“Yeah, he really fucked things up this time, huh?”
Aaron wheeled his way back around towards Ryan, ducking and dodging with surprising dexterity. “I guess those video games finally paid off, little brother. Crash Bandicoot would be proud.”
Aaron frowned. “Who?”
“Never mind, we’re getting out of here.”
“What about Loobey?”
Loobey started backing up towards the shed. “Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna stick around, clean up a bit.” Aaron frowned, but before he could say anything, Loobey started shouting at Sean, waving his arms around like a madman. “Hey, Sean, come give your old mate a hug. That’s it, come on.”
Sean’s green-fuzzed eyes fixated on Loobey, as if attracted by the movement. Or was it the noise getting his attention? Either way, Ryan and Aaron stood completely still while Loobey danced and shouted. Eventually, he got all of Sean’s attention. “We always said you’d catch something one of these days, yer mad bastard. We just assumed it’d be the clap. Come on, you Manc twat. Let’s see how hard you are!”
Sean made no sound as he rushed furiously at Loobey. Loobey retreated backwards, heading towards the open door of the shed. Ryan wanted to do something, to try and grab the hammer in time to save his friend, but it was too late.
Loobey took a few more steps and then Sean leapt at him, tendrils whipping in the air. Loobey threw out his arms and wrapped them around Sean’s emaciated waist, pulled him into a tight embrace. They tumbled, together, towards the shed. Loobey turned, forcing Sean through the open doorway as they fell. Before he disappeared, he managed to reach out and pull on the door handle.
The door slammed shut.
Silence.
Behind the shed, the generator conked out with an asthmatic grunt. The last of the sun disappeared. Inside the shed, Loobey was alone with Sean, in the dark. His grunts of exertion turned into agonised screams.
Aaron stepped towards the shed, but Ryan grabbed the back of his jacket. “Loobey’s gone. You might not understand it, but he’s gone. We need to get out of here.”
“But—”
Ryan picked up a bike and thrust it towards Aaron. “You said it yourself, someone needs to come here with a flamethrower.”
A single tear spilled down Aaron’s cheek, but he nodded.
The brother’s Cartwright mounted their bikes and pedalled away. The stag do was over.
Aaron rode the yellow bike and led the way with his light. As soon as they made it down to the stream, they saw how bad things were. A fox glared at them, but only one of its eyes shone beneath the newborn moon. The other was a shadowy fuzz. Several times, rabbits bolted towards them, but their coordination was poisoned by the fungus and Ryan and Aaron were able to skirt by them. It felt like the infection was all around them, growing out of the very earth. How quickly did the green oil spread? Had all of the wildlife caught it from the corkscrew on the hill?
What the hell is that thing? Where did it come from?
Ryan had to keep telling himself to slow down. He wanted nothing more than to feel the wind in his hair as he put more and more distance between him and the cottage, but the night had gone from grey to black, and every curve in the road hid a pothole, rock, or precipice. One wrong turn and he could be lying out in the open with a broken leg. Aaron, too, was pushing his luck, and several times his front wheel had hit an obstacle and caused him to wobble frantically until he regained his balance.
After a while, it felt safe enough to slow down, so Ryan called ahead to get Aaron to pump the pedals a little less hard. They settled into a new rhythm, side by side, but neither of them spoke for a long while. Eventually, Aaron broke the silence. “We shouldn’t have left Loobey behind. He wouldn’t have done that to us.”
“He was infected,” said Ryan between gasps. “Not only that, but he was dying from cancer.”
Aaron turned sideways. “What?”
“He was dying of cancer. None of us knew it, but this weekend was his goodbye. I don’t think he had long.”
The silence resumed for a few minutes more until Aaron spoke again. “Loobey was really dying?”
“I swear down. He was infected too. Back at the cottage, he showed me his arm. Sean had got him. One slice of those talons and it’s game over, I think. It’s a miracle we got out of there alive. Brett… Brett wasn’t so lucky.”
“He changed so fast.”
“He’d been infected for a while. I just think it was happening on the inside. We never noticed until it was too late.”
They sped around a bend in the narrow road and then descended a dip. Ryan’s tummy fluttered and he found it comforting. A normal bodily function that told him he was alive. Or were his insides teeming with fungus? Brett had had no idea. He hadn’t known he was changing.
As if thinking the same thing, Aaron said, “Brett changed much quicker than Sean did.”
“You’re right.”
“Maybe it was all the drugs he took. The fungus might not like to get high.”
Ryan was too numb to laugh immediately, but after a second, a cackle erupted from his lips. “Even a deadly fungus couldn’t keep up with Sean. God bless him.”
“No way is he getting an invite to Heaven.”
Ryan’s cackle became a chuckle. “Yeah, he’ll probably have more fun in Hell anyway.”
“I’m going to miss him.”
“Me too.”
They rode on for another half a mile, but this time they didn’t do so in silence. They chatted and chuckled, glad to be free of the terror. A numbness had set in, pressing pause on the horror they had witnessed, and it allowed them to think about something else. For now, they had a task, and that task was riding to the village to get help. The
