Spores

by Ike Hamill

  “How are you doing, man?” Andrew whispered to him.

  Jake glanced over but didn’t answer.

  “Marie, we have an emergency. We are going to hike out after all,” Patrice was saying to the woman. She was standing there, at the edge of the frozen lake, with her hands stuffed down into her pockets and her jacket unzipped. The wind didn’t seem to bother her at all. Patrice moved closer to facilitate a conversation in the howling wind.

  “She knows,” Jake whispered.

  “What’s that?” Andrew asked. He focused on Jake, leaning in to see if he would say anything else. Jake’s lips were moving, but only a syllable or two overcame the wind and made it to Andrew’s ears.

  Andrew missed a chunk of the conversation between Patrice and Marie, but he could guess at what had transpired.

  “…and there’s plenty of wood on the side porch. Just try not to burn the place down. I’ll be back when I can.”

  “She’s not coming?” Leonard called from the back of their line.

  “No,” Patrice said. He led the way and they moved fast. Andrew directed Jake with a hand on his shoulder. The man moved fine as long as he was encouraged. As soon as Andrew took his hand away, Jake began to slow. Andrew ended up looping his arm around Jake’s. It was easier.

  “Fuck, it got cold,” Leonard said behind them. “This pack is pressing the wet right through to my back.”

  “I can take the backpack,” Andrew said over his shoulder.

  “You take care of him. I’ll worry about the pack,” Leonard said.

  If anything, it felt comfortable for Andrew. The last time he had been outside, they had been stripped down to nearly nothing so they wouldn’t contaminate their clothes. That had turned out to be a useless gesture. Jake had come down with something anyway. Of course, there was no way of knowing if Jake had been infected the first time he had gone to see Tyler’s body or the second. Andrew had a pretty good idea that Jake had been infected on his first trip out there. He could clearly imagine Jake inching forward to get a better look at the young man’s exploded skull and reaching forward with a shaky hand to touch the spongy flesh. That had to be what had happened. It made perfect sense, and it also perfectly explained why Jake had caught the bug and Andrew remained perfectly healthy.

  “How far is it?” Andrew asked.

  “Same as the hike in,” Leonard said.

  “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “If we keep a decent pace, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours. We’ll be out to the trucks about sunset. Maybe we can move a bit faster since we aren’t all loaded down with gear and supplies.”

  Leonard was both right and wrong. Yes, they weren’t all loaded down. Leonard was the only one who had a backpack. On the way in, they had brought all kinds of gear and provisions for the week. Patrice had talked about borrowing a trailer and hauling in an ATV, but Leonard had talked him out of it. According to Leonard, hiking would be good for them. It would get them acclimated to the cold and accustomed to paying attention to the woods around them. He had a theory, backed up vehemently by Jake, that the presence of any motorized conveyance sent a message through all the forest creatures, alerting them to the threat of human hunters.

  But Leonard was wrong, as well. It wasn’t gear that was going to slow them down, it was the zombie that Jake had turned into. Even though he was walking taller, he was only moving forward when Andrew urged him by tugging at his arm. Over time, that burden would slow them down far more than weight on their backs. Already, Patrice was pulling ahead. The only reason that Leonard was still close was because he was moderating his pace to stay behind Andrew and Jake.

  “We could have parked an ATV halfway,” Andrew said. “Or left one at the trucks so someone could jog out and fetch it.”

  “Next time we’re attacked by a killer fungus, I will keep that in mind,” Leonard said.

  Andrew blushed and held his tongue. He could argue with Leonard about basic safety precautions, but what good would it do? They had all looked at the weather, considered the distance, and signed up to hike. Regardless of who had suggested that they walk, they had all chosen to participate. Somewhere after high school had ended, or maybe even during, the notion of peer pressure was no longer a defense for reckless actions.

  “Should we tell Patrice to go ahead?” Andrew asked. “Maybe he will find a spot where his phone works and he can get help on the way.”

  “Velcro, Andrew,” Leonard said, echoing Patrice’s order from earlier. “It’s important that we stick together.”

  He couldn’t have heard the conversation, but Patrice stopped in the distance and waited for them to catch up. It always seemed to happen that way between Leonard and Patrice. They had been friends so long that they didn’t even seem to need to communicate directly. They just knew what the other was thinking. It wasn’t even a matter of completing each other’s sentences. When Patrice and Leonard were on the same page, they didn’t even bother to talk.

  “How’s he doing?” Patrice asked as they drew closer.

  Andrew assessed Jake again. He removed his arm from Jake’s—it didn’t seem necessary anymore. Jake was standing up straight and his eyes appeared alert.

  “You okay, Jake?” Andrew asked.

  Jake looked at him and smiled. He gave his head two jerks up and down. It was a marionette’s version of a nod.

  “Good,” Patrice said. “I’m going to push the pace a little. I think we can make pretty good time and get out to the trucks before sunset.”

  Leonard pointed at Patrice.

  “Yes. I have the keys.”

  “Good boy,” Leonard said.

  Patrice wasn’t kidding around. When he turned and started up the trail again, his long legs moved quickly. For a big man, Patrice seemed to have endless stamina. Andrew reached for Jake’s arm to guide him faster, but it was too late. Jake’s energy was back. He followed Patrice closely and Andrew had to hurry to keep up. Once he adjusted to it, the pace was actually easier. Andrew was accustomed to jogging. For whatever reason, walking actually seemed more strenuous to him than a light jog. The speed over the difficult terrain allowed Andrew to settle into a good rhythm with his breathing and the world began to make a little more sense again. It was the same thing when he ran. The sound of his own breathing and the plodding of his feet allowed him to process everything more easily. This was only a minor medical emergency. Surely, doctors would have a cure for whatever was wrong with Jake, and they would be able to test Andrew to verify that he wasn’t in any danger himself. All they had to do was keep their feet moving forward and this whole issue would be resolved. Likely, he would be back at home in a day or two and these strange events would start to fade into memory.

  With a jolt, he remembered shooting Tyler.

  The shock faded fast. It was a nightmare that he was leaving behind. There was no evidence except a spent shell casing in a field and a bundle of empty clothes at the bottom of a lake. These men were his friends. They had made a promise to keep his secret, and Jake had even made himself an accessory by helping to sink Tyler’s clothes. Later, there would be sleepless nights filled with doubt and guilt. For now, he had to push those all aside and focus only on survival. It was easy to do with the challenges ahead.

  “Unavoidable,” Andrew whispered to himself between breaths. The idea made perfect sense. A diseased man had come running across the fields to attack them. It was a hunch that had turned out to be completely, unassailably correct. Of course it had been necessary to shoot the man. By all sane definitions, Tyler had been as good as dead already.

  Later, when this was all over, Andrew knew that the voices would start to creep into his head with questions. If Tyler had been so sick, why had it been necessary to shoot him at all?

  “Contagious,” Andrew whispered.

  If Jake was infected too, then clearly shooting Tyler hadn’t been necessary because it hadn’t prevented a thing.

  Andrew shook his head to chase away the thought. He couldn�
�t let the voices in yet. He still had to survive if he intended to live long enough to regret what he had done.

  * * * * * * *

  (Leonard)

  They were moving at a good clip. When Patrice had upped the pace, they had been a little too close for a bit. Now, they were spread out. With a few yards between each person, it was less likely that a stumble would turn into an accident, and it also meant that Leonard didn’t have to hear the tiny whispers coming from Jake. That crazy whispering was maddening. He didn’t hear it all the time, but when they had been packed together and the wind turned, Leonard would pick up a few chunks. Jake was ranting about consciousness, and ether, and simultaneous stuff. None of it made any sense at all, but it somehow reminded Leonard of a story that his father told him one time.

  His father had volunteered with the local fire department, back before they started paying a full-time staff to go out and pull cats from trees. Their town didn’t seem to have enough fires to keep them busy, aside from the brief stretch when a couple of kids had entertained themselves by committing a few acts of arson one summer. During the day, his father had worked a desk job and shared a corner with his best friend, Jessie. Aside from the occasional office picnic, Leonard never really saw his father’s friend Jessie, but he heard about the man a lot.

  One evening, watching Monday night football when Leonard was a kid, his father had sat straight up. He sloshed a little beer from his glass when he pointed at the screen.

  “That’s it!” his father had said.

  Leonard was too startled to ask what had sparked his father’s attention. Even if he had been dying to know, he probably wouldn’t have asked. They had an unspoken agreement during Monday night football—Leonard was allowed to stay up late and watch the game as long as he didn’t say a word about it, during or even the next day.

  “You see those fucking dolphins?” his father had asked. “That’s it.”

  Leonard had looked at the screen. The image came and went quickly. The commercial was for a cruise or a vacation or something, and one brief scene had featured dolphins swimming out ahead of the bow of a small ship.

  “That’s it,” his father had said, leaning back in his chair again. When he glanced at Leonard’s face and had seen his son’s confusion, his father had said, “Let me tell you a story.”

  The game came back on then, but it didn’t matter. The stories were always better than the games. Sometimes when his father told a story, Leonard would learn something about his father that nobody else in the world knew. The stories were like miniature therapy sessions, and Leonard was the wall that his father would bounce his feelings against.

  “You know my friend, Jessie,” his father had said. His eyes were too unfocused to be staring at the TV. He was seeing something beyond the TV and beyond the wall. Leonard didn’t have to answer. “He’s been gone for a couple of months now. I miss that sumbitch. He was funny. Now the days just drag to shit, you know?”

  Leonard had no idea how to respond to that. His days at school sometimes dragged to shit, but he still had his best friend around.

  “We only get two or three fires a year around here, and it always seemed like Jessie would be talking about a place right before they had a fire. You know, your mom always says things like, ‘I was thinking about my aunt all morning, and then she just stopped by.’ But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find out that she was thinking about her aunt because she knew that Pauline was going to have a biopsy that morning. Of course Pauline would come by after her biopsy. She knows your mother is home in the mornings.”

  Leonard had watched his father’s face closely as he tried to pick out which parts of the narrative were important. Nothing seemed connected—the dolphins, Jessie, the fires, and a biopsy.

  “So I said to Jessie, ‘Every time we get called out to a fire, I realize that I’ve been thinking of that place for at least a week or more. You know why? I have always been thinking about those places because you’ve been talking about them.’ He claimed that he didn’t know what I meant, so I reminded him about that coffee roasting place near the river. He used to walk his dog down there. For a month, he kept talking about what kind of temperatures they must have in those roasters and how it always smells like a campfire whenever he walks by. He even said that one time the sun set right over the roof of the place and, for a minute, he thought that the building was on fire. Well, not more than a few days after he said that, we were called out to a fire at the place.”

  Leonard had started to understand, at least he thought he did. It had sounded like his father was linking Jessie to arson.

  “That wasn’t the only example,” his father had said. “I laughed it off as the same thing your mom always does with her aunt. In hindsight, it’s easy to find a pattern. But in reality, Jessie ran his damn mouth all day. It would have been unusual if he didn’t talk about a place before it burned down, since he talked about everywhere.”

  His father had pointed to the TV. The play on the screen was a dropped pass, but that’s not what his father saw. His father was still pointing at the dolphins that were long gone. Following his father’s pointing finger, Leonard had almost seen them too.

  “That’s not it though,” his father had said. “It wasn’t just coincidence and me cherry-picking out the few times he talked about a place before it happened to burn down. That wasn’t it and that’s why I went to my friend over at the station and I mentioned it to him. It was nothing, of course. Still, it was enough for Jessie to leave town.”

  His father had turned to him and looked him dead in the eye, really noticing Leonard for the first time in a while. This wasn’t part of their normal routine. Usually, when his father used Leonard as a sounding board, he ignored him and talked to the walls. If he actually looked at Leonard during Monday night football, it always meant one thing—time for bed.

  “Don’t ever talk behind your best friend’s back. If you think something is going on, you confront him face to face. You hear me?”

  Leonard had nodded.

  With that said, his father had dropped back into his story. “I suppose they looked at him for a fraction of a second, but definitely no more than that. If I had thought about it for any amount of time, I would have figured that the idea was ludicrous. We had causes on all those fires. A guy isn’t going to fake an electrical short over here and then a chimney fire over there. Every single incident had a perfectly reasonable explanation, and none of them involved Jessie. But over and over I had told myself that there’s no such thing as coincidence and there’s no such thing as ESP. Given those two constraints, I had to think that Jessie was involved, you know? It was the only answer left. But there is another answer. Those damn dolphins.”

  Leonard figured that if he thought about it long enough, it would click together like a jigsaw puzzle. That’s what had happened for his father. He had been surprised to find out that he didn’t even understand once his father explained it.

  “When a boat moves through the water, all we see is the wake. We see the churn behind the propellor and we see the waves fanning out to the sides. Those dolphins though, they swim ahead of the bow. Everything looks calm to us, but they know that there’s a wave of water under the surface that’s powerful. It’s invisible to us, but they barely have to flick their tails to stay in the wave and it drives them forward at crazy speeds.”

  Leonard had looked back to the TV, trying to see the dolphins. Was Jessie the boat or the wave? Was Jessie a dolphin? Leonard had tried to piece it together but he wasn’t even completely sure that the two stories were related.

  “You know what I’m trying to say, Bub?” his father had asked.

  Leonard had shaken his head slowly, hoping that his father would stop looking at him soon.

  “Don’t ignore something just because you can’t see it. Me and Jessie were both caught in that wave. I knew the fires were coming and he talked about where they were going to happen. We talked all day every day. We talked so much that sometimes we co
uld say a single word and know exactly what the other one was thinking about. Language is a way to express thoughts in sounds, but it doesn’t mean anything at all without context. The more context you have, the less you need to say to make yourself understood. The fire was talking to both of us. It was pushing us with an invisible hand. I mistook that hand as belonging to Jessie, but it was really just the magnetism of what was about to happen, you know?”

  Leonard had shaken his head again, but his father was staring at nothing. It had been, as far as Leonard knew, the last thing his father had ever said on the subject.

  As they marched, single file, up a hill, their feet crunched on the frozen leaves.

  “You okay back there?” Patrice called over his shoulder.

  Andrew said, “Yeah.”

  “No. I’m wet and cold as hell,” Leonard said. It wasn’t precisely true. He had almost gotten used to the damp clothing. The heat coming off of his body made him feel a little swampy and it wasn’t the most uncomfortable feeling in the world.

  “How you doing, Jake?” Patrice called back.

  Jake slowed a little, like he was trying to formulate an answer. It all happened very quickly. Jake’s shoulders went up towards his ears, he stopped, and then he just dropped to his knees. A moment later, Andrew was hovering over him as Jake jiggled and shook on the ground.

  “Shit!” Patrice said, doubling back.

  Chapter Sixteen - Missing

  (Patrice)

  ANDREW GOT A HAND under Jake’s midsection and Patrice took Jake’s shoulders. Together, they rolled Jake over as he shook with a seizure. There were leaves stuck to his face. When Patrice brushed them aside, the skin underneath looked blue, as if the leaves had stained his flesh.