Fungal Tide

by Ian Woodhead

  “The man pulled out a small black object, the size of an A5 envelope. “Four of them are still moving.”

  “Oh my, they are resourceful. Once the power is running, I want you to attach a squad to locate and destroy them. Those four represent four potential spanners, just waiting to fall into my machine, and I’d rather not take any chances.”

  His second in command paused, a slight frown filling his face but the blank expression returned in less than a second and he turned away, walking back to join the other technicians.

  14.

  Souls of the corpses

  The soft leather sacking beneath Ryan’s body helped to ease the hundreds of aches and deep pain currently tormenting his muscles. It didn’t matter where it came from, not right now. His analytical and inquisitive mind could go take a running jump off a cliff for all he cared.

  He’d reached the limit of his endurance and all he wanted to do right now was to close his eyes and go to sleep, even if that meant he’d never wake up. This circular room, made from a rock the colour of burnt umber would be his tomb. Fuck it, why the hell not. What better way for an archaeologist to leave this plane of existence than to leave his body in some century’s old forgotten mausoleum of a long dead civilisation.

  At least the kids and Glenda had got out. He couldn’t save Sierra but he had at least made a difference. He lay back and listened to the faint scratching coming from the walls behind him. That noise had started up a while ago and had followed him as he tried to find some way out of this place. One of the changed kids must be making the noise, it was the only explanation.

  There was no way out of here, apart from the entrance and he’d already been back there, the fibres were now even thicker, and he doubted that even another plated monster would be able to get through that stuff now. This was the end of the journey. The left path stopped right here. He’d spent what felt like hours, looking for some other exit.

  “Okay, you’ve got me. I give up.” Ryan voice echoed around the chamber, and for a couple of seconds, even the scratching stopped. He sighed heavily, and closed his eyes, not altogether surprised to hear the scratching had returned, only this time the sound invaded both his ears, making its way into his mind, subtly changing in octave and tempo.

  ***

  He snapped open his eyes and gasped at the sight of several mammal-like bipeds shuffling past him. The light had changed from low orange to light blue, and gossamer thin strips of material covered the top part of the room, leaving the walls below exposed.

  The room was no longer bare. He saw eight plates of bed shaped metal in the middle, facing out, in a star pattern. The creatures each stopped beside a bed and climbed up.

  Ryan found his body moving, standing then walking into the middle, between two beds. The biped on his left, a painfully thin creature, covered from head to foot in a glossy white fur blinked before it held up its arm.

  “Will this hurt? I don’t want it to hurt, sir.”

  “You won’t feel a thing,” said the voice, coming from Ryan’s mouth. “Your spirit will fly out of this coat of muscle, bone and blood and you’ll join the creator. When the time is right, he’ll remake you, as he will remake all of us.”

  The creature sighed. “I miss my children and my lifemate already.” He struggled to sit up, “Wait, what will happen to this body? I don’t want those monsters to eat me.”

  Ryan’s claw reached out and gently pushed the creature back. “I want you to lay back down.”

  “But I can hear them!”

  He backed away from the creature and followed the edge of the metal plate until he reached the middle. The faint noise of shouting now reached his ears, Ryan realised that this was the same sound that had been troubling him, only now he recognised it for what it was. His digits danced across a dark grey block, at the head of each of the eight slabs, moving from one block to the next when the colour changed to bright orange.

  “You are the last ones, my friends. When your spirits have left, our race will be beyond the reach of these vile animals. Be ready to be reborn. For you, the transition will be instantaneous.”

  “What about you?”

  Ryan’s head faced another white furred creature on the bed next to him. “The creator has other plans for me, my friend.” The final block changed to orange and the creatures on the metal beds closed their eyes. He stepped out of the middle, watching eight crescents of bright yellow material rise up from the floor. They stopped expanding as they touched the edge of the beds.

  The sound of the enraged voices became louder with each passing movement and Ryan felt the creature’s heartbeat racing, he started to shake, his trembling fingers having difficulty completing the process. His head jerked around as the room filled with the sound of splintering wood.

  Three human faces, their bestial expressions partly hidden behind the huge mass of red beard advanced, their thick arms packed with tight muscle. The stench of rotting meat and unwashed bodies followed them as they shuffled further into the chamber.

  Ryan urged the creature to stop staring, turned around and finish whatever the hell he was supposed to be doing. The humans didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, then again, why should they rush. If what he said was right, these remaining nine beings were the last of their kind and they were going anywhere. The humans could make this last as long as they wanted.

  He released a low growl, hesitating as the three humans jumped back. They were probably not used to these meek animals making any kind of protest. He did then turn. As his hand touched the first yellow rod, Ryan felt his body leaving the ground and he flew across the room, smashing into the wall. He slid to the floor in a boneless heap, watching helplessly as the first human slammed his huge fist into the face of one of the white furred people.

  The thin skull shattered like an egg shell, spraying dark red blood, lumps of meat and tiny bone fragments across the circle of beds. His violent action acted as a trigger. The other two humans charged in, each one throwing their bodies onto a bed. Pulling the creatures apart with their ham-sized fists, Ryan wanted to turn his head, not wishing to view this mindless slaughter anymore but the body would not respond, not matter how hard he tried. He was forced to witness his ancestors, acting like pit bulls fighting over the carcass of a rabbit, as the body he occupied slowly died.

  One of the blood-drenched humans inadvertently sat on a metal slab, his elbow brushing against the raised orange block, they all jumped up and screamed as the eight rods flashed from yellow to orange. They disengaged from the moorings at the end of each metal slab and shot up towards the ceiling. The screams from two of the human savages turned into heart-wrenching shrieks when the rods punched through their stomachs, skewering the men like kebabs. Their blood poured from the wounds, flowing down the rods, and collecting at the base of the equipment.

  The creature that his mind occupied weakly raised his head, moaning in horror as the rods changed colour to black.

  “They’ve contaminated our spirits! Oh, creator, don’t allow our race to end like this, don’t allow our…”

  Ryan jerked up, a terrified shout dying on his lips. He wrapped his arms tight around his body, unable to stop himself shaking. The last images of those black rods rising into the ceiling refused to leave his mind. He got to his feet and padded into the centre of the room and looked up.

  Yes, he could see where those eight crescent shaped rods fit now. He dropped his head and examined the chamber with a new perception, unable to stop himself from smiling, the pieces were now slotting into place. The final solution still evaded him but now he at least knew which direction to take.

  He kneeled down and traced his fingers along the indentations in the floor, stopping when he found the one he was looking for. Ryan leaned closer and blew away the dust to reveal a cube shaped hole. “Thank you,” he said, giggling. Ryan pulled out the artefact handed to him by Mark and pushed it into the hole, breathing a sigh of relief when it fit perfectly.

  Bright blue light flood
ed the chamber causing him to cry out. Although he’d been kind of expecting the change, Ryan had no idea that the light would be so intense. He scrambled back towards the edge of the chamber when the beds began to rise from the floor. He stared in utter amazement, feeling very subdued in the presence of such an advanced piece of technology. Watching the beds return to the position that he saw in the dreamstate, made him feel as though the six thousand years of human advancement were insignificant to what these creatures had achieved.

  Ryan stood up and circled the beds; tentatively running his fingers along the metal, it felt warm to the touch, He knew that although what he had here wouldn’t exactly wow another scientist. They could construct something that easily resembled this equipment but all they would be building was some dummy model, an inferior visual sculpture. Would this still operate after lying dormant for all those millennia? He turned around in a tight circle, admiring all of this machinery, recognising parts of it from his other excavations. He felt like such a fool. His theories about why they died had all being built on the skewed perception that these intelligent beings would act in the same way as his species when faced with an aggressive force, that they would find a way to fight back.

  His foolishness didn’t just stop at his ideas regarding these creatures. Ryan now saw exactly why his unknown backers had thrown so much money at his ventures. The bastards must have known what was down here,.

  He looked around the chamber and now saw two doors cut into the rock, he’d found a way out. Ryan knew what to do now, but he wouldn’t be able to stop this alone. He walked back into the middle of the room and pulled out the block. The equipment began to sink back into the floor but the exit remained in the same shape. Ryan pushed the block back into his pocket and ran towards one of the doors, crying with relief as the doorway led to a flight of stone stairs

  As he climbed the steps, Ryan listened, realising that he no longer heard that scratching sound.

  ***

  The scent of the human still lingered as he fearfully entered the chamber. His appendages slivering along the warm furniture, desperately trying to read the long dead scents still attached to the ancient material before it all vanished into the floor.

  He dare not fully commit all of his senses into examining the puzzle before him, not wanting to be caught unaware if that human did decide to return. Despite this disability, the information he did retrieve filled up so many aching gaps in his comprehension and it pleased him to now see that his knowledge surpassed even the first ones whom saw the discord within the three new species and adopted absolute authority, brutally putting down any seeds of rebellious thought, sown within the minds of the creatures, newly changed or from the older ones who’d been transformed from the first batch of spores that were released from directly above this chamber.

  The wall surrounding the door expanded, rock and the ever present engraving folding over the opening, like cooking bread rising over its tin. He sighed with awe, the human mind, hidden beneath the new hybrid fusion, still able to appreciate a force closer to magic than to and of the crude devices that any member of his species had invented, or built.

  The closure of the door now signified that he could now relax, to allow his defences to recede and to contemplate how this unexpected burst of vital knowledge could benefit him.

  Only a few hours had passed since David Cooper had left the safety of the hospital. Looking back to the optimism he felt, blinking up at the dazzling sunlight, David wondered if he’d have been better just staying where he was. The food might have diminished but enough meat, dead or changed, still remained. His eagerness for fresh food, flesh that ran away had got the better of him.

  His first encounter hadn’t been with more food, David had been unfortunate enough to come into contact with another member of his kind. Only this one was already three times David’s size, and twice as mean. Their appendages had interlinked and the two creatures shared each other’s thoughts from the moment the change ravaged through their bodies. He watched the plated hunter drinking the black slime that was once his wife before bursting through the door of the antique shop and feeding on the thirty huddled bodies hiding inside the dark shop.

  The other creature shared David’s appetite as he pulled apart the two nurses he found hiding under a bed and dining on the dead patient, blocking the door.

  He knew of Barry Newman, the annoying little man who ran the sandwich shop. Davis went to school with him and spent the last three terms before they went their separate ways, tormenting the snot-nosed little bastard. As he carefully uncoiled his appendages from the larger creature, the irony of their role change was not lost on David. The new Barry could wrap his longer, thicker appendages around David and squeeze his plates, crushing and liquidising his soft inner parts with no effort.

  The larger creature had no interest in settling old scores, which pleased David. Barry gave him this simple job instead, to play nursemaid.

  Barry shuffled his bulk backwards, retreating from the chamber, the brood batch were demanding food again. Before he left, the plated hunter cast his vision around the chamber, studying the inscriptions. Unlike Ryan, Barry had no problem in understanding the scripture, of reading the long history of the three species, going back to their origins. He too had found himself falling back to that critical moment, over sixty thousand years ago, he’d watched the three humans tearing apart the prey but he didn’t experience revulsion. Those feelings were the sole property of the human, sharing the dreamstate. He had felt the excitement, the joy of feeling their hot blood splashing against his skin.

  His restructured brain also allowed him to take another unique facet from the experience. Barry had witnessed the sloughing of their savage origins and the sacrifices their three species went through in order to become these technologically advanced pacifists.

  He shifted his bulk and began shuffling back to the brood batch. Barry wished the human good luck on his quest to bring order back to the world above his head. If Ryan succeeded in reverting the changes, Barry’s competition would effectively disappear, he and the brood batch would be safe down here, as long as they took shelter in the chamber.

  Would the human had been so eager to depart if he had seen that what was happening now had already happened, twenty thousand years before the three species tragic encounter with the first humans.

  15.

  Mountains and Fleas

  The cheap nylon rubbed against her flesh in a dozen places. It took considerable effort not to scratch the affected areas. After five minutes of wearing this stuff, Sierra decided running and stumbling through this world of slime and fibre was more comfortable naked.

  Pedro had found them all the clothing in a department store from Radfield’s shopping mall. She and the older woman had taken refuge in a stationary shop, watching the man slalom his way through the ever-expanding growth of white fibre which now covered most of the town outside the mall.

  Jeanette had told Sierra that she used to hate coming into places like this. They were another extension of modern society’s obsession with filling their lives and minds with mountains of irrelevant crap. It served no other purpose than to make the drones crave for more and more pointless trinkets.

  She had nodded in all the right places, deciding not to tell the other woman of how crap this town used to be before they built this place. There seemed little point, these two wouldn’t understand. Like Ryan, they lived in a world surrounded by old bones.

  “Jesus, this stuff itches,”

  Jeanette shrugged off her own top. “Here, try this,” she said handing it over. “I can wear yours, at least until we find something else.”

  She gratefully took the offered piece of clothing and took off her own top, instantly feeling so much better. “Do you still think that we should stay in here?” Sierra pulled on the top and stood up, turning around to watch Pedro come back with another armful of supplies.

  Jeanette pulled on the top and bit her bottom lips. “I think so. From what we�
��ve seen so far, this town has now become a very dangerous place. It’s what awaits us when we emerge out on the other side that scares the crap out of me.” She glanced over at the double doors, two shop fronts from their location and shivered. “You see, even if we do manage to escape from your town, Sierra, where do we go?”

  She had no intention of escaping anywhere, Sierra needed to find her son. While sloshing through the freezing black water below the streets, accompanied with her two equally naked rescuers, being reunited with her Danny had been her main reason to keep going. The need to find out if Ryan was still alive also occupied her thoughts too. Finding herself alive as well as discovering the man’s fellow companions had given her hope that the situation wasn’t as dire as she first believed. Even if Danny had that white stuff growing over him, there may still be a cure.

  Sierra didn’t know what she’d do though if anything worse had happened to her beautiful boy. That tiny bubble of optimism had popped when the three of them had found their way back onto the streets. Sierra could have wept. Nothing at all looked familiar. The fibre had covered almost every building, suffocating the landscape, transforming everything into one uniform white carpet.

  The running man dropped his goodies at Jeanette’s feet. Sierra wondered if he now expected the woman to pat him on the head or perhaps feed him a dog treat. She turned away from the couple, a little ashamed of her feelings. For crying out loud, they had both gone through just as much trauma as she had. Jeanette had already told Sierra of their experience of their capture in that hotel bedroom. She tried to imagine how she would react if she had been in that situation. Looking back, Sierra truly believed that the only reason why she hadn’t broken down and tried to crawl up her own backside was because of Ryan. He’d been her solid pillar.

  “Are you okay?”

  She smiled back at the boy, “I’ve had better days, Pedro.”