The Fungus

her as she writhed on the ground, choking and retching.

Wilson was suddenly propelled forward into the circle.

It was his turn now.

3

Wilson’s arms ached. He’d been tied to one of the columns for several hours, his arms pulled back behind him and secured by thick strands of woven fungus.

The night was pitch-black apart from the faint illumination provided by the moon. He could just make out the pale shape of Kimberley’s body similarly tied a few columns away. He had tried speaking to her, but she wouldn’t answer. She seemed to be well and truly sunk in her personal pit of despair.

He shifted his position in yet another vain attempt to ease the strain on his arms. And he was also dying for a drink of water. It was a hot night and the air was thick with humidity and the fecal odor of the fungus.

He stank of it himself. His whole body was smeared with it, it was in his hair, and he could still taste it from the time they had forced him to eat the stuff and swallow its juices.

After the “ceremony” he and Kimberley had been tied naked to the columns, and their captors had settled down to wait. Wilson had quickly realized what they were waiting for, and so had Kimberley, to judge by her frightened sobbing.

Every so often one of the creatures would come and examine them, looking for signs that the fungus was growing on them. So far the examinations had proved negative, to his intense relief, but he knew it could only be a matter of time before one of them, or both, displayed the inevitable stigmata. What would happen then he had no idea. Presumably they’d be released to be full-fledged members of this fungus-loving crowd.

What a total fiasco, he told himself bitterly. Instead of even beginning to search for Jane and her papers he’d ended up in this situation. No transportation, no weapons, not even any clothes—and certainly not even the remotest hope of achieving what he’d come here to do. He had begun to realize that the whole mission had been a wild long-shot from the very start.

He heard a sound, turned and saw a shadowy outline shuffling towards him. Most of their captors seemed to be sleeping now but one or two had obviously stayed awake to carry out the inspections.

Then, as the bulbous figure drew nearer, Wilson saw the moonlight being reflected off something in his hand. Something metallic.

He had a knife.

What was this? Had they got tired of waiting? Or was this some kind of ritual sacrifice? Wilson tried to edge his way around the column, but he was bound too tightly.

He tensed himself as the creature halted beside him, waiting for the awful pain of the knife blow.

“Dr. Wilson, I presume?” wheezed a soft voice.

Wilson was so startled he was unable to reply.

“Dr. Wilson?” repeated the voice. “Dr. Barry Wilson?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking. “Who are you?”

“A great fan of your Flannery books, Dr. Wilson. I thought your last one, The Meaning of Liffey, was marvelous.”

“Uh, thanks.” Wilson couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Was it some fungus-induced hallucination?

The creature made an odd, rustling sound that Wilson realized he’d heard before. Then, “Sorry, Dr. Wilson. Couldn’t resist my little joke. I still have a sense of humor if not much else. My name is Dr. Bruce Carter. I’ve been waiting for you.” He began slicing through the strands with his knife.

Wilson remembered the Public Health investigator on the video. He felt a surge of renewed hope as he was cut free. “God!” he cried. “How on earth did you find us?”

“Shush, not so loud or you’ll wake our friends. I’ll explain everything later. First let’s get your companion free.”

Kimberley raised her head as they approached her and said in a dull, apathetic voice, “What are you doing?”

“Escaping,” said Wilson, and told her who Carter was.

Her reaction was to mutter, “What’s the use? We might as well stay here. We’re finished. I can feel it growing on me.”

As Carter cut her free of the bindings Wilson quickly ran his hands over her face, torso and limbs. Her skin felt smooth to his touch. “You’re fine,” he told her. “Come on, get up. We’re getting out of here.”

He pulled her to her feet. She leaned against him and groaned. “My leg. I hurt my knee when the truck crashed. I don’t think I can walk.”

“You’d better,” he said roughly. “I certainly can’t carry you.”

With Carter in the lead, and Kimberley hobbling painfully, they picked their way quietly through the mass of sleeping creatures. Even though Wilson knew they were human beings under their fungal shells he was unable to regard them as people any longer. And he was thankful the darkness prevented him from getting a good look at Carter.

They made it to the lane that led through the cemetery to the entrance. As they hurried along it as fast as they could, which wasn’t very fast due to Kimberley’s leg and the fact that Carter couldn’t manage much more than a shuffle, Wilson began to relax a little. He again asked Carter how he’d found them.

“Knew you… were coming,” he wheezed with difficulty. “Intercepted radio messages meant for you. Posted lookouts on the main western approaches still open into London there are still a few of us who can call our brains our own, though for how much longer I don’t know. My own thoughts are getting stranger all the time—a sign the fungus is affecting my mind.”

He paused to suck in air, making a sound like water going down a drain.

He continued, “The physiological changes the fungi are imposing on their unwilling hosts are quite interesting from the scientific point of view. The effects are many and varied, but there does seem to be a major trend toward the mutating fungi somehow harnessing human intelligence for their own survival purposes.

“But I’m digressing—another indication of mental deterioration, I fear—I was telling you how I came to be here.

The look-out I’d posted south of here heard all the shooting and guessed it might be you. He fired a flare to alert me and I came as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast, I’m afraid.

I found your abandoned vehicle and knew it was you.”

“But how did you know we’d be in that weird temple place back there?”

“That’s where they take all their victims. They hunt for people who don’t show any signs of infection. There are a few such around—natural immunity, I gather—but they are very rare. If they still don’t get infected in spite of everything our friends at the temple do to them, they are then killed as heretics. Like one of those old witchcraft trials—you can’t win either way.”

Kimberley gave a piercing shriek. Wilson turned and got a fleeting impression of something rushing at them out of the darkness. He pushed Kimberley to one side and struck blindly at the shape.

He felt his fist make contact with something brittle. There was a sound like a stalk of celery being snapped in two. At the same moment something hard caught him a glancing blow on his left shoulder.

Dazed, he swung his fist again but met nothing but empty air. Then he discovered that his attacker was stretched out on the ground in front of him.

Wilson knelt down and gingerly examined the thing with his fingertips. He said wonderingly, “Damn, its neck’s broken. I didn’t hit it that hard.”

“Many of them are so riddled with the fungus, their bodies are becoming extremely fragile,” said Carter. “They are probably more fungus than human now. I suspect the same thing is happening to me—uh oh, listen!”

In the distance, from the direction they’d come, there was a murmur of voices—a kind of angry buzzing as if a bee hive was slowly coming to life.