Wind whips through the trees and their long, leafy boughs rattle. I look toward the crop duster and wonder if I can make a break for it and grab the blaster without Albert noticing. I raise one foot to tiptoe back but I stumble and fall. I feel around with my gloves. A vine grips my ankle in a snug loop. I scratch at the ropey coil, but it only seems to squeeze tighter. A panicky feeling churns in my stomach. The whole forest is turning against us.
“There is no need to say more.” Albert trudges toward Nate. “You’ve already taken the first step of initiation.”
First step of initiation? Nothing about that sounds good.
“What are you talking about?” Nate asks, his voice more scared than angry.
I peek through the branches. Albert’s eyes glint in the darkness. “You can feel it. A tickle in the back of your throat. A tingling in your hands. The whispers. Faint now, but they’ll get louder. Rising and rising until they’re all you hear.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nate’s words come out thin. I want to run to him. To tell him that it’s a lie; there won’t be any tingling or whispers. That Albert is making it all up. But as I look at Nate, I catch a faint pulsing blue in his balled-up fists.
It’s happening. One by one, the Spore King is picking off the people I care about most. I need ammo. Now. I tear through the first bit of vine around my ankle.
But Albert suddenly takes a step back into the dense trees and away from the clearing. There’s a low murmur of voices up ahead. “We have company. Our little talk can wait.” There’s a blur of white and he’s gone.
If we’ve got more infected workers closing in, I need to hurry. I rip off the last loop of the vine and race back to the plane. I grab a few water grenades and connect the first to the end of the hose. “Maggie,” Nate calls, and there’s a stirring of branches.
“I’m here!”
Nate rushes back and skids into me. “You got those blasters filled? I know a target that needs to be sprayed down, pronto.”
“Not yet, but I’ve got a couple of grenades,” I say, dropping them into my backpack. Just then a twig snaps behind us. We both whirl around.
There’s a smudge of yellow, then we’re surrounded. But it’s not who I expected. At least ten people in bright yellow hazmat suits and heavy boots crunch toward us.
“Step away from the plane,” a voice orders, and then pulls off the hazmat mask. It’s Lydia Croft. “I see you children can’t seem to stop meddling in my private affairs.”
“Shady Pines is covered in mutant fungus,” I say, grabbing one of the empty MegaBlasters.
“The town is going to be just fine. We’ll have everything under control in no time. Now drop those water toys. You’re making a mess of things.” Lydia motions to her team and they march our way.
“Nothing is fine,” I say. “Mac Washington has a stalk growing out of his skull, the fire department has a mushroom cyclone in its front yard, and the sheriff is working for the Spore King!”
“The Spore King?” Lydia’s eyes shift to a cloud of luminous dust swirling in the shadows. “You’re getting yourself too worked up, child. Some of our regular maintenance is a little off schedule with Bell’s death, but we’re taking care of it.”
After everything I’ve seen, there’s no way I trust the Crofts to handle this. They may have the right gear, but they’re about as dependable as a pack of black widow spiders.
“No offense,” Nate chimes in, “but you’ve done a pretty stinktastic job of handling it so far. Only a crazy person would add freaky jungle fungus to their soda pop.”
At that, Charles Croft breaks away from the rest of the group. “You don’t know the first thing about running a business. That fungus has doubled our profits. One taste and customers are loyal for life.”
Nate snorts. “Loyal? Try zombified.”
Lydia tosses a dismissive hand in the air. “Absurd. I drink a case a week and I’m as healthy as can be.”
“Well, maybe nobody’s told you, but your company’s changed its management. And the new boss has a brand-spanking-new formula.”
“That’s ridiculous. No one’s replacing me,” Lydia snaps. “Charles! Bobby! Someone get these kids into the van!”
Two men grab Nate and one heads for me. I dodge under an arm and make a break toward Nate, but someone snags the straps of my backpack and I stumble. My blaster falls to the ground. I whirl around, swinging my bag, but a bulky man with a handlebar mustache already has a death grip on my wrist.
“Please! My brother’s out there,” I shout. “Let us help. We can spray stuff too.”
Lydia fluffs her silver hair. “Tempting. But no. We have a national order to ship and the last thing we need is you two stirring up trouble.”
I keep kicking and wriggling, but it doesn’t do any good. The team drags us to a Vitaccino van parked in a clearing. One of the men yanks open the back door. The air inside is muggy and smells like corn syrup.
Nate grips the top of the van. “It’s, like, a hundred degrees in there. You want us to suffocate or something?”
“You’ll survive.” The team shoves us in, slams the door, and stomps away. We’re all alone and it’s pitch black.
I fish my flashlight out of my backpack and shine it around. On both sides of the van there’s a small sliding window. I push open the one closest to me and try to poke my head out, but can only fit my nose and chin. At least we can get air. I point the light at a wall separating the back of the van from the front seat. It looks pretty solid. My flashlight flickers, then goes out. “Guess it’s gonna be a little dark.”
“I don’t think that’s our biggest problem,” Nate says.
I turn. His whole face glows sapphire blue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Nate tugs off his gloves. “I need that fungicide, Mags.”
I reach for one of the grenades in my backpack. Then I stop, remembering when Albert poured the jelly on the fungus and it sizzled up. “What if it’s not safe? What if it hurts you?”
“I’m already messed up. We don’t have anything to lose.”
He’s probably right. I should throw the grenade at him. Stopping the outbreak is what we came to the woods to do. But I just can’t bring myself to start with Nate. “Let’s see if we can get out of the van first.”
“Fine. But if one of those stalks starts sprouting out the back of my head, promise me you’ll launch every bit of mushroom killer you’ve got at me.”
“I promise.”
Nate sighs. “If I hadn’t drank all those Vitaccinos, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“We’d still be stuck in the back of this van. It’d just be a bit darker.”
Nate leans against one wall. “You would’ve put it together the second you saw all that fizzling green foam.”
“You saw it fizzle green before you drank it?”
“I was thirsty. I don’t always think things through. I just do stuff.” Nate shakes his head. “You’ve got all your big plans to be some amazing scientist. And me? We both know I can’t really grow up to be an alien robot hunter like Brigadier Ajax. That stuff is make-believe. I’m probably gonna end up being some wacked-out conspiracy theorist posting weird junk on the Internet for the rest of my life.”
I smile. “Posting weird junk on the Internet is pretty much your dream.”
“That’s true.” He peers down at his gleaming fingers. “Assuming I make it that long.”
I slide over to Nate and put my gloved hands around his. “Of course you’re going to make it. Can you imagine how boring my life would be without you? I’d probably end up ironing Gramma’s dish towels all day with no one to talk to except Pascal. And he only has so much patience for my science.”
Nate grins. “He’d probably poop on your research just to shut you up.”
“Definitely. Cats are petty like that.”
“And nobody takes poo-covered research seriously.”
“They really don’t,” I say, and rest my head aga
inst the side of the van. The air’s so thick it feels like I’m inhaling molasses. It even has a buzz to it.
I glance at the window. A bee creeps along the opening. It pulses aquamarine. I stand to swat it away, but the hum gets louder. One by one, a growing army of bees, moths, and beetles coat the glass and make their way into the van. I scuttle back.
“Mags?” Nate whimpers. “Please tell me there’s no spiders in that mess of nightmares.”
“There’s no spid–”
Just then a dark mass wriggles across the glass and crawls in. It’s a fist-size orb-weaver spider with yellow stripes zigzagging down its sides. A long, skinny bean sprout rises from its head.
“We need to get out of here,” I say. “Right now.”
“Spider!” Nate squeals. “Not okay! NOT OKAY!”
I drop to my back and start kicking the wall that separates us from the front of the van. The combination of trash bag suit, heat, and stomping makes me light-headed.
Something tickles the back of my hand. I look down. Black and gold fuzzy body. Paper-thin wings. Stalk. It’s the bumblebee moth I once hoped would lead me to scientific glory. But now I know its third antenna isn’t an antenna at all, but a spore-filled weapon. And from the size of it, I’d say it’s ready to burst any minute.
I start kicking again and Nate joins in, his face glistening with a layer of sweat. The wall doesn’t budge.
“Why are we doing this? It’s made of steel,” Nate pants.
I give another kick and the bumblebee moth glides into the air, its wings brushing my swim goggles as it goes. I pull the handkerchief over my nose, even though it makes it harder to breathe. White powder falls from the stalk onto the cloth. I hold my breath and the inside of the van blurs. My legs give way and drop to the floor with a thump. Tiny white stars flick at the sides of my vision.
Nate quits kicking too and lies crumpled on his side. “This is it, isn’t it?”
I don’t have enough air to answer him. The sawing of the insects drowns out everything.
As I drift into the darkness, there’s a metallic creak. A gust of air flows into the van and light spills over us.
“Nathaniel,” a voice hums. “Join us.”
I turn. The back doors of the van are wide open. But there’s no one there. Only a cloud of turquoise insects in the vague shape of a man. The wind stirs and the cloud blows apart until all that’s left is the moonlit woods.
We crawl out and collapse on the dirt. I pull my bandanna down and suck in the fresh air. It’s hot and humid but at least there’s plenty of it.
After several big gulps, I sit up. Nate’s got a far-away look in his eye like he’s listening to distant music… or voices only he can hear.
“Let’s see if we can round up those MegaBlasters,” I say.
Nate stands, but his steps are slow and wobbly. When we make it back to the crop duster, the Vitaccino crew is gone but so are our MegaBlasters. Only the siphon pump remains, dangling from the crop duster like a flung-out spaghetti noodle.
“I’ve still got the pack of grenades,” I say. “We can fill them up while we’re here.” I drop to my knees and start connecting a grenade to the hose.
Nate kicks at the dirt. “Those stinkin’ bats have really nastied up this place.”
I push a few of the little black pellets of bat guano away with the side of my boot and try to focus on the grenades. As I fill, Nate paces, alternating between dramatic sighs and comments like, “I can feel my bones fungifying!” It’s oddly comforting. As long as he’s being theatrical, I know he’s still mostly himself. I get half a dozen grenades filled and stuffed into my backpack before there’s a murmur of nearby voices.
“Which gang of jerk-faces do you think that is? Spore King Army or Vitaccino Hazmats?” Nate asks.
“Let’s find out.” I grab my bag and we creep past scrubby bushes and fallen tree limbs. We come to a grassy ridge and peer down at the mushroom field below.
“The national order is all that matters,” Lydia says to the hazmat team circled around her. “We need the workers picking at full speed.”
“What about Albert?” Superintendent Silverton asks. “You think he’s still hiding out in the woods somewhere?”
“It doesn’t matter. If he shows up, he’s fired,” Lydia answers. “He’s been making trouble for far too long.”
A swirling gust lifts my hair and the mushrooms in the field flicker, then go dark again. Nate shakes his head. “We know where this is going.”
Lydia spins around. “Albert? Is that you?”
The forest moans as Albert Eldridge glides out from its depths, his jacket billowing behind him. “In the flesh… or whatever is left.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nate and I duck behind a tangle of vines. We’ve got a view of the whole field from here but are safely tucked out of sight.
“Albert?” Lydia flicks two fingers, signaling for the hazmat team to come close. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I’ve undergone some changes.” Neon veins spring up in the earth between Albert and the hazmat team. Glistening light ripples through the woods in rivers of electric color.
Charles Croft gapes at the ground. “What? How are you doing that?”
“I knew you’d been a little out of sorts… but this is something else altogether,” Lydia murmurs.
“I have you to thank.” A musty smell wafts up from the ground and I pinch my nose. “The day you sent me here to dispose of the rats, I met Ophio. It’s made me a new man.”
Charles whistles, and the men in yellow suits form a half circle around him and Lydia. “We’ve got a business to run. We’re putting an end to your little freak show. After that, you can find yourself a new job. You’re finished here.”
“This is only just beginning.” He tilts his head and Ezra, along with the rest of Albert’s minions, emerge from the woods. “Together we will usher in an entirely new species. Part fungus, part man.”
Charles slowly shakes his head. “You’re completely insane.”
“Seeing is believing.” Albert raises one hand and his workers take a step toward the Crofts. Ezra’s eyes are glazed and there’s a blank expression on his face.
This has gone too far. I need Ezra to snap out of his trance. Dad always had this way of saying our names whenever one of us was in a mood. No matter what, it’d smooth things over. I spring from our hiding place. “Ezra!”
Nate jumps up after me. “I don’t think that’s a good plan!” he whisper-yells.
“Ezra!” I call again. But I don’t sound like Dad. I sound screechy and panicked and small.
Lydia whirls toward me and Nate. “You two are the peskiest children I’ve ever known!”
Ezra doesn’t glance our way. His skin shines a swamp-water green and his hair is ashy with a layer of powder. I press my handkerchief tight around my nose. “You’ve got to fight it, Ezra!”
“The time for fighting is over,” Albert says, his translucent blue eyes falling on me.
“You need medicine, sir,” I say. “You could get well again. Go back home.”
“The forest is my home now,” Albert answers. “And my family are all who join me here.” He inhales and the veins in the ground crack wider. Long-limbed fungi the shape of sea crabs sprout from the crevasses.
“That fungus has rotted your brain.” Charles scrambles away from the mushrooms as his team lugs an industrial- size hose through the woods.
“I wouldn’t speak that way if I were you.” Albert’s workers march toward the Crofts’ crew.
“There’s something wrong with the connection, sir,” one of the men in yellow suits says, giving the hose a shake.
“Fix it. Now!” Charles snaps.
“How unfortunate.” Albert smiles, a cloud of spores spinning from his finger.
I dump the grenades out of my backpack and grab two. I can’t stand by and let everyone get infected. Even if they’re bad guys. I hurl both grenades at Albert’s head. They explode
and white foam coats his face. I pelt his torso with two more grenades. Fizzy white bubbles run down his chest.
He drops to his knees. “It burns!”
“Why did you have to go snooping around, Albert? If you’d just eliminated the rats like we told you, you’d be fine. You’ve only got yourself to blame,” Lydia says, giving Albert an “I told you so” glare.
Just then, the man with the handlebar mustache emerges from the woods. “The hose is fixed, sir. This punk disconnected it.” He’s dragging Nate behind him.
“Nate? Why would you do that?” But as the words leave my mouth I know the answer. Nate’s eyes twitch from me to Albert’s horde.
He wants to join them. He wants to follow Albert.
“Spray them. All of them,” Lydia says, coming to Charles’s side.
Albert sits in a crumpled heap, but the team tugs the hose toward him anyway. A blast of white squirts out, blanketing Albert and the others in liquid foam. The air is white with vapor. I race toward Ezra, but I can’t find him in the cloud of fungicide. I can’t find anyone.
After what feels like an eternity, the spray runs dry. The air clears and the men drag the hose back like a dead snake. Everything is still. Bodies are sprawled everywhere. I’m not sure if Nate’s down on the ground or if he’s managed to escape to the woods.
The fungicide might not have killed them, but nobody’s moving. Who knows what kind of shape they’ll be in when they wake? They might never be the same again. “We need to help them!”
But Lydia and her team keep moving, not paying me a bit of attention.
There’s shuffling as the hazmat team moves through the field. “Clean this up,” Lydia orders. “And get the girl out of here.”
As one of the Vitaccino goons approaches, the ground under my feet vibrates. The wind whips through the trees and the light of the mushrooms quivers.
Albert Eldridge rises to his feet. He gives himself a shake and frothy white clouds roll off his shoulders.
Charles takes a step back. “Impossible.”
The Mutant Mushroom Takeover Page 14