Spores

by Ike Hamill

  “Because we’ll both die,” he reminded himself with a whisper. That fact seemed to matter less and less. It might be worth it to die just so he wouldn’t have to feel so helpless anymore.

  “That’s crazy,” he whispered. It was true, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

  Finally, the rope jerked in his hands. It wasn’t the two quick pulls that would mean that Leonard wanted to be dragged in—it was tugging spasmodically. For an instant, Patrice hesitated. What if it wasn’t Leonard on the other end of the rope? What if, instead, it was something horrible that had been waiting under the ice. Some cold-blooded amphibian that they had lured, unwittingly using Leonard as bait, had grabbed ahold of the rope and was waiting for Patrice to pull so it could claw and scramble across the ice and devour him.

  Before that thought even left his head, Patrice started to pull. Unconsciously, he rose to his knees, pulling hand over hand despite the cracks and protests from the ice below. Leonard breached—a waterlogged carcass attached to the rope. Patrice pulled anyway, even though he suspected that Leonard might already be dead.

  “That’s crazy,” he whispered again.

  The rope stopped, an immovable object, when Leonard reached the edge of the ice.

  “Kick!” Patrice yelled. “Kick.”

  He pulled but all it accomplished was sliding himself towards the hole in the ice. There was nothing for him to pull against except the tiny amount of friction he could create against the ice. Patrice splayed himself flat, trying to increase his friction with more surface area in contact. Even lying prone, when he tried to pull on the rope, his own body slid more than Leonard’s.

  And Patrice was well out into the bad ice. The surface below him yielded a little too much every time he thrashed. That gave him an idea. Patrice clenched his teeth and kicked a steel-toed boot at the ice. The reverberation rattled up his leg. He kicked again and his toe broke into the top surface, giving him a tiny foothold. With that anchor, he pulled again. Leonard’s feet were now churning the surface of the water as he kicked.

  With Leonard kicking and Patrice pulling, Leonard slid up over the edge of the ice. Patrice kept the rope taut while Leonard wrestled something blue up over the edge.

  Leonard grunted out something unintelligible. Patrice understood anyway. Leonard was set.

  Patrice pulled with everything he had and it got easier with each pull. Leonard was sliding across the ice, one arm extended in front, attached to the rope, and the other arm dragging a blue thing. Patrice raised up and found that he could now pull from his knees without sliding. He wiggled his way backwards, towards better ice and tried to get a look at what Leonard was dragging. He had the sinking sense that it was a dead person. Patrice tried desperately to remember what the snowmobiler had been wearing.

  When Patrice backed onto solid ice, he got to his feet. He had to keep up the speed. When Leonard slowed down, even a little, his wet clothes threatened to stick to the ice.

  Leonard didn’t even try to move until Patrice quit pulling. He seemed to understand that his job was to be perfectly dead weight while Patrice dragged him to safety.

  Leonard reached solid ice and Patrice moved towards him, pulling the rope now to close the distance faster. Leonard looked creaky as he tried to rise.

  “What is it?” Patrice asked.

  Leonard looked back at the cuff he was clutching and dropped his grip. The question felt stupid coming out of Patrice’s mouth—he knew what it was. It was the corpse of whomever had plunged through the ice. That was obvious from the shape of it.

  “Where’s the… where’s the head?” Patrice asked, managing to articulate the obvious problem.

  The jumpsuit was filled out, like it must contain a body, but at the neck and wrists, there was no sign of the inhabitant. Somewhere down in the water, something had made off with the head and hands. Patrice remembered his notion of an icy cold amphibian down there and took a half-step back before he could stop himself.

  “I didn’t…” Leonard started to say.

  Before he could finish, the jumpsuit collapsed. Starting at the neck, whatever had kept the jumpsuit inflated dissipated. It fell in on itself, collapsing like a line of dominoes. Patrice’s fillings ached and he realized that his mouth was hanging open, letting in the cold air. He closed his mouth and looked to Leonard.

  “Help me inside,” Leonard said. “’fore I turn into a popsicle.”

  Patrice nodded.

  He reached, grabbed Leonard’s hand, and dragged him to his feet.

  They gathered a little momentum as they shuffled towards the cabin, leaving the rope and the empty blue jumpsuit behind.

  * * * * * * *

  (Leonard)

  With help, Leonard shucked his jacket and left it on the porch. Under his clothes, his skin stung like a sunburn. Patrice opened the door and helped him inside. The dry warmth of the cabin made him cringe. The skin on his face tightened as if it might crack and peel back from his bones. Patrice was fumbling at his buttons.

  “Careful!” Leonard begged through clenched teeth.

  “It’s only pain, Len, shut up and deal with it,” Patrice said. The words were comforting but Patrice’s tone was troubling. He was not doing a very good job at sounding casual. Leonard looked down and understood why. The skin that Patrice was revealing as he peeled away Leonard’s shirt looked unnatural. It was blotchy and gray and seemed to absorb the light.

  “Wiggle your fingers and toes. Get some blood moving,” Patrice ordered.

  “They hurt.”

  “Yeah, no shit. The hurt is good. It means you’re probably not going to lose them. It’s the dead ones that don’t hurt anymore. Why the hell would you dive down like that? I thought you were down there trying to fire up that snowmobile.”

  Leonard felt a shiver rattle up through him. With it came an icy fist that squeezed his heart and lungs and then subsided slowly.

  Patrice was working on taking off his waterlogged pants and having trouble with them.

  “Oh, shit. I’ve got some bad news for Kendra,” Patrice said. “Actually, she’ll probably be happy. If you live through this, your dick will be so small that she can rub you off with one finger.”

  Leonard laughed despite another involuntary shiver.

  “I haven’t seen Kendra in a year—you know that. Get the fuck away from me, you old queen,” Leonard said. Patrice helped him step out of his pants and he was nearly naked. Only his waterlogged socks remained. He bent over and removed them with a trembling hand while Patrice ran to one of the bedrooms to grab a blanket. Patrice wrapped it around his shoulders as Leonard stared at his own toes. The tips of them were red and stung like they were on fire. Patrice was right—it was a good sign. The blood was returning and waking up his extremities. The pain was an indication that everything was going to be okay.

  “It was a man,” Leonard said. The blanket wasn’t warm enough. He moved closer to the wood stove and opened it up to waft warmer arm against his skin. With it came more stinging pain.

  “What was?”

  “In that jumpsuit. I thought it was just a…” He stopped and shivered before he could finish. “… Just a jacket when I grabbed it, but it was a full jumpsuit with a man in it.”

  Leonard glanced over his shoulder. Patrice was moving the wet clothes to the washtub. The cabin didn’t have running water in the winter, but it had a big washtub that they used to clean up. It drained into a French drain under the cabin, according to Patrice. What came from the lake returned to the lake, eventually. They used a special soap that wouldn’t poison the groundwater.

  “Buddy, there was nothing in that jumpsuit but lake water,” Patrice said.

  Leonard shook his head. He tried to remember his time underwater. It was foggy and dark, like the pain that had inflicted his eyes had seeped into his brain as well.

  “No, there was something.”

  “Shit,” Patrice said, running for the door.

  “No!” Leonard said, scaring himself with
his own shout.

  Patrice barely paused. He opened the door, leaned out, and came back in with the jacket.

  “This has to thaw and dry out as well, unless you have another jacket that I don’t know about.”

  “Oh,” Leonard said. He felt much more comfortable when Patrice closed the door again. “Oh.”

  “I mean, I have some swimsuits and maybe a Hawaiian shirt back there, but the only winter gear we have here came in on our backs, you know? Grandpa never used this place much in the winter.”

  “Yeah,” Leonard said.

  Patrice was pulling off his own outerwear, hanging it up on the hooks on the wall. Leonard felt another shiver go through him, but this one didn’t come with an icy clamp around his heart. That meant that the blood in his extremities was warming up. His core would be coming back up to temperature soon. The little French Canadian man had told him all about warming up after a dip in the cold water, but he couldn’t remember much of that part of the lecture. By then they had all been too tired and stressed to hear much of anything.

  One stray image of the French Canadian man popped back into his head.

  “Snow!” he said.

  “What about it? We don’t have any yet,” Patrice said.

  Leonard’s teeth rattled with another shiver but he told the story anyway. “I took a course on how to survive when you fall through the ice. A skinny little guy taught the class. He went in twice to show us what to do. Afterwards, he stripped down to his skivvies and rolled around in the snow. He said that if you have powdery snow around, it will dry you out.”

  “Yeah, no thanks,” Patrice said.

  Leonard started to move towards a chair.

  “No, you keep walking around. Keep your blood moving.”

  Leonard nodded and sighed. He shuffled in a tight semi-circle around the stove.

  Patrice went to one of the rooms and came back with thick socks. Leonard put his hand on Patrice’s shoulder and lifted a foot so his friend could put the socks on him.

  “How are your hands?”

  Leonard flexed his fingers. The skin was tight and threatening to crack with each movement. They weren’t fingers anymore so much as talons.

  “They’ll be fine.”

  Patrice smiled. “That’s how I know you’ll be okay—you’re already lying to me.”

  He disappeared again and returned with a tiny bottle of lotion. With a dollop squeezed out onto his palm, Patrice took Leonard’s hands and massaged them for a moment. For once, Leonard’s pride was overcome. Patrice’s little massage felt so comforting that he couldn’t tell his friend not to bother. In fact, he felt disappointed when Patrice gave his hands one more squeeze and then let go.

  Leonard looked to the chair, wanting to simply collapse into it. Patrice was right—he needed to keep moving. At least with the socks on and the blood back in his hands, his fingers and toes didn’t ache anymore. It was going to be okay. He had chased the devil down in that black water and he had somehow escaped to fight another day.

  “I swear that there was a man in that jumpsuit.”

  Patrice didn’t immediately contradict him. When Leonard looked up, his friend was studying him, almost like he was going to reveal something. When their eyes met, Patrice looked away and returned to the washtub to squeeze out the wet clothes.

  “You can’t leave until these dry out,” Patrice said. “I’ll have to hike out alone.”

  “What?” There was panic in Leonard’s question. He couldn’t disguise it.

  “Someone has to go out. We have to call the sheriff and let them know that a guy went through the ice. All we have to show for it is that jumpsuit.”

  A revelation dawned on Leonard so hard that it made him unsteady on his feet.

  “The jumpsuit! That blue jumpsuit I pulled up from the drink, that’s not too different from your jumpsuit, right?”

  “I guess,” Patrice said. “My coveralls are not quite as thick. They’re really just a heavy cotton with a lining. They have some kind of coating to make them waterproof, but…”

  Leonard stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Do me a favor—put that jumpsuit on and then try to take it off without unzipping it first.”

  “Huh?”

  “That blue jumpsuit I pulled from the lake.”

  He saw the fact of it wash over Patrice. The jumpsuit had been zipped right up when he dragged it across the ice.

  Patrice started shaking his head.

  “We don’t even know if it was the same jumpsuit. That thing could have been down there for years, right? It’s synthetic. What would make it decay under the water?”

  Leonard didn’t get a chance to answer. They both heard the footsteps across the porch and then the door banged open.

  * * * * * * *

  (Patrice)

  Patrice dropped the wet jacket and moved towards the door. Somehow, the thing that had inflated the blue jumpsuit and the monster that he had imagined out in the lake had combined into one terrible creature. All he could think was that the creature had finally taken a run at the cabin. Patrice intended to ram the thing back out through the door and then shut it tight.

  He didn’t make it more than a step before he recognized the intruder.

  It wasn’t a monster—it was Andrew.

  Andrew collapsed to his knees, panting. The cabin door was still wide open.

  While Andrew caught his breath, Patrice went around him and glanced through the door before closing it.

  “Andrew, where’s Jake?”

  Andrew swallowed and looked up.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Chapter Five - Debating

  (Patrice)

  “WAIT, ANDREW, SLOW DOWN,” Patrice said. “What’s going on? Where is Jake?”

  Andrew gave them a quick rundown, only repeating himself when they pressed for more details.

  “You think the man was contagious with something?”

  “Listen, guys, you know me,” Andrew said. “I’m not the type of person who freaks out for no reason. There was something seriously wrong with that guy. If there are more of them, we have to get out of here, you know? Wait, Len, why are you naked?”

  It was Leonard’s turn to tell a short story.

  “This is grim, but it works out,” Leonard said, pointing to Patrice. “You and Andrew hike out, get far enough south to pick up a signal, and call for help.”

  Andrew shook his head. “Please, no. On my hike back, I was thinking—we do that and I’m going to prison. I know it’s wrong of me to ask, and I won’t hold it against you if you have trouble with this, but please look at this from my perspective. I have a little boy at home. I couldn’t risk being infected or attacked by that madman, and I’m not going to risk going to prison forever over it.”

  Patrice licked his lips and softened his face. “Andrew, we have to come clean to the sheriff. Besides, I’m sure the guy on the snowmobile had a family. They deserve to know what happened to him. If we stay quiet about your thing, then his body is just going to rot down there for who knows how long.”

  Andrew clenched his fists and spoke slowly. “He’s already dead. I’m very much alive. My son is very much alive.” He took a breath and let it out slowly.

  “What about Jake?” Leonard asked. “He’s never going to keep this a secret. You said that you left him there, and that he was going to investigate the body, right? If the other guy isn’t contagious through the air, then Jake is fine and he’s going to tell everyone precisely what happened. He’s a straight shooter.”

  “So to speak,” Patrice said.

  Andrew glared at him.

  “Listen,” Andrew said. “If I’m right, then Jake is dead already. If I’m wrong, then I go to prison when Jake calls me out. At least give me the chance.”

  “Andrew,” Patrice said, pausing before he finished his thought, “you didn’t do anything to Jake, did you?”

  Andrew didn’t get a chance to answer. They all heard the voice from the other
side of the door.

  * * * * * * *

  (Andrew)

  “Hello!” the voice called.

  The three men looked at each other. Leonard was wearing the blanket like a cape. He pulled it tighter around himself.

  “That’s a woman,” Patrice said. He reached for the door handle.

  “Wait!” Andrew said.

  Patrice opened it anyway. They all moved closer to the door.

  The figure was standing down on the bare patch of ground between the cabin and the lake, a few paces from the bottom of the stairs. There wasn’t a single square inch of human flesh showing. Her snow pants extended down around her boots. The cuffs of her gloves were tucked under her sleeves. She wore a hood, scarf, and goggles. Patrice leaned forward—he couldn’t even see her eyes behind the tinted goggles.

  “Who are you?” Patrice called.

  Her voice was muffled by the layers. Because of that, she spoke slowly, projecting each word. “Have. You. Been. In. Contact. With. Any. Strangers?”

  Patrice turned back and glanced at the others.

  Andrew gave him a tiny head shake.

  “No,” Patrice yelled.

  Leonard made a small hissing sound and Patrice glanced back again. Leonard communicated to him with a tiny nod towards the lake.

  Patrice turned back to the open door. “We saw a guy go through the ice on a snowmobile, but we didn’t get to him in time.”

  The woman started walking forward.

  She paused at the bottom of the stairs.

  “May. I. Come. In?”

  “No!” Andrew whispered.

  “Sure,” Patrice said. “Come on in.”

  The woman climbed the stairs.

  * * * * * * *

  (Patrice)

  Patrice closed the door behind the woman as she stood. Her head turned slightly as she took in the details of the place. She didn’t make any move to remove her gloves or hood. Leonard shivered and moved back closer to the stove. Andrew slipped into one of the chairs near the square table.