Cordyceps Rising: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

by JE Gurley

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She coughed and nodded. Her child wiggled beneath the blanket but made no sound.

  They reached the 16th floor just ahead of the zombies below them, but the creatures rushing down toward them were waiting for them. Kyle began firing his Beneli into them as he cleared the landing. The heavy 12-gauge slugs ripped chunks of flesh from their bodies and severed limbs. Several of them were so ripe with the fungus, they almost disintegrated when hit. He didn’t stop moving, plowing his way through them by brute force using the shotgun held crosswise as a ram. One creature grabbed his arm with surprising strength, almost wrenching free the shotgun. To his astonishment, Rita pulled out her .25 caliber revolver and shot the creature in the head at point blank range. Its head exploded, showering them both with blood and gore. He kicked its body away. He didn’t have time to thank her. He shoved her through the door ahead of him and stood in front of it fending off zombies.

  Walters crested the stairs and opened up with the SAW, sewing a 5.56 mm swath of destruction through the creatures, providing an opening for Ginson and the others. Ginson staggered through the door under his own power, but collapsed to the floor as soon as he was inside. The others followed with Walters entering last. He closed and locked the door behind him.

  Kyle knelt beside Ginson. “Are you hurt badly?”

  Ginson grunted and removed his hand from the wound. Blood gushed from beneath his hand. “Bleeding like stuck pig. Hurts like hell, but no artery.”

  Kyle removed Ginson’s med kit from his belt, took out a compression bandage, and wrapped the wound. When Ginson saw the morphine hypo in Kyle’s hand, he shook his head.

  “Not now. We may have to move quickly. Nobody carries me out.”

  Kyle understood the sergeant’s reluctance, but Ginson was in obvious pain. “You need this,” he insisted.

  “No. I’m not dead yet. I can make it back down under my own power.”

  “Fungus heads are outside. We may be stuck here for awhile.”

  “Captain Isaacson knows where we are. He’ll come for us.”

  Walters sat with his back against the door as zombies pounded on the door. The distant reports of gunfire outside the building and the muted sound of some firing within the building, revealed that they were not the only ones under attack

  “We could try the other stairwell,” Kyle suggested.

  “It takes us too far from the North entrance. Captain Isaacson will look for us here.”

  Kyle sat down on the floor beside the bleeding Ginson, listening to the fungus heads pounding on the door and hoped the captain arrived soon.

  11

  July 6, Miami-Dade County Courthouse, Miami, FL –

  Rita sat cross-legged on the floor and fed the last of the baby food in her bag to Tomas. During the entire fight, he had not cried. He stared at her and cooed, making smiley faces between spoonfuls.

  “He’s a good baby,” Kyle said.

  She looked over at him. He had bandaged the injured sergeant earlier and had sat talking to him until the sergeant had dozed off. Now, he seemed as restless as she was. “Yes, he is. He hardly ever cries. He’s less afraid than I am.”

  “You seem to have your shit together pretty well.”

  She laughed. “Ha! On the outside, maybe. Inside, I’m scared to death.”

  “We’ll be out of here soon.”

  “To where? To a FEMA camp, herded up like an illegal alien? I was on my way to my cousin’s boat, a way out of Miami.”

  “I saw a lot of boats leaving two days ago. He may be gone already.”

  That had been the fear nagging at Rita’s mind. That Elian would leave without her, was unthinkable, but without word from her or Ricardo, he might have assumed the worst. That was why she had flagged down the army convoy.

  “No,” she insisted with a conviction that somehow felt hollow, “he has to be there.”

  “It’s too risky. You’ve seen what it’s like downtown. The fungus heads are everywhere.”

  Fearing he might be right and wanting to hear no more, she began singing softly to Tomas until the detective walked away.

  An hour later, the sounds of gunfire in the stairwell heralded the other soldiers’ approach. Ginson awoke with a start, but then relaxed. Ten minutes after that, someone knocked on the door and yelled, “It’s clear out here.”

  The big man with the even bigger machine gun, Walters, stood, opened the door, and grinned. “Anyone bring a pizza?”

  The captain saw sergeant Ginson lying on the floor and walked over to him. He glanced at Rita and smiled at her. “How bad is it, Sergeant?” he asked.

  Kyle helped Ginson to his feet. He was unsteady and pale from loss of blood, but he shook off Kyle’s grip and stood on his own.

  “I’ll live, sir. I lost two men.”

  Isaacson frowned. “I lost eight men, Sergeant. It’s been a bad day all around, but we recovered twenty-five people. We need to get you to the medics and the others to the FEMA facility ASAP.”

  Rita sighed. She had no choice but to allow them to take her to Marlins Park. She should have known that her quest to reach the marina had been a pipedream born of desperation. Elian would be gone. Ricardo was gone, perhaps dead. She was alone with her child in a city overrun with demonios.

  They stepped over scores of dead bodies and bits of bodies strewn across the stairs. Most were zombies, but several were soldiers. The blood underfoot was sticky, grabbing at her shoes as if trying to keep her there. She fought down a wave of nausea from the intense smell and sense of foreboding and took the steps downward more quickly. The soldiers stationed outside the building had killed their share of the ‘fungus heads’ as Detective Bane called them. A ring of demonio zombies littered the terrace and the street beyond the vehicles, but the number of zombies was growing, as more poured into the area from downtown and along the river drawn by the sounds.

  The captain quickly loaded the civilians into the trucks with armed soldiers accompanying each truck. Before she joined the other evacuees, Detective Bane came up to her and handed her a business card.

  “It has my cell number. If you need anything, call me. I don’t know if I can do anything, but sometimes it’s just good to talk.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  “Take care of little Tomas,” he said.

  “I will.”

  The detective looked embarrassed, but he smiled when she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Stay safe,” she said.

  No one on the truck took notice of her. Each person was enveloped in their own private cocoon of fear. Their faces, slack-jawed and lifeless, made her wonder if her own features betrayed her fear. The policewoman they had rescued was on the verge of shock, her hands trembling and her eyes staring blindly into space. With the help of a helicopter firing into the midst of the zombies, the convoy broke through the mass of creatures as if they were barricades to be swept aside instead of once living humans. Many fell beneath the massive wheels of the five-ton trucks. Any of the creatures that attempted to board the trucks received a face full of bullets. Rita kept her grip on the pistol secreted beneath the blanket just in case.

  As they crossed the bridge over the Miami River, she had a good view of the area around the marina where her cousin kept his boat. Her heart sank. It was just as well she had not gone there. Many buildings and boats were smoking piles of ash. The river was filled with the debris of a dying city and corpses floating to the ocean. She didn’t know if Elian had escaped unharmed, but he and his boat were not there. She said a quick prayer that he was safe.

  Riding back through her neighborhood, she saw just how badly it had fared. From street level, it had appeared undamaged except for a few buildings. Now, she realized how lucky she had been that the extensive fires had not swept through her block. Many of the creatures stood immobile on the roofs more dead than alive. According to Detective Bane, they were gestating, hollow vessels ready to spew out more o
f the fungus spores and infect more ‘fungus heads.’ His apt description of the creatures made them seem less menacing than demonios, but she suspected names meant very little. The fast ones were deadly and the immobile ones deadlier still.

  Marlins Park loomed before them, a massive white stucco and glass structure. She had visited Marlins Park only once after it had first opened. She and Ricardo had sat beneath the new retractable roof with programs over their heads to keep dry from the leaks. She recalled the scandals that came with the stadium – rising costs, unpopular bonds to pay for it, the recall of a mayor and a county commissioner. The final cost, over 600 million dollars, would become two-and-a-half billion before it was repaid.

  Marlins Park had been built to blend in with its Little Havana neighborhood. No fence separated it from the nearby homes. Now, however, a sturdy chain link fence surrounded the structure. They passed through a guarded double gate in the fence and parked on the west main entrance between the two giant pillars that held the retracted roof. The roof was now in place over the stadium. Guards escorted them inside. She didn’t know if they were there for protection or to keep anyone from attempting to escape. She paid little attention to the art work or the stadium’s beautiful architecture. Her eyes remained fixed on the neat rows of tents covering the field, and the high fence surrounding each one like a mini-prison.

  “It looks like a prison,” one man wearing a dirty shirt and jeans commented as if reading her thoughts.

  Men in white suits with hoods asked them to undress, men in one area and women in another. Their manner was polite but businesslike. The guards with guns lent power to their request. They took her meager belongings and disposed of them. She stripped and allowed them to scrub her naked body, trying to cover her embarrassing nudity with her hands. They had allowed her to keep Tomas with her. He, too, received a scrubbing. His screams of outrage kept her silent ones in check. After drying off, they were all handed white coveralls, cloth shoes, and masks, and pointed to one of the tents. She donned the too-large coveralls, sans underwear, and joined the long line of evacuees. Before entering the fenced compound, each person’s eyes and ears were examined. Her group of forty-five joined another dozen men, women, and children, most of who sat in silent dismay on cots as their children ran wild around the small open area surrounding the tent.

  “Food will be served in a few hours,” one man in uniform informed her as he slammed shut the gate. “Don’t miss out,” he added as he padlocked the gate.

  She was hungry but too upset by the impersonal treatment she had just endured to think about food. They had stripped her of her few possessions, her clothing, and her dignity. Now they wanted to regiment her time like a prisoner. She lashed out at the man.

  “I want food for my child. I want it now!”

  He stared at her. Her verbal eruption had caught him by surprise. At first, she thought he might consider her a troublemaker and try to separate her from Tomas. Let him try, she thought. Instead, he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She was suddenly ashamed at her outburst, but a bit of her lost dignity returned. She surveyed her new home. A quick count revealed over twenty separate enclosures on the one-time baseball field. A few of the enclosures were empty, but almost a thousand people resided in the makeshift FEMA camp. She had overheard talk of half a dozen other camps throughout the outlying areas, but even if they each held a thousand people, it was a small pittance compared to the number of dead or the thousands of people still hiding in their homes afraid to venture out. Was her Ricardo among those dead?

  The man she had accosted returned a short time later with a sealed bag containing jars of baby food, formula, disposable diapers, a few extra masks, and two pair of latex gloves.

  “It’s all I could find for now. I’ll see that more supplies are brought for the children. You know – toys and stuff.”

  “Thank you,” she said, wishing she could think of a word more encompassing for how he made her feel. Even a small act of kindness in a world gone mad seemed monumental. The soldier was simply performing a task he might have personally found repugnant the best way he could. She looked again at the languid parents and bored children around her. Many of the children, even some of the adults, were not wearing the masks they had been issued, a perfect scenario for a potential disaster. The children were not frightened, just confused and filled with excited energy. They needed a creative outlet.

  Rita thought for a moment, removed one of the latex gloves and blew it up. She tied the end to keep the air inside, like a balloon.

  “Children,” she called loudly, “let’s play a game.”

  At first only a few of the younger children came to her, but as she tossed the makeshift balloon in the air, more became curious and joined them. When she had a crowd surrounding her, she said, “We’re going to play a ball game.”

  “We don’t have a ball,” one ten-year-old boy said.

  “We have a balloon. We’ll form two teams. Each team will have the same number of older kids and younger children to make it fair. The object of the game is to keep the balloon in the air, but without holding on to it. You must pass it back and forth, like in soccer, but with your hands. Remember if the balloon touches the ground before you reach the goal line, the other team gets the balloon at that point and gets to try for their goal line. Another rule is that everyone must wear their masks.”

  “Oh, they hurt my nose,” the same boy said rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “No mask, no game.”

  He hesitated, and then said, “Aw, all right.” He pulled his mask up over his nose and mouth. The others followed. “What do we use for goals?”

  She looked around for something to serve as goals. “Each end of the tent.”

  She sat on the ground and watched the children play. They didn’t need a referee. The team with the balloon tossed it back and forth while their opponents stood on the sidelines cheering for them to drop it. The game continued back and forth with neither team able to score a goal, but they didn’t seem to mind. It was the running, the yelling, and the burning of energy that mattered. They were in an unfamiliar environment, unsure of what was happening around them, and the game was familiar, something to focus on. Watching the children at play took her mind from the conditions around them as well. Even some of the parents took an interest in the game, cheering the children on. After half an hour, the white-suited men and women arrived with carts of food – burgers, hot dogs, and chips for the children; baked chicken, rice and vegetables for the adults. The children received bottles of water and juice, the adults, coffee and water. Once again, each person was examined as he or she was handed food – their eyes, ears, and mouths.

  The food was lackluster in taste but filling. At least it was more wholesome than what she had been eating for the past few days. After the meal, she encouraged the younger children to go around collecting empty food containers and place them in the trash bins behind the tent. They made a game of even this chore, seeing who could discard the most used containers. Though it was only early evening, after the rigors of the game, many of the children napped. This allowed her to speak with some of the parents around her.

  “Does anyone know exactly what is going on?” she asked.

  One gray-haired man cleared his throat before replying. He wore his coveralls like a suit, the zipper fastened all the way to the top. He toyed with the zipper as if straightening an imaginary tie.

  “My name is Simon Benoit. Most everyone calls me Benoit. I’m a high school biology teacher. From what I’ve pieced together, a few days ago someone entered our country at Miami International who was infected with a heretofore unknown type of fungus. It is a species of the Cordyceps mushroom, the so-called ‘zombie’ fungus. The fungus drives people insane before consuming their organs and using their bodies to reproduce spores for more fungi. It is airborne and highly contagious, thus the masks.” He reached up and touched his mask. “It has spread to other cities and is one-hundred-percent fatal
.”

  One woman gasped at this. “We’re all going to die!” she screamed.

  Benoit turned to her. “No, madam, not all. Most of us are either somehow immune or not infected.”

  “Most of us?” another man asked.

  “We are under observation. I have no doubts that if any of us began to exhibit signs of bizarre behavior, they will quickly remove us. You noticed the examinations of the eyes and ears?” A few heads nodded. “They’re looking for signs of infection.”

  “What about the children?” the first woman asked.

  “The same parameters apply to the children. They are either immune or not. They must keep their masks on at all times. We all must.”

  “Even when eating?” one man asked.

  “That would be difficult, but replace it as soon as possible.”

  The mood of the crowd swung from desperation to despair. An undercurrent of gloom descended on them like a dark cloud, smothering all hope. Rita was certain the biology teacher’s explanation had been meant to be informative, but he could have couched it in less pessimistic terms.

  “Mr. Benoit,” she said, “how long does it take for the first symptoms to appear?”

  She was as concerned for her own condition as that of the others. Was she safe? Was Tomas safe?