In the Shade of a Mushroom

1

Sasha’s breathing was loud in her head, even with the metallic whirring of the rising platform she was standing on. Cool beads of sweat formed on the back of her neck beneath her clean-suit and she could feel the rumble of the humming machinery shaking her knees, which felt rubbery and useless. The platform crept ever upward on its track through the near blackness of the corridor, broken occasionally by a string of dim florescent lights mounted in the steel walls every twenty feet or so. The pace of the platform was agonizing and Sasha’s mind felt as if it were on fire.

Straighten up Sasha, her father’s voice spoke in her head, fly right.

Sasha felt the press of the locket, warmed against her skin, under her clean-suit and the straps of the field respirator on her back, and tightened her grip on the rifle in her hands. The locket was in the shape of a heart and seemed to beat right alongside her own.

Right, Sasha thought, fly right.

Sasha was among the first generation born underground. Yesterday she’d graduated. Sasha was a Ranger now, just as her father had been, and today she was to accompany a research team topside. These would be her first steps on the face of the lost world.

The world that you and I know had been lost in the year 2056 to an alien invasion, though it wasn’t the sort of invasion you might be thinking of. Nope, no saucers, no militant Martians, no war between worlds. Earth had been invaded by a fungus. It was crafty, this fungus, it had to be to survive in the vacuum of space for as long as it did before it broke our atmosphere and, rather quickly, humanity. The alien fungus evolves at a staggering rate, constantly adapting to its host planets. The rate of human evolution to that of the alien fungus is a Radio Flyer to a Formula One racecar; for example, it adapted to the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere within seconds of entering it, passively rearranging its own molecular structure in seconds. The fungus functions as a parasite, entering its hosts through the respiratory system via airborne spores, growing from the brainstem.

Sasha understood that her orders, in the event of a teammate’s exposure to the spores, were to eliminate immediately and with extreme prejudice.

Sasha looked around at the people on the rising platform with her: to her left were two of her fellow graduates, Allie Campbell and Ben Parsons, to her right was Senior Officer Chalmers, head of their Ranger division, and before her was the research team, composed of Head of Field Sciences, Dr. Allen Black and his assistant who Sasha only knew as Bug. All of them stood behind a standard issue Field Buggy that was loaded with three unmarked crates. None of them said a word, all of them wore identical expressions of fear under the masks of their respirators, all except Chalmers, who only closed his eyes and waited. Only Chalmers and Black had been briefed on the mission, the others were to be briefed on site.

The platform climbed on, groaning against its track, the dim florescent lights casting weak shadows that turned around the team like sundials. Suddenly, the machine that drove the platform let out a pained shriek and the team jolted to a stop. There was a moment of silence, broken only by Sasha’s own breathing, then, a loud, metal thunk followed by several clicking sounds. Sasha’s eyes widened behind her mask.

Sunlight, Sasha thought, I’m going to see sunlight!

Sasha looked up and saw a huge circular ceiling in the dim florescent light. Then, the huge steel ceiling split down the middle and the light that flooded in through the slowly opening crack was powerful and awesome, she held up her hand in front of her eyes and squinted against it. Sasha heard Allie gasp in her com-link.

“Wow…”, Ben whispered, his voice was cracked and tinny in Sasha’s earpiece. Sasha said nothing, only squinted on.

The platform jolted again and Sasha had to suppress a yelp. The platform resumed its whirring, mechanical ascent, now in tandem with the opening, shining eye of the ceiling. Sasha’s heart thrummed in her chest and the party was lifted out of the dark corridor into a desert of blinding white light. Sasha winced and shut her eyes. The platform jolted one last time then hissed as if it were sighing.

“Oh my god.”, Ben said, he was cupping his hands in a visor over the lens of his mask, his rifle hanging by a strap around his shoulder. Sasha opened her eyes to slits and what she saw filled her with a sense of awe and dread; all she could see was dead, beige infinity. The sun sat high in the bleak, pale blue sky, huge and angry, lording over a sea of cracked, white hardpan. Heat shimmered off of the desert, blurring the lines between land and sky. Sasha thought it was the most beautiful and terrifying thing she had ever laid eyes on.

“I… I can’t believe…”, Allie started.

Chalmers opened his eyes, “Welcome to the Mohave, kids.” He allowed them a moment to gawk, then grunted for them to mount up.

2

White desert whipped by, changeless in its infinitude, twin clouds of beige dust trailing the rear tires of the buggy like exhaust. They rode in silence for what felt like hours. 50 miles? 500? She had no idea. Sasha looked to the sky and discovered that the sun had begun to favor the other side of the pale, cloudless sky. Ben drove the buggy, next to him, in the passenger seat, was Black, in back was Chalmers and Bug, on either side of the buggy, holding on to the roll cage and standing on the buggy’s frame, were Allie and Sasha.

“Eyes up!”, Chalmer’s voice said in Sasha’s earpiece, she pulled her gaze away from the sky and scanned the horizon, raising her rifle to her hip. 5 miles off and rapidly approaching was the remains of a highway, crowded with abandoned vehicles, some of which supported big, billowy clusters of huge, white mushrooms pushing their way out of broken windows and windshields. Sasha’s eyes widened and her mouth fell agape behind her mask.

“Wha—? Sir, what is that?”, Sasha said. Chalmers offered no answer. “Sir?”.

“Ben.” Chalmers said.

“Yes sir?”

“Parallel to that road.” Chalmers said, leaning forward and pointing over Ben’s shoulder.

“Affirmative.” Ben said.

“Sir.”, Sasha ventured again, “Is there…a new invader?”

“Not strictly speaking, no.”, Chalmers said this with a finality that brokered no retort.

Not strictly speaking, Sasha thought, what in the world does that mean? Sasha understood the invader to be a parasite, internalizing itself in its host, consuming it from the inside, and walking its host around to maximize the spread of its spores. These hosts were considered extremely dangerous and were to be avoided at all costs. But these massive mushrooms erupting from the highway…well, Sasha had had no reason to believe that they existed until this moment. Some of them were 5, maybe 7 feet tall! Chalmers knew about this? Why hadn’t they been told?

“Um…S—Sir?”, Ben stuttered.

“Dear god…”, Black said in a low, hushed voice.

Allie muttered something along the lines of, “—mm…mmpossible, it’s just not…”.

Sasha jerked her gaze away from the mushrooms whipping past on the highway and stared slack-jaw at the marvelous terror before her. The buggy was headed for the ruins of a city, towering over the city, casting shade down upon it, was a forest of massive, parasol mushrooms, the tallest of which dwarfed the ruins of skyscrapers beneath it.

“What…What is…”, Sasha stammered.

“The mission.”, Chalmers said.

3

Chalmers briefed the team on arrival at the mission site, the base of the largest mushroom cluster growing from the center of the city. On their way through the city, they encountered several hosts, all of them had purple, rotted, wet looking skin and milky, white eyes, shambling along in their aimless, drunken gait, puffs of black mushrooms erupting from their mouths and ears and the napes of their necks. The hosts seemed unalerted to the team’s presence, they only shuffled along soundlessly. Sasha saw several collapsed hosts as well, these were nothing more than human-shaped mushroom clusters face down on the sidewalks and bus benches, tangled in kudzu vine and fallen telephone wires. There were also several vaguely person-shaped puddles of black ichor where the invader had exhausted its host and had deliquesced. Sasha’s orders were to stand sentry while Bug took several photos of the mission site and the colossal mushrooms, Ben and Allie were to unload the unmarked crates from the trunk of the buggy while Black ran field tests on samples of the colossal mushroom cluster. It was cool in the shade of the enormous parasol.

Bug was looking up, taking a photo of the ribbed underside of the mushroom’s parasol when he noticed something terrible, the buildings around the colossal mushroom cluster look to have been…absorbed somehow…eaten.

“Dr. Black…”, Bug said, lowering his camera. Just then, Black walked up, Allie and Ben trailing behind him with two of the crates.

“Bug.”, Black said.

“The…the buildings…it ate them.” Bug pointed to the buildings surrounding the cluster, Black gave them a cursory glance. Bug continued, “non-organic matter.”

“A mushroom with a fruiting body of this size,” Black said plainly, “could quite possibly have a mycorrhizal network the size of Rhode Island, imagine what would happen to our bunker if the spores reached us.”

Allie and Ben opened the first of the crates. Bug looked down at the crate’s contents and immediately understood.

Black approached the stem with his field kit and proceeded to take samples, he took out a large syringe and thrust it into the stem, drawing a liter of foamy looking yellow stuff. At that moment, it seemed to Bug that the great mushroom almost…shivered. A high, cracked whine went through the team’s com-link; Bug and Black felt a faint electricity tickling their skin, they looked at each other.

Sasha tapped at the side of her mask, “Coms up? Do you read?”, no reply, static. Something moving caught Sasha’s peripheral and she dropped to one knee, socking the butt of her rifle into her shoulder. A host broke the perimeter of the mission zone and stopped, seeming to look at Sasha, it stood thirty yards away and, to Sasha’s horror, it was wearing a clean-suit.

“Contact!”, Sasha barked, “Order?”, static. The host began to walk towards Sasha, slowly at first, then picking up speed, more speed that she had seen from the other hosts. “Order!”, Sasha shouted, static. Even faster now, 30 feet, 15, closing, 10, Sasha held her breath and squeezed the trigger. A bold of irradiated plasma struck the charging host in the head and it exploded in a black cloud of spores and goo. The host dropped on what would have been its face. As the host hit the ground, Sasha clocked 4, no, 6 more approaching the perimeter.

Behind Sasha, a huge orange glow hissed into life, casting a shadow on the ground before her.

Thermite, Sasha had time to think, the crates. Then, the colossal mushroom pulsed, Sasha felt it thrum in the asphalt beneath her feet and a loud, high pitched whine ripped through her earpiece. More hosts appeared, shambling around corners, breaking through closed doors, some falling from high windows and exploding into clouds of spores. 15, then 20, 35, 50, many of them in clean-suits. Sasha rose to her feet and began to back pedal towards the team and the buggy. Sasha turned to run, she saw the team loading into the buggy, they were waving to her. Then, the colossal mushroom pulsed again, harder this time, and there was a loud pop as the buggy’s battery engine exploded.

60, 90, more, and faster now…