Spore Series | Book 2 | Choke Read online

  Sheriff Ahiga bristled as did several of the town leaders. Moe knew the colonel’s type. A real hardass who would run over anyone and anything to complete a mission. And while he could understand the tribal concerns over their lands, it would only end badly for the Navajo leaders if they continued to press the colonel.

  Moe slipped through the crowd and put his hand on Ahiga’s shoulder, drawing the man back even as he stepped forward. “If you don’t mind me asking, Colonel Humphreys,” he interjected, “how many are you deploying here? Are we going to get a chopper show?” He already knew the answer as his ears picked up the distant sounds of helicopters. “If so, have them use the school lot to land. Otherwise you’ll be eating dust all day. And believe me, it gets into everything.”

  The colonel turned his head and appraised Moe with cold, dark eyes. “And you are?”

  “Moe Tsosie, sir. I just got into town. I’m a truck driver, but I’m also former military.”

  “Oh yeah. National Guard?”

  “I was active duty, sir,” he said. “I spent five years in Iraq as a Marine staff sergeant.”

  Colonel Humphreys’s eyes turned curious. “Where in Iraq?”

  “All over, but Fallujah was a frequent hangout,” he replied, allowing a slight smile to work onto his lips.

  “First or second battle?”

  “Second.”

  “That was a busy engagement, soldier.” Humphreys’s eyes softened with respect. “Glad to see you made it out unscathed.”

  “Hardly, sir,” Moe said, patting his hip. “I got a nip in the right leg for my troubles. It only put me down for a few months, though. I got back on patrol.”

  “Well done, Staff Sergeant Tsosie.” The colonel gave Moe a respectful nod and his eyes roamed across the entire group as he stood taller. “For all of your information, we’ll be deploying twenty-two hundred men and women here. That includes FEMA personnel, military specialists, and every doctor we can find.”

  “That’s big,” Moe said with a low whistle. “Do we have a refugee situation on our hands?”

  “That’s the essence of it,” Humphreys confirmed. “Our CDC field teams in Denver and Albuquerque indicated the toxic cloud hit both cities hard before emergency services could be deployed. Tens of millions are dead, and hundreds of thousands of refugees are heading this way.”

  Moe shared a look with the tribal elders then turned his attention back to the colonel. “We heard there are troops moving east, too. What are those for?”

  “They’re headed to Window Rock and Gallup as a first line of defense,” Humphreys said. “They’re establishing gateways to stem the refugee flow. They’ll treat as many as they can there and send the rest here.”

  “I understand,” Moe murmured, then he bucked up. “Is there anything we can do to help, sir?”

  “I mean no offense with this,” Humphreys said as he gave them a pointed look. “Just stay out of our way. Take care of your people and stay away from camp unless we ask.”

  “We’d like our doctors to stay abreast of the situation,” Cynthia Tso spoke up, pressing a lock of white hair behind her ear.

  “Is there someone in town I can connect them with?” Humphreys asked.

  “Sage Denentdeel is our head doctor,” Cynthia said.

  The colonel shot a look at one of his staffers who jotted the name down.

  “If that’s all,” Humphreys said, “I’ve got a camp to set up.” With that, the colonel walked out into the scrubby, dusty field.

  The elders pulled Sheriff Ahiga aside and talked amongst themselves while Moe and Rex watched the organized chaos of the military’s arrival.

  “Great job,” Rex said, patting him on the back. “You smoothed things over. You should be a liaison between us and the military folks.”

  “Maybe,” Moe said as he weighed the colonel’s words. He was spiritually on the fence about a lot of things, though he often had gut feelings he couldn’t explain. At face value, the military would offer protection and expertise. But could they really accommodate thousands upon thousands of refugees?

  Moe scratched his head and tried to crunch the staffing numbers required to treat so many. The numbers didn’t add up no matter how he looked at it.

  Chapter 9

  Kim Shields, Zanesville, Ohio

  Kim drove Mobile Unit XI along I-70 at a careful twenty-five miles per hour. The bus was large and unwieldy, and there was a pileup of cars every fifty yards. She concluded that a spore cloud must have drifted west along I-70, suffocating and killing drivers as it went.

  Semi-trailer trucks had plowed over sedans. Vehicles trying to avoid further collisions had careened through guardrails or slammed into the stone median, spinning out of control as they tossed their drivers out onto the pavement. Plastic, glass, and metal lay strewn across the roadway, and trails of smoke rose from the wreckage both in front of and behind her.

  She worried about something piercing the bus tires or getting the bus fender caught on something heavy while she tried to fit through a narrow gap in the twisted metal sea. The road was an endless pile of smashed up, fungus-covered coffins.

  After the fourth hour, Kim grew tired of looking at it. She pulled the bus to the side and parked it, allowing the engine to idle as she took a break.

  “Dim the windows, please.”

  The glass grew darker, shielding her from the horrific view outside. She stood and stretched her arms over her head, barely reaching the roof. Some parts of the vehicle seemed crowded, though the cab itself was spacious. From the copilot’s chair, one could access an array of functions or monitor a full panel of instruments and video screens on the dashboard.

  Kim stiff-walked back to the small living area and popped open the mini fridge. To her surprise, there was a six pack of Cokes and a case of bottled water inside. She grabbed a Coke and sat down in the bucket recliner behind the driver’s seat. Kim twisted off the top, took a swig of the sweet carbonation, and placed the beverage in a cup holder on her armrest.

  She didn’t drink soft drinks, but at the moment the Coke was the greatest thing ever. Kim reclined back in the seat and kicked her feet up, resting her head on the soft padding. She’d wanted to reach Yellow Springs before evening, but that wouldn’t happen. It was already getting dark, and her eyelids were heavy and tired.

  She fell asleep in an instant, dreaming wicked dreams of people laying in the road covered in a thin carpet of fungus. Mycelium wormed its way down through eye sockets and skin pores in a speedy time lapse, making pathways as it threaded through muscle and bone. Kim saw the corpses deteriorate into piles of fleshy, crimson fungus where strange, black insects came to feed.

  The corpses mutated until there was nothing left but lumps that grew together, covering the entire surface of the planet. The fungus creature eclipsed humankind, and the sun dawned on Earth’s new inheritor.

  The system alarm jolted her out of her unpleasant dream — REEP, REEP, REEP!

  She shot up bolt straight as her eyes darted around. “Kill that alarm. What’s wrong?”

  The alarm stopped, and AMI’s cool tone came through the cabin. “My apologies,” she said, “but there are intruders outside. I took it upon myself to set the alarm once you’d fallen asleep.”

  Kim skipped questioning how AMI could have known she was asleep and stepped into the cabin, slipping into the passenger seat. She rubbed her eyes and then looked over the dashboard screens that showed her video feeds of the outside of the bus.

  Two people were walking around the bus, poking at the various sensors and trying to wedge their fingers into the edges of the sealed door. One intruder stood at the front of the bus, half climbing up the front as they tried to peer in through the tinted front window.

  “Thanks for setting the alarm.” Kim looked up. “Can you make it so I can see out but they can’t see in?”

  “Certainly. Would you like me to do that?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The smoky glass in front of her cleared, an
d she looked into the face of a man wearing a curious expression behind an improvised air filtration mask. The construction impressed her. They’d shaped the visor out of a flexible plastic much thicker than a 2-liter soda bottle. Soft window insulation lined the edges, which allowed the mask to hug the man’s clean-shaven face and head. The filter was made from several pieces of plastic and fit snug into a plastic mold—crude, but effective.

  It was too dark to see more facial features, though Kim checked another monitor to confirm that the second intruder wore a similar mask and also had her head shaved clean.

  “Looks like some freaky cult to me,” Kim said. “How do we get rid of them?” She’d brought weapons from the CDC facility, but she didn’t want to leave the bus if she didn’t have to. “I guess I could always just pull away.”

  “Or I could set off the exterior alarms,” AMI suggested.

  “That sounds like a good first step. Go ahead.”

  There was a brief pause before a series of alarms blared from the exterior of the bus. Bleating noises blasted into the night and recorded voices shouted through megaphones.

  The man who’d raised himself up to see into the front window flew back and landed on the concrete. He scrambled backwards on his elbows like a crab, screaming into his mask with wide-eyed fright. The woman reeled, tripped, and fell. She scrambled to her feet but fell again, skinning her knees on the concrete. They ran into each other near the front of the bus and settled down after a moment.

  The man made a rude gesture at Mobile Unit XI and reached into his rear waistband to remove a pistol. He pointed it at the front window and popped off a shot.

  Kim cried out as she hit the floor, throwing her arms up.

  She raised up and stared out the window as the man fired another round to the same affect. The glass rattled, and the bullet left a faint mark, but it did not shatter. The woman produced a weapon of her own, and together they walked around the Mobile Unit XI and pumped rounds at it. She listened as rounds smacked the siding, though she didn’t know if any penetrated.

  Kim leapt into the driver’s seat and put the vehicle into drive. She smashed the accelerator, and the bus’s powerful diesel peeled out and lurched forward. The man was still shooting rounds at the front windshield, but her sudden charge caused him to leap aside as she flew by.

  She glanced at the rear-view monitor as the pair met in the center of the road and shot obscene gestures at her.

  “Not this time,” Kim mumbled as she wove through the cluster of crashes.

  Four hours later, she got off I-70 for Yellow Springs and traversed several unlit back roads until she passed through the center of town. She didn’t know much about Yellow Springs except that it was a community of hippies, farmers, and artisans who made unique and amazing goods. While going to school in Kentucky, Kim had heard her friends talk about visiting, although she’d never gone herself.

  In truth, there wasn’t much to see. The city itself was dark and lifeless, and a few of the local businesses had already burned down. She still had to navigate several car crashes, but it was nothing like I-70. Kim reached a stretch of open road and followed her GPS directions until they delivered her to a hidden driveway a couple of miles outside of town.

  Gravel covered the lane and fungus-covered trees and wildflowers as tall as her sprung up on either side. She’d seen signs for the Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve, but nothing that determined a residence. There wasn’t even a mailbox with the house number Dr. Flannery had put in the directions.

  “The GPS says this is it,” Kim said with a frown.

  She backed the big bus up thirty yards, put it in drive, and used the oncoming lane to take a wider angle on the driveway.

  “Oh, boy. This will be close.”

  As she squeezed through the gap, branches squealed along the sides and top of the bus, and the tires crunched on gravel. The bus tilted and rocked on the uneven lane, and she punched the gas pedal to shoot through the foliage before pressing the brake to slow them back down.

  While there may have been enough room for two cars, the bus took up every inch of gravel. The woods crowded in all around, scratching and banging against the sides, and the rocking grew more frantic as Kim tried to work the brake and gas to keep them from getting stuck.

  She glanced over at the external monitors, but it was pitch black all around.

  “Can you turn on the exterior lights?”

  “Okay.”

  The trees all around the bus erupted in stark white light. Still, Kim couldn’t see a single inch of road due to the press of branches and leaves dripping with clumps of fungus.

  “We’re penned in,” she said through clenched teeth as she gripped the wheel harder. She didn’t want to admit there was no way to turn the bus around. Not even if she found a driveway to turn into. She cursed herself for not leaving the bus back on the main road, getting into some protection, and walking in.

  Around the next curve, Kim thought she saw a break in the dense woods. She edged the bus along, peering forward so hard her eyes hurt. The road leveled out, and the branches stopped scraping and creaking as she broke through onto a blacktop surface. The tree branches retreated on her left, and an open grass field stretched out and down to her right.

  Kim still couldn’t turn around, but at least she had some breathing room.

  Letting out a sigh of relief, she brushed the sweat off her brow and loosened her grip on the wheel. The road curved around to the right to encircle the field. About halfway around, the road ended in a circular dead end where hikers and sightseers parked their cars during normal park hours.

  She pulled the bus around in the circle and got it facing back the other way, then she put it in park and pressed down on the emergency brake before collapsing back into her seat.

  “Wow, that was intense,” she said with a shudder. “If I’d wrecked this thing, we would have been in big trouble.”

  “Would you like me to play some soothing music to calm your nerves?” AMI asked.

  “That’s okay,” Kim chuckled. “I want to sit here for a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  She stared out the window while her heart rate settled down. Then she grabbed her Coke and had another drink as she looked out the front window. The way she’d positioned the bus, the external lights illuminated three-quarters of the field.

  Her heart sunk. “I think Dr. Flannery might have given me the wrong directions.”

  Pulling out Tom’s tablet from her things, Kim turned it on and looked at the directions one more time. A quick glance at the GPS told her they matched up. Tom wouldn’t mess up a detail like this, not with so much at stake.

  “Perhaps some exploration is required,” AMI suggested.

  “You might be right,” Kim said with a note of finality before she stood and moved toward the back of the bus. “Kill all external lights. I’m going outside.”

  Chapter 10

  Kim Shields, Yellow Springs, Ohio

  Kim stepped out of Mobile Unit XI in her protective suit and respirator. She carried a specimen collection over her shoulder with a pistol tucked into a side pocket. While she was out, she wanted to take some Asphyxia samples to study if there had been any changes to its genetic structure.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  She walked up to one sign with arrows pointing to three trails. “I’m going to start on the high trail and work my way down. Please let me know if you detect any more intruders.”

  “Okay.”

  Kim stepped off the blacktop circle and turned on her flashlight, following a dirt path that wound into the trees. She doubted the bus would draw any attention, since the road was unmarked. There would be no reason for anyone to be at the park unless they’d planned on taking a hike in the middle of Asphyxia season. She shook her head. It only reinforced the idea that Dr. Flannery had given her the wrong address, and she was chasing ghosts.

  On the other hand, if Kim didn’t find Paul Hender
son and his lab, she could use it as an excuse to head west in search of her family instead of returning to Washington. General Miller didn’t believe she would find a cure anyway, so he wouldn’t miss her.

  Still, she had to explore all avenues; it had been Doctor Flannery’s last wish.

  Kim hadn’t hiked in a long time, though she recognized a lot of the foliage. Poison ivy vines climbed the thick tree trunks, covered in Asphyxia. The fungus had molded the stems and leaves to the bark and appeared to be killing it like it did everything else.

  The affliction choked the wildflowers and weighed them down heavily. As Kim passed, she noticed the fungus had left some leafy plants and underbrush alone. It could be the fungus had failed to attach itself to the leaves before it fell dormant, or maybe some plants had particular resistances to it. Kim reminded herself to pick some samples on her way back.

  The trail dipped down a steep slope, and she guided her flashlight back and forth across the curving trail, noting the various shades of Asphyxia as her mind wandered.

  Her flashlight beam caught something up in the brush. Some heavy tangle of green and brown…and pink. Kim kept her light pinned to it as she came even to it on the trail. She stood and stared at it with her jaw hanging slightly open.

  The woman was of average height with light brown hair and wide, brown eyes glazed and moist with death. Her arms were thrown wide as sticker bushes pierced her pink sweatshirt and hung her suspended four yards from the trail. The fungus clung to the sticker vines and entwined in the woman’s hair. The crimson fuzz trailed from the woman’s nose, the corners of her eyes, and down from her frowning mouth like she’d been eating fungus soup and allowed it to drip down her chin.

  AMI’s calm voice spoke through the hood. “Kim, I’m detecting a spike in your heart rate. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Kim gulped. “Everything is fine. I found a body.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” AMI soothed.

  Emboldened by AMI’s voice, she stepped closer to the woman, her boots scrunching on twigs. She leaned in closer. “You were probably jogging and got off the trail to relieve yourself. That’s when Asphyxia got you.”