The Fungus Page 4

  The thought cheered her up still further as she dressed and began to dry her long, blonde hair with a portable drier.

  It was then she noticed the cut on her right forefinger. It was a small incision on the very tip of her finger, extending at right angles from the end of her fingernail for just over a quarter of an inch. As she held it up for a closer look a small drop of blood oozed out. Automatically she put the end of her finger in her mouth and sucked. . . .

  Frowning, she wondered how she could have cut herself. Then she remembered removing that sliver from the gill segment for the microscope. She must have nicked herself with the scalpel. Oh well, it didn’t matter; the cut would have been well and truly cleaned by both the antiseptic gas and water. Not that there was any chance of picking up a dangerous infection from anything in her lab. Despite all the elaborate safety precautions, which were imposed on all the Institute’s genetic engineering facilities no matter what the nature of their work, she knew that there was nothing potentially harmful among any of the artificial micro-­organisms that she and her team had created over the years.

  Or so she believed. . . .

  Unknown to her, several thousand microscopic mushroom cells still remained in the cut and under her fingernail. They were dead or dying but the virus-­like enzyme, which had been designed to survive for as long as possible, was still active within all the cells.

  And while the enzyme wasn’t directly harmful to human life its indirect effects were to prove, very swiftly, catastrophic.

  Humming to herself Dr. Jane Wilson finished dressing and made her plans for the night. Though she hadn’t slept for the last 36 hours she was too excited to go home to bed. No, she wanted to celebrate, and she’d celebrate by having her first self-­indulgent night out in years. She would go to a movie, perhaps—preferably a comedy—then have an Indian meal and after that go to a pub and get quietly drunk. She would do all the things that she and Barry used to enjoy doing when they first met.

  Damn, she was thinking about him again. She wondered if she should give him a call when she got home and break the wonderful news. No, he’d probably be typing away over there in Ireland even at that late hour—wearing his stupid ear-­plugs—and would accuse her of interrupting his “flow.” That was if he even bothered to answer the phone.

  No, she decided, she wouldn’t call him. He could read about it in the papers.

  She left the Institute of Tropical Biology at 5.18 p.m. and a short time later was walking down Tottenham Court Road. At 5.22 p.m. she bought a newspaper to check the cinema listings. She was looking at the paper when she collided with Norman Layne . . .

  6

  Wednesday, 5.55 a.m.

  Dr. Bruce Carter swore when he saw what time it was. A phone call before 6 a.m. meant two things: trouble, and not enough sleep to cope with it.

  He reached out for the phone on the bedside table and picked it up. “Emergency,” said the familiar voice of the Duty Officer, confirming his fears. “Get to the Middlesex Hospital as quickly as you can.”

  Carter didn’t bother asking what had come up. Even if the Duty Officer had the details he would be reluctant to give them over the phone. Security in the civil service was continually getting tighter under the Thatcher regime and a whole new set of regulations governing what it was permissible to discuss by telephone had recently been issued. The weather was about the only safe subject left.

  He forced himself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. The sight of his face in the mirror was enough to jolt him into full wakefulness. He looked like his father. Or rather what his father had looked like at 50. The trouble was that he was only 43.

  I’m working too hard, he told himself as he threw cold water on his face and then began to clean his teeth. At this rate I’ll be dead of a heart attack long before I reach retirement age . . . just like Dad.

  And yet he enjoyed his job, in spite of the long, unsocial hours, and the pressures, and certainly didn’t want to be transferred into a less strenuous department. He knew he’d be bored doing anything else.

  Dr. Bruce Carter was a medical investigator for the Home Office. His duties ranged over a wide area, dealing with every­thing from rabies control to tracking down the origins of outbreaks of communicable diseases like typhoid, TB and the like. He was also an expert on toxins and was often called in on suspected murder cases. All in all it was a fairly exciting and challenging job that didn’t follow any particular routine. He hated routine but he loved challenges.

  He parked his car in Goodge Street at 6.25 a.m., pleased with himself at how quickly he’d made it into town. As he got out of the car he was aware of how quiet it was at this time of the morning. If only it was always like this, he thought, as he hurried toward the entrance of the Middlesex Hospital.

  On the way he noticed something odd; growing out of a drain next to the footpath was a clump of the biggest toadstools he’d ever seen. They were white, spherical things almost the size of footballs. He was tempted to examine them more closely but there wasn’t time. Later perhaps.

  Inside the building he gave his name to the receptionist who, predictably, couldn’t find it on her list. Carter was patient. “Try looking under ‘C’,” he suggested politely.

  She eventually found a Dr. Bruce “Cowper” on the list and agreed, a shade reluctantly, that it was probably him. “You’re to go to the Contagious Diseases Ward, Block C, Level two and ask for a Dr. Mason. Take that lift there and press the button marked two. Then . . .”

  But Carter was already running for the lift. “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder. “I know the way.”

  On the second floor he encountered a nurse heading toward him from the direction of the Contagious Diseases Ward. The look on her face disturbed him. Her expression was one of shock. It was rare for a nurse to display her emotions that way, no matter what she might have witnessed. Carter began to get an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He went through the door marked “Contagious Diseases” in big red letters. Beyond, in a short passageway, sat a nurse at a desk. There was another nurse with her, talking in a low voice. They both looked up at him as he entered. Their eyes had the same expression of dull shock as the nurse he’d passed outside. His feeling of foreboding increased.

  He gave them his name and one of them took him along into a small room. She handed him a plastic anti-contamination suit and told him to put it on. He stared at the suit with surprise. He’d worn such clothing before, but only rarely, in extreme situations. The last time had been during the investigation of a suspected escape of smallpox bacillus from a research lab.

  He gestured at the suit’s self-­contained oxygen supply and said to the nurse, “Rather drastic this, isn’t it? Isn’t your patient in an isolation unit?”

  Tersely she said, “There’s more than one of them and, yes, they are in isolation units, but Dr. Mason advises the use of the suit just the same.”

  He said nothing more as he climbed into the suit. When he was ready she checked the seals then indicated another door. “Go through there. You’ll find a door at the end of the passageway. Dr. Mason will be waiting to meet you beyond it.”

  “What’s the problem?” he asked her, his voice distorted by the plastic helmet.

  “I think you’d better let Dr. Mason explain the situation,” she said and then left the room.

  Carter paused for a while, then went to the door she’d indicated. He was positive now he was not going to enjoy what lay at the end of the passage.

  Dr. Mason, similarly attired like an extra from Star Wars, met him as he stepped into a small ward that was all pristine whiteness and glittering medical equipment. Carter had met Dr. Mason once before at an emergency meeting to discuss the AIDS problem about a year and a half ago but knew him mainly by reputation. And that was very impressive indeed.

  “Ah, Dr. Carter, I’m glad you made it here so quickly,” said Mason. “I’m afraid we have quite a serious problem on our hands . . . quite a seriou
s problem.”

  Behind the plastic of his helmet Mason’s round, sweat-­covered face was haggard with strain. Carter glanced past him at the six beds the ward contained. Each bed was covered by a plastic tent. In four of the tents he could make out vague shapes.

  He peered hard at the nearest bed/tent. The patient within it seemed to be entirely covered in thick bandages. Yellow ban­dages. He went nearer. Mason followed.

  “What happened to him? Or is it a her? Those bandages make it impossible to tell.”

  “It’s a ‘he.’ And those aren’t bandages.”

  Carter turned to Mason, thinking he was making some sort of odd joke, but the look in Mason’s eyes told him it was no joke. Carter felt himself go very cold and his testicles seemed to be shrinking up into his crotch as if trying to hide.

  He turned back to the figure on the bed and bent his helmet close to the plastic tent. What he’d thought was a bandage was instead a thick yellow growth that covered the whole body, even the face.

  “Jesus,” he groaned. “What the hell is that? It looks like a mold . . .”

  “It is.”

  Carter was confused. “I’ve seen a fair few corpses in my time but never one in a state like that. And why have you got it up here instead of in the morgue?”

  “It’s not a corpse.” Mason’s voice was bleak.

  “What!” He stared at Mason in astonishment then back at the form on the bed. He now saw that the fluff-­covered chest rose and fell perceptibly. He was glad he hadn’t had time for breakfast before he’d left home.

  “Yes, he’s still alive,” said Mason. “I suppose you could say he’s one of the lucky ones.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Unlike this patient.”

  Mason led Carter to the adjacent bed. The naked body beneath the plastic was that of a man. Carter judged him to be in his mid-­twenties. He couldn’t tell for sure because from the neck up there was nothing but a lump of grey, featureless fungus. It was like a dirty cauliflower.

  “Mercifully dead, but I don’t dare transfer him to the morgue. The risk of contagion is too great. The man may be dead but that growth is still alive, I fear.”

  “But what is it?” demanded Carter. “Where did these people get infected with this stuff?”

  “The answer to both your questions is, ‘I don’t know,’ ” said Mason. He pointed back at the first bed. “That one was picked up by the police less than two hours ago. He was spotted by the driver of a newspaper delivery van staggering along the Euston Road. The two policemen who answered the call had the good sense to bring him straight here. And this victim . . .” He indicated the body in front of them. “. . . was brought in by ambulance from Ladbroke Grove about an hour ago. Neighbors heard his girlfriend screaming at around 5 a.m. She was completely hysterical. She’d woken up in bed and found him like this . . . beside her.” Mason swallowed dryly and led Carter to the next bed.

  Carter reluctantly stared through the plastic. It was almost as bad as he had feared. The body was covered with pulpy white growths. Like toadstools, the puff-­ball variety.

  He remembered the unusually large toadstools growing in the gutter outside the hospital and a horrible suspicion began to form in the back of his mind.

  “This one’s alive too,” said Mason. “Staggered into the casualty department of Guy’s Hospital at 4 a.m.”

  “It is some kind of fungus, isn’t it,” said Carter, peering at the growths.

  “It looks like it. But I’ve tried massive doses of both nystatin and griseofulvin without any noticeable effect.”

  Carter nodded. Those were the two antibiotics most effective against fungal infections. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Neither have I. I’m no expert on fungal infections but I thought I was familiar with most of the ones that can affect human beings, even the ones we don’t tend to get in Britain, like histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis, but this . . . this is outside my experience completely.”

  An idea occurred to Carter. “It could be some new tropical strain that a visitor from, say, Africa or India has brought in. You’d better get in touch with the Institute of Tropical Medicine, they might be able to identify this.”

  “I’ve already thought of that. My staff are making the calls now. They’re also trying to contact the head of the Mycology Department at London University so that we can have stuff analysed by experts as soon as possible. But the most pressing problem—and the reason I called you—is to stop this stuff from spreading any further. This last victim was brought in from as far away as Hackney. . . .” He indicated the final occupied bed.

  Carter looked and saw a large, middle-­aged black woman lying there. At first she seemed free of any fungal growths but then he noticed the long slits running down her limbs and torso. He looked at her face. Her eyes were open but the surface of the eyeballs was covered with a grey mold. He could see the same grey mold within the fissures in her skin. Fortunately she wasn’t breathing.

  “Her whole body is riddled with fungus. There’s probably more of it than her now. One of the disturbing factors is that each of the four victims here appears to have been afflicted by a different type of fungus. I just don’t understand it.”

  Carter said tonelessly, “Ladbroke Grove, Hackney, Borough . . . that’s a wide area already. Have there been any more reported cases?”

  “I’m afraid so. So far we’ve had calls from the West Middlesex Hospital, the London Hospital and the Springfield Hospital . . . they’ve all got cases by the sound of it.”

  “Springfield . . . that’s Upper Tooting.” The red area on Carter’s mental map of London grew even bigger. “And you say it’s very contagious, but exactly how contagious?”

  “Extremely contagious,” answered Mason. “The two policemen who brought in the Euston Road victim are in another ward nearby. They’re both infected. The stuff is covering about twenty percent of their bodies and is spreading fast, despite all our attempts to kill it. Three ambulance men have also been stricken so far . . . and there’s this.”

  Mason held up his right hand and opened the seals on the plastic glove. He pulled off the glove and Carter saw, on the back of Mason’s hand, a patch of yellow mold.

  PART TWO

  THE JOURNEY

  1

  Flannery lurched in to Neary’s, trying to ignore the pain in his bruised legs. He was positive that one of the men lined up at the bar was going to be surprised to see him and he was right. Of the several faces that turned in his direction one of them registered a fleeting look of disbelief. The face belonged to Bresnihan.

  Flannery joined him at the bar.

  Casually, Flannery said, “Hello, Fiach. I suppose I have you to thank for last night.”

  Bresnihan’s attempt to look innocent was as weak as English beer. “I don’t know what . . .” he began.

  Flannery cut him off. “Don’t waste your breath, Fiach. You might need it to explain to that poor, mistreated wife of yours why you’ve come home carrying your balls in a paper bag instead of in your pea-­sized scrotum. I know it was you who set me up with the provos. You told them that my questions about Mulvaney had something to do with them, right?”

  Bresnihan hesitated, then gave a resigned nod. “How did you get away? I figured for sure you’d be a dead man by now.”

  Flannery grinned. “It takes more than the IRA to stop Flannery, Fiach, my lad. You should know that.”

  “Oh Christ!” shouted Barry Wilson, slamming his fist onto the typewriter and making the lamp with the loose connection flicker. It was no good. Much too melodramatic. Too far over the top. None of that ‘wry, sharp wit’ that the reviewer in the Irish Times had astutely noticed in the last Flannery novel The Meaning of Liffey. It was more Mickey Spillane than Barry Wilson.

  He frowned suddenly and cocked his head. Was that the doorbell? It was hard to tell with these damn earplugs but he’d become addicted to them as a working aid. It certainly couldn’t have been the phone because
he’d taken it off the hook weeks ago.

  He sincerely hoped it wasn’t the door bell. He didn’t want a single interruption until he’d finished all the work he had to do. Apart from meeting the deadline for this fourth Flannery book—which was less than a month away—he also had to write a treatment for the proposed Flannery TV series that RTE was “semi-­keen” on doing. If the TV series happened his financial problems would be over. Though the Flannery novels had been a moderate success, and their popularity was still growing, money was still in short supply. The two children, Simon and Jessica, ate up most of it and the rest was spent on paying off this damp-­ridden cottage here in County Wicklow.

  He heard the sound again. It was the door bell. He swore to himself and looked at his watch. It was after midnight. Who the hell would be paying him a visit all the way up here at this time of night? Couldn’t be one of his neighbors. He’d made a point of alienating them all in order to ensure uninterrupted privacy.

  He took out the earplugs and listened intently. The door bell rang again. This time it sounded as if someone were leaning on it. He got up and made his way out of the study and down the passage towards the front room.

  Without turning on the light he crept across the floor, struggling to remember which of the boards creaked, and went to one of the front windows. Warily he peered out through a crack in the curtain . . . and got a shock.

  He could see the outlines of three men outside. And all of them were carrying what looked like automatic weapons.

  Alarmed, he backed away from the window. Men with guns. It could mean only one thing. The IRA. But what were they doing at his house?

  At that moment there came a tremendous thump on the front door. Wilson’s heart seemed to miss a beat. Christ, they were breaking down the door!

  He retreated from the front room, ran down the passage and back into his study. His mind raced as he frantically tried to think of a place to hide. There was no cellar, no attic. . . .