You’d be hard-pressed to tell where fungal growth ended and human tissue began. The organs beneath were hardly recognizable. Half of the liver had collapsed on itself where the fungus had sapped the life out of it, leaving a shriveled husk. Meanwhile, the spleen was swollen to twice the size of a healthy human liver, with bits of human tissue scattered among the fungal scaffolding. And the dark filaments were everywhere.
“This… this is unreal,” Brand said.
Mr. Isafobe’s intestines had outright exploded, and as a result, his abdominal cavity was filled with the infection’s black ooze, albeit caked in green powder. Both colors glistened and quivered in my changed eyesight.
“Oy…” Dr. Skorbinka clicked his tongue. “Inner surface of coelom is blanketed by fungal hyphae like hair on floor of barbershop.” He stared at the sight before him with a potent mix of fascination and horror.
“That’s… disgusting…” Ani said.
Mistelann turned to face her. “Men very hairy in Odensk,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Heggy closed her eyes. “Too much information, Dr. Skorbinka.” I could almost feel her cringe.
“Ahem,” Brand said.
Everyone turned back to attention. The underside of the flesh-sheet Brand had pulled back to expose Frank’s abdominal cavity was riddled with ulcers. Fungal growths crowned through those ulcers, and the threads—the hyphae—grew out from underneath the growths, just like roots.
“This is the kind of damage you might see in a man who’s been smoking since before he learned to walk, or the end of a decades-long Tuberculosis infection, or fulminant darkpox,” Brand said.
“Fulminant darkpox takes a little more than a week to kill you,” Heggy said. “We’re looking at years of damage happening in a matter of days.”
Ani’s eyes flashed wide. She pointed at the center of the body cavity. “Angel’s Breath! Dr. Nowston, look at the liver!”
A dark mass of fungal tissue growing out from the right lobe of the liver.
“Fuck…” Jonan muttered, shaking his head.
Dr. Horosha, however, was completely unperturbed. “Most intriguing,” he said, nodding solemnly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“These are neoplasms, Dr. Howle,” Dr. Horosha explained, “which is to say, new tissue, but—and this is most peculiar—it is a neoplasm of the fungus itself, rather than the body of Mr. Isafobe.”
“Your point?” Dr. Skorbinka asked.
“Microbial pathogenesis primarily occurs by one of two routes. Either the pathogen physically destroys healthy tissue in order to grow and reproduce, or the pathogen produces chemical compounds—endotoxins or exotoxins—that damage tissue and/or interfere with the body’s biochemical processes.”
“Sometimes, germs make us kill ourselves,” Jonan added. “The immune system overreacts and goes all scorched earth on the microbial invader, and we die as a result of cytokine storms or runaway inflammation.”
“Correct.” Dr. Horosha nodded.
“Hold up.” Heggy pointed at the growth on the liver and spleen. “This looks almost like cancer.”
Brand nodded excitedly. “Yeah, yeah, I see it, Dr. Marteneiss.”
“Explain,” Dr. Skorbinka demanded.
“Well, by all appearances, this bugger seems to be stealing from cancer’s playbook. A malignant tumor is basically a part of the body that’s declared independence from homeostasis. Unlike pathogens, which either eat us or poison us, cancer kills by outcompeting healthy, law-abiding tissue.”
“Okay,” I said, “but where are you going with this?”
Brand sighed. “Germs are squatters, and our bodies are the land they’re squattin’ on. We’re an all-in-one food and shelter deal. They eat us, and evolutionary pressure drives pathogens to do so as efficiently and effectively as they possibly can.”
Ani joined the wave of insight with a nod. “But this… this is wasteful.”
Brand grinned. “Exactly! Which makes you wonder: why? In biology, form is function. The NFP-20 fungus is expending a huge amount of time and energy in doing this, so there’s gotta be a reason for it.”
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“If I may…” Dr. Skorbinkna said, only to cut himself off with a soft, “no.” Grumbling, he shook his head and then clicked his tongue.
“What is it, Mistelann?” Brand asked.
The mycologist pursed his lips. “This may be… fungal reproductive structure; fruiting body.” He pointed to filaments encroaching upon the body’s slick, wet inner lining. “Dark filaments are clearly mycelium; active, feeding component of fungus. Things like mushrooms and stools-of-toad are, to fungus, like flowers of plant. Fruiting bodies are produced only in conditions sufficiently favorable to successful propagation of new generations of fungus. Fruiting bodies disperse fungal spores, seeding new life.”
“And what’s the problem with that?” I said.
Mistelann furrowed his brow. “Jock itch does not make mushrooms grow on crotch. Big fungi have big fruiting bodies; microbial fungi have microscopic fruiting bodies. But here? Here, we see macroscopic fruiting bodies in pathogenic fungi—and in mammal, no less. This is madness.” He pointed at the green powder encrusting nearly everything inside the body cavity. “Look, this powder; is almost certainly spores. Billions upon trillions of spores.”
“The spores are going to be the most likely vector for spreading the disease,” Ani said. “We need to handle this body very carefully.”
Heggy nodded. “Y’all better be careful when taking off your PPE. If any of these spores get on us, it might be game-over.”
I gulped. “Even if they touch unwounded skin?”
“Some of the patients I saw yesterday had their skin as the primary infection site,” Ani said. “I don’t know if this is because they got spores in a cut or a break in their skin, or if the spores had gotten on healthy, unbroken skin.” Shuddering, she shook her head. “You could pay me all you want, I would not touch that stuff to my bare skin, no matter what.”
I clenched my fists. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a hundred degrees. I felt as if I was surrounded by death.
Oh God…
This was not going to help keep me calm. Not in the least.
“Just follow protocol, everybody,” Heggy said. “Treat it like it’s radioactive. As long as we stay clean and keep our eyes peeled, we’ll be alright.”
“I hope you’re right, Heggy,” I said, “I really, really hope that you’re right.”
Brand pursed his lips and tilted his head. “You think it might be a slime mold, instead of a true fungus?”
I chuckled in terror. Brand really was at home here. This was his element.
Dr. Skorbinka shook his head. “No. Gross morphology might be compatible with plasmodial slime mold, but plasmodial syncytium is fragile balloon. Moreover,” the mycologist deftly waved his hand, “virulence in slime molds is completely unheard of.”
“Slime mold?” I asked.
“Quasi-multicellular organism,” Dr. Skorbinka explained. “Can look like gooey grapes, or vomit of dog.”
“And—not to bring up biological structure again,” Brand added, “but plasmodial slime molds turn out to be extremely effective network optimizers. They can solve the traveling salesman problem with ease.” He smiled. “The more you know…”
As usual, Brand was way too comfortable around bodily horrors. God, how I envied him for that.
Sighing, I pointed at the corpse’s head. “Speaking of networks…”
Dr. Nowston’s eyebrows perked up. “It’s brainin’ time.” He smirked. Brand then fetched humanity’s least favorite medical instrument: the buzzsaw. He didn’t need to tell anyone to take a step back; we did it on our own. Seeing the glint of the buzzsaw’s serrated, diamond-dusted teeth beneath the fluorescent light strips made everyone squeamish, except for Brand and Jonan. Dr. Derric waited for a fashionable moment before stepping away from the body.
Oblivious as ever, Brand continued talking even as powered on the buzzsaw. I couldn’t hear a single word over the saw-blade’s roar as it ground through Mr. Isafobe’s skull. For a second time, I averted my gaze, this time to hide from the sight of skin, hair, and aerosolized bone dust spraying through the air and spattering Brand’s PPE gown with gore. Even after the buzzsaw had finished its work, I could still hear a kind of soft fizzing bubbling in my ears.
WeElMed’s neurosurgeons liked to joke that the reason human beings wrapped everything in plastic was because we were just copying what nature had done to our brains. Peeling the uppermost layer of the meninges —the dura—away from the skull elaborated the punchline. Beneath the dura lay the semitransparent pia and arachnoid layers of the meninges. These tissues wrapped the human brain in a fibrous sheath that had more than just a passing resemblance to a plastic bag. In a healthy brain, cerebral veins pressed up against the membranes in the form of dark, needlessly ominous squiggles. However, what we saw in this dead man’s head was as far from healthy as you could possibly get.
On more than one occasion, my wife or I had had the misfortune of peeling open the brown outer husk of an onion from the grocery store only to discover that the next few layers were infested with threads or powdery splotches of black or dusky aquamarine—the sign of mold.
But Frank Isafobe’s brain put all those moldy onions to shame. The dark webs of fungal filaments were so thickly enmeshed on and in his meninges, you’d have been forgiven for thinking he might have literally had spiders on his mind.
I wasn’t the only one who gasped at the sight. Dr. Horosha made the Bond-sign, earning him an incredulous glare from Jonan.
“I wouldn’t have figured you for the religious type,” Jonan said.
“I am… many things, Dr. Derric,” Dr. Horosha replied. He smiled gently.
Then Brand cut into the meninges.
Most of us winced when Brand started to cut through the meninges and the encroaching fungal filaments. As Dr. Nowton drew the scalpel across the filaments, the metal… screeched. A soft screech, yes, but still a screech. For a moment, Brand hesitated. But then he pursed his lips and redoubled his efforts.
The sound got worse. The hard Brand pressed onto the filaments, the louder and sharper the noise grew. It wasn’t long before the sound started sending shivers down my spine.
But, eventually, the filaments lost the battle. They broke with a sound like a cello’s strings snapping free. Hot breath bounced off my F-99 mask’s inner surface as I sighed in relief. Then Brand pulled away the last bit of the meninges, and I gagged.
My stomach lurched.
Frank Isafobe didn’t have a brain anymore. All that remained of his mind was a couple crouton chunks of brain matter that floated in a soup of black ichor, fungal icebergs and masses of filaments. The filaments infiltrated the remaining chunks, as if digesting them.
It took about a minute for someone to speak up.
“Holy fuck,” Jonan said.
And, for once, I absolutely agreed with him.
Behind us all, Ani made the Bond-sign, muttering an Orison under her breath. “Holy Angel, protect us with your sacred Light. Forgive us for our failings, and guard our souls from the serpents’ icy claws.”