by Unknown
Even the weather was against us. The sky outside the window was slate gray. The cloud deck seemed about to come crashing down. Soon the deluge would come, flushing every corner of the city.
But not clean. The rain would only propagate the misery.
“There’s the barrier.” Yuji Mimura was driving. “From here we walk. No point contaminating the vehicle.”
A decontamination crew in hazmat suits loitered in front of the barrier, looking bored. Mimura stopped the van and a crew member came round to each side. We rolled down the windows and held up our IDs. Someone must have called ahead, because they waved us through without any questions.
Mimura parked. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I felt as if something warm and sticky were invading my suit. I shuddered. Get a grip, I told myself. You’re buttoned up. You have a respirator. There’s nothing to worry about.
“Let’s get going,” said Mimura. “We’re on a clock. I couldn’t swing us much time.”
We crossed Route 43 and turned north. It took about fifteen minutes to reach the train station. The plaza was deserted. The terminal was empty, the buses all gone. Silence enfolded the little shopping mall. The traffic lights were dark. No birds stirred in the plane trees. The city was dead, as if time had frozen.
A fine white powder rose in puffs as we walked. The early afternoon light was weak and cheerless. It was hard to believe this used to be home.
Two shapeless brown lumps lay close to the road. Cats? Maybe one had been a small dog. The desiccated bodies, like crumpled wrapping paper, were covered with sprouting brown mushrooms. The gelatinous caps were flecked with white.
Mimura stopped and stared at the corpses, his eyes narrowing in disgust. “Hasn’t this area been decontaminated?”
“They must have wandered here from somewhere else. The crews can’t be everywhere at once. Cut them some slack.”
“You’re right,” he said with a sigh, trying to calm down. “Let’s go. I don’t like hanging around here, suit or no suit.”
We crossed another broad avenue and entered an area of detached houses and apartment buildings divided by narrow lanes.
I glanced at a house. Something was peering over the garden wall.
Two hands appeared on the wall. The creature’s gaze was sticky. Gender and age were hard to tell. The eyes were clouded black and red and the skin had an opalescent sheen, like strangely colored fish scales. I’d never seen one before. My first ghost.
Almost immediately, a sweet aroma penetrated to the back of my throat; it was almost refreshing, like a single drop of mint oil vaporizing in a pan of hot taffy. The scent took me right back to childhood.
“No eye contact.” Mimura’s voice was sharp. “No matter what you hear, don’t answer and don’t stop.”
As we hurried by, the eyes and hands glided along the wall, keeping abreast of us. When we were almost past, I heard a low voice close to my ear.
Help me … Help me …
I fought the urge to turn toward it and kept my eyes fixed on the houses ahead.
“Hurry.” Mimura’s voice was tight. “They’re gathering.”
Before I could answer, I saw something nasty—a swarm of white, humanoid shapes bounding along the top of a wall, bunching and stretching as they ran. Their mouths were turned up at the corners like suppressed grins. I kept hearing the same words, repeated like an obsession.
Help me … Help me … Help me …
“Shall we run?” said Mimura. “If it’s too much for you.”
“Can we outrun them?”
“Distance helps. What do they look like?”
“Not like anyone I know. Not yet.”
“Tell me if you see someone you know. It means we have a problem.”
About a month before I entered the quarantine zone, I ran into Matsuoka, a friend who worked at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. It had been a long time. We’d both been so busy, we hadn’t gotten together for a good ten years.
When I proposed an evening foray into Ginza, Matsuoka turned cryptic. “Takashi, you better come over. I’ve got something confidential for you. I can’t discuss it in public. Not even in a private room in a restaurant.”
I started my work in pharmacology in my home prefecture of Hyogo. Later I transferred to my company’s Tokyo headquarters to join their research lab. Matsuoka worked in Section One of NIID’s Bioactive Substances Department. Section One dealt with fungi, including mushrooms. I’d heard that they recently formed a team to research Auri disease.
I went to Matsuoka’s condo after work, equipped with blowfish jerky and a bottle of Kyoto sake to keep us occupied. We quickly ran out of small talk. Matsuoka changed the topic to work.
“How much does your company know about Auri?”
“All we do is drugs,” I said, “and all we look for is cures. Beyond what works and what doesn’t, we don’t know a lot.”
“You know about the new resistant strain?”
“Yes, we were briefed.”
“I think we’re in for it this time. I’m betting this new one shrugs off everything we throw at it. I’m not even sure the experimental drugs we’re getting from Europe and the States will help.”
“Then we’ll just have to wait for the designers to cook up something new. Until then, I hope it doesn’t leave the zone.”
“You ought to get out while there’s still time.”
“What—leave the country?” This was unexpected.
“Find someplace as dry as possible. A city with a climate that’s hostile to Auricularia. You might have to forget about coming back.”
I toyed with my sake cup and grinned. “Are you sure the government wants you leaking that?”
“You’re a friend. I doubt you’ll go out and announce it, but if you feel like selling this to the media, go ahead. People will catch on soon enough. I’m just trying to get you a head start.”
“Are you going?”
“Better believe it. A suicide pact with Japan doesn’t exactly appeal. Is your family here?”
“Yes. My wife and son.”
“Your parents have a house in Mikage, don’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell them to sell it while they can and use the money to get out before it’s too late.”
“Are you serious?”
“I was in Kyushu, Takashi. It was pretty rough. Sooner or later the rest of Japan will be the same.”
Auri disease was officially known as Wood Ear-like Systemic Mycosis. It was caused by an invasive fungus, a species of Auricularia that was easily mistaken for the edible wood ear mushroom. The fruiting body had a gelatinous, almost translucent brown cap, deeply folded like a human ear and covered with white flecks. The new species was an aggressive propagator and ejected prodigious volumes of white spores. It thrived on protein and targeted mammals as its preferred food source.
Victims were eventually covered with so many sprouting mushrooms the skin was no longer visible. Without treatment, death came in four to seven days. The mycelia penetrated the skin, even piercing the eyelids and thrusting deep into the eyeballs. The fungus covered the membranes of the mouth and invaded the stomach, the intestines, even the lungs. Attempts to eradicate the parasite through surgical intervention alone had been unsuccessful.
The first cases had appeared in Japan about a year ago. The rapid progression and grotesque symptoms sparked rumors of biological warfare, but governments across the globe hurried to issue denials. Now cases were being reported from Southeast Asia and South America.
Auri was treated with multiple antifungal agents. No single drug was effective. My job was to find promising combinations of existing drugs.
Luckily, the disease responded well to the multidrug approach, and the initial panic died down. Still, the specialists at NIID were not optimistic. Multidrug therapy might be
effective, but it was also a pathway for the development of resistant strains. Some new, innovative drug was urgently needed.
The most promising candidates seemed to be broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides. They could perforate the fungus cell walls and target its DNA for destruction. But the peptides were only for topical use; injectable and oral preparations were too toxic. Pharma companies worldwide were working frantically to overcome this hurdle.
Eventually, and just as NIID had predicted, a strain of the fungus that was impervious to multidrug therapy emerged in Kyushu. And still there was no news of a new drug.
“I’m a clinician by training,” said Matsuoka. “I had to see it firsthand, so I got myself assigned to an inspection team.”
“Was it really that bad?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard they were going to lift the quarantine once the mushrooms were incinerated.”
“The way things are down there, who knows when that will be? They’d have to napalm the infested areas. And the whole city is full of ghosts. Humans beings are creatures of reason. Too much exposure to those things would drive anybody mad.”
Tokyo seemed a million miles away from the tragedy in Kyushu. In interviews on the street and gossiping with neighbors, people talked about how frightening it was, or about the panic that would ensue if the mushrooms appeared in Tokyo. But few understood how dangerous the situation really was. What people found truly fascinating were the scary stories about victims turning into ghosts.
“Is it true what they say, about those spooks?” my wife asked me.
“Aren’t you a little old to be afraid of that kind of thing?”
“It’s not me, it’s the children. The school is having a terrible time. Somebody’s spreading rumors about seeing them around here. Now some of the kids won’t even go outside.”
The infected area in Kyushu was declared a quarantine zone. Those free from infection were ordered to leave. As the buses moved out, people torn from family and friends looked back in anguish and saw something bizarre against the deep orange sunset: massive swarms of translucent human forms, writhing like a gigantic forest of seaweed with roots sunk deep in the sea bed, plunging, rising, calling out endlessly in the dying light. Help us. Help us. Help us.
The tidal wave of moaning raced over the heads of the evacuees and echoed into the distance. Invisible hands plucked at their heads and shoulders. A sticky presence embraced them, pouring warm sighs into their ears. People screamed for it to stop or sobbed for forgiveness. Others clapped their hands over their ears and ran. Those who ran heard malevolent giggling. Some people cracked and started screaming obscenities.
The incident was witnessed by journalists covering the evacuation. Naturally the story trended instantly across the country. None of the photos and video showed anything out of the ordinary, yet everyone had had more or less the same experience. The rumor spread with the news: If Auri kills you, you’ll return as a ghost, bound to where you died for an eternity of torment and a thirst for vengeance.
In a day or two the rumor was everywhere. It was irritating to see how idiotic people could be. Everyone in the medical community was working day and night to find a cure, and people were obsessed with ghost stories. If they only knew.
The national news programs avoided the term “ghosts.” Television specials were devoted to scientific explanations of “apparitions,” and viewers were warned to steer clear of phony psychics looking to make a quick buck.
“They got that information from us, you know,” Matsuoka told me. “Twenty-four hours after the victim dies, the parasite starts releasing an organic volatile, a toxin something like a pheromone. It seems to be a neuropeptide analog that stimulates human synapses, but the potency is stronger than any pheromone. The limbic system, temporal lobes, Brodmann areas 18 and 19—they’re all affected. When the toxin is inhaled—and it’s hard to filter with standard respirators—memory traces generate hallucinations of human forms. The hallucinations are usually nonspecific but can also be people you’ve seen recently, especially people who are in your thoughts a lot. In other words, the people you see aren’t necessarily dead. The voices, the tactile hallucinations—logically they all have the same basis. Whatever the mushroom is off-gassing must be affecting the auditory cortex and sense of touch at the same time.”
“Does the reaction vary from person to person?”
“Of course. Each brain is different. It also depends on the local toxin density. The sense of smell is affected too. Some people report a sweet smell that penetrates the sinuses. Like molten taffy, but minty.”
“Taffy and mint?”
“The toxin stimulates the olfactory area of the brain and makes people think they’re smelling something pleasant. Maybe it cloaks the smell of corpses. Not everyone smells the same thing, though.”
“But we’re raising Auricularia in our lab. Nobody’s seen, heard, or smelled a thing.”
“Of course you haven’t. Auricularia raised on culture media or lab mice aren’t the same as the parasite feeding on humans in the wild. Blowfish bred in tanks aren’t poisonous either. It’s the same effect.” Matsuoka tore off another strip of blowfish jerky. “The parasite completely envelops the host. You can’t reproduce the complexity of the toxin in a lab setting. Fungi grown in a Petri dish can’t synthesize the lure. The only people equipped to solve this are government scientists with unrestricted access to the quarantine zone. And nothing infected leaves the zone. So you have people holding funerals without bodies.”
“But the mushroom doesn’t have a brain. How does it fool its victims?”
“Carnivorous plants do it. Many species of plants evolve ways to lure and kill insects without the benefit of neural tissue. It’s amazing, actually. The mushroom’s lure has only one purpose: to draw the prey close to an infection source.”
“Spores?”
“Correct. Pheromones travel much farther than spores. The toxin generates hallucinations over a wide area to lure the prey.”
“Wouldn’t hallucinations be just as likely to scare people away?”
“The strategy doesn’t have to work every time. Humans are a contradictory species. Fear makes us curious. Auricularia has discovered an elegant way to exploit that.”
Matsuoka fell silent, turning his empty cup over and over. When he spoke again, the words came slowly.
“The government’s explanation is credible, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“I watched them burn the bodies. Nothing contaminated leaves the zone, so the crews have to finish the job on-site. The crematoria don’t have anywhere near the capacity, so the crews gather the corpses in open areas and burn them in big batches. The ashes stay in the zone too. Let’s just say the crews have lot of latitude when it comes to getting the job done.”
“People are making a stink about it.”
“It’s a delicate issue. It’s hard for the government to compromise with the bereaved families.” Matsuoka paused. “The zone was full of ghosts. ‘Help me, help me’ everywhere you went. The respirator blocks the spores but doesn’t filter the toxin. There must’ve been hundreds of corpses. Before, all I could hear was ‘help me,’ but when the crews fired the bodies, suddenly there was this high-pitched screaming. The ghosts started writhing violently. Every one of them was screaming something different. ‘It burns it burns Father Mother stop stop it burns no I’m on fire help me I’m on fire no stop I’m burning stop!’ ”
Matsuoka slumped forward. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to block the memory.
Something didn’t feel right. This was a hard-headed scientist, a clinical physician with years of experience dealing with distressing situations. How could a cremation, even a mass cremation, do this to him? Was there something he wasn’t telling me?
He finally looked up
. “The sky above the pyre was distorted by the heat. I just stood there watching them roast. I guess I looked out of it. A crew member slapped me on the shoulder. Don’t let it get to you, he said. It’s all in your head. They’re dead and gone. How could they feel pain? But I felt something. They were pawing me. I heard them screaming out of the fire. I’m not dead yet. Maybe the toxin was messing with my head. In that case, there’s nothing more to say. But what if it was some kind of real communication? What if the mushroom doesn’t kill its victims but puts them into suspended animation? What if it’s symbiosis?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The victims may be clinically dead, but isn’t it possible that some of their neurons could remain viable? Maybe they’re alive but no longer human. Maybe the mycelia penetrate the brain, tap into the neurons, and manipulate them the way we would a computer. It would explain why the ghosts are so flexible at adapting their behavior to how the prey reacts. They could be using host bodies as biometric sensors to detect our approach. That would trigger the release of the toxin. Maybe toxin composition and volume is modulated to match target and distance. To generate the optimal hallucination.”
“Do you have proof for any of this?”
“Right now it’s just a suspicion, but the voices I heard were real.” He shook his head. “Anyway, even if we did prove it, they wouldn’t let us tell the public. Do you have relatives or friends in Kyushu?”
“No.”
“Well, there’s going to be another outbreak and another quarantine, and they’ll probably deal with it the same way they’re dealing with it in Kyushu. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Not that you can do much about it.”
Matsuoka was a reliable guy. Still, I didn’t know what to make of his warning. Fleeing the country was pretty drastic. It wasn’t a decision I was prepared to make in a hurry. Antimicrobial peptide research was heating up all over the world. The first pharmaceutical company to come up with something effective would make money hand over fist, and we were all attacking the problem as hard as we could. Getting approval for a new drug in Japan would mean jumping through some hoops, but if it was approved overseas first we could re-import and do field tests. I thought I’d wait a bit and see how things played out. The epidemic might even run out of steam …