The Fungus

by Harry Adam Knight

  He snatched up the case and ran for the doorway. The flames licked at his bare skin, making him scream. And then, at last, he was through the doorway and safe.

  8

  Kimberley died three days later.

  It was on the morning of the day after the fire that he noticed the small patch of bright orange mold behind her right knee. They had spent hours helping Carter carry his equipment across to the nearby Euston Tower, which he considered to be the best alternative location for his transmitter after the fire had completely gutted the Post Office Tower.

  While Carter worked to rig his makeshift transmitter, utilizing the antenna and other undamaged equipment from the local radio station—Capital Radio—that had been based in the building, Wilson and Kimberley went exploring and found a tankful of water in a relatively untouched apartment near the top of the building.

  It was a relief to be able to wash the encrusted blood and filth from their bodies, and despite his exhaustion and depression, Wilson responded to the sheer sensuality of the experience. As he helped wash Kimberley he felt a sudden and intense desire for her. By making love he would be able to blot out, if only for a short time, all the horrors of the last couple of days.

  And it was soon obvious that she shared his mood—her body trembled under his touch as he rinsed the soapy water from her. But as he leaned down to raise another cupped handful of water from the bathtub he saw the small patch of orange.

  “Kimberley,” he sighed, all desire gone in that instant.

  She looked down and followed the direction of his gaze. The only sound she made was a tiny, child-­like, “Oh.”

  He hugged her, not knowing what to say. For a few moments she clung to him, then pushed him gently, but firmly, away. “Come on,” she said in a steady voice, “we’d better go see how Carter is making out.”

  They didn’t mention the fungus again that day, but by nightfall it was no longer possible to ignore it. By then her right leg, from foot to upper thigh, was covered in the orange mold. It was as if she were wearing a single woollen stocking.

  Carter couldn’t have helped noticing it but he said nothing either. They were sitting in what had been one of Capital Radio’s control rooms. With his spare parts Carter had got some of the equipment functioning again and they had just completed making a recording of Wilson’s analysis of Jane’s notes. Wilson had quickly read through all the notes, knowing that once out of their sealed case the paper would quickly be attacked by the fungus. He had succeeded in pinpointing the vital information. He identified the crucial enzymes that had been modified, and then gave a detailed description of the chemical structure of Jane’s resulting super-­enzyme. Carter’s intention was to put the tape on a loop and transmit it continuously.

  It was then that Kimberley had asked Carter suddenly, “Do you think it’s symbiotic or parasitic?” Both men knew what she was referring to.

  “It’s too early to tell,” wheezed Carter.

  She was thoughtful for a while, then said, “Well, at least it’s prettier than some I’ve seen.”

  Carter began the transmission. As he was relying solely on batteries for power, he wasn’t sure if the signal would carry far enough, nor did he have the means to build a receiver to hear if the signal was acknowledged.

  “What are the chances?” Wilson asked him.

  “Fifty-­fifty. We’re sending on the designated frequency, so someone somewhere should be monitoring it 24 hours a day waiting to hear from you. It all depends on how close to us the nearest functioning receiver is now. It may be that the fungus has spread right through Wales to the coast. Then again, how far a signal travels often varies depending on atmospheric conditions; so the longer I can keep this equipment functioning, the better our chances are.”

  Wilson and Kimberley left Carter in the dimly lit control room, anxiously tending the vulnerable transmitter. They returned to the apartment they’d found earlier. They knew there were some cans of food stored in a kitchen cupboard.

  They ate in darkness on the floor of the living room, opening one can after another by touch and then tasting to identify the contents. It was a strange meal, consisting of asparagus tips, courgettes, tuna fish, tomato soup, apricot halves, rice pudding, and evaporated milk. They even managed to laugh at one point when Wilson realized he’d opened a can of dog food.

  Afterward, by an unspoken agreement, they made love. In the darkness, on the floor, they made love with a frantic, desperate, urgency. At first he tried to avoid touching her right leg but soon it didn’t matter to him, nor to her . . .

  Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, she sighed and said, “I wish now we’d got to know each other better.” She spoke matter-­of-­factly and he realized she was now resigned to the fact of her imminent death.

  He gave her a gentle hug. “So do I. But there’s still time.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said but he knew she didn’t mean it.

  “For a start you could tell me why you came along on this trip. I know you’ve been hiding something all along.”

  She sighed again. “You’re right. I had an ulterior motive. It made sense once but now it seems crazy. I would never have succeeded.”

  “In doing what?”

  “In getting my parents out of prison. They were convicted last year in Johannesburg under the Anti-­Terrorism Act, conspiring to cause explosions.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It was all trumped up by the security boys, of course. My parents have had connections with anti-­apartheid movements for years now, but they’d never be involved with violence. My mother’s a doctor, for God’s sake. But she’s been sentenced to 10 years and my father to 15.”

  Wilson made a sympathetic sound though he couldn’t see what possible link there might be between her parents’ jail sentence and the fungus.

  “When I heard what was happening in London,” she continued, “and learned the reason for it, I came up with this wild scheme. It involved mutated lichen fungi—you know the special properties of lichen fungi, don’t you?”

  “Vaguely,” he said, trying to remember. “I know they’re a strange combination of fungi and algae.”

  “Yes, and they have the ability to absorb heavy metals. There’s a theory that the gold deposits in South Africa at Witwatersrand are the result of lichen fungi in pre-­Cambrian lagoons absorbing the gold out of the water. I had the idea of using mutated lichen fungi to extract gold in vast quantities from sea water. And if that was possible it would mean the ruination of the South African economy, because the price of gold would plummet and the country still depends on the damn stuff so much.”

  He understood now. “You were going to try and blackmail the South African government into setting your parents free.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it would have meant modifying Jane’s mutating agent to the point where it was safe. That would have been very risky, and complicated.”

  He felt her shrug in his arms. “I was going to worry about that later. The main priority was to make sure your wife’s secret wasn’t lost. So I maneuvered myself into a position where I was indispensable to the mission.”

  He considered what she’d told him. “You were crazy,” he said finally. “It would never have worked.”

  “Maybe not, but I had to try. Now I rather wish I hadn’t . . . I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to end up like all those other creatures.”

  He squeezed her. “Don’t think about it. Not now.”

  But she continued, “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “If you survive all this, will you try to contact my parents and tell them about me?”

  “Of course, if I survive. But I don’t think much of my chances.”

  “No,” she said seriously, “I’m certain you will get out of this uninfected. Your wife was right. One of us was naturally immune, but it wasn’t me.”

  “I’ve just been lucky so far.”

  “No. It’
s probably genetic. Your son was immune, before your wife—” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

  He felt her lips brush his. “Promise me you’ll do what I asked?” she whispered.

  “Yes, I promise,” he said and meant it. And he’d do his best to get her parents out of prison as well. As the man who—hopefully—helped save the world, he would be entitled to some rewards.

  They made love again. More slowly this time, and with genuine affection. Then he fell asleep.

  When he woke up bright daylight flooded the room and Kimberley was gone.

  He knew in his heart it was a waste of time, but he searched for her anyway. He couldn’t find her until he went out onto the roof and looked down. Far below, lying on yellow fungus that coated the sidewalk was a small splotch of bright orange.

  His eyes stung as the hot tears filled them. Then he went back down to the control room.

  Carter was asleep. The equipment didn’t appear to be functioning. Wilson gently shook Carter awake and asked him what the situation was.

  “I kept it going for over six hours,” wheezed Carter, “but then some mold got into the works. We can only hope someone heard . . .” He looked around. “Where’s the lady?”

  “Kimberley’s gone,” said Wilson.

  “I see,” said Carter, his heavy head tilting forward.

  The days passed monotonously. When Wilson wasn’t scavenging for food and drink, he spent the time sitting on the roof of the Euston Tower with Carter. They were waiting for something to happen—a sign of some kind—though they didn’t know what.

  Carter didn’t talk much anymore. He was finding it difficult to breathe due to the weight of the crust on his head, neck and chest.

  During one of their last conversations Wilson said, “Christ, I could do with a cigarette.”

  “Bad for your lungs,” wheezed Carter, and made his laughing sound. Then he said, “Me . . . I’d like to read a book. Anything at all. Even a Flannery novel.”

  Wilson laughed too.

  On the eighth day they got their sign. It was near sunset and they were sitting in their customary place on the roof. Suddenly an RAF jet flew overhead with a thunderous roar. It circled low over the area, rocked its wings, and then disappeared to the north.

  “You think that was an acknowledgment of our message?” Wilson asked eagerly.

  “Had to be,” wheezed Carter. “No other way they’d know we were here.”

  The next morning, Carter was dead. He’d suffocated in his sleep.

  Wilson left him where he lay and by evening the fungus had consumed him completely. The bright orange stain on the sidewalk far below had long disappeared.

  Every morning and night Wilson checked himself for the fungus, but he remained uninfected. Kimberley had been right, it seemed. He was immune. Not that it really seemed to matter any more.

  A week or so after Carter’s death he was sitting on the roof one late afternoon, drinking a bottle of wine he’d found, and staring vacantly out over the fungus-­covered vista, when he heard a loud rumbling sound. He looked and saw the Post Office Tower starting to topple over. It fell toward Tottenham Court Road in slow motion, and when it hit the ground, after smashing through the brittle shells of the smaller buildings beneath it, the impact made the Euston Tower shake.

  Wilson guessed that the fungus had finally eaten through the concrete base of the Post Office structure. He was glad it had collapsed. Every time he looked at it he remembered what its bulbous summit had contained . . . the horrors of Jane’s laboratory . . . his son’s eyes staring out of that cabinet.

  For some reason he interpreted the destruction of the tower as an even more positive sign than the RAF jet’s appearance.

  All of a sudden he knew for certain that the battle would be won and the fungus would be destroyed.

  He drank the rest of the wine and flung the bottle high into the air.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Harry Adam Knight was the pseudonym of John Brosnan and Leroy Kettle.

  John Brosnan (1947-2005) was born in Australia but lived most of his life in Britain. He published many books about movies and movie-­making (including the particularly well-regarded Movie Magic, Future Tense and James Bond in the Cinema). Three of his horror books (Carnosaur, Slimer and Bedlam—the last two written with Leroy Kettle, all under the pseudonym Harry Adam Knight) were made into movies. Their most successful book was The Fungus. Two other horror books were published as by Simon Ian Childer, Tendrils (with Leroy) and Worm. And they published a collection of humorous pieces—well, they thought they were funny—called The Dirty Movie Book.

  John also wrote several science fiction novels—the Skylords trilogy, The Opoponax Invasion and Mothership, as well as a range of SF thrillers such as Torched (with John Baxter) and Skyship and comic fantasy novels Damned and Fancy and Have Demon, Will Travel.

  He wrote a much-liked column for the UK magazine Starburst and scripts for the comic 2000 AD, as well as a range of TV novelisations.

  Leroy Kettle (born 1949) also published the science fiction conspiracy thriller Future Perfect in 2014 with Chris Evans and, before retirement, worked in the civil service as one of the principal architects of the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act.

  Both John and Roy first started writing in SF fandom and published humorous fanzines which were enjoyed by the few people who read them.