“If we live through this,” Steve said, “I’ll need to use your phone to call home. My folks are probably really pissed.”
And then he and Tyler went loping down the rainy garden rows, slowed by the weight of the heavy jugs.
“Lift your feet,” Lucinda heard Tyler yell. “Don’t let those white things get a grip on you!”
Lightning flashed so bright that for a long moment everything before Lucinda’s eyes went black, even as the thunder made her very bones shudder. Then she dimly saw the lights of the two jugs bobbing near where Ragnar had stopped.
“You’re too close!” she screamed, but Tyler was also shouting.
“Throw it high, dude!” her brother called to Steve. “They have to break!” And he swung his own by the ring at the neck, spinning himself and the jar round and round like an Olympic hammer-thrower, then let it go. It flew up and then plopped down into the mud without breaking, a foot short of the pile of dead animals clustered against the greenhouse’s iron structure. The flame was still burning, though it guttered in the rain, and as gasoline spilled out of the jar it made a growing but unimpressive pool of blue fire.
“No!” Tyler shouted in despair. “Steve, you have to do it! You have to hit the greenhouse!”
Steven Carrillo stared for a moment as another lightning flash turned the entire garden into a kind of stage set, rows and rows of flat pictures, each set in front of the next-garden plants, the greenhouse itself, mountains, and sky. Then Steve bent down. For a moment, Lucinda thought he was going to set the cider jar down and simply walk away in defeat, but he was bending for balance. He spun, surprisingly nimble, holding the jug in both hands, and then let it go. It flew end over end, flaming wick rotating like a Catherine wheel, its arc not as high as Tyler’s but a little longer. Lucinda’s heart rose-it was going to reach the greenhouse!
It thumped against the uppermost part of the structure without breaking, the impact deadened by the pale, doughy globs growing out of the frame. For an instant it teetered there and it seemed the monstrous thing would simply draw the jug itself like a sea anemone snatching a fish, but it was too heavy and too delicately balanced. It fell away, rolled down the mound of dead creatures at the base, and smashed into the other jug, breaking them both. Fire splattered up the sides of the greenhouse and the pale, doughy flesh where it had oozed through the broken panes. More fire spread across the ground. The white tentacles spasmed in shock and what could only be pain. !!!!!!!!
The greenhouse-thing’s screaming thoughts, if anything so primitive could be called that, ripped through Lucinda, knocking her flat on the ground and leaving her dizzy, unable to make her arms and legs work. It was the worst thing she’d ever felt in her head, a convulsion of fiery agony that seized her and shook her like the jaws of some great beast. When the worst had passed she could only lie still for long moments with rain splashing her face, then finally found the strength to drag herself upright again, although the fungus-monster’s sensations of alarm and pain still battered her.
The part of the white thing that wasn’t on fire was stretching even farther into the sky now, mouthlike holes gaping in the pale spongy mass as if a thousand voices screamed at once, but all Lucinda could hear above the storm was the whistle of escaping gases. In its pain the creature had lost control of much of its network of threads, and Ragnar was busily tearing himself loose. When he could move his legs again he staggered over to Mr. Walkwell and yanked him free, but the farm’s overseer did not move and Ragnar had to carry him away from the burning greenhouse: Simos Walkwell, who could lift the farm wagon with one hand, looked as shrunken and lifeless as a withered turnip, but at least he was free. Beside Lucinda, the fungal strands fell away from Colin Needle and withdrew into the ground.
But suddenly, just when it had seemed they had destroyed their terrible enemy, the mass of the main fungus body began to split open above the places where fire was blackening its flesh. A transparent ooze began to flow from these cracks, extinguishing the flames that had been scorching the thing’s surface. The echo of its power still pulsed in Lucinda’s head, its single-minded need to spawn, its mindless determination to spread itself to the winds. The thing was not beaten.
Lightning flashed again.
“Everybody, back!” Ragnar shouted. “Quickly!” He bent and picked up the fence post from where it had fallen short and advanced toward the greenhouse like a knight marching into a dragon’s cave. Lucinda could barely hear him over the thunder and a bizarre whistling noise that was coming now from the thing, but she did as he had said, pulling Colin by his good arm until the boy finally managed to crawl on his own. She turned to look for Tyler and Steve hurrying after her, and saw something behind them she would never forget, although she would wish for the rest of her life that she could.
The charred white and black mass was stretching wider now, its strands quivering with the spores they were about to release, but the truly horrible thing was that was that for a moment she could see something of Gideon’s own face and shape forming itself out of the main body’s moving white surface, as if the fungus had tasted her great-uncle so deeply and so long that it wanted to be him.
A blinding flash of light whitewashed the sky. Ragnar threw the fencepost-spear again and this time it shivered through the air and thumped into the thickest part of the monstrous fungus, the wire trailing like a row of silver sparks. Thunder boomed and boomed again, very close, then the sky exploded in a monstrous flash, so powerful that the ground lurched, knocking her off her feet again. Blue fire crackled and arched where the fence post stuck out of the ground, and white strands curled into blackened threads all around the ruined greenhouse.
The body of the thing, a grotesque and unstable copy of Gideon, swelled and began to grow bigger-for a mad moment Lucinda thought it would pull itself out of the greenhouse wreckage and walk-but then burst into gouts of dripping fire. The monstrous Gideon face twisted in agony or fury, then fell back into bubbly nothingness. Spores poured out but caught fire and disappeared in clouds of burning sparks, popping in the air, vanishing like the falling fireworks at a Fourth of July show. Inky black smoke curled from the melting wreckage and was swept away by the wind.
Lucinda felt a hand on her arm, then one on the other side. It was Tyler and Steve Carrillo lifting her out of the mud.
“We’re alive,” was all she could say. “Alive.”
Tyler nodded, shook his head, then nodded again. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re alive.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she told him. “You guys have to carry Gideon. Ragnar knocked him out, but that thing had him really bad.”
With the boys awkwardly cradling the unconscious Gideon, they all turned their backs on the smoldering greenhouse and began to make their way back across the garden, toward the house. Colin was staggering along under his own power, holding his arm against his chest. Lucinda moved up to offer him some support, but he turned away from her and continued to make his own slow way. Ragnar was carrying Mr. Walkwell. The sight of the old man’s closed eyes and limp form frightened her.
“Is he all right, Ragnar? He’s not… ”
“Simos is alive,” the big man told her. He didn’t look as though he could claim much more himself. “But he is in a bad way.”
“We won, didn’t we?” she asked, but she said it quietly, mostly to herself.
“Oh, one thing, Luce?” Tyler said from behind her, grunting a little as he tried to balance his share of their great-uncle. “If you were going to go and lie down? There’s… there’s kind of someone sleeping in your room.” She turned to look back. Tyler had a funny expression on his face, a little nervous, but also quite proud. “You remember Grace? Gideon’s wife?”
Lucinda had no idea what he was talking about and was so battered and exhausted that she didn’t think she could string two more words together, so she opted for just one.
“Whatever.”
Chapter 41
Steve Carrillo’s parents came to pick him up about noon, and as they pulled up to the front gate in their pick-
