David Koepp - Cold Storage

Cordyceps novus was driven. Over thirty-two years of isolation, it had changed very little, except to note that its growth environment was for shit. Its epigenetic memory of its initial expansion, back in Kiwirrkurra Community, was one of extreme fertility. The first living thing it had come into contact with was Enos Namatjira’s uncle, whom it had entered through a loose flap of skin under a torn fingernail on his right hand. The warmth and fetidity of the inside of a human body had caused explosive proliferation.

Human beings were also highly mobile and, as a species, had a tendency to congregate. It was as if God had drawn these creatures up specifically to make life easy for the fungus. The complete takeover of twenty-seven human fleshpots was fast and easy; oh, how glorious things had been back then, before the fungus was jailed inside this tin can. If there’s one thing prison gives you, it’s plenty of time to sit around and long for the good old days.

Cordyceps novus had tasted humans, and it wanted more.

First it had to get out of here, and C-nRoach1 was a means to that end. The headless insect had moved methodically back and forth across the floor of SB-4 for four days, skirting a path around the shrieking, cannibalistic Rat King, until it reached the far end of the corridor. There the roach discovered a four-centimeter tube opening at the base of the wall, covered by a small metal grille. The tube was required by law in any underground structure more than fifty feet below ground level, in order to prevent the type of CO 2buildup that had killed so many mine workers in the nineteenth century. From a containment point of view, the opening was a terrible idea, but the sub-level had never been designated for storage of biohazards, and the opening was just small enough to have escaped the notice of the team that had entombed the fungus thirty-two years ago.

C-nRoach1 didn’t care why the tube was there; it just sensed fresh oxygen, crawled inside, and followed an upward curve in the pipe, which rose gradually to vertical.

The insect climbed.

Two days later, nearing the end of its life but about to achieve its greatest success—and late success really is the sweetest—C-nRoach1 reached the ground-level grating of the ventilation tube’s emission port and wriggled out onto the surface of the hot, loamy earth. It was fifty yards from the entrance to Atchison Storage on a warm late-winter afternoon.

What a piece of work was this roach! It had endured infection by a hostile fungus, it had survived its own decapitation, it had methodically searched for and found a way out of a prison specifically designed by intellects far superior to its own to allow no escape. But little C-nRoach1 had done just that. Headless, dehydrated, and dying, it had climbed 323 feet, straight up, on a slick surface. Given its tiny size, this feat was the human equivalent of climbing Kilimanjaro on your knees right after going to the guillotine. The tiny roach had performed perhaps the greatest act of physical conquest in the history of earthly life.

Then a car parked on top of it.

C-nRoach1 died with a squishy pop beneath the right rear tire.

The car was Mike’s, and this was this afternoon, when he’d come to Atchison Storage, looking to bury the cat and deer he’d murdered. While Mike walked up to the hilltop and searched for the right spot, Cordyceps novus faced the latest obstacle in its thirty-two-year journey: 10/32 of an inch of thick rubber car tire. But it had been confronted with something similar once and knew just who to call.

The sheen of Benzene-X that lived on the surface of the fungus activated almost immediately. It invaded the rubber in the tire, ate its way through, and opened a doorway for the fungus to pass into the airy interior of the wheel. Cordyceps novus floated upward, and the fungus and its endosymbiont repeated the penetrative process through the tread at the top of the wheel. From there they rode along a bit of wiring that led into the trunk of the Chevy Caprice, where Cordyceps novus discovered abundant consumable organic matter in the form of a dead deer and Mr. Scroggins, the former cat.

That was more like it.

“The fucking deer just took the fucking elevator.”

Naomi, who was still staring at the closed doors in amazement, didn’t even look at Teacake, still trying to digest what had happened. She murmured, “You said that already.”

“I think it is a hundred percent worth repeating. The fucking deer just took the fucking elevator. ”

Naomi looked back at the phone in her right hand. She didn’t know exactly what the Defense Threat Reduction Agency did, but it was a safe bet that a Rat King and a deer that knows how to work an elevator were probably right up their alley. She turned her phone around and showed him the website. “We need to call this place.”

“Be my fucking guest.”

“Do you mind, with the language?”

“Sorry.” He was. Anything for her. “Please call them.”

Naomi scrolled to the “Contact Us” header, clicked on it, and a list of phone numbers popped up. “There’s gotta be a hundred numbers listed here.”

“Like what?”

Naomi thumbed her phone again, rolling past the numbers and job titles. “‘Director,’ ‘Deputy Director,’ ‘Command Senior Enlisted Leader,’ ‘Counter-WMD Technologies’?”

Teacake looked around, nervous as hell. “What about, like, green shit leaking everywhere and animals acting all fucked up?”

“‘Chem/Bio Analysis Center’? ‘DOJ Radiation Exposure Program’?”

From the elevator shaft, they heard an inhuman caterwauling echoing off the concrete walls. They took a step back.

“Or,” Teacake offered, “maybe we put a couple miles between us and this place and then we call them.”

“I’m cool with that.” Another howl came from inside the elevator shaft. “Stairwell?” Naomi suggested.

“This way.” He led her down the hall at a run, around the first corner, and they reached the locked stairwell. Teacake zipped his key off the ring (still loved that sound, no matter what else was going on), unlocked the door, and they pushed through. They bounded up two flights of stairs, reached ground level, and he used his key to open the door there. They stepped out into the all-white hallway, never so grateful to be aboveground in their lives. He took her by the hand ( Damn, she’s got some soft skin, soft but strong hands, you can feel it, I wonder if that’s from carrying her kid around?, nah, that’d make your arms strong but not necessarily your hands, how come she’s got such strong hands?, wait, focus, man, we gotta get out of here ) and led her down the hallway, headed for the lobby.

Not far away, the deer stood in the elevator, awaiting further instruction. It’s not that the deer was sentient; it had no sense of selfhood. What it had was a clearly articulated purpose. As long as it was moving toward fulfillment of that purpose, the pain in its belly was not as intense. The deer didn’t have the faintest idea why any of this should be the case, but then it didn’t understand much of what had happened to it in the last forty-eight hours.

THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED AT THE FAR END OF THE GROUND-FLOORlevel of Atchison Storage and Teacake and Naomi both screamed. They had taken the stairs specifically to avoid the disfigured, resourceful deer that seemed to know how to operate an elevator, and now that deer was standing right in front of them.

“How the FUCK ?!” Teacake shouted at the deer, which took three shaky steps toward them, making a phlegmy hacking sound at the back of its throat.