Release date: February 16, 2017
Subgenre: Horror
About Fruiting Bodies:
It’s 1979 and a secret all-out war between science and nature has erupted in the forests of the eastern United States.
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the Zombie Fungus, infects the brains of ants. A daring military mission has recovered samples and it looks like the fungus just evolved into humanity’s worst nightmare.
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the Zombie Fungus, infects the brains of ants. A daring military mission has recovered samples and it looks like the fungus just evolved into humanity’s worst nightmare.
Excerpt:
There wasn’t enough starlight filtering through the branches to
light up shit. Johnny “Shrub” Kieterman reached up and snapped on
the IR LED, switching the goggles to active-vision. Looking down,
he saw filaments glowing in the infrared, filling the hole, looking
like spider webs or arteries. He could see and feel the stuff
undulating and writhing around his calves.
Shrub tugged at his legs, pulling up at his
right knee with both hands. His leg remained stuck. He yanked his
tac-knife from the sheath on his thigh and jabbed and sawed into
the glowing threads. In the green light, more glowing white goo
leaked from everywhere along the sides of the hole, staining his
pants, blade and hands. He cut with his right and dug and pulled at
the filaments with his left. The hole seemed to be filling with the
thin webbing faster than he could cut it away. As he watched, a
thicker vein of material as big around as his gloved thumb
slithered and jerked out of the muddy side, flopping wetly from
side to side, twisting and moving like a worm freshly baited on a
hook.
Shrub’s breath came hot and fast now as panic
set in. He could see the thick, white, probing thing twisting
closer to his boot. As soon as it touched the canvas and leather,
it pulsed out from the side of the hole, twisting, wrapping and
entwining from the heel of his boot up his calf. The pointed tip,
glowing wetly in the artificial light appeared to back up, then
jabbed into the back of his knee, right between the straps of his
knee pad. Pain shot through Shrub’s leg, like alcohol poured on an
open wound.
The pain urging him on, Shrub sliced through
the pulsing thumb-thick appendage and hauled his feet out of the
grip of the thrumming webs. He fell backwards, knocking the
AN/PVS-5 off his helmet. Gooseflesh raised across his skin; He
scraped and rubbed with both hands where the white root had
penetrated his knee. He grabbed the sample case again and tried to
race for the tree line. His knees weren’t working at all, so he
shuffled on his thighs and forearms, his knife still gripped in his
right hand. With his left, he dragged the case.
Painful heat was spreading out from the wound.
The tree line was getting closer.
His eye caught his pale reflection in the knife blade. His face a
grimace of pain and determination, and what the hell? He
looked at his reflected eye, and he could see the red veins from
the corner to iris bulging, even pulsing. His sclera writhed with
motion beneath the surface.
Shrub grabbed the red smoke grenade from his
tac-belt. The bad-shit-is-going-down red smoke. He pulled the
paper-tabbed wire ring with his teeth and threw it as hard as he
could through the trees and out into the clearing. He could see the
red puffs beginning to billow and spread from the aluminum can. His
arms twitching and not quite responding, he pulled the silver
sample case up and back to the side. He saw the flesh of his
forearm start to bubble. Lumps rose and fell, tracks of raised,
web-like tracings sliding and moving just below the skin.
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About Guy Riessen:
Guy Riessen is an American author of contemporary dark fiction spanning the science fiction, horror, fantasy and crime genres. Born in 1967 in South Dakota, he grew up in the Southern California beach town of Huntington Beach. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985, graduated with a degree in English from UC Berkeley, and has been living in the wild lands north of San Francisco ever since. After nearly two decades of creating artwork in the visual effects industry for feature films, he returned to his first passion: writing speculative fiction.
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