Slocock shrugged. “Who cares? I don’t. Do you?”
“It would be less complicated if he didn’t know.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “You fancy him at all?”
“No. He’s not my type.”
Slocock reached across and put his left hand on her crotch. He gripped her hard. She gave a hiss of pain and annoyance and pushed his hand away. “Don’t do that!”
Amused, Slocock said, “Oooh, the lady doctor’s all uppity today. Doesn’t want to remember what she was doing with common old Sergeant Slocock last night.”
“That was a one-off event. Don’t think for a moment you’re going to get second helpings.”
Slocock’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the hair. She gasped and struggled but he was able to push her head down towards his lap without any trouble. Then he gave her hair a sharp twist. Her scream was muffled.
“You know what to do now, Doctor. And be gentle with it. I feel your teeth in me I’ll scalp you.”
She unzippered him and freed his already erect penis. As she went to work on him with her tongue he shuddered with pleasure and said hoarsely, “You’re a real expert at this, I can tell.”
His words were confirmed in the 15 minutes that followed. Several times she brought him to the edge, but just when he felt he was about to explode she seemed to sense it and eased off. Finally she didn’t ease off and he came in her mouth with such an intensity of feeling he almost drove off the road.
He let go of her hair. She sat up, unzippered her own pants and kicked herself out of them with an obvious urgency. Then she twisted round, put her left leg across his lap and draped her right foot across the back of his neck.
He glanced at what was being offered. ‘No rest for the wicked,’ he muttered and put his fingers into its gaping wetness.
Minutes later, as Kimberley, back arched, juddered with a series of uncontrollable spasms, he reflected that the one good thing about the present crisis was the total lack of police cars on the motorway.
After that they rode on in silence for some time. He glanced at her occasionally and was amused to see how quickly she became her usual, cool, poised self. Only the slight flush on her cheeks gave any indication of what had happened.
Finally she said, “I’ve got to go into the back. I need to use the toilet.”
“Try not to wake Buffalo Bill. The less I see of him the better.”
Kimberley opened the hatch and murmured, “Oh my God!”
The way she said it made him look around.
On the other side of the hatch there was nothing but a solid wall of yellow fungus.
15
Wilson was still unaware he’d been consumed by the fungus.
He had remained asleep as the growth had filled the rear compartment and he continued to sleep even now.
The growth completely covered him, but as its structure was highly porous, his breathing was unimpeded. He slept on as the fungus ate his clothes and the blanket under him, along with every other organic substance that was accessible to it in the compartment.
When his clothes had been consumed the hyphae proceeded to absorb all his body hair and then entered his various orifices. In his mouth the probing, thread-like hyphae picked his teeth clean of every particle of food; they entered his anus and extended themselves along his rectum, absorbing waste material as they went; in his ears they ate the wax and in his nostrils they consumed the dried mucus.
At the same time the fungus began to dissolve his dead outer-layer of skin. This was what woke him up.
He regained consciousness aware of an intolerable itchiness all over his body.
Then he opened his eyes and saw nothing but total blackness. Then he realized he was covered in something. It was all over him. In his mouth, his nose.
He panicked. He kicked and tried to lash out with his arms but it was like trying to swim in syrup. He became frenzied in his efforts to free himself, writhing and twisting against the soft but tenacious substance imprisoning him.
Then suddenly he saw light and heard a voice say incredulously, “Christ, he’s still alive!”
Slocock was standing over him, a shovel in his hands. Then Kimberley appeared beside him and helped Wilson pull the strands of yellow fungus from his face and body.
Slocock started to laugh. “Look at him! Like a new-born baby! Bright pink and not a hair on him anywhere!”
Wilson was trying to spit something foul out of his mouth. He wanted to throw up. The yellow fungus seemed to be everywhere in the compartment. What had happened? How had it got in?
“The fungus has consumed his entire epidermis, by the look of it,” Kimberley told Slocock. “The question is, why didn’t it eat the rest of him? It seems to have eaten everything else in here.” Then to Wilson she said, “How do you feel? Can you talk?”
“Get me out of this,” he gasped.
Together they pulled him free of the mass and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the road and blinking in bright sunlight. He stared down at himself. Slocock was right. His flesh looked very soft and pink, as if it had just been scrubbed very hard, and his pubic hair, and the hair on his legs, was completely gone. He reached up and touched his head. His scalp was smooth. He was totally bald. “Oh Christ,” he said.
Slocock was dragging one of the anti-contamination suits out of the yellow chaos that now filled the rear of the truck. He started to put it on.
“Rather late for that, isn’t it?” said Kimberley.
“It’s to protect me against the solvents I’m going to spray in there,” he told her. “We’ve got to clear that stuff out completely unless you fancy giving it a ride all the way to London.”
He unlocked the metal trunk on the back of the truck where the flame-throwers were stored and took out a hand operated pump. Then he began to spray a white liquid over the fungus. Where the liquid fell the yellow growth began to darken and curl with a sizzling sound.
Kimberley watched for a while, then turned her attention back to Wilson, eying him critically. He suddenly became aware of his nakedness, which felt even more acute without any hair, but her interest was obviously a professional one only. She squatted down next to him and gave him a cursory medical examination, feeling his pulse and then peering into his ears and mouth.
“Fascinating,” she murmured as she looked into the latter. “Your teeth have probably never been so clean. The fungus has scoured them to the enamel.”
“None of it’s growing on me anywhere, is it?” he asked anxiously.
“Not that I can see.” She examined the rest of him and pronounced him fungus-free. “Hopefully that means the Megacrine is giving us full protection; or maybe you’re one of the rare, lucky types who has natural immunity. For my sake I hope it’s the former.” She looked at her own arms worriedly.
It took Slocock over an hour to clear all the fungus out of the compartment. After that they surveyed the mess that remained. The fungus had stripped the compartment of everything that wasn’t made of some inorganic substance. The bunks had been reduced to the metal frames, Slocock’s kitbag and the clothes it had contained were gone, and even the labels on the cans of food had vanished.
Slocock picked up a full bottle of whiskey from the debris. It too had lost its label. He wiped the strong- smelling solvent from it and opened it. “Thank God for small mercies,” he said and promptly swallowed a quarter of the contents.
Kimberley was salvaging her various medical supplies and instruments from the mess on the floor, her leather medical bag having been consumed too. She held up a small bottle, devoid of a label like all the others,
