The Fungus

Paralyzed with terror, he couldn’t move as the bottle shattered in the road right in front of him. The blazing liquid showered over him, setting him alight. He screamed. He woke up trying to beat out the flames engulfing his body. Then he realized he was naked and lying on his bunk.

But he could still hear the stones hitting the armored car!

As he sat up in alarm the light came on. Kimberley, still naked, stared at him with shocked eyes. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” He grabbed for his pants and started to pull them on.

The hatchway was opening. Wilson’s startled face appeared. If it was surprised at seeing Kimberley naked he didn’t show it. “We must be surrounded!” he cried. “We’re being hit from every direction at once, but I can’t see anyone out there!”

Slocock ran to the hatchway, pushed Wilson out of the way, and slid through into the cab. He saw that Wilson had turned the headlights on, and a large area ahead of the truck was clearly illuminated. But there was no one in sight.

And yet even as he peered out he could see numerous round objects hurtling between the trees towards them. The clatter as the things hit the roof and sides of the vehicle was continuous. Then one of them hit the windshield. Immediately there was a large red stain spreading across the glass. A second one hit the windshield, then a third. The stain got bigger.

“Fruit! They’re throwing bloody fruit at us!” said Slocock. He started firing the minigun, spraying bullets indiscriminately. But the barrage of brown, orange-like objects didn’t lessen.

When the gun was empty he switched to the other one.

“Can’t we just drive the hell away from this?” cried Wilson.

That’s what we should have done, Slocock thought bitterly, cursing himself, but now it was too late. He pointed at the windshield. It was almost completely obscured. “We’d probably drive straight into a tree and be stuck here for good.”

The big gun chattered on until it too was empty. Slocock had swept it back and forth round a full 360 degrees. He must have hit some of them out there but the barrage was as heavy as ever. He was stumped.

Wilson, on the other hand, had suddenly started to smile. He had been staring hard at the stuff on the windshield and then his face had lit up. He turned to Slocock. “I’m going out there.”

“Are you crazy? There must be an army of them.”

Wilson continued to smile his annoying smile and said, “An army, yes. But not of people. There are no people out there at all.”

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” But Wilson refused to say anything else. Slocock, mystified, had no choice but to follow Wilson into the rear section. There Kimberley, now dressed, asked them what was going on.

“We got a couple of hundred people out there chucking balls full of red gunge at us but Buffalo Bill here claims it’s all an illusion.”

Wilson was climbing into one of the suits. Before he put on the helmet he said, “Coming, Sergeant, or are you going to cower in here for the rest of the night?”

Reluctantly Slocock suited up as well. He picked up one of the rifles from the rack but Wilson shook his head. “You won’t need it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said as he checked to see that the magazine was full.

Wilson went out through the airlock first, carrying just a powerful flashlight.

When Slocock warily emerged from the rear hatch he saw Wilson some distance away aiming the flashlight beam at something on the ground.

Almost immediately Slocock felt a sharp impact on his stomach. He grunted and doubled over, winded.

“Move away from the truck!” came Wilson’s voice over the suit radio. “I think it’s the heat that attracts them. And protect your face-plate. One of these things could easily crack it open!”

Still bent over, and covering his face-plate with his free hand, Slocock staggered over to where Wilson was standing.

“Look!” he cried, pointing at the ground.

Slocock looked and saw that the ground between the trees was covered with a thick yellow carpet. Suddenly he saw a movement in the thick growth and got a blurred glimpse of one of the round missiles shooting upwards out of the stuff. Then he saw another. and another.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Sphaerobolus,” said Wilson with a crazy kind of glee in his voice. Slocock wondered if he was starting to crack.

“It’s a fungus where the fruit body acts as a catapult,” explained Wilson happily. “Inside the fruit body there’s a tiny sphere called a gleba, except in this case it’s not so tiny. On average these specimens must measure five inches across.” He ducked as one of the round missiles shot by him. “The gleba floats in a sort of rotting fluid. The pressure builds up in the fruit body as it matures and then eventually an inner wall suddenly turns inside-out and flicks the gleba away. An ordinary gleba can be ejected over a distance of several yards, but these are traveling over 10 times that. It’s incredible!”