Alien Jungle (9 page)

He led Trace to a bed of mushrooms growing in rows. Their fist-sized caps were ribbed and pitted like honeycombs.

“When were these planted?” Trace asked.

“Three weeks ago.”

Trace frowned. Considering the rest of the planet, he would have expected these mushrooms to be at least a meter tall.

“Something wrong with the soil?”

“Identical to the last microbe. The air is different, of course, so I introduced mold spores.” Aldus pointed at the purple rings upon the walls. “But even mold doesn’t breed in here the way it does outdoors. The only thing that grows in abundance is this.” He walked to a wheelbarrow filled with clumps of thick moss.

Trace crushed a bit of it between his fingers. “In a bio-dome at the old camp, there are beds of this stuff. I took a cutting.”

“You needn’t have bothered. It’s in every soil sample we take. At first, I thought it formed mycorrhizae, increasing the nutrient absorbing capacity of the plants. But if left unchecked, it will take over, snuff out anything trying to grow. We have to scrape it from our seed beds every other day.”

Trace brushed off his gloves. “What you’re saying is you’re no further along than the scientists who were here ten years ago.”

“That’s not exactly correct. We planted a crop of wheat in an open field. Couldn’t maintain it because of those monsters. But it grew, son. Fast as the jungle. We just don’t know why.”

His father seemed alight with energy. He looked younger than Trace felt.

“This is your explanation as to why you are here?” Trace said. “One unkempt field?”

“You are aware, of course, that there is a food shortage.”

“And you want to feed the galaxy.”

“Is that so wrong?”

“No. I just don’t buy it.”

Aldus’ eyes flared above his mask. Then, unexpectedly, they crinkled with humor. “Let me show you the project.” He moved deeper into the greenhouse, calling back over his shoulder. “You’ll appreciate this. I’ve worked on it for years. You mentioned seeing hybrids. Well, this is the hybrid of hybrids.”

He stopped before a seedling bed. The plants had broad, black leaves. A nameplate labeled them
SUSAN’S GIFT
.

Trace looked up. “Susan?”

“Your mother started the project before she became too ill to work. I picked it up from her notes. It’s been long in development. A lot of failed starts. A lot of government grants petering out on me.” He glanced at Trace then laughed. “It’s a cure, son. A cure for Maramus Disease.”

Trace couldn’t have been more stunned if his father had taken out a gun and shot him. He stared at the bed of black leaves.

“Unfortunately, the plant grows slowly.” Aldus grunted as he reached beneath the table. He brought out a jar and removed a mottled red and green seedcase, holding it for Trace’s inspection. When Trace didn’t accept the pod, he set it on the table. “It takes nearly three years to produce its first fruit. But I thought if I could bring it here, unravel the secret of accelerated growth—”

“You think this will make up for it?” Trace said. “For not helping her when she needed you, for not being there when she died?”

Aldus’ face fell. “I was fund raising, trying to find backing for the project. Her project.”

“So you left me in your stead. A fourteen-year-old kid. Do you know what that was like? Do you have any idea what it did to me to watch her die?”

“Trace, I know it was hard, but—”

“She was a stick figure. A caricature. I wanted to think of her as my mother, tried to remember her rocking me in her arms. What arms, Dad? Her arms were eaten away.”

“Son, try to understand.”

“In the end, I was afraid of her, dreaded that sunken face. I hated the burden she’d become, hated myself.” He stared at his father. “But most of all, I hated you for leaving me alone.”

“Listen, I—”

“Now, you think you can atone. The poor grieving widower carrying on his dead wife’s work. But you can’t fool everybody. The reason behind this miraculous cure is the same reason you were never home to begin with. Money.”

“That was never it. Don’t you understand? Susan’s Gift will save countless lives.”

“It won’t bring back my mother,” Trace said, “and she’s the only one who mattered to me.”

Aldus’ eyes glistened, but his expression was hard. Without a word or another glance, he stormed from the greenhouse.

Trace bit back a riposte. Go ahead. Walk away. That’s what you do best. Don’t explain. Don’t ever apologize.

He slammed his fist against the table, wincing with dull pain, and then snatched up the seedpod.
Susan’s Gift.
A dry sob tore his throat. Holding the precious pod to his chest, he squinted hard against the tears.

N
atica stood at her post in the garish jungle. She hugged her flame gun and glanced over her shoulder. The roar of a distant bulldozer fell to silence. She listened for a moment to the supervisor calling instructions to his workers. Then she heard nearby footsteps. She spun about, flame gun held ready.

Wilde stepped toward her from the trees. “This is stupid. We’re daring the vegetables to attack. He’s putting us at risk, jeopardizing the lives of the workers—and for what? Mushrooms?”

She let out her breath and lowered her weapon. “I’d certainly feel safer in camp.”

Wilde scowled. “I wonder if the Scouts have ever had a mutiny.”

Her shoulders sagged with her spirits. Would it come to that? Trace was doing his best—but he didn’t instill confidence the way a leader should. And there was the issue of the skinsuits.

“Well, I was just making sure everyone was at their posts.” Wilde turned to leave. “Be sure to signal if you see something. Don’t take them on alone.”

“Don’t go.” She rushed to block his path. “How is it over there? It sounds like they’re making progress.”

“They’ve cleared about a hectare. The hard part is getting the caps to pop off so the stalks will roll down the hill.”

“That’s a lot of land.” Her brows lifted. “Do we need that many mushrooms?”

“Well, Trace doesn’t know how long this bonfire of his needs to last, does he, so I’d say—” He stopped, one hand up, head cocked as if listening.

Natica heard the difference, too. Shouts turned to screams. An engine revved.

“Come on,” he said.

With her gun clutched to her chest, she followed Wilde down a nonexistent trail. The mid-morning light drew hazy shadows around the undergrowth, causing her to misstep and stumble against trees. The jungle was so thick, she couldn’t see farther than three meters in any direction.

Abruptly, she entered a wide clearing.

She gaped at the devastation. The huge, mushroom trees had fallen. Their trunks were stacked like cordwood. The remains of their caps littered the ground as if there had been an explosion. Multicolored toadstools lay like confetti, pulverized by the treads of the dozers.

Natica leaped over ruts and gullies as she searched for the source of the shouts. Where were the workers she’d talked into this scheme? The colonists she’d promised would be safe?

“This way!” Wilde ran across the clearing.

Ahead, the jungle grew in a solid wall. As they neared it, she discerned shapes within the growth. Mold monsters stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a defensive wedge. They moved as one.

Her step slowed. People shouted and darted across her path. She saw Impani and Cole. Then her gaze switched to a man atop a bulldozer. The engine roared, and the dozer lurched forward, treads churning, blades tilted. He aimed at the creatures.

The wedge opened, flowed around the careening machine, and swallowed it. The sound of the engine rose in pitch as if it, too, were screaming.

Then the dozer reappeared, lifted over the heads of the monsters. They tossed it aside to land blade first in the dirt. She rushed forward, searching in vain for the driver.

Suddenly, the mass broke apart. The monsters moved so quickly they appeared blurred. Natica stared around her. Impani fired her flame gun, her mouth wide with a battle yell. Cole also fired, but his gun sputtered. Out of fuel. He threw down the weapon and took up a machete, hacking at the creature nearest him.

“Get the workers down the hill!” Wilde shouted. “Retreat! Retreat!”

Natica stumbled through the fray. To the side, a woman cartwheeled through the air. Another smashed against a tree.

“Retreat!” Wilde’s voice called.

I should run with the workers. What good would my one gun be against so many?

Then a mold monster turned toward her. With a grimace, she ignited her weapon. The thing sped forward. It was twice her size. She shrouded it in fire then stared in terrified fascination as it continued to advance. Its featureless face loomed over the flames on its body. She turned to run but a second creature was coming up fast.

Natica planted her feet and faced the nearest monster. She opened the gun to full then staggered with the force of the blaze. She risked a glance behind her at the second creature.

The fiery arm of the first monster cut across her vision. She spun sideways, leaped up, and kicked as if propelled by a spring. Her boot slammed into its midsection. Sparks erupted from the blow. Flame lapped her leg. The monster collapsed.

Crouched, she drew her jet of fire in an arc toward the creature behind her. But the flame guttered and died. She was out of gellasene.

The second monster bounded forward. Natica dodged a swipe of its long, fungus-laden arm. She whirled about and smashed the gun butt into the center of its face. The thing reeled then swung at her again. She held the gun to deflect the blow, and the monster broke it in half. Her hands stung with the impact. She ducked beneath its reach then leaped again, kicking hard, wishing there were ribs to crack beneath the heavy coat of vegetation.

With growing horror, she became aware that the flames upon the first creature had extinguished. Its entire body was charred—but twisting tendrils of new growth laced the old.

“Help!” she cried through the open com.

She fended off the mold monster with the split gun. A swipe of its arm sent her sprawling. She scuttled backward, still waving the shattered barrel. It threw back its head and hissed as if it realized she was beaten.

“Somebody help me!” she cried again.

With a sudden whoosh, flame enveloped the mold monster. Wilde yanked her up. “Stop playing around,” he yelled over the sound of the burning.

Natica clutched his arm, weak with relief. The flaming creature crumpled.

“Let’s get out of here.” He pulled her from the scene.

Many of the monsters stood blackened and immobile. They were re-growing. Regaining their strength. The workers were gone. They’d left their slow-moving equipment behind. Only a handful of security personnel remained to protect their retreat, Impani among them.

The woman who had wheeled through the air now lay on a stretcher. Her head was swollen and misshapen, her face splotched with green goo.

“Take the injured and go,” Wilde shouted. “We’ll hang back to cover you. Natica, help them with that stretcher.”

But Natica couldn’t take her eyes from the unconscious woman. Her bulging head appeared to shift, as if something within her fractured skull were growing. A single leafless shoot twisted from the goo behind her ear.

Suddenly, the woman sat up. She clawed her head and screamed, “Get them off me. Get them off!”

She leaped from the stretcher. Her screams turned hoarse and unintelligible. A man tried to subdue her, and she batted him away. With a garbled hiss, she streaked in the direction of the jungle.

“Cheyenne, stop!” The man scrambled to give chase.

Wilde caught his shoulder. “We can’t save her.”

All at once, the immobile creatures stirred.

“Everyone down the hill,” Wilde shouted.

Natica gaped at the encrusted, blackened monsters. In her mind, she saw the woman’s misshapen head. Something was growing inside
.

Wilde tugged her arm. She crested the hill and followed it down. In the valley, fallen mushrooms mounded against the pilings. Fleeing workers struggled to get across.

“Run faster,” Wilde told her, “and don’t look back.”

Natica pushed her body harder. Momentum overran her bearing and threatened to topple her. On the hill behind, she heard a wail, like wind roaring through tree boughs. She imagined mold monsters rising, even those she believed had been defeated, because they couldn’t be killed, couldn’t be stopped.

She was halfway down the hill before she reached the first of the mushroom stalks. They lay scattered along the decline. The farther she went, the more numerous the stalks became, lying three deep, then four deep, shifting treacherously beneath her.

Natica slipped and fell to hands and knees. She glanced toward the others. Wilde walked precariously with a motionless woman draped across his shoulders. Behind him, three men struggled to carry a man who thrashed upon a stretcher. Impani supported yet another of the wounded. Natica hurried to Impani and tucked her shoulder beneath the injured man’s arm, wordlessly sharing her friend’s burden.

Impani panted. “We’ll be climbing this mess soon.”

The man groaned, his face blanching. “I don’t think I can make it.”

“Yes, you can,” Natica told him.

They continued over the deepening stalks. Several times, Natica lost her footing and walked with one hand on the ground. Soon the climb demanded both hands, and she had to balance the man’s weight on her back. She panted unevenly, on the verge of collapse, prodded forward by the wails of the creatures behind her and the memory of the woman’s head.

Then Wilde said over the com, “Trace, we’re coming in. Be ready with your bonfire.”

“Ready and waiting,” Trace answered.

A sense of immense relief washed over Natica. They were almost there. She trained her gaze on the uppermost stalk as she climbed. Six more to go. Four more.

Then she reached the pinnacle. She looked down at camp. The pilings held the stack of mushroom trunks six or seven meters high. An expanse of land held several small forklifts. Beyond that, a series of mushroom-filled trenches encircled the camp. The workers who had fled the battle scene filed between the pits on narrow pathways.

“We made it,” she told the injured man as she hoisted him higher.

He looked about, bleary eyed.

Impani gasped. “Oh, no.”

Natica turned back to camp. Growing flames enveloped one of the trenches. The blaze caught the people on the pathways. They panicked and pressed forward. Several caught fire and fell, igniting the other trenches.

“What are you doing?” Wilde yelled into the com. “You’ve lit them too soon. We are still in the zone.”

Natica stared transfixed at the wall of flame that cut off their retreat.