The Fungus

“I don’t have a TV and I never listen to the radio when I’m up here working alone. Too distracting.”

“You mean you don’t know about the crisis?” Smythe-Robertson looked very surprised.

“What crisis?” demanded Wilson.

The soldier paused for a moment then said, “There’s no time to explain it all now. We have to get moving right away.”

“Moving to where?”

“Belfast.”

Wilson laughed. “I’m not going to Belfast. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Smythe-Robertson made a gesture and his two men each grabbed one of Wilson’s arms. The next thing Wilson knew he was being dragged out of his study. He tried to put up a resistance but the two soldiers didn’t even seem to notice his efforts.

“You can’t do this to me!” he yelled. “I’ll sue you for false arrest!”

“We’re not arresting you, sir,” said Smythe-Robertson from close behind. “But in a State of Emergency you are obliged by law to obey our instructions. And that’s what you’re doing.”

They dragged him out through the front doorway, stepping over the remains of the door. Wilson then received another surprise. Sitting in his front garden was a helicopter — a big one.

As the soldiers hustled him toward it, its engine roared into life and the rotor began to turn.

“Better duck, sir,” yelled one of the soldiers. “We don’t want to lose that valuable head of yours.”

No sooner had they bundled him through a side-door in the machine than it began to rise into the air. Wilson couldn’t take in what was happening. It was all too crazy to be true. If he’d put something like this in a Flannery story he’d be accused of being too far-fetched.

“Look, I can’t go away anywhere! I’ve got a book to write! I’ve got a deadline to meet!” he yelled over the noise of the engine.

“Where’s your publisher based, Mr. Wilson?” yelled back Smythe-Robertson.

“London, of course!”

“Mr. Wilson, there is no London anymore!”

2

Everything smelled of country.

Dermot Biggs breathed deeply of the warm night air and was happy. He and Sally and their three children, Sarah, Robert and Finnegan, were all thoroughly enjoying their fortnight’s camping holiday. It was proving to be the success he’d hoped for but hadn’t really thought possible. The usual constant bickering between the kids had stopped and the slight sexual distance he’d felt from Sally in recent months had been bridged, not once but several times.

The weather in Yorkshire had been marvelous the whole time, the car hadn’t misbehaved at all, and to top it off the old farmer on whose property they were camping turned out to be the producer of a home-made beer that was one of the best things Dermot had ever tasted, as well as having the kick of Kenny Daiglish. Every time Dermot visited the farm to pick up their daily supply of eggs and fresh milk he also came away with a quart of the old man’s brew.

He was carrying a quart of it now as he headed across the fields to the clump of trees beside the small river where they were camped. He was a pleasant old fellow for a farmer, Dermot reflected, though he did tend to ramble a bit at times. Like tonight when they’d been sitting in his kitchen sampling a couple of pints of a new batch. He’d been going on about something he’d heard on the radio — or wireless, as he called it — concerning some plague that was supposed to have broken out in London. Dermot couldn’t make head nor tail of what he said and guessed he was exaggerating wildly. Pity one of the kids had dropped and broken their own radio last week, but he was sure that whatever it was could wait until they got back — perish the thought — to Liverpool the next Monday.

Besides, who gave a damn about London? When did anyone in London last give a damn about what went on north of Watford? It was practically a separate country.

Dermot’s good mood persisted even when he stepped in some cow dung. He muttered, “Oh bugger,” to himself and then chuckled when he switched on his flashlight to confirm that he had indeed walked into the grandfather of all cow-pats. A fresh one too.

He wiped his right shoe on the grass to clean off the dung then continued to weave his tipsy way towards the camp site.

He didn’t know it, and wouldn’t have cared less if he did, but smears of excreta remained in the chunky patterns on the sole of his shoe. He also didn’t know that the smears contained spores from the coprophilous fungus living in the intestine of the cow that had produced the dung.

None of this would have mattered but for the fact that the field had received an invisible shower of microscopic fungus particles carried all the way from London by the prevailing winds. The particles had first been swept very high into the sky and would have continued on over the Irish Sea if a westerly cross current hadn’t caused them to be deposited onto this particular part of Yorkshire.