Aaron ran his wet hands through his messy brown hair and all over his body until he was shivering with cold. They would need to start a fire to warm themselves up. “Is there a cure?” he asked, his voice fraught with nerves. “For fungus?”
“There are anti-fungal treatments,” said Brett. “Most are effective, but… I don’t know. Whatever Sean has is something I’ve never heard about. If we breathe it in, it could take root in our lungs. It could infect our brains.”
Aaron wobbled. Ryan grabbed him and made him look at him. “It’s okay, little brother. Tom is already on his way to get help. Just stay with me, okay?”
Aaron took a series of shallow breaths, but eventually he gave a nod. “I’m good.”
Ryan took a deep breath, trying to keep his heart from beating out of his chest. He turned to Brett. “Sean’s confused, like he doesn’t even know what’s happening. You think the fungus reached his brain?”
“It would explain why he lashed out at Loobey, and why he became so calm afterwards.”
“What do you mean?”
“In nature, parasites, fungi, bacteria, and even viruses act to ensure both their survival and their reproduction. If the fungus has got into Sean’s brain, it might have caused an initial mood swing or panic that made him attack, but then it rewired his thought processes to keep him calm. If a person doesn’t panic, they are less likely to seek help. The longer it takes a patient to see a doctor, the more time the fungus has to take hold. The thing that scares me most is just how quickly this thing spreads. The amount of energy an organism would need to grow like that. The fungus must be feeding directly off of Sean’s fat cells. The chemical reaction is so fierce that the green fuzz darkens and decays in a matter of hours. We all saw it.”
Ryan put a hand over his eyes and shook his head. “This is bad.”
Aaron kept the conversation going. “When Sean pulled that patch of dead fuzz away, there was something underneath, as if his skin had turned into some kind of shell.”
“I saw it too,” said Brett. “Like the surface of an egg. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. We all need to get a change of clothes and go outside. It’s less likely we’ll breathe in fungal spores if we get out.”
“What about Sean?” asked Loobey. He was still sitting on the bottom step and had been listening to them in silence until now. “He’s still our mate, and he’s sick.”
Brett grabbed a tea towel and started drying himself off. He ignored the question, although he had clearly heard it. He either didn’t have an answer, or didn’t care to give one. “Okay, that should be enough. Everyone get dry and get dressed. It’s all up to Tom now.”
Chapter Six
Ryan sat on the bank of the stream, watching the crystal water flow from left to right. Now and then a tiny fish would wiggle by, and the carefree movement made the current situation even more surreal.
I’m trapped in a nightmare where all of my friends turn on each other and a fungus is eating Sean.
Aaron sat beside Ryan, poking a bendy stick into the water. He looked nothing like a fifteen-year-old lad from a rough housing estate in Manchester. He was a lost child, which made Ryan feel even more like his father instead of his brother.
That’s not my job. It was never supposed to be my job.
Aaron’s father had stuck around for the first couple of years after he was born, but eventually the piece of shit had grown tired of being a parent and disappeared to Spain with a friend who had bought a bar. “A once in a lifetime opportunity,” he had called it, but it was really just a way to run out on his responsibilities. He might have loved Aaron, but he had no affection for Ryan or his mother. The promises of annual visits had dried up by the time Aaron was six, his father quickly becoming a memory. Ryan had been sixteen and suddenly found himself becoming Aaron’s male role model. At the request of their mother, he had tried to include his younger brother in as many things as possible, allowing him to tag along to the few gatherings that didn’t involve alcohol or frisky girls. Pretty soon, Sean and Loobey had taken Aaron under their wings, too, but it was hard for a bunch of teenagers to look after a six-year-old responsibly. Aaron was exposed to too much at too young an age, and it scared him. The last straw had been when Aaron witnessed Ryan get beat up after a ‘fun time’ egging houses.
The egg-based terrorism had been indiscriminate, which somehow made it feel safer. Sean and Loobey were all smiles as they spattered car bonnets and second-floor windows. Inside their fit and healthy bodies they felt invincible; nothing could catch them. They were teenagers having fun, but the last house they egged belonged to an ex-paratrooper without a sense of humour. The furious veteran bolted out of his house like a retired thoroughbred. While Sean, Loobey, Aaron, and Ryan had made a run for it, it soon became clear that Aaron, with his small legs, and Loobey, with his large belly, weren’t going to make it. Ryan stopped dead in the middle of the road, a strap of terror tightening around his chest. His knees trembled, but he stood his ground while his friends and brother got away.
The paratrooper didn’t slow down. He sprinted right through Ryan, knocking him to the ground so fiercely that he wondered if he’d been hit by a man or a bus. He slid across the uneven tarmac, arms and lower back shredding to pieces. The pain was immense, but the shock of being hit so suddenly and so hard was even worse.
Ryan remembered trying to get up, but the
