bloody hell, this was serious, he’d have to get someone in to sort it and quickly, the stuff was spreading up and out of the cellar, spores were already underneath the kitten cage.
“Andrew, I need to borrow your phone.”
He had left his at home, he could see it right now, the damn thing was still on the coffee table, placed there this morning next to his car keys and he’d still left it behind.
The boy hadn’t replied. Christ, what was wrong with the idiot today?
“Andrew! Come on man, stop messing around, I’m serious.”
The only response he received was the paper shaking and the meathead chuckling. Bollocks, he didn’t have time for this. He strode over to the door. Dave had a phone, he wondered if his shop was infected too. Pete glanced at the boy, what was up with him today?
“I won’t be long,” he said.
Andrew was having hysterics behind that paper.
“Okay, what’s so funny? What’s the big joke?”
A big, fat, grubby finger poked out from behind the paper and pointed at one of the cages he had yet to clean. The bars had been snapped and twisted apart.
“What the hell are you playing at?” Pete shouted. Did Andrew even have a concept of the chaos an escaped animal could cause? He ran over, keeping an eye on the floor. It used to house the chinchilla so it shouldn’t have gotten that far.
“Fucking irresponsible fool,” he muttered. Pete didn’t care if he heard him, this was serious, and he’d had those damn cages for decades. He couldn’t see the bloody animal anywhere. Stupid thing, it had probably scurried behind the food sacks, what was he going to do about the cage? He bent forward to take a closer look.
The thoughts of damage and the cost of replacement flew out of his mind when the interior came into view. It looked like a tin of red paint had detonated inside. A small lump of raw meat, one side coated in grey fur dripped off the ceiling and fell into the food dish.
“You dirty, murdering, bastard. You’re going to pay for that. I’m going to…”
Several nails punctured the top of his shoulders, the shop rolled as Pete was savagely spun around.
Hot crimson eyes from what Andrew was becoming shone down on him. He was pushed back against the broken cage, the warped bars digging into his back. Those long claws dug further in as the thing grew and filled out. Pete was re-living his nightmare.
The skin stretched and split, Pete shook his head from side to side; this couldn’t be happening, the things cavernous mouth yawned wide, he tried to shrank back, knowing full well that those teeth like jagged shards of glass were about to rip into his tender body.
Most of its old pink flesh was now on the floor, forming an uneven pattern of stinking slop between them. Pete’s time had almost run out. The jaws opened even wider.
There was no waking up from this nightmare, no second chance would be given, but he was buggered if he was going to let this fucker steal his life. He gritted his teeth against the almost unbearable pain as he tried to move his arms to reach into his back pocket.
The thing towered over him, its head rearing back, and ready to strike like a cobra. He pulled out the torch, shaking fingers managing to turn it on, then shone the beam straight into the bastard’s loathsome, black, mutated face.
It shrieked like a stuck pig and jumped back with its head blistering and steaming. He almost passed out from the pain as its talons ripped out through his skin when it reared back, but he knew that if he lost consciousness then it would be over. Remembering the door in his dream, he slammed his head back against the cage and then shot forward, his hands held out in front of him, reaching for the outside door and freedom.
“Gonna squeeze you like a grape, you little man,” The words were mashed but identifiable. “Gonna chomp on your head like I did with that bunny!”
Pete grabbed the handle and flung open the door, bathing the interior of the shop in bright sunlight. The creature screamed again and dived behind the counter to escape its cleansing rays.
“It was a chinchilla, you stupid bastard!” Pete retreated out of the shop, keeping his eyes fixed on that counter. But of the creature, there was no sign.
Pete emerged into a street fighting a losing battle against the strange new plant-life. Patches of bright coloured fungus and lichen burst out from cracks in the paving slabs, the roads and buildings. The spreading infestation turned the landscape into a primary coloured alien nightmare. He put aside the countless burning questions about what was happening, the only thing that should concern him was trying to stay alive, the thing that Andrew was becoming would not be the only one in town, there were bound to be others.
He stopped at the kerb, indecision tearing at him. He needed to see Dave, make sure he was okay - but what if he had changed too?
Tiny yellow vines emerged from the drain in front of him and wound around the toe of his boot. He hopped back in shock then jumped up and down on the stuff. Well, he couldn’t stay here; if Dave had changed at least he still had his torch.
Pete ran over the road doing his best not to step on any of the dense clumps of tiny green toadstools growing out of any conceivable gap. Not that it would have made the slightest difference as the slightest breeze sent millions of spores into the sky, a green haze had already formed and getting thicker by the minute. He tried not to think about just how many of those spores he had already breathed in and the damage they could be doing to his insides. He reached the kerb and glanced back, his footprints in the road looked like he’d just run across a wet beach, every indentation filling up with a riot of alien plants.
This stuff was eating into everything, even the stonework. He figured that in a few hours time not a single stone building in Holburn would be left standing.
He pushed open the door to Dave’s shop, trying not to scream when the glass fell out and shattered on the floor. He had the torch in his hand before he took one step over the threshold. He really did hope to Christ that his friend hadn’t turned into one of those things.
The torch beam cut through the gloom exposing more devastation wrought by the plants, his heart thudding and at any moment expecting the s
kull splitting scream to explode from Dave as the white light scorched his black mutated body.
“Dave? Are you about mate?” He licked his lips, hoping that if he did answer, it wouldn’t be the dry, gravelly voice of one of those creatures.
Pete received no answer, for which he was grateful; he looked at the multicoloured wet mess where the newspapers and magazines were and the blackened shelves full of unidentifiable fuzzy lumps and didn’t think that his friend would be just sat on his favourite stool just ready to pass the time of day with him as soon as he walked in.
He rushed in and ran up to the till and shone the torch behind the counter. There was nothing apart from the skeletal metal frame of Dave’s stool. Pete hurried into the kitchen, smiling for the first time since he woke up when he’d seen the state of it. Pete was so glad that not all of his dreams were prophetic. The living room was the next place to check. There seemed little point in calling out his name again, if he hadn’t heard him the first time then he couldn’t be here.
Pete gazed into the back yard watching the security fence folding over the wall like wet cardboard and wondered exactly where Dave could have gone.
“Dave!” he shouted. “Where the hell are you? Come on you daft bastard, answer me!”
In the room above the kitchen, something fell to the floor with an almighty crash, and he froze.
Oh crap. What if that tentacled behemoth in his dream was real and was up there, just waiting for him to pay it a visit?
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
No, he couldn’t leave; he had to find his friend. There was no way he could face this new world by himself.
He wrenched open the cutlery drawer, the front came off in his hand and the contents flew out and clattered all over the tiles. Pete dropped to his knees, his eyes seeking out the one knife that might withstand the attacks from all this weird plant stuff.
He kicked the knives and forks and spoons in a fit of temper. It wasn’t here, the bloody knife had gone and he’d been so sure that it would be here. He stood up and booted a slotted spoon under the cooker, unsure of what to do now. He couldn’t go upstairs without a weapon; somehow, he knew that his friend was up there this time and he had to climb those stairs and face whatever was waiting for him.
The giant tentacled monster doesn’t exist.
Pete Butterworth froze, that thought wasn’t his, and he felt like it had just been shoehorned into his head.
“I’m either going loopy or someone else is in my mind…”
He grabbed the edge of the sink and stared at the plates half submerged in the dirty water, his distorted face staring back at him.
“Don’t be a dickhead Peter,” he muttered. The situation was dire enough without him distracting himself by entertaining the delusion that some higher force, benign or otherwise, had taken up residency inside his head.
He threw those ideas into the bin where they belonged and concentrated on the task at hand, like trying to find that bloody knife he’d bought Dave last Christmas. He had sworn on his life that it was the best present he’d ever got and reassured him that he would use it every day. He had been taken aback by Dave’s rare burst of emotion and although his friend wasn’t the best cook in the world and would probably only uses it to pierce the film on microwave meals; he knew he would keep his word.
The knife should have been in the bloody drawer. The answer, though, was literally staring him in the face; he couldn’t believe he had been so stupid. Pete wiped the frothy green scum off the surface and dipped his hand into the cold water. It didn’t take him long to find his prize, the plant stuff had eaten through the soft grip plastic revealing a smooth metal handle. The blade glinted in the hazy green sunlight; it still seemed as sharp as he’d bought it. Satisfied that he had the correct equipment, he now felt confident of facing whatever was hiding in the upper rooms.
Pete ran through the living room to the door by the stairs, knowing that if he hesitated, he’d never go through with it. Looking up, he saw the ceiling bowing in the middle where Dave’s bed had to be. At the rate this stuff was growing, anything made of wood - including the floor boards and the stairs in front of him - would be gone.
He didn’t allow doubt to creep back in, he knew full well that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Dave died; he turned the torch back on and ran up the stairs, keeping to the edge.
The contrast between here and downstairs was startling; apart from a few spots of mould on the carpet, the landing seemed almost normal. The illusion of normality vanished as soon as he looked through the window and out onto the surface of an alien world.
Holburn as it was had gone. The old drab greys had vanished under a living creeping psychedelic carpet of yellow and green fuzz. Pete hoped that the elevation would have helped him scour the town for any other survivors. He sighed; there was little chance of that happening. Even if there was anyone stupid enough to venture out he wouldn’t have been able to see them due to the swirling cloud of spores obscuring almost everything at street level.
Pete turned away from the window wondering how long it would take for the spore cloud to be thick enough to allow the Andrew-like creatures to emerge from their hiding places and start hunting. As he stood by the first closed door, knife gripped tight in his sweating hand and alert for any sound that might give away Dave’s presence, he realised that they wouldn’t have to wait for the cloud to thicken up; within a few hours the sun would be setting.
He shuddered, trying to banish the image of hundreds of those things prowling through the remnants of Holburn’s fog-shrouded, darkened streets and chasing down and savaging what remained of the surviving population. He hoped to Christ that he was out of this town before then. Pete took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
The stench that blasted out of the room was strong enough to burn his eyes, God, it was worse than ammonia. He wiped his watering eyes on his sleeve then looked around the room.
Dave wasn’t in here. This must be the bedroom above the living room; there was a huge old fashioned metal bed in the middle of the floor or at least what was left of it. The mattress had been stripped to the springs and he guessed that the blue and red mush around the bed must be all that was left of the quilt and sheets.
As he watched, the stuff bubbled up like thick, boiling mud and then hundreds of tiny spiders burst though and crawled towards the open door in unison.
He yelped and slammed the door shut then got down on his hands and knees and hoped to God that the little bastards weren’t going to come through the gap at the bottom of the door. But there was little chance of that happening, it looked like Dave was conscious of heat loss and had fitted thick rubber draft excluders to every door.
Well, that helped to explain why the plant life hadn’t affected the landing yet. His choice now was down to the spare room and the bathroom.
Pete crept past the towel cupboard, heading for the bathroom; he’d check the spare room last. His hand rested on the handle when something banged against the inside of the towel cupboard door. What the hell was that? He ran back to the window thinking that one of those monsters could be hiding in there; it must have smelt the blood from his back and shoulders as he walked past.
Dave wasn’t in the house, Pete was deceiving himself. He would have answered by now. Oh bollocks, the spore cloud was now so thick, it was almost solid and the stuff had started to rise; if he was going to go it would have to be now.
The air in front of him warmed up and began to shimmer, he stepped back in shock then winced in pain as his shoulders touched the glass. An object appeared in front of him then fell to the floor, rolling across the carpet and coming to rest by the bathroom door. Pete wanted to cry; his eyes didn’t leave the object. He wasn’t too concerned about what was behind the door now, he knew what it was, of course he did, and it was obvious. Pete couldn’t stop himself from grinning, sure there were malignant forces at work in the town but there was also a balance.
Pete picked up the toy that Michael Ri
chards had once snatched out of his hands in the playground and jumped up and down on it. Tears were running down his cheeks as he twirled it around in his hands, even one of the robot claws still had the doggy teeth in it.
Pete put his beloved Transformer into his pocket then opened the door to the towel cupboard. Dave tumbled out backwards, covered from head to foot in white cobwebs, wrapped up like a silk parcel.
The stuff melted as soon as Pete touched it. He didn’t have a clue whether he was still alive or not but he didn’t look it. He knelt beside him and wiped off the cobwebs, was he too late? The poor man’s skin felt like freezing wax. He did the first thing he could think of, he bent over and wrapped his arms around him. Pete stayed in that position for what seemed like hours, feeling Dave leach the heat out of his body like a vampire.
Chapter Fifteen
Damien collapsed against the cracked plastic window, desperate to get more air into his burning lungs. He clawed at the stuff wrapped around his mouth and nose, knowing that if he didn’t get it off, he would either pass out or even suffocate.
A masked figure appeared through the thick green fog, bent over and grabbed his hand.
“Leave it alone,” said the muffled voice.
The figure crouched down in front of him and placed his hands by his sides.
“If you pull the scarf off then you’ll almost certainly die.”
“Can’t breathe,” he gasped.
“Yes, you can. Just take deep slow breaths and the pain will subside in a few moments.”
This wasn’t fair, look at her; Jen wasn’t even out of breath. Oh hell, the stitch in his side was crippling him. He took in another great lungful of filtered air.
“Let it out slowly,” she said.
He thought of all those occasions when he took the piss out of her bloody obsession with going to the gym and spending hours on the treadmill and rowing machine. Ha! Who was taking the piss now? It wasn’t him. The only exercise he got was lifting his pint to his mouth.