Growth (9 page)

Walsh put his elbows on the counter, raised his eyebrows. “Nobody's ranting and raving, Doug. Just asking a few questions. Not my fault nobody wants to think about these things. Seem like you all are happy to swallow any bullshit that Allagro feeds you. Everybody's happy to repeat the company press release, to point fingers and holler for retaliation, but where's the evidence?”

Cochran touched Bob's elbow lightly, and when Bob glanced down, Cochran flattened his hand out, gently patting the air under the counter. The meaning was clear. Be quiet. Let this play out.

Perkins slammed his fist on the Formica. “That ain't the issue here. Point I was making was that you needed to be more respectful. It's the wrong morning to spout that nonsense.”

“Respectful? Hell, seems to me real respect is digging to get at the real truth of what happened to Bob Junior. That's respect.”

“Admit it,” Perkins waggled a thick finger at Walsh. “Allagro could release actual video surveillance of these terrorists killing everybody and it still wouldn't be enough.”

“Come to think of it, that's a damn good idea,” Walsh said. “Fact is, we haven't seen a whole lot more than a lot of smoke. Where's the pictures on the ground? You all are taking Allagro's word that these eco-terrorists, a bunch of hippie dipshits at the best of times, managed to firebomb an entire goddamn island in the middle of the ocean. Does that not strike anyone else as being tough to swallow?”

“Listening to your paranoid fantasies is hard to swallow,” another farmer on the Allagro row said.

Walsh continued, “I mean, you don't think that Allagro, one of the most secretive, most powerful corporations in the entire world, wouldn't keep an eye on one of their most valuable laboratories? You don't think that they would have every inch of that island under video surveillance?”

“Christ, here we go again.” Perkins looked heavenward for help. “You just answered your own goddamn question. What is it about the term ‘total destruction' that you don't understand?”

“I think you are underestimating the level of technology involved here. I think—”

“I think,” Perkins interrupted loudly, “that you like the attention. It's predictable. Next you're gonna accuse us all of being drug dealers again.”

“Hey, you want to grow that cheap Frankencorn just so they can turn it into sweet garbage, be my guest. Just don't expect me to pretend that your shit smells like roses.”

“There you go again, pissing on the GMOs. Guess you don't have a problem with the world starving to death.”

“Gentlemen,” Cochran spoke up suddenly. “I can appreciate and respect your views. However, I believe we have lost the true goal as to why Mr. Morton stopped by this morning. He was merely extending an invitation to join him, and his wife, in honoring the memory of his only son.”

The Korner Kafe fell silent.

Walsh asked, “Who are you?”

Cochran fixed the full force of his stare on Walsh. “My name, Mr. Walsh, is Paul Cochran. I am an attorney. I have been retained by Mr. Morton during this difficult time. If you have an issue with an organization such as Allagro, I suggest you take it up with that particular corporation. In the meantime, in the interest of behaving like a decent, humane neighbor, I highly suggest you keep your personal opinions to yourself and show Mr. Morton all due respect in his time of mourning.” Cochran addressed the rest of the diner. “I know that Mr. Morton would appreciate it if public discourse regarding his son's death remained civil and polite, and I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for observing this request.”

Cochran surreptitiously tapped Bob's elbow, indicating that Bob should stand first. Bob put his coffee down and stood, somewhat disappointed they wouldn't be having breakfast.

Cochran stood as well, saying, “Thank you, gentlemen. We hope to see you all at the memorial service tomorrow. I certainly hope you take my advice to heart. If we are forced to meet under different circumstances, if you choose to ignore Mr. Morton's request, I can assure you that you will regret it.”

Kevin didn't tell his mom that Jeremy Glover had taken a shit in his lunch box.

He shouldered his backpack, heavier today, took his bike from his mother as she lifted it out of the trunk, and endured a good-bye kiss on the cheek. As she pulled out of the parking lot in the cruiser, he locked his bike in the rack and stood in the shade of one of the elm trees that lined the schoolyard.

That was about the only good thing about summer school. Cover. If you stepped back a little, you could hide behind the trees, and become invisible to the second floor. You could still hear, though. Could tell if they were up there.

In the winter, there was nowhere to hide outside. You couldn't wear white-and-gray camouflage fatigues, like in video games. You couldn't sneak away from anybody.

However, at least during the regular school year, you could disappear inside the school, in the mess of students, just another coat and hat in the throng of students that filled the hallways.

In the summer, Kevin stuck out.

Jeremy wanted his buddies to call him Jerm for short. He liked that. Capital
JAY-EE-AR-EM
, baby.

Jerm and his buddies were looking for Kevin. Always.

At least they weren't in the same class, unlike in the spring, when they all shared a math class. Kevin had spent too many classes worrying about them and couldn't remember a damn thing. That's how he ended up in summer school. Jerm and the two other assholes had been placed in some other summer program entirely. It was some kind of remedial thing, supposed to help them catch up to the rest of their peers. Shared periods in gym and lunch were the worst. Kevin had nowhere to go. The teachers protected him some of the time. Sometimes, he got caught and was lucky if they just tripped him, called him a few names.

Sometimes, it was worse.

Like when Jerm and the assholes surprised Kevin out behind the school. Jerm grabbed Kevin's backpack, pulled the notebook and binder out, and dumped the food on the ground. Stepped on it. Put the empty lunch box on the ground, pulled his pants down to his knees, and squatted.

Even the other two assholes, Javier and Morgan, had been seriously disturbed by their friend. They hid it though, with maniacal laughter and frantically swiping the air in front of them to wave the smell away. Jerm wiped his ass with the lid, zipped the lunch box up, put it in Kevin's backpack, and handed the backpack to Kevin.

Kevin took it.

He'd replayed that particular moment in his head a million times. Couldn't change it. Wished he'd done anything,
anything
, except take his backpack like a fucking pussy. He'd taken it and stood there while they whooped it up and went upstairs.

He'd spent hours and six gallons of bleach trying to erase the memory. It was never clean enough. Never would be. He could never bring himself to tell his mother he would never eat out of that lunch box ever again. The Baggies and food inside would get tossed into the first garbage can or Dumpster he passed.

They'd since been waiting every morning at his locker since summer school had begun. “There's the fucker. Smelled you comin'. Fuckin' pussy-ass motherfucker. Your mommy around now? Huh? She gonna arrest me? Huh? Chief Bitch? Huh? Chief Cunt?”

Some days, Kevin hid by the bike racks, out of sight from his locker and the second floor, in the shade of the trees, and went in late. He got used to waiting, got used to being lectured on tardiness, and simply blamed it on his mother, knowing she felt bad about getting him there late, and if anybody ever talked to her about it, she would assume it was her fault. Better than running into them at his locker.

It couldn't last forever. Kevin was cracking. He had nightmares of his fingers breaking off when he went to grab things. Sometimes he would look around and realize he had no memory of getting there. He spent hours in the bathroom, both at school and at home, either suffering through horrible diarrhea or puking his guts out. His mom hadn't noticed his weight loss yet, but it was only a matter of time. He saw himself as the earth itself, cool on the crust, but deep inside, nothing but burning, bubbling, molten lava.

Until one morning, hunched over the toilet at home, dry-heaving at the thought of going to school, something inside him decided, quite simply,
enough
. There would be no more fear. He would end this, one way or another, and to hell with the consequences. Anything was better than
this
.

He knew where she kept her old revolver, the one she'd used in the Incident.

 

 

Cochran walked slowly out to the edge of the yard, and stood near the antique tractor, waiting for the men upstairs to answer the phone. Flowerpots had been spaced out across the top of the tractor, while vines grew around the wheels. There was no place private enough inside, so he had gone outside to make his call.

“Go ahead.” Only one voice spoke, but Cochran knew the others were listening.

“The announcement was made and the service will be tomorrow,” Cochran said. Breakfast at the diner hadn't gone as well as he had hoped, but it hadn't been a total disaster, either.

“Good. Get it over with, sweep it out of sight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any signs of further infection?”

They knew the idiot son had mailed some package to his father three and a half months ago, but nobody knew what the hell was inside. It could have been anything. A book, a letter, a contract, pictures, anything. It also could have been a packet of seeds.

On paper, Cochran's primary goal was to accompany Bob Morton Jr.'s remains back to his parents and oversee the memorial service. He was also supposed to protect the brand, make sure that no reporter tried to grab some easy ratings by dragging Allagro's name through the mud. Unofficially, he was to keep his eyes open and make sure that none of the infected corn seeds had made it back to the Morton farm. The last thing the men upstairs needed was another containment breach. It would halt their research for decades.

Cochran surveyed the cornfields and looked back at the house. “No. I have not seen any evidence yet.”

Truth was, Cochran wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for. Before leaving for Illinois, they'd sat him down in a windowless room with a couple of scientists who couldn't give him a straight answer even if he'd put a gun to their heads. The company undoubtedly had their heads in a vise, and he figured that was the real reason they were so goddamn nervous. They knew damn well if they couldn't figure it all out and provide adequate answers, they might wind up in one of the fertilizer tanks.

“We're years away from understanding this,” the mycologist had said, stabbing his cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. “Years.” He was Asian, Korean maybe, and wouldn't stop smoking no matter how many times the other scientist asked.

The other scientist, a plump little microbiologist, couldn't sit still and paced the entire time. “You people built a bridge across evolution, jumped millions of years, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Sweat had soaked through the armpits of his shirt and his eyes looked like a couple of hardboiled eggs bulging out of dark hollows. “You need to tell your bosses that we tried to warn you when the tests started coming in. We tried. Make sure you tell them that. You can't just release something like that and expect it to behave.”

Cochran didn't say anything.

The mycologist lit a new cigarette. “Some basic facts that you need to understand.” He held up his hands and tapped his nicotine-stained fingers as he went. “Fungi is neither plant nor animal. Yet it shares characteristics of both. The scientific community continually debates how to classify these organisms.” He spit a fleck of tobacco on the floor and shook his head. “In the last thirty years, the taxonomy classifications have changed more often than a map of Eastern Europe. But it has been on earth since the beginning. It was almost the first conscious life-form, but never quite made it, and God cursed it to clean up after the rest of the species.”

Cochran thought the man needed some rest and checked his watch to politely remind him to get to the point.

The mycologist ignored Cochran's body language and ticked off another finger. “We've identified over 80,000 species. However, there are undoubtedly more. Many, many more. At least 1.5 million. Maybe even 5 million.”

“Who gives a shit,” the microbiologist snapped, waving at the smoke. “None of them have ever, ever acted like this. This stuff, it gets in you, it grows like cancer on crack.”

This, the mycologist agreed with. He nodded. “And God help you if you are close when it is ready to reproduce.”

The security footage taken from the conference room on the island made this quite clear. They'd watched in silence as Dr. Deemer's head had cracked open and the eyes had popped, releasing the spores.

The mycologist told him that the fungus had somehow made the jump from one species to another with surprising ease, and that it was controlling the infected insects on the island to a limited extent before liquefying the abdomen and the head, then repurposing the legs somehow. Nobody was still quite sure how it worked, and the company wasn't in any hurry to replicate it under controlled conditions. That island had been one of their top research centers, complete with some of the most secure laboratories in the world, and now it was nothing but a charred slab of rock in the middle of the ocean, thanks to the fungus.

While the microbiologist paced, the mycologist fired up yet another cigarette. He sucked in a lungful of smoke, blew it out his nose while staring at the table. He looked up, met Cochran's eyes. “We think it can infect you two ways. One, when the fruiting body is large enough, it will burst, spreading microscopic spores into the air. These spores will infect anything they come into contact with. That's like most fungus. But,” he paused to take another drag, “there's something else going on too. You ever catch athlete's foot?” He didn't wait for an answer. “All you have to do is touch it. That's all. A simple touch under the right conditions.”

He'd pointed to the footage from the security cameras from Greenhouse #6, where the two executives had broken in and tried to escape using the Zodiac tied up in the tidal pools. “They had already been infected, back in the boardroom, but here,” he pointed to the cobwebs. “Here, they picked up some of the infected insects. Of course, they were not insects any longer, not really. They were simply vehicles for the fungus to expand, to search out more flesh. See, traditionally, normal fungus will ‘move' to food by growing toward it, but this species has figured out a way to actively use its victims to carry the fungus to new food. It has become a predator.”

The microbiologist stopped pacing and wagged his finger. “We don't know that yet. We don't know anything yet.”

The mycologist shook a sheaf of papers at his colleague. “We know damn well they used
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
as a foundation for the DNA sequence.” He looked back at Cochran. “This is a fungus that controls ants. It latches onto the brain stem of a rainforest ant and controls their behavior, compels them to climb up to an optimum height, clamp on the underside of a leaf with their mandibles, and stays there until a large enough fruiting body grows from within the ant, until it explodes, raining spores down below, and the whole process starts all over again.”

Cochran almost felt sorry for the ants.

The mycologist threw the paper on the table and talked without looking at the other scientist. “So don't tell me we don't know anything. We know too damn much. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. We know just enough to go tampering with building blocks of life, but act surprised when life doesn't react the way we hope it will. Besides,” he looked back at Cochran, “this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Look at the Permian-Triassic extinction, 250 million years ago. Sixty percent of all scientific
families
, more than eighty percent of
genera
. That's ninety-six percent of all species in the ocean. All gone. We think that fungus had something to do with it. You want something more recent? Look at the plagues of Egypt. They all have a strong possibility of a fungal origin. They—”

“Oh, give it a rest,” the microbiologist said. “If I have to listen to any more of your superstitious nonsense I'm going to shoot myself. Dragging us back to the Dark Ages will not help us solve anything.”

“Man's hubris is what brought us to the brink of extinction in the first place.”

The microbiologist leaned over and yelled in the mycologist's face, “Spare me your platitudes, you fucking moron.” He went back to his pacing, and mimicked the mycologist's accent, pretending to smoke with fluttering, exaggerated gestures. “Because, you know, you can't spell fungus without
fun
!”

The mycologist had merely shrugged and lit another cigarette.

Cochran hung up the phone and listened to wind rustle the corn leaves. That meeting had been utterly useless. And now he still had no idea what the fungus looked like. How the hell was he supposed to be aware of microscopic spores in the air? The company had supplied him with emergency gear in the trunk of the rental car, but gave him explicit instructions not to use it unless he encountered irrevocable evidence of the fungus itself. Allagro wanted everything quiet and controlled.

He took one last look around the yard and trudged back up to the house to sit by himself in the living room, staring at a muted TV while Belinda sobbed in the bedroom and Bob locked himself in the bathroom.

 

 

Kevin had seen the footage from the Incident. Over and over. He'd watched videos of his mom arriving at the courthouse as reported by various networks on YouTube. He'd marveled at her coolness as people shouted questions and chanted slogans. Remembered how he'd heard her crying in the shower a couple times late at night. She would be furious if she knew he'd watched them again. Kevin knew the faces of everyone involved, especially the complainant. Knew how the asshole tried to get up out of his wheelchair and lurch over to the podium to speak to the press against his lawyer's overly theatrical advice, like it was some kind of professional wrestling match. Knew too well how the asshole's knee now worked like one of those wacky inflatable doofuses out in front of used car lots, forever flopping in random directions.