The Factory

Life isn't like a TV show.

Yes, civilization as we knew it got toppled. Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned. You want to go back to minimum wage? Stupid people getting in your business, telling you what to do with your body and property? Working yourself into the ground but no time to be with family? Yeah, screw that.

You know the type of talking about. Braggarts, double down on their stupidity, stockpile their supplies like hoarding is for pikers, then when the apocalypse really happens, act all shocked when they're the first to go.

I've said this for years: what we call “mental illness” is really a stress response to outside factors. We've seen that an autistic's Vulcan-like emotionless response is an excellent way to learn science and other rational disciplines that need attention to detail, and we know those with depression are phenomenal in a crisis.

So those with OCD are almost freaking immune to this pandemic. They keep their homes immaculate, and scrub like crazy after visitors. It's worked so far.

I'm not that crazy about it, but I certainly know the right way to hold a scrub brush. And it's like some days I almost swim in vinegar, to keep locations clean.

No, I won't tell you where our little community is. Suffice it to say, I have some awesome neighbors, and we built a nice wall around our cluster of houses. Enough room for us to raise sufficient food for our community, but native stuff as well, for the wild critters. It attracts them, like squirrels and bunnies and chickens. Well, okay, we maintain those last ones. Yes, we use them all as meat, but we're real careful to make sure none of us get greedy.

So far, so good.

The hoarders got it first, of course. I feel bad for them, I really do. Sure, I know it's sickness. But, see, here's the thing: sickness can make you weaker. If you can prevent it, or fight it, then you should do so. If you don't get help, or take the steps to get well, it might eat away at you. Make you susceptible to other things.

Because fungus needs “prepped” food to eat.

So a mold sets up shop – benign, relatively harmless. Found in a lot of places. But in houses that aren't cleaned regularly, it can get stronger. Once that one gets a foothold in an organism, It can spread out, make tiny changes on the microscopic level. Like putting out a red carpet for a good friend.

Or maybe like meat tenderizer before pan-searing.

So what does all this infected meat want to do?

Eventually, they settle down after gathering a bunch of seeds. In the last stage, I saw whole families gathering acorns and swallowing them by the dozens. The really creepy one was the sloppy farmer up the road: the whole herd of cows, the dogs from their on-site “kennel service,” four generations of idiots, the chickens, heck even the the pigeons... All of them, licking maple or ash seeds and slathering each other with the wetted contents. And just, like, laying down, and letting nature take its course. I was freaking out for days over that one.

But earlier? People are still mobile, and infected, and under the control of the fungus. Not like the show, I don't think, though I never watched it myself. I was too busy trying to sound the alarm about the real crisis I saw sprouting under my microscope lens, but of course no one listened. But sometimes you would see a mushroom-like thing sprouting at an odd location on a person's body, and run away. Like zombies, they don't move fast. And if you get your blood tested routinely, you can avoid their fate, but it's not something you should go seek out by socializing a lot.

Unless, like me, you're sent into the thick of it to figure it out. Lucky me.

But, hey, oral fungicides are a thing, and I keep enough doses on me to prevent that primary infection from taking up shop. Because the motile fungoids want everyone to join them, and bring back the primordial forests again. Yes, that's what this is all about.

The forests are sick of being cut down. The forests are angry about being paved over. You thought mycorrhizae were just decorative? The fungal web that interlinks all trees growing in a particular area have been trading information for a long, long time, and they're tired of beating around the bush.

The spore wave was unexpected.

The forests had woken up, and herbicides would no longer keep them in control.

There are cities and villages that are largely untouched, of course. Houses that have excellent air filtration are pretty safe, if you're near a power source that stayed online. Houses with solar panels they just left alone. But depending on the personality of the people that got fungified, there were places that developed a mob mentality, and would not take no for an answer.

Which is how I found myself in a particular tourist town, with an angry crowd sporting pretty but deadly shrooms, trying to break into the factory.

Why?

Think about it. Chocolate is basically refined plant blood.

Fungified people were rather angry about it, but afraid of it all the same. It had become a fortified location, safe for humans, because of the smell given off by the process.

I should know, since I lived downwind from the town for decades. We used to joke, that if the apocalypse came, we weren't moving, with all the factories nearby. Six within three counties, it would be the only place to get the gooey cacao at all.

I think that's how I ended up being embedded with this local mob. I knew how they think, living near them for so long. But even so, and with others on the fringes that looked like journalists or other non-fungal observers, it was scary watching the crowd grow frenzied trying to get to the fresh meat, but be repulsed by the very air they had to breathe in order to do so.

I hope I'm never put in that position ever again.

The crackling anger, the waves of fury, the seething rage, a steady roar of sound but at a pitch that should never come out of a once-human throat. It hurt, it made you dizzy, it made you want to join them, it made you want to hide till it all went away. Yes, I had a video recording device strapped to me, and they didn't care, and it still doesn't pack the same punch as being there in the thick of it.

And then they broke in.

And no one was there.

Did I have warning? I don't know, but echoing silence after that keening was disturbing. I started to back away, and I wasn't the only one.

So when we heard an explosion within the factory, and a strong-scented wave of chocolate brown came racing towards the courtyard, I took off.

Look, I don't want to describe what happened next. You can imagine, I'm sure. I got the aftermath on tape. It was bad enough, seeing the cleanup. There's quite a lush forest on the far end of town now, down by the river.

The humans didn't abandon the factory, of course. Just turned the one area into a trap. There are tunnels all through the town's center, built by Milton himself. They just hid until the trap was sprung. Reset it afterwards, with beans from all the railroad cars parked behind the building.

And now we knew how to fight to a truce.

I now live in one of the safe zones, close enough to a military base that I can reach there given a short warning. We have lots of vegetable gardens on the edges, which make a perfect No Fungi Zone, plus we all like veggie soup. Great cure for what ails you. And lots of vineyards, to make vats of vinegar, for cleaning.

Most everyone has a portable fire tank we can fill with veggie soup at a moment's notice. Don't want to get caught.

Want a garlic clove? No? Then, sorry, you need to follow these nice guards to get your blood tested. Not a crime to hate garlic, really, but you can understand how we don't want any infected people sneaking into our no-fungus zone.

Gotta be safe.