The Fungus

“Comrades,” said Geoffrey Henderson, his shadow jumping about on the sandstone wall as the candle flickered. “We have a crisis.”

All three of them were well aware of the crisis but as usual Geoffrey was intent on going through the formalities. Sheena Blakey listened with only a fraction of her attention, partly because she knew what he was going to say and partly because she was wondering which one of her two Comrades was going to want to demonstrate his solidarity to her that night.

The previous night she’d been obliged to accommodate both of them. After arguing over whose turn it was with her they’d had a vote to suspend the normal rota system temporarily. Sheena had lost by two votes to one. She had a strong suspicion there’d be a similar vote tonight.

She was beginning to wish she’d never come down with them into the caves, but it had seemed a good idea at the time. At first, when the news of the fungus had reached Hastings, most people had seen it as a problem for London alone. Despite the warnings on TV and radio, and the local government’s attempts to take preparatory action, it seemed like one of those things that would simply go away or never affect Hastings. But then things changed.

She wasn’t quite sure when, but suddenly people began panicking. All but the most elderly or stubborn inhabitants tried to get out of town, with or without their belongings. But there was nowhere to go. It was the same everywhere. The people in the other towns and villages — nearby St. Leonards, Bexhill, Bulverhythe, and Crowhurst — were panicking too. There were fights, riots, and general chaos throughout the area.

Oh, some people tried to leave in fishing boats and anything else they could get their hands on, either paying the high prices the fisherman set or resorting to violence to hijack the craft. But it wasn’t long before the French navy put a stop to that. Word soon got back that the Frogs were sinking every boat that went beyond the three-mile limit. And without even giving any of them a chance to turn back.

It was then that Geoff came up with his plan. It was blindingly simple. They would go and live in the caves.

Under the West Cliff were four caves, partly carved from the sandstone by prehistoric streams but mostly by man for commercial reasons; sand for glass and holes for tourists.

No sand had been removed for glass-making for over a hundred years, and there were certainly no tourists around at the moment, so Geoff’s scheme was for the Hasting’s Branch of the ISL to retreat into the caves with plenty of supplies and wait there until the fungus problem was over. He thought of it as a scourge sent to scour Britain clean of Toryism. After it had done that it would, like the Biblical flood, disappear and the ISL would surface to take charge of the new world.

In the event only two members of the ISL had been smart enough to follow Geoff into the caves. The other four had decided to take their chances above ground. Smart? Sheena was having her doubts if that was the right word. Perhaps the other four were the smart ones.

Before retreating underground they had, on Geoff’s orders, broken into a supermarket and taken lots of canned food, candles, and dozens of bottles of spring water. They’d also broken into a camping store and stolen sleeping bags, a kerosene stove, and some gas lamps.

At the caves they made some effort to barricade the entrances then settled down to life below the surface. For the first few days Sheena found it fun. A bit of an adventure. But then boredom quickly set in. They couldn’t get a peep out of the radio they’d brought with them, and the books that Geoff had insisted on selecting on their behalf were either by or about Karl Marx.

Not that much reading would have been possible even if she had had a more appetizing range of books; the electric lights had gone out by the end of the first week and then they’d used up all the gas for the lamps. Now they were reduced to the dim light of the candles, and their supply of those was fast dwindling too.

Geoff and Horace kept themselves occupied by discussing Marxist theory and taking turns in her sleeping bag. At first so much sex had been a mild novelty for her but the novelty had soon palled and now she was fed up with being continually screwed by two incompetents. Her big hope was that they’d get bored with heterosexual sex and start screwing each other.

However she couldn’t deny that Geoff’s idea had worked. They made regular checks of the caves but there was no evidence of any fungus. Geoff had reasoned that the fungus wouldn’t “bother” — he almost endowed it with sentience when he spoke about it — to go underground. Nothing to eat and too cold for it, he insisted. It probably didn’t like sandstone, Sheena decided. She didn’t like it much herself.