The Wyrms of &alon

Even as a kid, Vernon had always been a little bit pushy, but then again, so was every Marteneisses. It was a family trait, and for once, Heggy wasn’t proud of that, not in the least.

True to his word, despite some holographic hiccups, Vernon’s men had commandeered the Mark 3 matter printers down in the basement. Not only had the military taken over production and allocation of the mycophage, but they’d told the people as such.

Heggy was amazed the hospital wasn’t already up in flames. Granted, it was still barely an hour after Vernon had made his announcement, so, there was always the possibility that things were still warming up.

There was more than just spores choking the air, now.

Heggy glanced at her console on the counter, checking once again on the status of the patients who had received the mycophage. The data made Heggy want to cry, only she couldn’t make up her mind what the feelings behind those tears would be.

Joy? Terror? Fuckin’ nausea?

On the one hand, the mycophage wasn’t the miracle cure they’d been hoping for. On the other hand… it was certainly more than just a sugar pill. For whatever reason, the mycophage was meaningfully impacting the infection. Without fail, everyone who had received it recovered… but only slightly. It was more of an arrest—a pause—than a recovery, as if someone or something had intervened and held the fungus’ onslaught at bay, if only for a short while. This would have been great news, had anyone had an explanation for it. But nobody did, not even Dr. Nowston, and that was scary, because they needed that explanation now, more than ever.

The folks who had been given the first rounds of doses were starting to show signs of decline, though because they’d been given additional doses after that, everyone was gonna have to wait until the evening to see whether or not the mycophage could keep them alive.

Heggy found herself muttering under her breath.

“Please, let it work… please.”

Unfortunately, her brother was doing a great job of mucking things up.

“Next,” one of the soldiers said.

The line trudged forward.

Heggy and Ani had returned to their places in the examination tents, much to the relief of the doctors stationed there. Heggy couldn’t blame them; no one liked working at the threat of gunpoint. Heggy wanted to settle into the rhythm of the triage, if only to quell her worries about what I was up to and what the future might hold, but it was tough going, to say the least.

A gust of wind blew through the Court. The white tent’s synthetic polymer was strung over the plastic skeleton of a barreled frame that kept it standing, and the tarp walls taut. The breeze kicked up the lifeless autumn leaves, whirling them against the shoes and slacks and weighted skirts that stood in line by the tent’s entrance. There was a portable lamp on a nearby countertop. It shone with a bright, ghostly white against the darkness that the sunlight eking through the tent’s porthole windows was too weak to dispel.

Heggy’s tent was dominated by a row of portable examination tables lined down the middle. The thick, clunky boards of stained, off-white plastic looked their age, as did the tarnished, foldable chrome legs that supported them. Like Ani and the other physicians in the tent, Heggy sat in a plastic chair that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since Letty Kathaldri had.

Leaning to her side, Heggy looked over the features of the latest civilian to come and lay down in the examination table beside her. Two of Vernon’s best stood to the side of the tent, black-armored and loaded up the wazoo. Before, they’d been there to keep doctors like Heggy safe. Now, they were there to keep the doctors in line.

The examination table was currently upright, in chair mode. The man in it had pasty skin, probable vitamin deficiencies, and frizzy hair that didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “comb”.

At a glance, the man seemed surprisingly plague-free, so much so that even from the tent next door, Ani paused to stare. Heggy didn’t need a stethoscope to tell that the man’s airways were almost completely unobstructed.

It made Heggy unexpectedly excited. She sat up straight.

“He looks clean,” Heggy said. “You should have him taken inside. We can—”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Marteneiss,” one of the soldiers said, “but… it’s like we told you before.”

Heggy huffed, and then looked the nervous patient in the eyes. “Sir…” behind her mask, Heggy bit her lip, “…I’m gonna have to scan your chip.”

“What? Why?”

Heggy tried to muster up the force needed to say the words, but the soldiers got to it before she did. This time, however, the soldier who spoke up didn’t just lean in and whisper the answer to the guy in the chair like he had with the previous patient. No. Instead, this dick decided to shout it over the crowd’s heads.

“We’re going to be scanning for your personal details. Until we’ve got enough of the mycophage to drown in it, we’re going to be allocating care based on merit.”

Anxious murmurs rippled through the crowd as the tension in the air racketed up a notch. It was a bitter delirium. The news of the mycophage had given people hope, and with that hope came strength—borrowed, though it was—along with expectations, and the will to press onward. Vernon had had to scatter some of his elite troops—the guys in white—across the Garden Court to keep folks in line. People who’d tried to force their way through were getting blasted, and only the hope of getting the mycophage for themselves kept the bystanders from rising up right then and there.

“You can’t do this!” someone shouted.

The soldier shook his head. “It’s not like I want to, buddy. Orders are orders.”

Heggy gritted her teeth. She wasn’t used to being on the other side of conflicts like this.

But then the man on the examination table stuck out his hand, which brought Heggy back into the moment.

“Here,” he said.

Dr. Marteneiss scanned him using the Info app on her PortaCon. All the major details of the guy’s life appeared on the screen, condensed into a couple rows of orderly text.

Name: Samuel Langdon

Age: 51

Sex: Male

Occupation: Educator (Natural Sciences - Physics; Secondary School)

Income Bracket: 70th Percentile (± 2% M.O.E.)

Marital Status: Wedded. 27 years. Olivia Langdon (Deceased).

Children: Susan (F) (Deceased), Janet (F) (Deceased), Clarissa (F) (Deceased), Ash (M) (Deceased).

Not wanting to pry further, Heggy looked away, even as more of Mr. Langdon’s personal details scrolled by: his political party registration, his credit rating, his medical service priority number, estimated assets (both liquid and non), and so on and so forth.

“I’ve got his data.” Heggy pointed the console at the soldier’s helmet and then transferred it over, watching as text and pictures scrolled down the soldier’s visor.

“Low priority,” the soldier replied. He tilted his head to the side. “Sir, please proceed to the waiting area.”

Mr. Langdon’s eyes widened. He turned around in his seat. “W-What? But—”

“—Now hold on a minute,” Heggy said. She pointed at Mr. Langdon.

“If this guy has some sort of immunity to the fungus—even a partial one—that would be a game-changer..”

Well, it wasn’t going to stop the collapse of civilization, but at least it would keep humanity from going extinct.

And, just maybe, stop Vernon before it was too late.

“I’m fine,” Mr. Langdon said. “Right? I’m fine. It’s just a cough. I get colds all the time.”

Through his visor, Heggy could just barely make out the soldier narrowing his eyes. “Alright, but give him an examination first. I don’t want to waste resources on a false alarm.”

Heggy nodded.

It was better than nothing.

She turned to Mr. Langdon.

“Sir,” Heggy said, “could you roll up your sleeves?”

“What?” Blinking, the man glanced over his arms. “Oh… okay.”

He rolled them up.

Worried faces eavesdropping from the line by the entrance let out gasps.

The way the fungal filaments branched darkly beneath the pale skin on the underside of his arms made the hyphae look almost like tattoos.

The man shook his head, despondent and disbelieving. “No… that’s not possible. That… that wasn’t there this morning! I’ve kept myself locked in my beasteaten basement. I only left of because of the fucking zombies!”

Heggy winced at the man’s bad luck.

But what could she do?

Pausing, Heggy took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to wait in one of the clinic tents.”

The man’s dismayed stammers were broken up by a fit of coughing. Heggy rose from her chair to help him to his feet.

It’s the least I can do, Heggy told herself.

Mr. Langdon pushed away from her as soon as he’d gotten to his feet. He staggered out through the back end of the tent, almost insensate.

Heggy’s thoughts turned inward.

At the moment, Heggy wanted nothing more than to punch her little brother in the face. Hard. The kind of punch that sent a man to a dentist—assuming there were any dentists left.

Well, what she wanted most was for someone to pinch her and make her wake up from the wildest nightmare she’d ever weathered.

But that wasn’t going to happen, so she’d settle for punching Vern in the face.

Granted, she’d have to get his helmet off, first.

Nervous glances rippled down the line as Mr. Langdon trudged off to a clinic tent.

Surreptitiously, Heggy sent a text message to Ani, giving her a heads-up that the guy was coming her way. Dr. Lokanok could do a better job of making people comfortable than Heggy could.

Heggy wondered about that document her brother had given her. She hadn’t had the time to read it, and wasn’t really in the mood.

Heggy hated the current situation because it was driving a stake through her family ties, and that was the last thing you needed in times of crisis.

Solidarity kept you alive.

It’s not Vern’s fault, she thought, it’s the circumstance’s.

Ani and Genneth were absolutely right to be furious with the military’s actions, but that didn’t change the facts on the ground. The government was done. Society was ending. Even DAISHU itself probably wasn’t long for this world. Vernon’s honor—his military discipline and dignity—was all that stood between the survivors and the void. No matter what, you had to have faith in the system. Once good faith was lost, people couldn’t trust one another, and that trust would take eons to rebuild—and, even then, there was no guarantee it’d come back.

Heggy sighed.

Her thoughts felt dissonant, and she didn’t like that.

Didn’t like it one bit.

“Next,” one of the soldiers said.

As the line trudged forward, once more, Heggy lost herself to the moment. She’d been half-lost already, and the dissonance of her thoughts was just the final straw. She let herself drift back to a memory so time-worn, even its crumbled edges had already been smoothed over.

As a girl, nothing filled little Heggy Marteneiss with bubbles and bees quite like spending an afternoon with her father, overseeing the ships at Trueshore Cape. Sometimes, her dad went just for the sake of going. Those days were Heggy’s favorites. Without duty to distract him, her father was stories, all the way down.

“Marteneisses are heroes,” he’d tell her, “heroes through and through. We practically invented patriotism.”

And how she reveled in the examples!

“Your great-great-grandfather, Gebediah Marteneiss? It’s ‘cause of him that we desegregated our armed forces. Chief Minister Canfield wanted to make the changes, but he couldn’t be the one who went and did it, ‘cause the flak he’d get would’ve gotten him clicked clean out of office. Your GrampGramp was Secretary of the Navy at the time. He was the one who made the change, with Canfield’s tacit consent. After that, Munine folks could enlist in the navy, then Costranaks, then everyone else. And it’s all ‘cause of us. We did that.”

The stories seemed to go on forever.

But the cherished memory—the one to which she fled—that was special.

That was the memory about the Yellowjacket. Oh, she remembered when she’d first laid eyes on that beauty. She was a floating fortress of gunsmoke and steel, riveted and riveting. Its soldiers had painted the metal around the guns in yellow and black, to match the name.

“That’s the Yellowjacket, Heggy,” her father said, standing beside her on the docks, clasping her hand in his. “It was your great uncle Hoff’s ship. I dare say, it’s the most beautiful battleship there ever was. When pirates or blockade runners saw those bold stripes, they knew they were done for. That’s what real strength is, Heggy. Everyone in the room turns and looks, just because you’d stepped inside.”

It made Heggy feel safe. It was the iron hand of Trenton’s might. It safeguarded all and always did what was right.

And, really, it was all she had left to fall back on.

Heggy resolved right then and there to go talk to her brother again. There had to be a way to fix this.

There had to.

A voice shot out from a loudspeaker up on one of the guard towers.

“Remember: if you can’t stand anymore, you can sit down on the ground next to the tents. People will get to you as soon as they can.”

That was a lie.

Heggy had asked Colonel Sanders—one of Vernon’s subordinates—why they were giving people that particular bit of advice, the Colonel had laid it out for her cut and dry.

“If they pass out or die, it’s better that it happens while they’re on the ground, out of sight.”

Most people were too dazed to notice that many of the folks sitting on the sidelines by the tents or the garden wall had stopped moving. Those who still had their wits didn’t notice, either, because all they could think about was finding a way to prove themselves worthy of getting the mycophage.

It was a damn powder-keg.

The reason why the system—any system—worked was because people saw each other as human beings. Laws didn’t make men good; men made laws good. Cheaters, opportunists, and cutthroats were the scum of the earth because they made a mockery of that. They did what they wanted just because they wanted to and told themselves, “To hell with the consequences.”

Heggy had thought her brother would know better.

“I… I’m reporting,” someone said, stammering, “…and so…”

Dr. Marteneiss looked up. Next in line was one of the saddest sights Heggy had ever set eyes on: a young mother, with her even younger daughter in tow. Her coat was splotched and stained. Bits of dried ooze on her long, sky blue skirt were crumbling into green spores. The girl at her side couldn’t have been more than four years old, and was bundled up in a fuzzy coat with thick cufflinks.

The woman’s words were hushed and stammered. Heggy could barely parse what she was saying.

“Ma’am,” Heggy said, “you’ll need to speak up. I can’t hear you.”

“I’m reporting because I’m dead, and…” she gulped; her pale face flushed. “There’s a… a growth.” She brought her hands to her mouth. “And the rotting skin it’s peeling off, and… and…”

Her expression weltered with tears.