Last Man Standing (Book 2): Cordyceps (6 page)

Vee rubs her eyes and stifles a yawn, stretching her arms to loosen her tight muscles. "You don't need to sleep?" she asks.

I shake my head and push the magazine into its slot until I feel it click. "Nah. I've been sleeping for a month. I don't know how you guys sleep out here, anyway. Aren't you worried we'll be attacked?"

Vee shakes her head. "Nah, not so much. We're usually pretty safe a few floors up, so long as we don't attract attention. Most of them can't climb stairs so well now they've started to, you know, dry out and stuff. Honestly, they're not much of a danger unless they're fresh or they've eaten recently. Besides, it's a cost benefit analysis thing. We don't sleep tonight, we make a dumb mistake and get ourselves killed tomorrow. You gotta weigh up the risks."

I lift myself awkwardly from the carpeted floor and find my way in the darkness over to the window. It's too dark outside to see much from up on the fourth floor of this abandoned office building on the outskirts of a small town off Highway 78, but down at street level I'm sure I can see a couple of shapes moving slowly in the shadows. "What
are
they?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean what makes them tick? Why do they try to kill?"

Vee gives me a surprised look. "Shit, you don't know? Man, you really have been stuck in a box, haven't you?" She reaches in her duffel bag and tugs out a couple of candy bars. "Here, eat something, you need the sugar," she says, tossing me a Milky Way.

"It's a fungus," she explains, tearing open her wrapper. "
Cordyceps bangkokii
, they call it. You ever heard of
Cordyceps
?"

I shake my head as I happily chew. I'd almost forgotten what chocolate tastes like.

"First couple of weeks the news talked about nothing else. I think I could probably teach a damned course on it by now." She chuckles and tosses her candy wrapper to the floor. "There's a species of fungus called... umm,
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
. It's found in the tropical forests of Thailand and Brazil, I think. I once saw a piece on it in an old David Attenborough nature documentary, and even back then I though this shit was creepy as hell. I don't know exactly how it works, but it's a type of fungus that attacks carpenter ants, and turns them into some kind of... well, I guess you could call them zombies. They just lose control. The
Cordyceps
compels them to climb the nearest tree, find a leaf and clamp on hard with their mandibles, then this shit starts to multiply inside them. After a few days the ants die and the fungus breaks through their exoskeleton and grows a long, gross tube that releases spores that drift down to the ground and land on more ants, and the whole disgusting process starts again. Circle of life, right?" She shivers with revulsion.

"Anyway, some genius must have heard about this stuff and decided it'd be a great idea to see if they could tweak it enough that it infects humans. I don't know who it was, and I
really
don't know why they decided to do something so obviously dumb, but it looks like they succeeded. Shit, they didn't just succeed. They made this stuff even worse.
Cordyceps bangkokii
is just something else. Whoever played around with it knew exactly what they were doing. It's a near perfect organism, as long as your goal is to fuck up everyone's day.

"All it takes is a single spore in your blood. A scratch. A bite. A fleck of spit in your eye. That's all you need. Once it's inside you it feeds on your blood and multiplies faster than you can believe. I'm talking from one to billions in a matter of minutes, like your blood is a fucking all you can eat buffet. The spores follow your bloodstream up to your brain, and that's where the fun really begins. They just turn everything to mush. All your higher functions. Your thoughts, your memories, everything that makes you
you
, all gone. The only thing it leaves is the brain stem and just enough little bits of gray matter to keep you on your feet and moving."

She reaches for her cigarettes, taps one out of the pack and plays with it for a moment before lighting it. "Once the fungus has control its only goal is to make you pass it on to the next host. It keeps you alive like a life support machine. You're still breathing. Your heart's still beating, though it doesn't matter to the fungus if you're technically alive or dead. As long as your central nervous system is still working it can just guide you around like a meat puppet.

"Far as I can tell, the only thing these things feel is rage and hunger. They caught a few of them back in the first week before everything really went to shit, and they ran some tests on them. Turns out they've got about fifty times as much adrenaline rushing through them as an average person. They're permanently locked in fight or flight mode, and they always choose fight."

I look down at the street again, and suddenly it looks even more forbidding down there. The shapes lurking in the dark are just vehicles, mindless creatures compelled with every fiber of their being to chase us down and pass on the infection. They were already terrifying but now, somehow, they seem even more so. We're not just fighting individuals, but a force of nature itself.

How can we possibly beat nature?

"Earlier you said they've started to dry out. What did you mean?"

Vee lets out a chuckle. "Ah, now that's where we have the upper hand. This
Cordyceps
shit is clever, but it ain't perfect. I've been chasing these things down for a month now and I've yet to see a single one of them take a drink. I don't know for sure, but I think it destroys whatever part of the brain is responsible for basic self preservation. I guess they can't tell when they're thirsty any more, so they just don't drink until they die of dehydration."

"Huh, kinda like dolphins," I say.

Vee gives me a confused look. "You're gonna have to expand on that, Tom. Dolphins?"

"Yeah. See, dolphins can't survive on sea water. It'd kill them just like it'd kill us, so they draw all the water they need from the food they eat. In the wild that works out fine. It's just the way they evolved, so they don't know any different. The problem is that when they're in captivity they'll happily drink fresh water if they can get access to it, but then they won't eat for a week. So long as nobody notices they'll just keep happily drinking water until they eventually starve to death. They don't know the difference between thirst and hunger. Their brains just aren't wired up for it."

Vee nods. "Yeah, OK, that kinda makes sense. So if the fungus has destroyed the part of the brain that tells us when we're thirsty—"

"— the hypothalamus," I interrupt, happy that there's finally something I know about this fucked up situation that Vee doesn't.

"Right, the hypo... whatever. If that's gone these guys will just keep eating and won't bother to drink, and as long as they can't get the fluid they need from human flesh they'll eventually just die out."

"That sounds about right." I think back to something Vee said a moment ago. "Then again, you said the infected have a shitload of adrenaline running through them. The hypothalamus is responsible for regulating the adrenal glands, so maybe
Cordyceps
doesn't destroy it but just repurposes it. You know, turns that whole section of the brain into a loudhailer to yell at the adrenal glands to produce more and more. I'm just guessing. I'm not a scientist."

"You might be right," agrees Vee, lifting herself up with a grunt and joining me at the window. She looks down at the shapes moving beneath with a grimace. "I guess it doesn't really matter what's going on in their heads. As long as they're not getting enough water from their food they're living on borrowed time. We just have to wait them out. Just get through it one day at a time, and wait for the very last one of those fuckers to dry up and keel over. Then we take back the country and bury Lassiter beneath the pile of the corpses he made."

"You really think it'll be that simple? Do you really believe we can survive this?"

She nods. "We've survived this long. So long as we can stop more people getting infected I don't see why we can't get through it. Shit, you and Bishop got out of New York, right? If you can live through that you're pretty much invincible." She turns to me and lowers her voice. "Hey, that reminds me. You promised to tell me about Bishop's name. What's the big deal?"

I glance towards the door and lower my voice. "OK, I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to let him know. He's crazy sensitive about it. It's not a big deal, but you know how people can be weird about things like that." I try to keep the smile from my face. He's called Forrest.”

Vee grins. “Like—” 

“Yeah, like Gump. And he's a slow, friendly guy from Alabama. You can guess what it was like growing up.”

“Jesus, poor guy.” She falls silent for a moment, then grins again. “Damn, I really hope we won't need to run from any infected tomorrow. I don't think I could keep myself from yelling... well, y'know.”

I try to stifle a laugh as Warren rushes through the door, breathing heavily, holding his wind up lamp back away from the door so it doesn't shine out through the window. "Hey, guys. I think you need to come and listen to the radio.” I stop laughing as soon as I see his expression. “I think something's happening in Columbus."

The pilot grins broadly as he sees the lights of the city appear on the horizon through his windshield. He's been grinning constantly since the call came through two hours ago, and to be honest his lips are starting to ache a little now, but he just can't help himself. This is far and away the biggest night of his life. This is the night he becomes a hero, not only to Mandy and the kids but to every man, woman and child in Columbus.

Tonight the name Eric Peterson will go down in history. He may only be a small, insignificant cog in the great nation saving machine, but tonight his name will join those of a thousand other brave pilots who selflessly signed up for the President's volunteer air corps; brave pilots who are right now flying towards their own cities all across the country, all of them carrying a precious cargo.

Eric feels almost dizzy with pride. He can already imagine the hero's welcome awaiting him back at the airfield. He can imagine never having to pay for a drink again in the local bars, and being showered with praise by the assholes who used to mock him. He can imagine a tasteful marble monument, somewhere prominent in the rebuilt capital, with his name engraved on it; something he can show the grandkids one day.
See, kids, grandpa really was a hero in the war. He wasn't just the drunk idiot everyone thought he was.

He can
definitely
imagine the welcome he'll receive when he gets home. For once, maybe, Mandy will look at him with pride rather than shame. For once she might be thinking of
him
when they make love. That'd make a nice change. Hell, maybe he'll get a little attention from some of the young girls at the bar, the ones who lean suggestively over the pool table and walk around in knotted shirts that show off their flat bellies. He wouldn't
do
anything with them, of course. It'd just be nice to know the option's there.

No. Scratch that last part. He'll need to set an example for the kids. Leering at young women doesn't fit with the heroic image racing through his head.

Eric Peterson, a humble, salt of the earth Ohio crop duster who did his part to save his country from annihilation. A man who stood up to be counted when the going got tough. A skilled pilot who dared all to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands cowering fearfully below.

Eric Peterson,
American Hero
.

Yeah. It has a nice ring to it.

He grips the stick of his trusty old American made Piper Pawnee, throttles down and drops his altitude slowly towards the 200 foot target. It'll be a challenging dump so close to the deck, maneuvering between the thirty or so buildings in the city that top that height, but he knows he's a capable pilot. He's confident he can glide safely between the skyscrapers for the three passes it'll take to cover the center of the city.

The sprawling suburbs of Columbus pass beneath him as he approaches. Somewhere down there Mandy has tucked the kids in bed and settled down to watch her shows. She doesn't know he's up here. He didn't have time to call her before he was pulled from the bar, bundled into a black SUV and whisked to the hangar. She probably thinks he's still getting hammered at McCluskey's with the guys right now. She's probably cursing his name, but she'll change her tune when she hears what he's done. When he walks in, sober and clear eyed, and tells her he's saved the city.

Here it is. He sees the narrow ribbon of the 270 pass beneath him, and he tugs the red tank release lever beside the stick. He can't see the fine mist spray from the ass of the plane, but he can hear the hydraulics whir as the nozzle opens. He can feel the upward pressure tugging at the stick as the scrappy little Piper lightens its heavy load.

He skirts the city center, pulls east towards Bexley and Whitehall then curves back around in a lazy arc, bringing it in for another pass, another spray. Out towards Valleyview and Upper Arlington then back once more. All those fancy houses he could never hope to afford. All those city folk who looked down their noses at him and wrote him off as a dumb hick. They'll all owe him their lives come the morning. Everyone will know his name.

He's flying so low he can see the people down in the streets below clear as day as they emerge from their homes and lean out their windows to see what's causing the racket above. They're probably cursing him right now. They have to get up for work in a few hours, and Eric's engines just woke the kids and set off the dog. A few of them are probably even calling the airfield to complain about the nuisance. Come the morning they'll be singing a different tune.

Would a ticker tape parade be asking too much? He doesn't know if they even do those any more, but it'd be real nice to sit in the back of a convertible, riding slowly through the city as thousands of people chant his name.

It takes a half hour of dusting before the tank runs almost dry. The gauge has been busted a few years, but he cuts it off when it feels like he has maybe five percent left. That should be more than enough.

This next part of the job is kind of off script, but he has one final special delivery to make before returning to the airfield. He guides the little Piper southwest out of the city back towards Bolton Field, but angles it so it'll take him just a couple of miles to the west. The lights begin to fade out here in the boondocks, but he doesn't need much light to find this particular target. He knows this place like the back of his hand. He could find it with his eyes closed.

There it is, a mile or so west of the cookie cutter suburban sprawl of New Rome. The unlit, unpaved track cuts a clear path between the overgrown fields and there, half hidden in a grove of willow trees at the very end of the trail, he spots the dirty white roof of his small home. The rusted wreck of an old pickup out front in a mass of crabgrass. The tire swing he put in for Dan rocking back and forth in the breeze. Out front the porch light is on, and he can almost imagine Mandy sitting out there watching her little portable set while she waits for him to return home.

Once again Eric drops to the deck, bringing his little plane down so low he almost grazes the treetops, and with a broad smile he tugs the red lever as he passes over, emptying the last of the tank directly above his wife and three sleeping children.

They'll be so proud of him. They'll be so proud of their old man when they wake up in the morning.

They'll be so,
so
proud to learn he saved the very last drops of vaccine for them.