Descended from Darkness: Vol II Read online

  "Don't make it too fancy, okay?" he said.

  "Okay. "

  He lingered in the kitchen, two steps behind me, and I could see the frown on his forehead out of the corner of my eye.

  "What's up?" I said. "Any word from CDC?"

  He shook his head. "They think it's fungal meningitis. Crypto-something."

  "Cryptococcus." The word hung uncomfortably. For a gay man of his age, Johnny was so naïve---it's like he'd never heard of cryptococcal meningitis. "But it mostly affects immuno-compromised people."

  "That's what the CDC said."

  "Only it's not---Cryptococcus is usually a yeast, and these grew into filaments."

  Johnny shrugged. "Can't help you there."

  "I'm getting basidiomycete primers tomorrow," I said. And added when I saw his blank look, "Crypto is a basidiomycete."

  "There was another case today," he said. "In Denver."

  "How did he die?"

  "Collapsed in front of his computer. The weird thing though...that guy in Denver had ants crawling all over him, and there was broken glass. When he fell, it looks like he broke his ant farm."

  "Ant farm?" What was he, five?

  Johnny nodded. "The guy last night...he had one, too. Do you think...."

  "Ants and humans don't share any fungal parasites. There are some fungi that parasitize ants, like Cordyceps, but it's an ascomycete. The sample isn't."

  I peeled sweet potatoes and talked, trying to cover up the sensation of quiet dread that was starting to stir in my stomach. If you're a kid, you get this sensation in the dark, walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night, that pure maddening fear that makes you forget your dignity and run and leap into bed, irrational fear turning into no less irrational triumph at having escaped and made it under the blanket. As an adult, I had nowhere to run and no way to overcome the fear but by talking. I felt Johnny's irritation with my chattiness growing, like a billowing steam cloud very close behind my back, but I couldn't help it.

  "David," he said, after I babbled about ascomycetes for a good five minutes. "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but it smells delicious. I'm going to hit the shower and I'll see you in a little bit, all right?"

  I felt perverse as I said, without turning, just imagining his hunched over back receding toward the living room, "Alan knew this guy, I think."

  "You spoke to Alan." He stopped. "When?"

  "Today." I really never meant to use Alan to make Johnny jealous, but I always did nonetheless. "He said a friend of his died in Denver, collapsed in front of the computer. I think it's the same guy."

  "Could be." Johnny sounded thoughtful rather than pissed off or upset. "Can you ask him the guy's name, and if that's the right guy, ask Alan what the dead man had wanted with an ant farm."

  "What happened to the ants?"

  "In the criminology lab," Johnny said. "they're testing them for pathogens."

  I was certain that they wouldn't find anything, but kept quiet.

  Johnny resumed his tired trek to the bathroom, and I was left with my cooking and my guilt. And a great excuse to call Alan and meet him for coffee---why, Johnny had practically encouraged me to.

  I got hold of Alan first thing in the morning. "Did your friend have an ant farm?" I messaged.

  "Larry? Yeah, he did." The right guy then. "Spoke about it a lot. Weird that you asked."

  "Why?" I asked, warming up to my new role as an interrogator.

  "Last time we spoke, he kept asking me to get an ant farm. He said, these are not some stupid regular ants---these are leaf cutter ants, and he could mail me a starter colony because he just got some flying ones. He said he would mail them to me if I wanted. And the mushrooms they grow---you know, for food. It is kinda neat. Ever heard of it?"

  I did. Leaf-cutter ants and their fungal gardens had always fascinated me---the fungi more than the ants, because those were the ones not found anywhere else but the ants' burrows. Talk about mutualism! I just wasn't sure they would make great pets.

  "But why?"

  "Dunno." Alan fell silent for a few minutes, and I was starting to worry. When he came back, he only said, "He liked the way they mulched those leaves, and the fungal gardens."

  And then he logged off abruptly. I waited around, hoping he would come back and it was a computer malfunction and not a virtual slammed door. He never returned, and I started another round of PCR---thank God for overnight primers.

  Things nagged on my mind---the deaths, of course, but also this subdued strangeness and the interplay of the fungal groups. What I had at first thought to be an ascomycete was likely to be a basidiomycete, the group that included edible mushrooms and Cryptococcus and some disease-causing fungi, and--- I stopped abruptly, my mind searching for tentative connections where there weren't any. Molds that leaf-cutter ants grew were also basidiomycetes, only they were edible, not parasitic.

  The phone rang, startling me. It was Johnny, of course---who else would call me at the lab during the summer break? College was such a ghost town then, it was difficult to believe that it was packed with young bodies for most of the year, and I was just a pale, pudgy apparition among their exuberant, fleshy youth. Now, however, I was fully present, solid, and flinching at the sound of the ringing phone. I picked up.

  "Interesting thing," he said. He often started mid-sentence. "CDC says it's not crypto---you were right. They don't know what it is. Sequences don't match anything in the database."

  Scooped by the CDC---not surprising, they of course have better equipment and more people who are better at this stuff. "They're sure."

  "Yeah. Apparently, there was another body. Some shut-in, he must've died days ago. He never came out, just played his online games. Neighbors complained about the smell. Anyway, he was in bad shape to begin with, but the weird thing was, there was something like a black horn growing out of his head. They sent a bio-hazard team and sealed the area, because they think it's the mushroom, or whatever you call it."

  "Fungal fruiting body," I mumbled, trying not to be too alienating. "You sure it looks like a horn?"

  "Sure, but I can Email you some pictures." He paused, humming to himself. "You know, it's so strange to be working with CDC. They really get on those cases quick, and I like that they keep us in the loop."

  "They can't arrest people. Or do all the legwork. They need you."

  "I suppose." He heaved a sigh. "Listen, I'll be home early. I'll make dinner."

  Well, that was new. "Thanks. I'll work a little later then."

  "Have you spoken to Alan?"

  "Briefly, on IM. He said his friend in Denver was really into ants. I'll look into it."

  "Thanks."

  As soon as we hung up, I collapsed onto my stupid metal chair with the twisty leg that didn't quite work properly, and clasped my head in my hands. There was something awfully familiar about all this, and the black horn...I logged into my Email and shuddered when I saw the pictures Johnny had sent: the man's face was carefully blotted out, but the blue and purple streaks on his balding scalp spoke of decomposition, and there was an ugly protuberance emerging from the back of his skull. A long thin black horn stretched upward, like a leech doing a tail stand. I had to remind myself that I was looking at the actual picture of an actual dead person, so fascinated I was with the alien structure.

  I shifted my attention to the background---behind the swollen purple head with no face, there silvered a rectangle of the computer monitor opened to a blank page. And to the right of the head, there was a dark angle streaked with white, and it took me a second to realize that I was looking at a fish tank filled with earth, and the white streaks were mere reflected light from the monitor. An ant farm, with the possibility of a close look.

  I opened the picture and zoomed in---high resolution photography made everyone a blade runner---and stared at the twisty, creviced mass of the soil. There were darker specks of underground tunnels, as one would expect in an ant farm, and I moved the cursor around, looking for
any hint of anything unusual. In the very corner, I finally found something: thin threads of yellow and blue, coalescing into a lace-like pattern, fuzzing upward. Mold, I thought, good old fashioned ant food. That looked nothing like the black horn growing out of the dead man's head.

  I sighed and opened the browser. I knew now what I was looking for, only I still had no clue as to what it meant. I Googled "Cordyceps" and Emailed the images to Johnny.

  Cordyceps was a parasitic fungus, infecting ants and other insects. It would take over their minds, make them behave in a strange manner---like climb to the very top of a tree, where the fungus would produce a fruiting body, a tiny slender horn, that would then disseminate its spores from the highest point possible. The horn that looked just like the one in Johnny's picture.

  There were two problems with that: first, Cordyceps was an ascomycete, and I'd already ruled out this possibility. Second, humans were not insects, and no fungus ever jumped host from insect to a human. Also, there didn't seem to be an explanation for involvement of computers or ant farms.

  The thermocycler beeped, helpfully letting me know that it was done. I slapped the tube contents onto a gel to run it. While the gel was doing its thing, I called Alan.

  It took him a while to answer.

  "I need to talk to you," I said.

  His voice came slow, dreamy. "I can't. I need to set up the farm."

  "What farm?" I asked, chilling inside.

  "An ant farm, stupid," he said, and breathed his usual affectionate laugh. "Larry was right---it's awesome."

  There wasn't anything particularly great about the one in the dead man's apartment. It was just a drab ant farm with some colorful mold, and by now I had no doubt it was dangerous. "Listen to me,"I said slowly, my mouth suddenly dry and my heart too sluggish to pump thick corn-syrup-like blood. "Don't touch those ants and the mold, okay? I think they might be killing those people."

  His laughter came distant now, as if through a layer of cotton wool. "They're fine, really. Larry told me all about them."

  "Larry's dead," I said.

  There was the pause and the peculiar silence that let you know when someone had hung up on you. I put the receiver down and drew in a deep breath.

  I felt light and empty and transparent as the things that had been happening to other people, in my proximity but not actually inside my sphere of concern, suddenly became personal and mattered to the point of heart palpitations and sick stomach and sweat on my palms. I didn't like the feeling one bit.

  Now it was my turn to call home and apologize for being late; I would've found a perverse pleasure in it if I weren't so rattled. Thankfully, Johnny didn't pick up. I left a message, hoping that my voice was steady enough. "Johnny,"I started. "I need to go see Alan. I think he got some of these ants. They grow this fungus, this mold---and it's a basidiomycete." (A quick shine with a UV lamp at my gel confirmed it---basidiomycete primers did their thing and there were fluorescent smudges of DNA all over the gel. "Yes, sure enough. See, those are leaf-cutter ants, and they grow a basidiomycete that they eat. But this one seems to be different---its fruiting body looks like an ascomycete, a parasitic fungus. I think it's a fusion organism of some sort." I caught myself then, and unplugged the gel---it would be fine 'til tomorrow. "Anyway. I worry about Alan, and I'll go see him, all right? Don't worry---I won't go inside and I'll call the police if anything seems amiss. Love you."

  Alan lived about forty miles north, in Elizabeth. I used to live there once, many years ago, and I still had a warm regard for the city, no matter how ugly-polluted-industrialized-gentrified it grew by the day. I'd never been to Alan's place even though his address was in my Rolodex---I mailed him a book once, more of an excuse, the card in the pile of other cards a potential promise. I took it with me and, guided by recollection rather than useless GPS, drove along Elmora Street, looking for Vine that would take me to Dehart. The store fronts were just as I remembered them, Portuguese bakeries and bodegas, only older and with fraying awnings. I had no time to grieve for them, and I finally found the street and then the house, and rang the doorbell with a sense of dark foreboding.

  There was no answer, and I knocked, and then banged on the door. The hallway, barely visible through the gauzy shade on the glass door, remained dark and dusty and empty. I rang the doorbell again.

  Just as I was about to call the police, I heard footsteps. An old woman came to the door, dragging a foot and glaring at me from in between her hunched shoulders wrapped in a cabbage rose shawl.

  "Looking for Alan," I said, as soon as she opened the door.

  She waved her desiccated arm to point me up the stairs. "Third floor," she said. "Loft. He's probably playing his game again. He always wears headphones and cannot hear a thing."

  Somewhat relieved, I thanked her and rushed up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. First I would have to flush those ants down the toilet...no, too dangerous. I needed to get Alan out of there and then call the hazmat team. That made sense.

  Alan's apartment was located at the top storey, which was smaller than the other two---it was practically a turret or a garret crowning the old house. I knew places like this; I always loved them for their open floor plan and surprising nooks and crannies. But now was not a good time to consider architecture, and I knocked. Alan didn't answer, but the door squealed open the moment I applied some force to it.

  The windows were tiny and the loft was dimly lit by fading daylight. No lights were on, and the nearest window was all but blocked off by a sizable jade tree in a clay pot. "Alan?"I called.

  There was no answer except for faint, distant clacking, and I squinted into the dusk, past the raised platform with an undone bed on it and a tiny kitchen adjacent, separated only by half a drywall, and to the opposite end where another window was hidden behind drawn curtains and the milky light of a large flat monitor beckoned me.

  "Alan?"

  Nothing but the keystrokes, and---despite my promises to Johnny and myself---I didn't turn and call the cops, I, instead, took a cautious step toward the computer.

  Alan did not turn even when I was barely a foot behind him. The accursed ant farm sat next to him on the table, and Alan's IM window was open.

  "These ants are great," he typed. "You have to get them. I have some extras."

  "Alan?" I called without much hope of him ever hearing me.

  He continued to type with stiff fingers, dead like those of a marionette. I fought the familiar quiet terror that had been twisting my stomach into knots and suddenly remembered danger. I started to back away---I remembered that the ants took those who were infected by Cordyceps as far from their anthills as possible. I was supposed to be smarter than an ant; then again, if they didn't get infected by casual contact...I remembered the black horn, the spore-producing fruiting body. It was only when it bloomed out of the wretched head of an unfortunate insect and shed spores that it became dangerous. I hoped it worked the same here.

  Then another window popped up, and he typed the same text, intent, oblivious to everything but the tapping of the keys. Then another. I was about to pull him off, to warn people on the receiving end of his messages that they didn't need ant farms, when a video-chat window popped up. As if moved by an invisible force that filled him like a hand filling an empty glove, he picked up the ant farm and held it up, to the blinking eye of the small camera on top of the monitor. In the chat window, a pale pair of hands and a fish tank with ants appeared. It was very quiet as two men held their ant farms, as if the fish tanks were talking to each other.

  Of course not. It was the ants---and the dark, damp room span before me as if a fissure opened before my feet. Of course, of course---the ants took over gamers, geeks, and others who spent time online so that they could persuade others to get more ants, and then ants made them facilitate communications between colonies. Ants took advantage of technology.

  Very carefully, I pried the tank out of Alan's fingers. He didn't look at me, his hands still curled, fingers twitchin
g as if struggling against imaginary weight. I rested the tank on the table, and grabbed Alan's elbow. He felt rigid beneath my fingers, as if rigor mortis were already setting in.

  "Come on," I muttered, and dragged him to his feet.

  He swayed but stood, empty. Cordyceps took control of ants' brains; the fungus that they'd made (and by then I had no doubt that the mold in the tank was some unholy union of a parasitic ascomycete and a mild-mannered edible basidiomycete ants have been cultivating for millennia, created by ants) was likely to influence human behavior in a manner conducive to ants' designs---spread them around and then let them talk to each other by video, so that they could teach each other how to grow the terrible fungus.

  I almost laughed out loud at the absurd marriage of hive minds, ant colony and the internet, as I maneuvered Alan, stiff and light like a dead cat, toward the door of his apartment. Was he contagious? I hoped not. I hoped that there was some anti-fungal that would clear Alan's poor infected geeky brain right out. I also hoped that I wasn't messing up too badly.

  I propped Alan against the wall as I dialed 911. They apparently got the CDC memo---as soon as I mentioned a fungal infection in the brain, I was transferred and a very calm, very kind voice told be not to take Alan outside but to wait inside the apartment.

  Now that he was away from the ants, he seems to have lost the animating essence that moved him, and I let him collapse onto his bed. He sat, slumped, hands dangling between his knees, unresponsive to the world. If the fungus was still sending signals to his brain, he was unable to obey them. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I tried to warn you. I'm sure they can fix you." I wasn't. More disturbingly, I was getting a little light-headed from all the exertion and excitement. I tried to breathe deeper, all the while wishing I had a paper bag. Then I thought about the spores and held my breath.

  There were sirens outside, and voices, and then the day caught up with me and I watched the darkness slowly fold over me, like a midnight-dark steamroller.