by David Koepp
But within minutes there was a fungal party raging inside all five of their systems that could not be stopped or curfewed. The fungus entered the most productive phase in its history, joyfully increasing its biomass through the perfectly balanced human carbon-nitrogen ratio of 12:1. It started with a familiar, if accelerated, growth-expansion-expulsion pattern inside Wino, whose blood alcohol content provided additional glucose. While Griffin was outside the locker door, ordering Teacake to remove the lock, Wino was bulging, screaming, and bursting inside the locker, to the extreme consternation of the others. Cedric and Garbage went in the next thirty seconds, swelling and rupturing in quick succession. Ironhead and Cuba, their systems lagging behind, were left to scream in horror.
But then something extraordinary happened. The growth in the last two human hosts slowed down. Intentionally. Perhaps the fungus recognized the limited supply of human tissue and the confined space of the storage locker. Or maybe it registered that the walls of the locker, to which it was now largely affixed, were of limited food value, or maybe it even bore some sort of cellular memory of the successful result of the slowed-down fruiting and bursting process it had gone through with Mike. Whatever the reason, it tamped down its formerly unbridled surge of growth. The processes consuming the bodies and minds of Cuba and Ironhead, the last remaining humans inside the locker, actually decelerated. This implied, if not volition, then at least airborne endocrine signaling—a cell’s ability to transmit information and instructions beyond its own walls. Cordyceps novus had, for the first time since its initial human contacts in the Australian outback, modified its mechanism of control.
The fungus racing through the brains of Ironhead and Cuba got the message and curtailed its development. Their brains were allowed to retain a measure of autonomous control, but the fungus wiped out massive portions of their amygdalas, home to their fear and panic centers. As a result, they thought everything was okay. They thought they were still in charge.
“All’s cool, man,” Ironhead said through the door, to Griffin. “Just got a little hairy there for a second.”
Griffin turned the key in the lock and unlocked the door.
Thirty-One
A full hazmat suit weighs about ten pounds, the oxygen tank and breathing apparatus another twenty-one, and the T-41 unit Teacake had strapped to his back was nearly sixty. That meant every step he took, he was moving an additional ninety pounds over his own body weight, give or take. His shoulders ached almost right away as the straps bit into them through the suit, his thighs started to burn after the first dozen steps, and by the time they reached the front door of the building the sweat was running down his neck and into the suit. Naomi had less weight on her back, but the burden of being the sole lookout and guard, coupled with the amount of effort it took to keep turning from side to side in the bulky suit, meant she was expending as much effort as he was. The gun in her hand felt like a stone.
They’d gotten into the suits quickly enough, with Roberto’s help. The idea of climbing back down the ladder in the bulky things was harder to imagine, but they tried not to think too far ahead. Roberto secured the suits around their wrists, ankles, faces, necks, and waists, and showed them how to use the two-way radios in their headsets. He flirted briefly with the notion that he could somehow Bluetooth his cell phone into their headsets but gave up on the idea. There wasn’t much he could have done to help them from this point anyway. He’d shown them both how to arm and activate the T-41, which was fairly straightforward. It had been designed for soldiers in the field to operate under pressure, and simplicity was at its core. That, and fissile fuel that could sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
There was no third suit for Roberto. Teacake had asked why he’d brought two in the first place, and Roberto had just looked at him blankly. “For the same reason I brought two of everything else. What if one breaks?” Roberto would never understand some people.
With that he wished them luck, told them to hurry, and sent them on their way into the building. He watched them walk toward the front doors the way a parent watches his kid walk into a freshman dorm for the first time, thinking of a thousand things he should have said, a million pieces of advice he could have given, and knowing it was too late for all of that. Roberto knew he should be the one wearing the pack. He knew it should be him carrying it down to sub-level 4 himself and, if necessary, waiting there with it to ensure successful detonation, the way he and Trini and Gordon had planned and discussed thirty years ago. And he also knew with complete certainty that he couldn’t. Accepting that reality and trusting two twentysomethings he’d met fifteen minutes ago was the most difficult decision he’d ever made in his life. But he’d had no choice.
Of course, he’d left himself a failsafe. A contingency for the contingency. He hadn’t shared that part with Teacake and Naomi. They had plenty of information already, more than they could probably handle, and the rest would be revealed at the exact moment they needed to know it.
He watched them open the doors and walk into the building, then turned his attention to the parking area in front. Next order of business: make sure nobody goes anywhere. He pulled the Ka-Bar from the sleeve on his thigh and started with Teacake’s Honda Civic, parked on the far right side. He drove the blade deep into the edge of the back right tire and jerked it forward six inches. A puncture would take too long to drain the air and was no guarantee the car couldn’t limp out of the parking lot, but a slash did the job immediately. The tire deflated, and he moved on to the other rear wheel and did the same thing. The car’s chassis dropped a few inches. Anybody who tried to drive it now would be on the rims by the time they turned around, and the axle would snap before they got up the driveway.
The Harleys were easier; he only had to stab and slash one tire on each bike. They maybe could have limped out of the lot with a flat rear, but a flat front would break the fork. Nobody was driving out of this place unless they took his Mazda, and you can have my minivan keys when you pry them from my cold, dead hand.
He’d slashed four of the bikes and had three to go when his cell phone rang. He touched the Bluetooth in his ear to answer.
“You have incoming,” Abigail said.
Roberto straightened sharply and looked around. “Where?”
“Around the corner of the building. Ten seconds. Male, moving fast, major heat signature.”
Roberto turned, taking a few quick steps to his left, toward the front door, far enough to clear the sight line between him and the eastern edge of the building. He pulled the machine pistol from a holster on his hip and flipped the safety off with his right thumb. With his left hand he reached up and pulled down his thermal imaging goggles, which activated with a hum and a whir, showing the landscape in vivid purple-and-orange-tinted images. He didn’t need the goggles for light; there was plenty to see by, and more streamed around the corner of the building as the motion sensor lights went on, triggered by whoever was running toward him.
What Roberto needed was heat detection. When he’d first put on the goggles and looked at the hillside, the bits of fungus scattered there had glowed a warm red, and traces of that same red were visible in the open trunk of Mike’s abandoned car. There was live growth in those areas, and the chemical reactions of the growing fungus gave off heat. If he could see the heat, he could avoid contact with the fungus and could get a quick read on whether a human being was infected. It would be pleasant to avoid killing innocent people. If possible.
Roberto’s eyes stung at a sudden blast of harsh yellow inside the goggles, every last cone in his retinas getting a wake-up call at the exact same moment. He hadn’t fully adjusted when the figure came barreling around the corner of the building, looking less like a human being through the goggles than a blazing, burning, white-hot chunk of melted iron.
That answered the infection question.
“Get this shit off me!” the figure screamed.
Roberto didn’t pause to wonder how the man in motorcycle leathers had come to be
completely covered front and back in mutating fungus yet still remain in possession of his faculties. He just aimed the machine pistol, pulled the trigger, and put five rounds in the center of Dr. Steven Friedman’s chest.
A Heckler & Koch machine pistol has a short-recoil action, meaning the barrel moves back sharply, rotates the link, and causes the rear of the tube to tip down and disengage from the slide. It’s a hard, jerking motion, and its effect on the shooter is usually mitigated by putting a stabilizing hand on the front handle. Because he’d had so little reaction time and he needed his left hand to pull down and activate the goggles, Roberto had been forced to fire the gun with one hand. That in itself was no big deal, all it meant was that his right elbow needed to be snugged up against his right hip to reduce uncontrolled movement. He’d made that firing maneuver dozens of times in the field and at the range.
But he’d never done it at the age of sixty-eight.
His body absorbed the first three recoils without incident, but on the fourth one his back rebelled. The spasm was sudden and fierce, the low back tissues seizing up and sending a red alert throughout his nervous system. The recoil from the fifth shot, which Roberto’s brain had already ordered before he could countermand it and remove his finger from the trigger, finished the job.
A blinding pain lit itself on fire in his back and lower extremities, and Roberto’s legs went out from under him. He collapsed, hitting the ground just a second after Dr. Friedman did, the difference being that the dentist’s problems were over for good and Roberto’s were just beginning. He landed on his side and rolled helplessly onto his back, staring up at the stars overhead. He knew immediately, the way you know, that he hadn’t just pulled something, he’d torn it in half. Could be ligaments, could be tendons, or maybe he’d ruptured a disk. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that he couldn’t move.
Thirty-Two
A few minutes earlier, outside unit G-413, Griffin had removed the lock from the hasp on the door, turned the handle, and swung the overhead door open. He and Dr. Friedman both recoiled, involuntarily falling back a few steps. The visual was bad enough—there were three dead bodies in there, or at least their barely recognizable remains—but what had overcome them was the stench. Intense chemical reactions give off intense odors, densely packed clouds of fetid molecules that invade the nasal passages and cling to the olfactory sensors. The rancid waves of smell that rolled out of the storage unit were dense and alive. They overwhelmed all other senses for a moment.
The now highly mobile Cordyceps novus, hitchhiking aboard the bodies of the people once known as Ironhead and Cuba, stepped calmly out of the unit and smiled.
“What up, Griff?” Ironhead asked.
Cuba winked at Dr. Friedman.
The uninfected stared at the infected with horror. Though Cuba’s and Ironhead’s outward expressions were calm, friendly even, there was no mistaking their sickness. A strange color had seeped into their faces, and the telltale swelling of their abdomens had begun, albeit more slowly and smaller, since the fungus had modified its takeover approach. Still, there were vast and rapid changes occurring in the victims’ body chemistry, and beneath the skin of their faces, necks, and hands, there was movement—a seethe, a roiling of their bloodstreams that was visible to the naked eye.
Dr. Friedman, who had seen a lot of rotted gums and decayed molars in his day, had never seen this. He staggered back, screaming. Afraid to turn his back on Ironhead and Cuba, he failed to notice he was moving directly toward Mike Snyder’s remains, which were now a viscous, slippery coating on the floor and wall of the hallway behind him. Dr. Friedman hit the edge of the slick and his feet went out from under him. He fell, spinning, and landed facedown in the murk of green. He screamed again, lifted his hands, and stared in terror at the excited fungal residue there. He whipped his hands around in the air, trying to shake the clingy substance off, but it held fast. He slapped his hands back down, right in the middle of it, to push off the floor and stand up. His right hand slipped out from under him, he fell back down, onto his side, rolled over onto his back, and thrust himself back up on his feet.
Now covered front and back in fungus, Dr. Friedman looked up at Griffin and the others, eyes wide, mouth agape, struck mute.
Griffin, who still had his gun in his right hand, swung it around and pointed it at Dr. Friedman, then panicked as he realized he was leaving Ironhead and Cuba uncovered and swung it back to them. “What the fuck is going on what the fuck what the fuck?” was all he could spit out.
Blind with panic, Dr. Friedman turned and ran. The others stood between him and the main exit, but he’d seen both Teacake and Naomi run in the other direction, which meant there was probably a side entrance to be found someplace. He barreled down the hallway, around the corner, and saw a red Exit sign lit up at the far end. He ran toward it as fast as he could. Raising his right hand, he looked at the fungus while he ran. It was on the move too, wrapping around his fingers and penetrating his pores, pushing the openings in his skin wider and wider, clawing its way into his system.
Through bobbing vision, he saw a door up ahead, the one with the hole in the glass that Mike had smashed earlier. He ran toward it, knowing only that if he could get to his Harley he could go someplace safe, somewhere he could wash this stuff off him and figure out what the hell was happening. Maybe he would drive straight to the hospital.
He banged through the door, hit the night air, and felt a tiny bit better. Still moving as fast as he could, he cut right and ran along the outer edge of the building. Motion sensor lights flicked on as he passed them. There was a strange warmth spreading in his chest—maybe it was just the exertion, he thought, but then he got the distinct and unsettling feeling that his scalp was crawling. It was as if he wore a toupee and it had come to life, moving around his head at will. Yes, for sure the hospital, he told himself as he neared the corner of the building, I am definitely going to the hospital—where am I again? which one is closest?—oh yeah, Waukesha Memorial on Highway 18, that’s it, I’ll go straight there, but shit, I wonder if I can still ride, he thought as a dizzy fog started to descend on his brain.
He rounded the corner of the building, now certain that he couldn’t handle a Harley in this condition—hell, he could barely ride one when he was in full possession of his faculties. So when he saw the guy standing there, the guy with the funny goggles on and something in his right hand, he was relieved—This guy can help me, this guy can do something.
“Get this shit off me!” he shouted to the man in the goggles.
Then the something in the guy’s right hand spat fire a few times, something heavy and hot slammed into the dentist’s chest, and he started to fall. That’s weird, he thought as the ground came up at him. I get that I’ve just been shot, but why is the guy with the gun falling too?
Dr. Friedman hit the ground, still alive for a few more seconds, and saw his right hand erupt in what looked like green mushrooms. He knew he was dying.
Probably just as well, he thought.
Thirty-Three
Teacake and Naomi were halfway down the tube ladder when Teacake realized he was going to have to get the rest of the way there mostly blind. It was too bad, because their entrance into the building and move to the elevator had gone more smoothly than they’d anticipated. Hearing the shouts from the hallway near Griffin’s storage locker, they’d cut to the left, gone down a parallel hallway, and made it to the elevator without incident.
Teacake had insisted on going down the ladder first, because the T-41 was a son of a bitch on his back, and his legs were trembling with lactic acid before they got to the first rung. He was by no means confident he was going to be able to make it all the way down without slipping and falling, and the backpack was so large it was pressed firmly up against the wall of the tube. If he fell and Naomi was below him, he would take her all the way down too. Couldn’t let that happen.
Everything about the suit made the climb down diff
icult. The gloves were clunky, and his hands moved around inside them, which made his grip on the ladder uncertain. Shifting his weight from one rung to the next required full concentration and a bit of luck. The pack scraped along the wall as he went down, producing friction that slowed him and made every movement harder than it needed to be. But worst of all was the clouded mask.
The effort of lugging the extra ninety pounds that far had been grueling, and he was sweating profusely by the time they started down the ladder. The sweat wasn’t the problem—that was just uncomfortable—but the inside of the plastic shield was fogging up from his labored breathing. The suit’s oxygen recirculating system had been designed with some amount of condensation in mind, but not this much. The designers had never anticipated a full-body workout while wearing the suit, and the heat and CO2 that Teacake was throwing off were more than it could compensate for.
“I can’t see,” he said to Naomi through the radio.
“What?” she replied.
“I can’t see!” he shouted into the mask. Great, he thought, one of us is blind and the other one’s deaf. This should be a breeze.
Naomi, indeed, had problems of her own. Climbing down with two hands had been difficult enough with no suit, but now she faced all the same obstacles as Teacake, plus she was clutching a fully loaded Glock 19. She’d had to climb every rung with her left hand, while her right held the gun free. That meant her left arm, her weaker arm, had been doing all the work, and it already burned so badly she almost couldn’t feel it.