“It just hit the ground,” Sydney says.
“You’re certain?”
The seismologist leans back and gestures toward her monitor, where the seismogram reveals a distinct, if small, uptick.
“I’ll be right back,” Rana says.
“Where are you going?” Tim asks.
“Back to the van. Turns out we’re going to need that drone after all.”
RANA WATCHES THE live feed from the drone as she pilots it downward into the earth. Its range is more than four miles, but it only operates for thirty minutes at a charge, which means she’s going to have to throw caution to the wind if she hopes to reach the bottom and have time to explore before starting the return trip to the surface. There are broken sections where the chute narrows to such an extent that she fears she’ll clip the rotors, and yet somehow she manages to guide it ever deeper.
The light mounted to the bottom barely limns rounded concrete walls in varying stages of decay. Most segments are cracked and severely eroded, while others are absent and offer glimpses of the underlying strata. All things considered, the well has held up miraculously considering its age and the nature of the chemicals consuming it, like stomach acid eating its way up an esophagus. The fumes make the darkness appear to shimmer at the most distant reaches of the beam’s range.
“How much farther?” she asks.
“You’re passing negative eleven thousand feet now,” Tim says. “You’ll reach the end of the reinforced sleeves in about eighty vertical feet.”
“Most of the concrete’s already gone. It’s amazing the entire well didn’t collapse years ago.”
“The sound of the drone’s rotors is affecting the seismic readings,” Sydney says. “I’ve lost our anomaly. Wait… there it is again.”
Rana watches the depths of the tunnel, where the downward-facing beam diffuses into the darkness. The residual concrete abruptly gives way to metamorphic rock so heavily eroded that there are shadows too deep for the light to penetrate.
“The drone’s too loud,” Tim says. “I’m no longer picking up any readings in the infrasound range.”
“There’s nothing natural about these vibrations,” Sydney says. “I can’t detect any rhythm or pattern. There has to be something down there causing them.”
“You mean like an animal?”
“Nothing could have survived falling two miles,” Rana says.
“A burrowing animal could have tunneled—”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” Stephens says, “but with the levels of contamination we’re detecting up here, I guarantee you there isn’t a living being on this planet that could survive down there for very long.”
The walls fall away to either side, revealing a massive cavern so large that the drone’s light shines upon nothing beyond open air. The original engineers had expected the chemicals to disperse into the porous rock, not completely degrade its physical structure and carve right through it.
“I’m telling you,” Sydney says, “there’s something down there.”
The bottom comes into view. It’s pitted like the surface of the moon and riddled with deep fissures caused by the recent quakes. Crystalline formations unlike any Rana’s seen before sparkle from their depths, a consequence of the reaction between chemicals used to make weapons of mass destruction and deep strata that had never been exposed to their like before. The results were positively breathtaking.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispers.
The drone’s light abruptly swings, blurring the image of the cavern floor and projecting a shadow reminiscent of a grove of skeletal trees onto the wall. The light abruptly darkens and the drone becomes unresponsive.
“What happened?” Tim asks.
“I don’t know,” Rana says. “I must have hit something.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Neither did I, but I’ve totally lost communication with the drone.”
“The vibrations are growing stronger by the second,” Sydney says. “And I’m detecting a pattern, almost like a drumroll.”
“Someone fire up the ground-penetrating radar,” Rana says. “We need to make sure we didn’t compromise the structural integrity of the well. If what we’re picking up is the sound of falling rock, this whole area could be about to collapse.”
“It’s not falling rock.” Sydney’s voice rises an octave and takes on a note of panic. “I’m telling you, there’s something down there.”
She turns her monitor so Rana can see it and heads toward the mouth of the well.
“What are you doing?”
“Watch the seismogram and you’ll see the difference.”
She crouches and shoves a large piece of concrete over the edge. It strikes the wall and rebounds into the chute.
“Give it about forty seconds to hit the ground and—”
The chunk of concrete fires upward from the hole and clatters onto the rubble.
Sydney doesn’t even have time to turn around before the shadows scurrying from the earth swarm over her.
“WHAT IN THE name of God happened here?” Randall asked. “I saw them with my own eyes. Hell, I even held one. There’s no doubt in my mind they were dead.”
The rabbits had all moved to the front of their cages and pressed their foreheads against the mesh, their fur sticking out at odd angles. Fungal growths protruded from the bases of their skulls and the lengths of their spines. A fuzz of hyphae covered their eyes, completely obscuring their vision, and yet Randall could feel the weight of their stares upon him.
“We theorize the fungi never actually killed the rabbits,” Thompson said, “but rather suppressed their vital functions to such an extent that they were able to override the immune response. They essentially created a state of deep hibernation, the physical characteristics of which match those of a moderate dose of deoxynivalenol.”
“You’re suggesting they can produce the toxin at will.”
“Fungi don’t have a ‘will’ any more than they have a brain to exert it, but it wouldn’t be untrue to imply that the two species—graministritici and unilateralis—have formed something of a mutualistic relationship by which the former produces the toxin in response to a threat to the latter, in this case the white blood cells of the host life form.”
“Surely there’s a way to manipulate that to work in our favor.”
“You mean as an incapacitant?”
“We could win a war without excessive loss of life.”
“Hoping for the fungi to pass from the locusts to the enemy is adding the very element of unpredictability we were seeking to avoid. Not to mention the fact that we know nothing about the physiological interactions of the fungal species inside the rabbit, let alone an infinitely more complex organism like man. This could be more than a mere fungal infection that their bodies can ultimately fight off; it could be actively killing them from the inside out. Or maybe any attempt to remove it will cause it to release a lethal dose of toxin.”
Thompson plucked one of the growths from the head of the nearest rabbit, which thrashed and hurled itself repeatedly against the wire mesh until its white fur darkened with blood.
“Their rate of growth is beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” he said, and turned it over and over in his gloved hand. “An hour ago those protuberances were barely longer than the fur. Now they’re close to three inches. Their life cycle hasn’t merely been accelerated; it’s been altered beyond our ability to form a predictive model. If it continues to metabolize the blood—”
“The rabbit will just make more.”
“That’s not the point. Fungi don’t grow indefinitely. Like I said, their sole purpose is to reproduce. Once they do, the host no longer serves a purpose. Biologically speaking, it will have outlived its usefulness. Like the ant that bites onto the leaf, the fungus will eventually consume it.”