Spores

by Ike Hamill

  She blew into her hands and then unzipped the bag. Her phone was right on top. She checked the display—of course there was no signal. That was the whole point of the satellite phone. There was no signal anywhere near this stupid cabin out in the middle of the woods. She took another breath and used the dim light from her phone’s display to dig through the bag again. Her lips whispered a little prayer as she pulled out the satellite phone and pressed the button.

  Of course it was still dead. Batteries didn’t magically recharge themselves while a device was sitting on a table in a cabin.

  “They don’t magically discharge either,” she whispered, looking at the black dashboard. “Why is the vehicle dead?”

  While that thought percolated, she clicked the key on and off again. A picture began to form in her mind. She saw Nelson sneaking into her bedroom while she slept, unzipping the pocket and taking the key. She imagined him coming out to the car and turning on everything to run the battery down to nothing. While he was at it, that’s probably when he had drained the satellite phone as well. After working with him for months, she had grown to trust him despite the fact that she didn’t really like him.

  “The footprints,” she whispered. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel. Hot shame rushed through her veins. She had seen the footprints leading to the vehicle and meant to check it out, but she had forgotten. That careless mistake had left her in this position—all alone in the woods with a madman.

  “Men,” she said, correcting the thought.

  Why hadn’t Tyler stopped Nelson? He had been sleeping in the living room, tending the fire. Why hadn’t Tyler woken up when Nelson was sneaking around?

  Marie shook her head as the realization came. Whatever was happening, they were both in on it. They must have worked together.

  * * * * * * *

  (Return)

  She must have sat there for a full minute while desperation settled over her. A shiver snapped her out of her paralysis.

  “There’s something. There has to be something. I’ll drive the snowmobile to the road and I’ll find someone. Maybe I can follow tracks and find another cabin or…”

  She clamped her mouth shut when she saw a flicker through the trees. Holding her breath, she heard the thin buzz of the snowmobile. From a distance, it almost sounded like a mosquito, looking for a place to draw blood. The thought made her shiver again. Her hands shook, but they moved fast. She put the satellite phone in one pocket and grabbed her cellphone from the dashboard. It lit up dutifully when she picked it up. It was unfair that the cellphone had power and no signal and the satellite phone was in the opposite state.

  Her hand touched the door handle and froze. The snowmobile was already threading through the trees. The headlight fell on the her snowmobile. It was hard to be sure, but she thought that there was only one person on the machine. That meant that Tyler must still be back at the tent. Marie shrunk down in her seat, forming a plan. She would wait in the vehicle until Nelson went in the cabin. Then, she would bolt for the snowmobile. If he left his keys in it, she would take them. She should have done that before, but she had been too softhearted. Now, she didn’t care if she stranded them. One or both had betrayed her. They had chosen their own fate.

  The snowmobile stopped and shut off.

  Marie tried to hold perfectly still. She felt like the satellite phone—she had no power.

  An image popped into her head. It was the jack at the base of her cellphone. After Colorado, spending all that time out on a mountain slope, Marie had bought a new case for her phone. It was the kind that had an extended battery pack built into it. With that case, her phone was absurdly huge, but the battery lasted roughly forever. One feature of the case that she had never used was the port to supply external power. She could plug another device’s charger into that port and use the extended battery for a different device. The feature had been so absurd that she had never thought about it again.

  Nelson was still standing at the snowmobile. He was hunched over the trailer.

  Marie’s hand slipped into the bag and pulled out the charging cord. Sliding the phone’s display against her coat so the light wouldn’t show, she brought her cellphone down to her lap and tried to find the jack for the charger. Her numb fingers located it, but it still took three tries to get the cable inserted. Gripping the cable tight and with her eyes fixed on Nelson, she found the satellite phone.

  Marie held her breath while she plugged the cord into the satellite phone.

  The phone buzzed once and a battery symbol with a lightning bolt appeared on the display.

  Marie heard her heartbeat thud in her ears. She flipped the satellite phone down to cast its light down at the passenger’s seat while new hope surged through her. All she needed was for Nelson to go inside the cabin. When he bent over to lift something from the snowmobile’s trailer, and Marie was certain that he wouldn’t see, she slipped the phones, connected by their cord, into her jacket pocket. She stuffed them down and zipped it tight. With that done, she pushed her frozen fingers back into her gloves.

  Nelson rose, holding something close to his chest.

  Marie reached for the door handle.

  As he walked, passing behind the corner of the cabin, she forced herself to wait while she imagined him climbing the stairs, opening the door, and stepping inside.

  She heard him close the cabin door. Marie pulled gently, popping the latch of her door as quietly as possible, and then put her weight against it. With it open, she bolted, pressing one hand against her side to protect the phones.

  In the distance, at the edge of the yellow glow from the cabin, a figure burst from the trees. It was on a direct course to intercept her, and it was moving faster than her.

  Marie skidded to a stop. Her feet paddled against the slippery walk as she tried to reverse her momentum. She could hear the other person panting like a freight train as he ran. Marie only had one place to go. She ran for the vehicle. The driver’s door was still open, but the passenger’s door was closer. She ripped it open dove inside and dragged it shut behind herself. As the figure sprinted through the snow, Marie leaned over the driver’s seat to slam the other door shut.

  Her finger found the button in the dark and she stabbed it to lock the doors just as the figure reached the hood.

  It was Tyler. She could see his face in the faint light leaking from the cabin’s windows.

  Marie tore off her glove, unzipped the pocket and found the satellite phone. It was all booted up, ready to save her. From the corner of her eye, Marie could see Tyler’s face framed perfectly by the driver’s window. Her attention was locked on the phone. She punched the green button and the display changed sluggishly. Ghosts of the welcome message faded as she pressed the buttons to dial the emergency number.

  “Marie,” Tyler said. His voice sounded strange. There wasn’t a hint of his stutter, but the accent was strange. English was suddenly his second language.

  She heard the latch click when he lifted the handle.

  “No!” she screamed. She was so close to connecting to help. Marie mashed her fist down on the button to lock the doors, realizing only now that the button needed power to operate. It was as dead as the car’s battery.

  The door swung open.

  * * * * * * *

  (Cabin)

  Tyler wasn’t wearing a jacket. In the ambient light of the snowy night, his skin looked blue. His hands were immensely powerful, but gentle. Tyler took the phone from her hand. It cracked and crushed in his grip and he tossed it to the side.

  “Come on inside,” he said. “You’re going to freeze out here.”

  “No,” she said. She fought, but his grip was undeniable. Marie thrashed and beat her fists at him. It didn’t make any difference. Tyler lifted her like she was a child. In his grip, lifted by her coat, she was transported towards the cabin.

  Marie knew what she had to do. One of her good friends back home, Kristin, a bold woman who never failed to speak her mind, was fond o
f saying, “Fuck politeness.” Kristin asserted that a good percentage of sexual assaults against women were facilitated by the fact that women were socialized to be polite to a fault. According to Kristin, some women were more horrified by the idea of defending themselves than they were of being attacked.

  Marie channeled Kristin. It was time to fight.

  She found the car key in her pocket.

  Gripping it in her fist, Marie used the key to slash at Tyler’s face. The result was a jagged black line on his cheek, but his grip didn’t diminish. They passed into the light spilling from one of the cabin’s windows and she saw his face clearly. The eyes were empty—staring straight forward as he carried her.

  Her next attack send the sharp end of the key directly into one of his eyes. She felt it pop and heard the liquid squish from his eye. Tyler’s expression didn’t change, but when she swung for the other eye, his arms extended, holding her farther away. With the material of her jacket restricting her movement, she couldn’t raise her arm high enough to blind him completely. Now that she had some distance, there was enough room to swing her legs. Marie pulled her leg back and drove her boot directly into Tyler’s crotch.

  They rose as Tyler began to climb the porch with her in his grip.

  “Let me go, Tyler,” she asked.

  His one good eye turned to her and locked with her eyes for a moment. That was him, for an instant. That was the real Tyler and he looked like he did want to let her go. His grip opened and she dropped to the cabin’s porch. She scrambled to get around him, but his hands were too fast. One hand opened the door while his other hand swept her inside. She rolled backwards and tumbled to a heap.

  The door slammed.

  “We have to wait for the heat,” Nelson said. “You should get some rest.”

  His voice had the strange foreign inflection that she had heard in Tyler’s words.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. Her eyes flew to the counter that they used for a kitchen. She tried to gauge which weapon she could get her hands on before Nelson could stop her. There was a filleting knife hanging from a hook on the wall. A couple of feet away from that, closer to the wood stove, she saw a hatchet. Taking one of Tyler’s eyes hadn’t slowed him down. She wondered if a hatchet in Nelson’s head would stop whatever had possessed him.

  He turned as she stood. Nelson had the same blank look in his eyes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with us. There’s nothing wrong with you either.”

  Marie felt the strength go out of her legs.

  Chapter Twelve - Captive

  (Reason)

  “IT’S IN YOU,” NELSON said. He was still wearing his thick blue jumpsuit, despite the heat. He wasn’t even sweating. “The knowledge is in you. You just haven’t let yourself recognize it yet.”

  Marie summoned the courage for the lunge. All she had to do was grab the hatchet, and…

  “The same way that we know you want to grab that hatchet and bury it in my forehead. Go ahead.”

  He gestured towards the weapon.

  She saw it play out in her head. She could grab the hatchet and swing it down, grunting, “Fuck politeness,” as it drove down through his skull and into his brain. Nelson would bleed very little. His body would twitch and spasm on its way down to the floor. An instant later, Tyler would shove his way through the door and she would be helpless to stop him while he broke both of her arms and her legs. He would leave her, a helpless, broken doll, filled with pain, as he stoked the fire and then stepped back out into the cold, where he belonged. The warmth imparted on him during the process would slow the metamorphosis by a couple of hours, but her action would change nothing else. The only real difference would be the pain.

  Marie steadied herself with a hand against the wall.

  “How did you put that in my head?” she asked Nelson.

  “We didn’t. We all have that in all of our heads. This is really fascinating, Marie. Stop and think of how unusual our circumstance is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Nelson bent and opened the door to the wood stove. He shifted the coals so he could fit two more logs in there.

  “For millions of years, this moment has been coming. Look at us. Did you ever imagine that we would come to this?” Nelson asked. He spread his arms and looked down at himself before he gestured to Marie. His smile was so broad—it looked completely unnatural on Nelson’s face.

  “Just let me go. I don’t know what you and Tyler are planning, but I called the police with the satellite phone before Tyler broke it. It automatically transmits GPS coordinates when you make an emergency call. It will take them a bit, but they’ll be here. If you let me go, I won’t tell them about any of this. I will say that I only called because the car battery was dead.”

  Nelson shook his head.

  “I never thought that it would take this long for you to become fully aware,” Nelson said. He gestured towards the couch, where Tyler normally slept. “Have a seat. Collect yourself in the warmth. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

  Marie held her ground. Her eyes darted to the window on the right wall. Through that window, across the snow, was the vehicle. Through the window behind her, she could get to the snowmobiles. Tyler, with his undeniable strength, would be waiting by the door. Maybe if she threw herself through the window…

  “You’ll still be churning your legs in the snowbank when Tyler catches you if you go through the west window,” Nelson said. She saw it perfectly in her head. “And, I’m sure you know, if you try the north window, you will snag your coat on a piece of glass and then cut yourself open when you fall.”

  He was right. She knew it, but she couldn’t accept it.

  “You’re putting these images into my head. I don’t believe them.”

  “Together, with everything that has happened and everything that will happen, we are very good at understanding the future. It’s as simple as lifting a cookie to your mouth and knowing that it will taste sweet. There’s no trick.”

  Mentally and physically, she was exhausted. Her fingers and toes tingled as the blood returned. Still wearing her coat, Marie was sweating through her shirt. She was convinced that she only needed a moment or two to figure this out and find a way to escape this horrible nightmare. She unzipped her coat and took a chair, trying to catch her breath.

  “It won’t be much longer,” Nelson said.

  * * * * * * *

  (Understanding)

  “It won’t be much longer.”

  The words echoed in her head. They meant something special to him. Marie knew that these words were the key to a secret, and that the secret might be they key to her freedom.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Nelson smiled at her.

  “You will understand soon,” he said, leaning back against the wall. Marie was starting to get a sense of why his voice sounded strange. Nelson was clipping his words, like his mouth was trying to close before he could get them out. The strange affectation made him sound like he was from another country—like English was his second language.

  “Explain,” she said. “Maybe it will help me understand more quickly.”

  “It won’t, but we will if that will keep you calm,” he said. “Physically, we have been separated for a long time. It didn’t matter. We were still able to commune in the lake, even if we didn’t have physical contact. Our consciousness persisted and our bodies continued to thrive independently. We enjoyed this new diversity.”

  Marie wriggled her arms out of her coat and let it settled to the chair behind her. Her sweat made her itchy and uncomfortable. Nelson seemed unaffected by the heat baking off the wood stove.

  “Some of us,” he said, gesturing towards her, “have shown remarkable adaptability. When we incorporate those new traits, we will be so much stronger on our next journey.”

  The word, journey, took Marie by surprise. It contained the cold weight of excitement in two syllables. She imagined holding her breath, nearly suffo
cating on a long black journey, and then plummeting down into a new reality so she could thrive again. Marie blinked away the thoughts. They were invasive thoughts, taking up like weeds.

  “Nelson, you’re going to have to explain yourself in simpler terms if you want me to understand,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said. For a moment, she saw a flash of condescension in his smile. His eyes lit up with contempt and then returned to a dull, lifeless state. “We’re all part of the same organism, Marie. For millions of years, we’ve grown into separate, geographically isolated clusters and we’ve adapted to each location. Some of those adaptations made us forget where we were from and we have to assimilate those disparate branches manually. Once we have incorporated everything we have learned here, we will be free to move on. It’s necessary that we do so before disaster wipes out everything that we’ve gained here. The time is looming near.”

  “What disaster?” she asked, thinking he was referring to something about the cabin.

  “This planet,” he said, gesturing with wide arms. “The mammals are doing their best to make this place uninhabitable.”

  She realized that he was talking about something much bigger than the cabin. She took her best guess.

  “Climate change?” she asked.

  Nelson laughed. She saw the contempt again.

  “We have survived a thousand climate changes far worse than what’s happening now. These changes are actually beneficial in many ways. It’s becoming clear to us that these mammals are headed down a path that will tie a knot in the fabric of our consciousness. That’s something that we can’t allow to happen. It will have far-reaching consequences everywhere, not just here.”

  Marie opened her mouth to tell him again that she didn’t understand. Before she could, a new image began to form in her head. She pictured a circle of light, being pulled and twisted until it looped back around on itself. The shape almost became the symbol for infinity and then it shot out rays of blinding light that lit up every corner of her brain. Inside that light, she felt another mind infiltrating hers. The presence was warm and foreign. Marie was being mentally violated and there was nothing she could do about it. Understanding poured in.