by Ian Woodhead
Jordan smiled. He kissed her. “I know you do.”
“How could you possibly know that? Oh, your inner voice told you?”
“Yeah, something like that. Doesn’t matter. Come on, do your thing, we’re running out of time.”
Jenny pushed the ID card into a slot next to the doors and they silently opened. She winked at him. “The complex has its own generator and enough fuel to ensure that its systems stay functional for another twenty years.” She entered the building and turned around after Jordan had followed her inside. “You’re right about us running out of time. You’d better follow me.” She winked again. “Unless, that is, your inner voice already knows where to go?”
He kept silent and waited for her to follow the path to the R&D department before allowing himself a single secret grin. Jordan walked past two circular stands, each one at either side of the reception desk. Ceramic Chinese lions stood on them. He nodded to the large decorations before hurrying after Jenny.
As he followed the woman, that inner voice started to tug at his nerves. His previous worry about a threat hiding within this place grew. Jordan checked and double checked the shotgun. Jenny stopped.
“Okay, why do you keep counting those shells?”
“We’re not alone.”
“Are you sure?” she replied. “I can’t hear anything.”
“Neither can I. They are there, it’s just that we can’t hear them yet.” He dropped the shells back into his pocket. He doubted they’d last long if they were attacked.
“There’s something following us but not quite yet?” She sighed. “Don’t tell me. It’s your inner voice again.”
He nodded.
“Will you stop that, Jordan? It is seriously creeping me out.”
They both jumped when something crashed onto the floor. Jenny looked over her shoulder. “Was that from the reception?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. I think it was one of those statues.” He pressed his finger to his mouth and pointed to the next set of double doors. She got the message and ran past him while he walked backwards, keeping a close eye on where they had just walked. She held the door open for him then pointed to the first door to their left.
He shook his head.
“I have to go inside,” she hissed. “I don’t have any choice in the matter.”
Jenny left him by the fire door. He already knew what she was going to find in there. Jordan also knew that if he followed her inside, the likelihood of them leaving the room was slim. He so wanted to curse that inner voice and tell it to shut its gob, that it was spouting utter bollocks.
He stayed by the door, wincing as she approached the open lift shaft. He silently begged her not to look down, but his thoughts just weren’t enough. She stood on the edge, her face showed him the misery and trauma that her work had caused to the poor souls at the bottom of that shaft. He opened his mouth as far as it would go and pushed his fist in there.
What the fuck was going on inside his head? How could he know any of these things? Several long shadows grew along the far wall on the other side of the fire door which put paid to any more notions of him suddenly becoming psychic. You didn’t need to know the future to understand that if they stayed here any longer, they would be dead. He burst through the door, wrapped his arm around Jenny’s waist and pulled her out of the room. “We need to go, right now. There’s company arriving. Lots of them too.”
He kept hold of her hand then raced towards to next set of fire doors. He pulled them open and pushed Jenny through before easing them shut. They had only just made it. Jordan peered through the small window and watched as dozens of dead things piling into that room. He’d only just got her out in time.
“Are you okay? I mean, can you continue?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m just a little shaken up, that’s all. How did you…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Your inner voice again, I suppose. Doesn’t matter. Come on, we’re nearly there.”
She stood up. Jordan caught her arm. “Wait. Before we go any further. I need you to tell me what we’re dealing with here and how you’re involved.”
"I'm not too sure that you want to know, Jordan. I mean, I can already tell from the way you've been looking down at me that I've already lost your respect, and I..." She look at the floor. "Sorry, I don't know where that came from."
Jordan put her arms around her waist. "Please tell me?" He lifted her chin and kissed her gently. "Please?"
She sighed. "Despite all the damage and loss of life, none of this was deliberate. Jenny leaned back against the wall. "How insane is that? We created the ultimate doomsday weapon while trying to save our species. They were experimenting on introducing hybridised fungal spores into selected human genomes with the aim of strengthening the immune system. We discovered some mycelium DNA strands had the ability to combat and destroy mutated cells from almost every cancer we know about."
"A cure for cancer," he murmured.
"Essentially yes. The initial tests exceeded all of our expectations. The animal testing commenced a few weeks ago."
Jenny abruptly stopped.
"Go on," he urged. "Then what?"
"That's as much as I know. Last month, they transferred me to another department. I was due back but then this happened. Something had gone seriously wrong."
"No shit," he muttered. "The human species is almost dead. Gee, thanks for that. We'll, I guess you could say that the experiment worked as I bet there's hardly any more cancer cases now. Congratulations." When her face dropped he eased back on the condemnation. "Sorry. Mouth in gear before brain is online again."
She shrugged "There's no need to apologise. It's nothing that I haven't already thought about, over and over."
"So, why are we back, Jenny?"
"There's still a chance to stop this thing, that's why. I know we can't bring the dead and infected back to life but there is a chance to stop this from spreading any further. You know, to help the few survivors stay alive."
"Okay. I'm hooked. How are we going to do that?"
"That's simple," she replied. "We're going to make it rain." Jenny walked past him. "We have to go down a couple more levels yet. She stopped by the stairwell. "Prepare yourself, Jordan. I have a feeling that it'll get a bit more intense the closer we get to the main lab." She pushed open the stairway door. "It's a bit dark down here as well. You had better watch yourself."
Jordan followed her down the hard steps, keeping his fingers clasped tight around the metal hand-rail. Jenny wasn't kidding about the darkness. As soon as that fire door closed, it took away most of the available light, leaving a narrow beam, seeping into the stairwell from the gap between the doors and the floor but even that disappeared the moment he reached the first landing.
He finally reached the bottom.
"There's an emergency switch box on the wall to your left, Jordan. See if you can find it? I don't understand what's happened. Every other electrical system is operating as it should. Weird, it's like someone manually turned off the main lighting. Why would anybody want to do that?"
He kept silent, believing that Jenny would not like his answer. He ran his hands along the smooth wall surface. A moment later, Jordan's fingers hit a solid box. He felt around until he found what he hoped was the switch. "Okay, I think this is it." Jordan pulled the lever down and red light bathed the stairwell and the room directly in front of them.
"Come on, Jordan," she whispered. "This way."
Jenny led him through the first room. It looked like some kind of storage area. Metal shelving lined the inner walls. They also formed two lines, cutting the room into three long corridors. She pulled him down the middle aisle. Halfway down, Jordan caught something move on the other side of the shelves. He stopped and pulled her down while motioning Jenny to keep quiet. Jordan turned his head to the side. He wasn't wrong, there was something in here with them!
He crawled towards an upturned cardboard box, while watching through the gaps as a creature, larger t
han a man shuffled through the room. It didn't act like it knew they were in the same room. Jordan had no idea how long that would last, not when it was approaching the end of the shelving. If it took just two steps to the left it wouldn't fail to see them!
What the hell was it? He looked at Jenny to see if she could supply an answer but she simply looked away, her eyes full of tears. Jordan took that as confirmation to not just what it was but who.
A walking fucking mushroom. That's the best description he could give it. This thing seemed to be covered in some kind of soft fungal tissue, obliterating most of its human features. The stuff even covered the head, leaving a pair of diamond shaped slits for where the eyes should be.
The only aberration to the otherwise homogeneous design were the arms. Their unnatural length reminded Jordan of a gorilla's arms but without the bulked muscle. They looked more like flexible thin pipes which ended with three curved sickle-like claws.
He waited for a another second to ensure it was as far away as possible to them before pushing Jenny forward. The door out of here wasn't too far. If they hurried, they might get out of here without that weird thing even noticing them. Jenny had started shaking again. He gently squeezed her arm, hoping it might help to calm her down. He guided her closer to the door, hoping somebody was there to calm him down.
They were almost there. He glanced over his shoulder to check the whereabouts of that monster before they got the hell out of here. It had gone! The damn thing must have left the room and gone up those steps. Jordan pushed his heart back down his throat and stood up. He then pulled Jenny onto her feet, too. “I think we’re safe,” he said, grinning. It must have…”
A pair of highly flexible arms shot through a narrow gap between the shelving. The ends fastened onto his shotgun and wrenched the weapon out of Jordan’s hands.
It dropped the gun on the other side of the shelving and they whipped back through the gap, this time, those curved blades headed straight for Jordan’s face! Jenny pulled him down right at the last second. She pointed to the doorway. Another one of those mushroom monsters was heading into the room. What were they going to do? The first monster had given up trying to grab him through the gap in the shelves and decided to go for the easier option. It had already reached the end of the shelving.
Jenny pushed him down. She tapped the floor. It took Jordan a moment to work out what she was suggesting. He looked back at the way they had come in and then to where they were supposed to go next before he laid flat on the floor and followed Jenny by sliding his body under the metal shelving.
He gritting his teeth and pushed his hand hard against his thigh while he watched the monster’s huge, bladed feet shuffle closer and closer to their position. As the monster neared, its foul stink became more apparent. Jordan attempted to block his nose to avoid the dirty smell. It reminded him of rotten vegetables mixed with mouldy leaves. It grew so thick that he could taste it. He then realised why. The other monster had just entered the room.
The first one suddenly moved away from their hiding place. It literally launched itself at the newcomer. The newcomer had no chance. It was half the size and Jordan believed that it wasn’t aware the the room already had its own resident freaky mushroom monster. The battle was conducted in relative silence. They made no noise while they bit into each other’s soft bodies and their arm blades sliced into whatever they had for flesh. From his position, the stuff falling off their thick bodies looked like wet, cloudy sponge.
The newcomer abruptly keeled over and the original creature leaned over and slowly began scooping out the dead monster’s soft insides and pushing the stuff into it’s mouth. Jenny tapped him on the leg. He nodded. It was now or never. They had to move while it was distracted. He slid out from under the shelving and helped Jenny. She got to her feet and began to move, only for Jordan to catch her arm.
“Two seconds,” he hissed.
She immediately understood his intention and violently shook her head. He went anyway. Jordan ran over to the shelving and the other side and dropped to the floor then slid under the bottom. The shotgun was almost within his grasp when the creature pulled its blades out of the other dead thing’s guts. It turned and lowered its head all the way down. Jordan gazed at those bright red diagonal slits for a second then reached for the shotgun. The monster ran at the shelving. He cried out. His fingers slipped out of the trigger guard. Its blades snapped forward. Jordan managed to squeezed the trigger and his whole universe exploded. He felt a pair of hands wrap around his ankles and he allowed them to pull him back out from under the metal shelving. She was shouting at him but he couldn’t hear a single word. The ringing in his ears blocked everything. He pointed to the shotgun in the hope that would pacify her but it only made her worse. In the end, Jordan did the only thing he could think of. He placed the shotgun on the shelving wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.
“I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry about risking my life but we need the weapon. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
She pulled him back. The anger was still there but it didn’t look as intense. Jenny replied with similar words before taking his hand. He grabbed the gun and allowed Jenny to take him out of the room.
They traversed through a maze of featureless, grey corridors. Due to the ringing, he heard nothing but knew the area wasn’t totally silent thanks to Jenny jumping out of her skin on at least three occasions. They, thankfully, were confronted with no more vile monsters although Jenny had pressed them to the wall just before they reached another junction. Jordan didn’t need his ears to know that one of the mushroom monsters had passed them. His nose told him that.
Jenny stopped beside the first door they reached. “Can you hear me yet?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I can now, but the ringing is still there.”
“Lets just hope there’s no permanent damage.” Jenny pushed her ID card into the slot beside the door and opened the door wide enough to push her head through. “Oh no!” she gasped, pulling her head back. Jenny looked straight at him. “Maybe it was a good idea to go back for the gun after all!”
“What, what’s wrong? What’s in there?”
“It’s what I’d feared,” she replied. Jenny took a deep breath. “I think I know what happened now, what they did wrong. You need to prepare yourself, Jordan. It’s going to get a little gross and you are so going to need that shotgun.”
“Wait, tell me. I need to know”
Jenny opened the door wide enough so he could look inside. Three rows of glass tubes. Each one about three metres high and about two metres in diameter. Bubbling yellow liquid filled them. He tentatively followed her inside, still waiting for her to reply. He stopped beside the first tube and placed his hand against the glass, a little surprised to find the surface hot. There was a white label, the size of a paperback attached the the tube. He leaned forward and attempted to ready the black text. He couldn’t make any sense of it.
Jordan removed his hand then tapped twice. He cried out in shock when a thin hand, covered in thick fungal growth slapped the inside of the container. “What the fuck? There’s people in there.” He glared at Jenny. “That’s a person!” Jordan looked at the other tubes. “Oh Christ, are they all full of people? What have they done to them, Jenny?”
She walked towards him but he jumped back. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t know about this.”
She slowly nodded. “I knew about it, alright but, I secretly hoped that it wouldn’t come to this. I honestly believed we wouldn’t need to go to full human testing. In fact, it’s that which made them transfer me to another department.”
“No, don’t try to wiggle out of this. This is fucking grotesque.”
“I know, I agree. The government obviously believed that the sacrifice was worth it though. They were the ones who sanctioned the final testing, they also supplied the subjects.”
He blinked. “Wait, what?”
“The subjects were all prisoners. They were condemned to die an
yway. Rapists, child killers…”
“Stop, just stop right there. We don’t execute prisoners any more.”
“Sure they do,” she replied. “They just don’t tell anyone.” Jenny tried to hold his hand again, only for him to pull back. “Stop doing that, you idiot!” she hissed. Jenny grabbed him and pulled Jordan closer. “Look over there. I think that’s where our two earlier friends came from.”
He followed her glance and saw that further inside the room, three of the glass tubes were shattered. A lake of thick yellow fluid lay around their bases. “Shit, there’s another broken tube.” He caught his breath when the implication dawned on him. “Oh shit, there must be another one loose!” He stood back and leaned against the wall and brought the gun up. “Where could it be?”
She moved a little to the left.
“Can you see it?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s here.”
Jordan rushed over. “Don’t get too close, what are you playing at?” His panic faded away when he finally caught sight of the remaining creature. It looking nothing like the others they had encountered, much smaller for a start. It wasn’t much larger than a toddler. Like the ones before, a thick fungal growth covered its entire body but this creature had no arms. Jordan couldn’t even work out where its head joined the body. It flipped over and he saw its features for the first time. Under the growth, he could make out a large pair of bright blue oval eyes, a nose and a mouth. It opened this and slivers of a translucent glue-like substance dropped onto the floor. Jordan heard a noise coming from it, the thing sounded like it was panting.
“Jordan, put it out of its misery. I think its choking. The air must be killing it. Jordan brought up the shotgun, his finger tightened on the trigger when the tube next to them started to crack. He jumped back. He looked wildly around the room and spotted another four were about to break open as well! “We have to get out of here!” he cried. Jordan raced towards the door, jumping over the choking creature as he passed it. He reached the door, spun around and pulled her through before slamming the door shut.