Fungoid Read online

  Table of Contents

  FUNGOID

  Other Books by Author

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  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  FUNGOID

  William Meikle

  First Edition

  Fungoid © 2016 by William Meikle

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Broken Sigil

  Clockwork Dolls

  Night of the Wendigo

  Pentacle

  The Dunfield Terror

  The Exiled

  The Hole

  Tormentor

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse’s Amazon shop for a complete list:

  http://astore.amazon.com/darkfuse-20

  For Sue, always and forever.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks again to the team at DarkFuse.

  Their professionalism, patience and dedication are always an inspiration.

  1

  “Just my luck,” Jim Noble muttered.

  The call came in a minute before he was due to clock off from night shift. Kerry and Stapleton were already on board, so he was probably within his rights to just stroll down the gangway and leave them to it—it wouldn’t be the first time. But he’d had a quiet night with no alerts and had even managed a snooze during the hockey replays. He decided to stay and help out where he could; it sounded big—and bad.

  As the rapid response team for the busy port of St. John’s they mostly dealt with fuel spillage clear-ups, either in the harbor or just off shore, but this time they were called for down in Water Street, in the heart of the old town itself. And as Jim left the radio room he heard the sound of chaos plain enough—sirens in the wind—far too many sirens.

  Kerry and Stapleton passed him on the stairs—they were still pulling on their suits so Noble had time to head for his locker and get himself kitted-up. It only took him a few seconds, and by the time he got into the suit and down the gangway their truck was out of the ferry deck and waiting for him on the dockside. He climbed in beside the other two, sliding into his allotted seat, as comfortable as if he were in his old armchair at home, it having been shaped to his rear these past four years now.

  Kerry put on the lights and siren, adding to the growing clamor. It wasn’t far to their destination—only a couple hundred yards—but it sounded like they were needed sooner rather than later.

  “Fire, do you think?” Stapleton asked as they pulled off the dock and immediately hit a wall of traffic that was none too happy at being brought to a complete standstill. All the lights along the street were green but nobody was moving. They tried to inch their way slowly past cars and trucks that moved aside, reluctantly, to allow the truck through. Despite the lights and siren, it was still slow going.

  “Maybe a fire,” Jim replied, but there was no plume of smoke in the sky ahead of them. He could now see the flashing lights of the police responders at the end of the street—and hear the faint whine of ambulance sirens—several of them. “Whatever it is, it’s big.”

  It seemed that the rest of the traffic finally realized it too, at least the vehicles nearest the scene itself, for the path suddenly cleared ahead of them and they were able to pull up alongside the ambulances several seconds later, parking amid a scene of chaos.

  They were outside the town’s main bank, and it had a pickup embedded in the front of it. The bright red truck had gone off the road, across the concourse, through a large plate glass window—and it looked like it hadn’t slowed at any point on the way. Three bodies lay on the ground. Relief workers scurried around, stemming blood, applying bandages and organizing stretchers, but it didn’t look too good for any of the wounded as far as Jim could tell from the quick look he had as they got out of their truck.

  Tom Morrison, a local cop that Jim knew to speak to, stood outside the bank entrance. He looked pale and green about the gills—and this was a man that Jim knew had seen more than his share of drunk-driving accidents and the resulting carnage. Just seeing the look on the man’s face made Jim think he might have been better off going home when he’d had the chance.

  “What is it?” Jim asked. “Did the pickup have something on board?”

  “You could say that,” Morrison replied. “We’re waiting for you to tell us. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”

  “Spillage?” Jim asked.

  “No, at least not yet—it might not even be anything you can help with. But nobody seems to know what else to do right now. Best if you take a look for yourself. I hope you didn’t have a big breakfast.”

  Kerry stayed with the truck, and Ted Stapleton joined Jim as they picked their way carefully through the broken glass and bits of the pickup’s bodywork to the front end of the truck. It was buried in the bank’s main counter, a mangled mess of fender, grille, countertop and cash—a couple hundred dollars’ worth of bills by the look of it, all now liberally doused in brake fluid and oil. But that wasn’t any more spillage than your normal fender bender—it wasn’t what the team had been called out to see.

  The impact had forced much of the engine back through into the driver’s seat, and the man—at least Jim thought it had been a man—had his chest caved in by what remained of the steering wheel and column. Several shards of bone pierced both flesh and clothing; it looked like the rib cage had almost exploded on impact, but the bone wasn’t white, it was a dull, muddy color. It looked ridged and pitted—almost acid-etched. The force of the collision had been such that the seat belt hadn’t saved the driver much—at the same time as his chest was being caved in, his face was going in the other direction, into the windshield. Flaps of bloody skin hung from a strangely flattened skull that had been nearly stripped of flesh. There was surprisingly little blood, and what there was looked too watery, too thin—not red but almost brown.

  Finally Jim saw why they’d been called out.

  The only bit of exposed skin visible—the back of the driver’s left hand and some of his forearm—was spotted in tiny red sores, like a bad case of chickenpox that had been scratched, violently, until it bled.

  What the hell happened here?

  * * *

  The cop, Morrison, had been right about one thing—it wasn’t anything Jim had seen before. Stapleton stepped back sharply, not taking his eyes off the dead man’s exposed skin.

&n
bsp; “That’s not the result of any spillage I know of. Is it some kind of disease?” he whispered. “Tropical maybe?”

  “Might be,” Jim replied, a chill settling in his spine. “Let’s get this area secure—and get everybody back—right back. Find out if anybody touched anything in here, and get them isolated and hosed down. Once we’re done inside, we’ll hose down the street too. And call the hospital—we need some specialists down here—and we need them fast.”

  The next twenty minutes were hectic, but all the responders knew their roles, and were good at them. The ambulance staff kept working on the injured. One was dead, two badly hurt, but not fatally so—at least not yet. By rights they should have been on their way to the hospital, but Jim wanted to wait; he was watching for an outbreak of those red spots. They had him worried.

  The police got the street cordoned off—much to the displeasure of some of the drivers who had been stuck in the traffic standstill. Jim, Stapleton and Kerry stayed suited up in full hazmat gear. While they waited for the medical specialists, they hosed down as much of the immediate area as they were able with their cocktail of dispersant and disinfectant.

  I hope it’s enough.

  His hope turned to worry when the team arrived from the hospital. He stayed outside the bank as they looked over the body, but he didn’t have to hear them to know it was bad—he saw it in the looks on their faces, in the whispered conversations they were having, careful not to be overheard.

  If it’s that bad, we need to know about it—and we need to know now.

  He walked inside.

  “Anything you want to tell us poor working stiffs, Docs,” he said, hearing his voice echo slightly back at him through the mask—he was glad that he’d decided to keep it firmly in place for the meantime.

  One of the doctors took Jim to one side and whispered, almost conspiratorially.

  “This is the fourth case we’ve seen since this morning,” he said. Jim saw fear in the man’s eyes, and felt it grow inside him too. “Mount Pearl, Paradise and an accident in Airport Heights. It’s already all over town—and we have no idea what it is or how to deal with it.”

  As Jim walked back out onto the concourse he felt the patter of raindrops on his suit.

  The screaming started seconds later.

  2

  Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates. A typical single spore germinates into a homokaryotic mycelium. A mycelium may be minute, forming a colony that is too small to see, or it may be extensive.

  Through the mycelium, a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. It does this in a two-stage process. First, the hyphae secrete enzymes onto or into the food source, which break down biological polymers into smaller units such as monomers. These monomers are then absorbed into the mycelium by facilitated diffusion and active transport.

  A honey fungus with a mycelial spread measuring 2.4 miles across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon is thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.

  It started to rain just as Rebecca Lovatt drove down into the underground garage beneath the mall—heavy spatters that seemed somewhat oily smeared themselves across the glass when she deployed the wipers. There was still a greasy streak there when she reached level three and pulled into a parking space, a streak that was proving too difficult to dispel, even with two squirts of the heavy-duty wash. She was in too much of a hurry to take a closer look—she had a bunch of other chores to do before the kids needed picking up—and there was just enough time for her to pick up Shaun’s birthday present.

  The gift—a silver pocket watch and chain that Shaun had admired on his last trip home, cost more than she’d have liked, but he would be back with them next week and she wanted things to be just right. It had been a long contract—three months apart—the longest since they met—and she couldn’t wait to see him, to hand over the small box, and see his face light up.

  That was what she was thinking about when she got to the shop, so she missed some of the start of what the young girl behind the jewelry counter was saying—something about a big accident downtown.

  “They say it’s a bad one,” the girl continued. “Water Street’s closed off and the traffic’s snarled up all along Duckworth Street and up past the Fairmont. I was supposed to be getting my hair done at Josie’s when I get off and…”

  Rebecca tried to nod in the right places—she was now busy checking that the pocket watch was the one she’d ordered, and only had half her attention on the one-sided conversation. The girl didn’t seem too worried—she seemed the sort that liked to hear herself speak to remind herself she was still a person, and not some robotic mannequin behind a counter. Rebecca let her ramble on—she was onto her boyfriend now, and what a waste of space he was—but at least she’d started to process the payment while berating the lad—Rebecca already felt sorry for him, and she’d never met him.

  She paid up and left the small jewelry shop on the main drag of the mall, intending to go straight back down to the parking lot. She was so intent on ensuring she got the watch securely tucked away deep in her purse that she didn’t notice until she was almost on top of it that there was a commotion near the main doorway. A small crowd gathered, peering out to the roadway beyond. Thick black smoke rose outside—she saw it through the glass over their heads.

  Another accident?

  Then she heard the screams—high and wild, as if someone was being tortured—scarily loud even through the closed doors. Another scream joined the first—then another. Two people peeled off the watching group by the door and headed off in the direction of the parking garage escalator. Rebecca slid quickly into one of the vacated spaces, and got a first look out.

  She saw the burning cars first—two of them in what had obviously been a head-on collision. A body lay, half-fallen out of the driver’s door of the nearest vehicle. The woman’s hands waved feebly—but no one was moving to help. There were already cops on the scene—three of them—but instead of helping the woman they stood at one side, scratching wildly at their hands, their heads, their arms, raising red welts and streams of blood that ran in rivulets in a steady wash of rain.

  “Help them,” someone near Rebecca said. “We need to help them.”

  But nobody moved—they all stood there, silent, watching the cops scratch and scream, all of them unable to process what they were seeing. Rebecca looked past the crash scene, across the mall’s outdoor parking bays. There were more people there—and like the cops they too scratched and thrashed, as if the rain was attacking them in some way.

  Rebecca remembered the oily smear she’d left on the windshield.

  Then she remembered the kids.

  She turned and ran for the escalator.

  * * *

  On reaching level three she had to step back quickly as a speeding pickup, engine revving wildly, tore past her, scraped heavily along the restraining wall, and bounced rather than drove up out of the garage. Somewhere nearby someone wept piteously, but Rebecca felt no compulsion to stop and check. Her only thought was for the kids—Adam and Mark—and the idea, too big in her head that they might have been outside in the schoolyard playing when the rain came.

  It took her three tries to get the key in the ignition, her hands shaking. Finally she got it, and almost hit the family saloon opposite as she came out of the parking space too fast. She got the turn under control just in time and circled up and out of the garage as fast as she was able, trying not to look at the greasy streak that ran down the windshield right in front of her.

  Just as she came up the last ramp out of the mall someone, blood pouring down their face as they tore chunks of hair from their scalp, almost stumbled right in front of her, forcing her to brake hard. The man—that was only obvious when he took his hands away from his face—seemed oblivious to her at
first, but when she tried to drive on, he slapped his palms, hard, on the hood of her SUV and yelled something incoherent before staggering away. Rebecca saw him in the rearview mirror, hunched over and tearing at his scalp, then he was lost from sight as she drove out into the large open area to the rear of the mall.

  The junction out into the main road was blocked—another accident—and she had to turn left when she wanted to go right. Even then, two bodies writhed on the ground in the middle of the road—more blood, more frantic scratching—and she had to swerve to avoid running over them.

  Spots of rain splattered on the windshield, leaving more greasy marks when the wipers swept over them. She could hear the rain drum on the roof of the SUV—and again she thought of the kids, and the droplets hitting them on their heads, their arms. She had to swerve to avoid three more people—their distress obvious, the blood even more so. But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop.

  Adam. Mark. I’m coming.

  She couldn’t dare to take her eyes off the road to rummage for her phone—besides, she’d be there almost as quickly as she could make a call—but everywhere she looked she saw more blood, more frenzied people in obvious pain.

  What the hell is going on here?

  * * *

  She wasn’t made any the wiser on the short drive down the loop to the school—it was something in the rain, that much was obvious—something that caused anyone exposed to it tear and scratch at their skin and scalps.

  Acid? Rebecca thought. Is this a chemical accident?