The Fungus Page 5
The front door shuddered again.
A weapon! He had to find a weapon. But what was there? He had no rifle, no shotgun . . . then he noticed the letter opener lying on his desk. He snatched it up. Not sharp, but it was long and pointed.
Then he heard the front door splintering. . . .
He turned off the study light and crawled quickly under his desk. He waited there, heart pounding like a jack hammer, clutching the letter opener.
Voices in the front room. He heard his name being called.
Shit, so it was him they were after. It wasn’t some random attack or a case of mistaken identity. But why him? Why would the IRA be after him? Okay, so he’d poked fun at them in the Flannery books but surely he hadn’t upset them enough for them to take this sort of action.
Maybe they intended kidnapping him. Perhaps they thought he was a rich author and figured he could raise a huge ransom. Christ, they were going to be pissed off when they found out how little he was worth.
Heavy footsteps. In the passage. Getting closer.
Hell, what could he do? What would Flannery do in a spot like this? Take the offensive, of course. Surprise them. Grab one of them, shove the letter opener against his throat and take him hostage. Then use the famous Flannery cool to talk himself out of the situation. Probably end up with them eating out of his hand; volunteering to come round and fix the door and maybe do some work in the garden as compensation.
Fuck Flannery. This was real life. Wilson shared some of Flannery’s characteristics, as most authors do with their creations, but heroism, nerves of steel and a cool head in an emergency were not among them. Also Flannery was over six feet tall and built like a brick shithouse whereas Wilson was five feet ten and weighed only 160 pounds.
The footsteps got closer. The light came on. Wilson got a low angle view of three pairs of heavy black boots coming towards him across the floor.
I’ll spring out, Wilson told himself, stab one of them and then make a run for it in all the confusion.
But he couldn’t get his body to move. All he could do was crouch there helplessly. The next thing he knew there was a face peering at him only a few inches from his own. One of the men had bent down and was looking at him under the desk.
“Mr. Wilson? Mr. Barry Wilson?” inquired the face politely.
For a few seconds Wilson stared back in frozen shock. Then he managed to croak, “Yes . . . that’s me.” It was only then that he realized the man spoke with an English accent. “You’re not Irish,” he told him accusingly.
“No sir. I’m Lieutenant Smythe-Robertson of the 69th Parachute Regiment. Would you care to come out from under there, sir? We don’t have much time.”
Wilson crawled out from under the desk. The man helped him get to his feet. Feeling dazed, he stared round at the three of them. They were all dressed in army uniforms. “You’re soldiers. British soldiers,” he said, somewhat stupidly.
“Yessir,” said the one called Smythe-Robertson. “And there’s no need for that, sir.” He looked down at Wilson’s right hand.
Wilson followed his gaze and saw the letter opener. It appeared puny and ridiculous compared to the three submachine guns the soldiers were carrying. Wilson opened his hand and the letter opener fell to the floor with a clatter. “I thought you were the IRA,” he muttered.
The three soldiers glanced at each other. Wilson saw something in the looks that he was not sure he liked. Resentment began to replace his numbing fear. “Look here, what the hell is going on? You come breaking into my house in the dead of night scaring the shit out of me—you’d better have a bloody good explanation. And what are you doing here in the Republic? The Irish government is going to take a pretty dim view of this, I can tell you.”
Smythe-Robertson held up a hand to cut him off. “We have special dispensation, sir, due to the State of Emergency that exists in both countries. Now will you please accompany us, sir. We have a long way to travel.” He gripped Wilson’s arm. Wilson shook his hand away.
“State of Emergency? What State of Emergency? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You must know what’s happened on the mainland. The TV and radio’s been full of it.”
“I don’t have a TV and I never listen to the radio when I’m up here working alone. Too distracting.”
“You mean you don’t know about the crisis?” Smythe-Robertson looked very surprised.
“What crisis?” demanded Wilson.
The soldier paused for a moment then said, “There’s no time to explain it all now. We have to get moving right away.”
“Moving to where?”
“Belfast.”
Wilson laughed, “I’m not going to Belfast. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Smythe-Robertson made a gesture and his two men each grabbed one of Wilson’s arms. The next thing Wilson knew he was being dragged out of his study. He tried to put up a resistance but the two soldiers didn’t even seem to notice his efforts.
“You can’t do this to me!” he yelled. “I’ll sue you for false arrest!”
“We’re not arresting you, sir,” said Smythe-Robertson from close behind. “But in a State of Emergency you are obliged by law to obey our instructions. And that’s what you’re doing.”
They dragged him out through the front doorway, stepping over the remains of the door. Wilson then received another surprise. Sitting in his front garden was a helicopter—a big one.
As the soldiers hustled him toward it, its engine roared into life and the rotor began to turn.
“Better duck, sir,” yelled one of the soldiers. “We don’t want to lose that valuable head of yours.”
No sooner had they bundled him through a side-door in the machine than it began to rise into the air. Wilson couldn’t take in what was happening. It was all too crazy to be true. If he’d put something like this in a Flannery story he’d be accused of being too far-fetched.
“Look, I can’t go away anywhere! I’ve got a book to write! I’ve got a deadline to meet!” he yelled over the noise of the engine.
“Where’s your publisher based, Mr. Wilson?” yelled back Smythe-Robertson.
“London, of course!”
“Mr. Wilson, there is no London anymore!”
2
Everything smelled of country.
Dermot Biggs breathed deeply of the warm night air and was happy. He and Sally and their three children, Sarah, Robert and Finnegan, were all thoroughly enjoying their fortnight’s camping holiday. It was proving to be the success he’d hoped for but hadn’t really thought possible. The usual constant bickering between the kids had stopped and the slight sexual distance he’d felt from Sally in recent months had been bridged, not once but several times.
The weather in Yorkshire had been marvelous the whole time, the car hadn’t misbehaved at all, and to top it off the old farmer on whose property they were camping turned out to be the producer of a home-made beer that was one of the best things Dermot had ever tasted, as well as having the kick of Kenny Dalglish. Every time Dermot visited the farm to pick up their daily supply of eggs and fresh milk he also came away with a quart of the old man’s brew.
He was carrying a quart of it now as he headed across the fields to the clump of trees beside the small river where they were camped. He was a pleasant old fellow for a farmer, Dermot reflected, though he did tend to ramble a bit at times. Like tonight when they’d been sitting in his kitchen sampling a couple of pints of a new batch. He’d been going on about something he’d heard on the radio—or wireless, as he called it—concerning some plague that was supposed to have broken out in London. Dermot couldn’t make head nor tail of what he said and guessed he was exaggerating wildly. Pity one of the kids had dropped and broken their own radio last week, but he was sure that whatever it was could wait until they got back—perish the thought—to Liverpool the next Monday.
Besides, who gave a damn about London? When did anyone in London last give a damn about wh
at went on north of Watford? It was practically a separate country.
Dermot’s good mood persisted even when he stepped in some cow dung. He muttered, “Oh bugger,” to himself and then chuckled when he switched on his flashlight to confirm that he had indeed walked into the grandfather of all cowpats. A fresh one too.
He wiped his right shoe on the grass to clean off the dung then continued to weave his tipsy way towards the camp site.
He didn’t know it, and wouldn’t have cared less if he did, but smears of excreta remained in the chunky patterns on the sole of his shoe. He also didn’t know that the smears contained spores from the coprophilous fungus living in the intestine of the cow that had produced the dung.
None of this would have mattered but for the fact that the field had received an invisible shower of microscopic fungus particles carried all the way from London by the prevailing winds. The particles had first been swept very high into the sky and would have continued on over the Irish Sea if a westerly cross current hadn’t caused them to be deposited onto this particular part of Yorkshire.
And as Dermot walked across the field a few of the particles were picked up by the smears of cow dung on his shoe. Each particle contained Jane Wilson’s still-active enzyme, and when one of them came into contact with a coprophilous spore, something began to happen.
The lights were out in both the tents. Dermot had expected to find Sally still engrossed in her paperback—some epic fantasy about an adventurous leper or something. She and her silly sci-fi books, but it was because she was so hooked on the damn thing that she didn’t mind him going off to get plastered with the old farmer.
He headed for the children’s tent and almost tripped over a tent rope. Regaining his balance he said “Shhhs!” to himself and then poked his head, unsteadily, into the tent. They were all fast asleep but he kept watching them for awhile longer to make sure. They were crafty little devils.
Satisfied that they weren’t faking he went to his own tent. Sally was asleep too so he undressed as quietly as he could. All went well until he tried to remove his trousers and tripped over. He flopped heavily onto Sally.
“Wa? Uh?” she said.
“It’s only me. Sorry, possum. I’m a bit sloshed.”
She muttered something he couldn’t decipher and unzippered the sleeping bag a part of the way to make room for him. He crawled in, with difficulty. She was naked and felt warm. There was the slight slickness to her body that fresh perspiration gives. It felt very good, and he began to get hard.
He caressed her smooth skin and she reacted swiftly with the responses of a sexually aroused but still half-awake woman. They made love with all the pleasure of their early days together.
Later, as they slept, a thick, orange growth slowly formed outside the tent. It was looking for food, having already depleted the organic detritus in the soil.
It quickly detected the presence of a large supply of warm food nearby. Its thin hyphae, which would have been almost invisible in daylight, spread out over the ground toward the heat source. They moved swiftly, covering over 12 inches every minute. They entered the tent and spread across the grass towards the ground sheet and the end of the sleeping bag. During their love-making Dermot and his wife had emerged from the bag and were now sleeping on top of it. The tips of the hyphae touched their damp feet and began to feed on the dead outer layer of the epidermis.
As they grew further up the sleeping couple’s legs the hyphae sensed a food that was more natural to the coprophilous fungus. They grew faster and were soon probing the warm crevices and orifices that were particularly moist and nourishing.
They entered Dermot and Sally almost simultaneously.
All the sleeping couple felt was a dim sense of increased warmth. They both relaxed into it, and their dreams were pleasant. At one point Sally became half-awake and stroked Dermot’s chest. His skin seemed to have a thick, furry texture to it but she knew that was only because of the strangeness that sleep gives to the senses. It felt wonderful, she decided, as she sank back into deep sleep again.
In the other tent the children were being similarly invaded by the fungus and entering into the same peaceful state of union with it. The mutating coprophilous was making the necessary changes to its hosts so that it could exist in a symbiotic relationship with them without causing their destruction.
When the Biggs family awoke the next morning and saw what they had become, there was no adverse reaction—some brief moments of bewilderment but that was all. Then they began their new life, no longer needful of tents, books or clothes. From now on the fungus would take care of all their wants.
They wandered out into the meadow and got down on all fours. The grass tasted especially good at this time of the year.
3
Slocock hurt so much he knew he couldn’t do another yard, let alone a lap. His legs felt like kit-bags full of suet and his throat was so raw that each breath was like swallowing a cheese grater. His heart was doing at least 180 mph and he wouldn’t have been surprised if it simply packed up on him.
But he did do another lap, driving his short, stocky body on.
“Nice one, Sarge!” shouted young Feely who was sitting on one of the low benches that ringed the track. There was someone with him but Slocock, his eyes stinging with sweat, couldn’t make out who it was.
Slocock staggered off the track and collapsed onto the grass. He lay there on his back, chest heaving. The hot midday sun beat down on him and he screwed his eyes shut against it.
In the distance there was a distinctive crump sound. The bastards were at it again. A big one too. Possibly another car bomb. Despite what had happened on the mainland, and what was still happening, the bloody IRA had stepped up their campaign against the army. They can’t drive us out now, thought Slocock bitterly, don’t they realize there’s no place left for us to go?
“You want to be careful, Sarge. Especially at your age,” came Feely’s voice from close by. Slocock smiled to himself. Feely was a good kid.
“If someone had said that to your old man,” wheezed Slocock, “you’d be nothing but a dried-up puddle in an old rubber lying in some Liverpool alley. And what a loss to the world that would have been.”
Feely laughed. Some people—well, a lot of people—couldn’t take Slocock. And Slocock had convinced himself he liked it that way, particularly since Marge. But Feely refused to be offended by anything Slocock said and usually gave as good as he got. This time, however, all he said was, “You’ve got a visitor, Sarge.” And his voice held a note of amusement in it.
Slocock opened his eyes. Sweat continued to blur his vision and he could only distinguish two vague forms outlined against the sun.
“Good afternoon, sergeant,” said a female voice. A very nice female voice.
Slocock wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and squinted. He could now make out a woman in her late twenties. She was strikingly attractive. She had large eyes, high cheek bones, and a wide, suggestive mouth. Her hair was short and very black. And though she was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a shapeless khaki shirt he could tell her body was lean and muscular. She held herself well.
“Begorrah, Feely,” he said in a mock Irish accent, “you’ve brought your dear old grannie to see your beloved Sarge.”
“I’m Kimberley Fairchild. Doctor Kimberley Fairchild. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sargeant Slocock, but I’ve already been warned about you.”
“Lies. Filthy lies spread about by my envious inferiors. I am in reality the pasteurized milk of human kindness. So what can I do you for, Doctor?”
“Nothing in particular. I just wanted to take a look at you.”
He spread his arms. “Look all you want. Feast your eyes. It will mean reappraising your ideal of male beauty but that’s the price you must pay for the privilege.”
She laughed. “All I see is a short, overweight, and out of condition man in his mid-thirties who has a tendency to freckle and who shouldn’t b
e lying out in this sun with that sort of skin.”
Feely laughed too. “She’s right, Sarge. You’re starting to look like a burned tomato.”
“That’s indignation, lad, not sunburn,” he growled. To Kimberley Fairchild he said, “If I’m such a disappointing specimen, Doctor, why are you wasting your time looking at me?”
“Curiosity, Sergeant. I wanted to see who I was going to be traveling with.”
Slocock’s body twitched. Then he abruptly sat up and stared at her. “You’re coming too? For fuck’s sake why?”
“You don’t have to sound so pleased,” she said dryly.
“But Christ, don’t you know what we have to do over there? What lame-brained arse-hole came up with the idea of including you in the operation? I’m going to have enough to worry about without playing nursemaid for you.”
“Oh, stuff the macho drivel, Sergeant. You’ve got it back-to-front. I’m to be your nursemaid. I’m a doctor, remember, and you’re going to need one over there.”
“Hah! What good will a doctor be? You’ve all been pretty useless so far. About the only thing you can do is hand out the death pills when . . .”
He didn’t finish but glanced instead at the burned-out patch in the center of the grass area. That was where Hibbert had been incinerated. He’d managed to stagger this far before they’d caught up with him and surrounded him. Then they’d let loose with the three flame-throwers at once. But it was amazing how long he’d kept screaming.
“Believe me, Sergeant, you’ll be glad I’m along. And don’t worry, I can take care of myself. I grew up with firearms. I’m a crack shot.”
It took an effort to tear his gaze away from the blackened patch of ground. He looked at her more closely, noting the touch of arrogance in her eyes; her air of total self-confidence. She was definitely something out of the ordinary. She had to be. No one in her right mind would volunteer to go where they were going. He knew what his reasons were. He wondered about hers.
Unexpectedly she gave him a dazzling smile and said, “Come on, Sergeant. I’ll buy you and the Corporal here a drink. That is if you’re allowed to drink at this time of the day.”