He paused to suck in air, making a sound like water going down a drain.
He continued, “The physiological changes the fungi are imposing on their unwilling hosts are quite interesting from the scientific point of view. The effects are many and varied, but there does seem to be a major trend toward the mutating fungi somehow harnessing human intelligence for their own survival purposes.
“But I’m digressing—another indication of mental deterioration, I fear—I was telling you how I came to be here.
The look-out I’d posted south of here heard all the shooting and guessed it might be you. He fired a flare to alert me and I came as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast, I’m afraid.
I found your abandoned vehicle and knew it was you.”
“But how did you know we’d be in that weird temple place back there?”
“That’s where they take all their victims. They hunt for people who don’t show any signs of infection. There are a few such around—natural immunity, I gather—but they are very rare. If they still don’t get infected in spite of everything our friends at the temple do to them, they are then killed as heretics. Like one of those old witchcraft trials—you can’t win either way.”
Kimberley gave a piercing shriek. Wilson turned and got a fleeting impression of something rushing at them out of the darkness. He pushed Kimberley to one side and struck blindly at the shape.
He felt his fist make contact with something brittle. There was a sound like a stalk of celery being snapped in two. At the same moment something hard caught him a glancing blow on his left shoulder.
Dazed, he swung his fist again but met nothing but empty air. Then he discovered that his attacker was stretched out on the ground in front of him.
Wilson knelt down and gingerly examined the thing with his fingertips. He said wonderingly, “Damn, its neck’s broken. I didn’t hit it that hard.”
“Many of them are so riddled with the fungus, their bodies are becoming extremely fragile,” said Carter. “They are probably more fungus than human now. I suspect the same thing is happening to me—uh oh, listen!”
In the distance, from the direction they’d come, there was a murmur of voices—a kind of angry buzzing as if a bee hive was slowly coming to life.
“I’m afraid the lady’s cry carried too far,” wheezed Carter. “They’ll be coming after us.”
Wilson stood up. He was now holding the iron bar that the creature had attacked him with. He took Kimberley by the arm.
They weren’t far from the entrance. As they emerged into Harrow Road Wilson hesitated. “How far are we from the truck?” he asked Carter urgently. “I was confused on the way here.”
“About half a mile.”
The murmur of angry voices was getting closer now. “We’ll have to try and make it. Come on, as fast as you can!”
It was downhill, but as the three of them slipped and staggered along the fungus-covered roadway Wilson realized their pursuers would catch them before they reached the truck.
He voiced his fear to Carter, who was wheezing painfully as he shuffled along. His reply was hard to hear. “Might… be… able… to slow… them down,” he gasped. “Noticed some bird’s nest fungi—on the way here.”
About 50 yards further on he veered toward the high wall that bounded the cemetery. As Wilson followed him he saw a large number of white, trumpet-shaped growths protruding from the wall.
“Giant cyathus,” said Wilson as they hurried past the growths. He glanced over his shoulder. The first few pursuers were closing in, though the bulk of the mob was still a fair way back. Wilson guessed that the ones leading the pack were less fungus-riddled than the others and had more control of their limbs.
As they passed the end of the long row of cyathus fungi Carter said, “Strike the wall as hard as you can. With the bar.”
Wilson suddenly saw what he had in mind. He stopped and swung the bar at the wall. The impact jarred his arms. He swung again.
Something like a cricket ball with a spring attached flew out of one of the nearest trumpet-shaped fungus and shot clear across the road.
He hit the wall several more times and was gratffied to see a full-scale eruption of the things all along the row of fungi. One of their pursuers screamed. Wilson could imagine what was happening to him.
In conventional cyathus fungi there are a dozen or so little round objects called peridioles containing the badio-spores. The peridioles rest on spring-like hyphal coils. When the fungus is mature the impact of raindrops falling onto it is enough to activate the mechanism. The peridioles fly out of the trumpet and the trailing spring-like hyphae sticks to any leaf or twig it touches, coiling itself tightly.
With fungi this size the hyphae must be capable of exerting a tremendous amount of pressure.
And judging by the increasing number of screams in the darkness they were doing just that.
“Good idea,” cried Wilson as he caught up with Carter’s shambling form. He was about to clap him on the shoulder but held back his hand at the last moment, remembering what Carter’s shoulder consisted of.
“A delaying tactic only,” wheezed Carter. “Killed a few, no doubt, but it won’t stop the others for long. What do you have in mind when we reach the truck?”
“It all depends on what’s still there.” He didn’t continue. Finally the bulk of the Stalwart, lying on its side amid the rubble of the partially demolished building, appeared out of the gloom. Wilson rushed forward and anxiously examined the locker containing the flame-throwers. It was still intact.
There were signs that someone had tried to batter it open but had failed.
Wilson prayed he would be more successful. He could hear the mob approaching down the road.
In a frenzy he attacked the lock with the iron bar. He rained blows on it, ignoring the jarring pain of each impact. Something gave. He was able to wrench the door open.
Hurriedly he dragged out one of the weapons, trying to remember Slocock’s instructions for operating it.
“Oh God,” cried Kimberley in a small, terrified voice. A tall shape covered with what appeared to be tennis balls lurched out of the darkness. Wilson, still struggling to light the thing, thrust the end of the flame-thrower into the creature’s face. There was a crunch and it fell, mewling, to the ground. But there were several others close behind.
At last! He had found the switch that ignited the afterburner. And now all he had to do was turn a valve—there was a satisfying hiss of pressure—and—
The flame shot out with its terrible, ear-splitting roar, a great, dribbling tongue of fire that was so bright, after all the hours of being in near total darkness, it hurt Wilson’s eyes to look at it.
Its glare illuminated a scene out of a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. The road, already transformed by the fungus into a surreal landscape, was filled with a mass of creatures that could have only come straight from hell.
It even occurred to Wilson, as he stood there pouring fire into the midst of the screaming horde, that he was actually in hell. That he had perhaps died of a heart attack in his Irish cottage and all that had happened in the past few days had been his personal descent into eternal torment.
He cut the flow of fire, remembering Slocock’s instructions to use short bursts only.
Several of the creatures were burning. They ran about in circles, screeching and waving their arms as their fungus-riddled bodies sizzled and crackled. Wilson looked at them without emotion. He was numb.