The Fungus

her. She likes that. But I guess you know that already. I figure you were eavesdropping last night on the intercom.”

“As my old friend Flannery once said, ‘Life is nothing but a giant cesspool, which is why it’s advisable to swim with your mouth shut’.”

He opened the front of his overalls and examined the itchy patch on his chest. The skin still looked bright pink but there was no sign of anything else. He wondered how’d he’d react when he did find something.

As they came nearer to London the fungus got worse. The built-up areas they were passing through were totally unrecognizable beneath their surreal fungal coverings and it was only when they saw a barely visible sign for Denham that they knew where they were.

Houses were soft mounds, all traces of man-made sharpness gone. Between the buildings grew the giant mushrooms and toadstools, and occasionally giant white puff-balls the size of radar domes. The fungi were clearly the victors in this brief war between them and mankind. Very soon there would be no trace left of humanity’s handiwork. Or of man himself.

But for the moment the former dominant species was still in evidence. Wilson kept glimpsing people in the street or standing in fungus-draped doorways. Not that they still looked like people. Every one he saw had been blighted by the fungus in some way. If there was a small percentage of people who possessed some miraculous immunity to infection, he saw no sign of them. If they existed at all, perhaps they were in hiding.

Past Denham they began to encounter difficulties on the highway. A continuous thick carpet of hyphae grew on all the road surfaces. This presented no real problem to the Stalwart’s tires; however in places great ropy strands stretched across the road like jungle suspension bridges.

Most of the time the truck was capable of breaking through them, but eventually they came to a section where the strands grew so thickly, the vehicle was forced to come to a halt.

“We’re stuck!” exclaimed Wilson, staring around. “It’s like being in the middle of a giant spider’s web!”

“We could burn our way through the rest of the stuff. There’s not much more ahead,” said Slocock. “But—” He didn’t go on.

“But what?”

“But you’ll have to do it. I don’t like—” He swallowed and went on. “I don’t like handling flame-throwers. But I’ll show you how to operate the damn thing.”

Wilson hesitated. Was this a trick? A scheme to get the upper hand somehow? He sounded genuine, though. He seemed actually embarrassed at having to admit this weakness.

Wilson decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay. Let’s get outside.”

On the way through the rear compartment Wilson explained the reason for the stop to Kimberley. She insisted on putting on one of the anti-contamination suits before they opened the back doors. He was impatient at the delay, knowing that the suit’s protection was probably only an illusory one now, but thought it best to humor her.

When they stepped outside they entered a bizarre, fairyland world of bright colors and soft, furry surfaces. Even speech sounded alien in this strange new environment with the omnipresent fungus absorbing all vibrations. The result was an awful, muffled stillness in the air.

Wilson stood unsteadily on the springy substance covering the road while Slocock extracted one of the flame-throwers from its locker. Not only was he keeping a suspicious eye on Slocock, he was also trying to watch the numerous figures he glimpsed lurking in the buildings on either side of the street.

Slocock handed him the flame-thrower and from then on all his attention had to be on it while Slocock explained how it worked. Slocock showed him how to light the burner and then how to operate the valve that would send the gas-ejected fuel spurting out some 15 to 20 feet. “Remember, short bursts only,” warned Slocock, his distaste for the weapon all too evident on his face.

As Wilson struggled into the harness Slocock dryly offered to hold the Sterling for him. Wilson just smiled without saying anything. He stuck the .38 in the front pocket of the overalls where it was within easy reach and took hold of the business end of the flame-thrower, which needed both hands.

Slocock had backed the truck several yards from the fungus strands that had blocked them, giving Wilson plenty of room to use the flame-thrower. As he unleashed the terrible stream of liquid fire with its deafening roar he quite understood Slocock’s phobic dislike of the weapon. It was indeed an infernal device.

The fungus offered no resistance to the fire. The thick strands blackened, bubbled, then melted away, leaving only an awful stink in the air. Wilson had soon burned his way through most of them.

A warning shout from Slocock between bursts made him look round. He saw four misshapen figures rushing toward them. All were carrying clubs. One had an axe. Behind them, further back, a larger group was massing on the side of the road.

He acted without thinking. He spun round and sprayed the four nearest figures with the liquid fire.

One of them went down as if hit by a high-pressure hose. He, or she, went rolling across the fungus- covered road scattering burning fragments like a catherine wheel. The other three, who hadn’t taken the full brunt of the jet of fire, staggered about flailing their arms as their fungal crusts burned fiercely. They made hideous, high-pitched wailing sounds that cut like a knife into Wilson.

Shocked at what he’d done, he stood there staring at them helplessly, the lowered snout of the flame- thrower still dribbling fire onto the fungus matting. He was only dimly aware of the bigger group fleeing in all directions.

“Quickly, damn it!” he heard Slocock shout. “Before they make another try.”

He snapped back into life and followed Slocock to the rear of the Stalwart. Slocock switched the weapon off, then helped Wilson out of its harness. They flung it into the locker and then hurried inside, slamming the door. Kimberley, still encased in her suit, made urgent gestures at them as they pushed by her towards the front cab but Wilson was in no mood to explain the situation to her.

When he reached the cab he saw that two of his victims were, horrifyingly, still writhing as they burned. The other two were unmoving, blackened shapes.

While Slocock started the engine Wilson pulled down the mini-gun control and starting firing blindly. Eventually he managed to hit his targets. They shuddered and stopped moving.

“Don’t waste any more bullets,” cautioned Slocock as he sent the truck surging forward. The Stalwart cut through the remaining strands of the fungus and sped down the road.

“Why did they attack us?” cried Wilson, the image of the four fungus-covered figures enveloped in flames still searing his retinas. “I didn’t mean to do that to them.”

“A good thing you did. Otherwise, we’d be dead by now.”

“But why did they attack? We weren’t threatening them at all.”

“But we were threatening their beloved fungus. Killing it.”

“Their beloved fungus. What do you mean?”

“Who knows what those poor bastards think anymore in all that stuff? I reckon it’s a case of ‘if you can’t beat it, join it.’ The ones the fungus doesn’t kill probably feel grateful to it, despite being turned into walking mushrooms.”

Their progress towards the center of London got slower and slower. Often the roads were blocked completely and they had to make numerous detours until they could find an alternate route. On one occasion, as they were traveling through what they guessed to be Wembley, they were stopped dead by a huge toadstool that completely filled the road. Its trunk—it was too big to be called a stem—was at least 15 feet in diameter and its cap dwarfed the houses on either side of the street.

Then later, as they were crawling along the Harrow Road past Kensal Green, they were attacked by another mob—a big one numbering several hundred. They emerged from the surrounding, suffocating dreamscape like creatures from the worst nightmare imaginable. Large creatures, slow and bulbous, with stubby appendages, bearing iron bars, bricks and bottles. They formed a solid line across the road in front of the truck. Slocock didn’t slow down.

Missiles began to hit the windshield, some bouncing off, some shattering.

The Stalwart plowed into the mass of obscenely soft bodies. Wilson’s stomach turned over as he heard the