To rid the world of another set of lungs—of another mouth to feed, another source of procreation.
“We’re close!” Fausto gasped as they reached the first copse of trees. There were paths in the woods, worn routes that snaked through thickets of fern and blackberry brush. A carpet of pine needles and maple leaves crunched beneath their feet.
Twenty seconds.
Bryan thought it was impossible to go any faster, but they found yet another gear. Every second was precious, and in each unit of time was a glimpse at what could be. A son or a daughter. A future. A life.
They angled through trees, a smattering of others sprinting through the woods near them, though Bryan sensed that most had chosen the densest portion of the forest, directly beyond that first battery of bulls.
Lungs searing, quads stretched to capacity, Ruiz and Norton strained across the terrain, leaping logs, darting from tree to tree, hurtling brush.
Ten seconds.
“There!” Fausto shouted. Sixty yards away, a gentle hill was peppered with enormous, wispy ferns. There were few trees—few places to take shelter.
Labor… has… begun! echoed the robotic voice, signaling the start of the test. The din of automatic gunfire instantly ripped into the air, a ruckus of destruction and ruin that arced fresh pangs of fear through Bryan Norton’s heart.
Fausto hit the hill, began to scramble up it, rolled to the ground and simply vanished.
It happened that fast.
“Fausto!” Bryan shouted, lurching up the bank. A hand shot out from beneath a fern.
“Down, damn it! Move!” the man hissed, and Bryan hit the deck, rolling beneath a canopy of fronds. Fausto was furiously scooping leaves and soil over himself, smearing dirt onto his face, smashing it into his hair.
Bryan followed suit, petrified that they hadn’t created enough separation. Here was their first test; they would hide in plain view.
“Quiet now,” Fausto whispered, his tone moderating. “We are nothing—nothing more than mushrooms, Bryan. We exist in the soil, beneath the protection of these ferns. We are safe, secure down here in the earth.”
Streaked with grime, watching the forest from between the shifting slats of gently waving fronds, Bryan felt a stillness welling inside himself. He willed himself down, deep down into the soil, pressing himself into the earth.
They were still.
Periodic gunfire echoed in the forest, but it was dimming, growing faint. Bryan could faintly detect men scampering all around them.
Many minutes passed before he glimpsed the first bulls. In that time, he had learned a few things. Mushrooms are, indeed, extremely still.
Mushrooms breathe through every surface of their being, and so did Bryan, feeling himself alive no longer just in the expansion of his lungs, but throughout every region of his body. He drew air through his eyelids, through the backs of his hands, through the skin atop his ankles.
Bryan Norton learned that mushrooms dream, and he fell into his own—dreams not of Maggie and Eli, but of the beauty of the woods, of the green vitality of wild places.
He learned that mushrooms were small, and he too became small.
He learned all of these things as the bulls advanced on the hill. His right eye cracked a centimeter wide, he watched as about a dozen bulls advanced slowly on their position, rifles at the ready. The soldiers picked their way carefully across the terrain, scanning trees for climbers, using the muzzles of their weapons to probe the trunks of enormous rotting trees.
Soon the bulls were beyond ascending the hill; Bryan clamped his eyes shut tight.
Footsteps stippled the ground inches from his face. He felt the tremor in the soil, the way a mushroom would feel the passage of a woodland creature.
The bull passed him, leaves crackling underfoot.
When the sound of their passage grew faint, Bryan sipped the air. He did not move, and neither did Fausto, and in that way the men passed the first seventy-eight minutes of Labor.
“Bryan,” Fausto finally whispered. “We need to move. We have three more hours of daylight. If we mean to find our angel, we have to get going.”
Bryan took a deep breath. He tried to move his hand to swipe a leaf from his forehead and realized he couldn’t move. “I can’t…”
“Flex your fingers. Do it gradually. It’ll come back to you.”
Bryan made a fist, the pads of his fingers exploding in a rush of pin pricks as blood rushed into his hand. He awoke in stages, the agony of disuse powerful in his extremities.
Damn, but life could be hard as a mushroom.
“I’m going to take a look. Wait… don’t move,” Fausto said. He parted the fronds and glanced into the woods. Slowly, he rose and scanned up the hill.
“Ok,” Fausto said, rubbing his biceps and forearms. Bryan joined him and they crouched there, considering their first violent minutes in the throes of Labor.
“Where did you learn that trick?” Bryan asked.
They were hunched, scampering from tree to tree, Fausto looking ahead while Bryan watched their flank.
“I read about it in a book. The Struggle. It was written decades ago by one of the Labor pioneers—a fellow named Bic Trenton. He survived televised Labor in Miami, back when the Authority was publicly executing dissidents.”
Bryan had never heard of the title. Media on surviving Labor was so scarce—the penalty for trafficking it so steep—that the spectacle had managed to sustain its macabre mystery through the long centuries.
They fell into a rhythm, scampering from tree to tree, pausing periodically as fresh gunfire crackled in the distance. They trudged up hills and descended into ravines.
It was in the bottom of one of these ravines that they encountered Derek Gorman.
He sat on a hunk of granite, a look of dazed complacency in his blue eyes, while a cloud of bacteria methodically devoured his left arm. There was nothing left below the elbow and the bacteria were just beginning to digest the flesh of his bicep.
Another batch chewed at the muscle of his right shoulder.
Gorman slowly raised his head at the sound of the men skittering down the steep ravine.
“Oh, shit,” Fausto said when he reached the man. “Oh, no.”
Gorman offered a weak smile. “Digital obstacle. My advice: don’t touch anything.”
“What was it?” Fausto asked.
Gorman laughed, the sound a rattle in his chest. “A fucking gun—a prop, of course. I’m so stupid,” he replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking, you know? I saw it… and I just reached for it without thinking. I slung it over my shoulder. Instant pain.”
“And now?” Bryan asked.
Gorman shook his head. “Can’t feel a thing. I guess they secrete a chemical or something. Industrious little boogers, ain’t they?” He lifted the nub of his arm, a portion of gleaming bone terminating in the ragged meat of his shoulder. “Won’t be long now.”
Fausto sighed. He bit his lip. “You want…you want me to help?”
Gorman looked at him, a mixture of confusion and gratitude in his eyes. “You’d do that?”
Fausto nodded. “Quick as I can.”
Gorman blinked up at the gray sky. He was crying. “What’s your name?”
“Fausto Ruiz.”
“My name is Derek Gorman. My wife’s name is Annabelle. We’re having a little girl named Rachel. I want you…I want you to tell them how much I love them. Tell them I’m so sorry that I let them down.” His words ended in a little sob. “Tell them I’ll wait for them—that I’ll be watching over them. Tell them that I love them.”
Fausto nodded. “I will, Derek. I will, I promise.”