I used to care about people. Or at least, I think I did. I can imagine myself as someone who'd let a stranger take the last shopping cart left in the grocery store, even though I was just a kid – wasn't I? how long has it been? - when shopping carts and grocery stores became irrelevant. I bet I was someone who'd console a crying child, or stop to help an old lady across the road. Someone who'd give their last bite of food to another who was starving.
Yeah, I bet I was nicer before, I think as I clumsily swipe a hand across my face to get rid of the lingering feathers from the pigeon who'd had the misfortune of flying in through a broken glass door. The metaphorical starving person, who is very real, watches enviously from where he's half-crusted into a corner, mouth open in a silent snarl. Brushing past him on my slow journey down the hall, I send a silent apology his way. Transmit an image of mushrooms sprouting from empty eye sockets, the fungus feeding on him now that he can no longer gather food to sustain it. Fruiting bodies sending out showers of spores into the air as his torso collapses in on itself, becoming one with the wall.
Circle of life, man. It'll all be over soon.
Further down the dark hallway a woman is hunched over, moaning. Now that there's no food involved, I have room to be sympathetic. Killer headache, huh?
I crouch down next to her and moan in sympathy, helping her birth new life into the world. Jelly from a pierced eyeball trickles down her cheek as a freshly-grown fungal tendril unfurls. Her pain diminished, she clicks questioningly at me. I try to copy the sound, to see what she sees, but my hearing isn't good enough yet. Guess you have to lose one sense to gain another.
Not that my eyes are much use here anyway. Any moonlight shining through the glass doors has petered out into nothing, so I put a hand out and trace the trailing veins of fungus along the wall. Curling tendrils illuminate the way ahead with some sense I don't have a name for. I stumble around several corners before I wonder - where am I going, anyway?
There are stalkers around me, still and silent as usual. Waste of energy, they seem to mutter disapprovingly. Cordyceps has already digested the pigeon from earlier, and I'm hungry for more. Always so hungry. A nice person wouldn't think about stalking the stalker, about taking a bite from an arm or leg to see how it tastes (bad, so bad, too much cannibalism would stop the spread of infection…) But if the stalkers are thinking at all while in their dormant state, I bet they're thinking the same thing too.
Where am I going, again? And what's the point of getting there?
I stop in my tracks, a marionette with its strings cut, at the realization that I don't even know where I am, let alone where I'm going. The idea of being so thoroughly lost is frightening enough that what's left of my mind instinctively withdraws from it; a tongue shying away from the gap of a missing tooth. I slump against the wall, forehead resting on a knot of fungus.
Not alone, comes the chorus. Never alone with us here.
I fall into a half-doze, by far the least painful way to kill time. Disjointed dreams of fitting rooms and mirrors, crisp jeans and pristine leather jackets. Wake with a jolt, look down at my own clothes: half torn to shreds. They were bad even before, and the feds wouldn't give me new ones. Gotta find new ones…
As soon as I remember what I came here for, the half-formed thought pops like a soap bubble as a harsh screeching assaults my ears. Damn it, I was so close! But the noise, that infernal yet rhythmic noise. Music? I wonder as I run towards it, my body moving of its own accord. A reflex, as natural and involuntary as sneezing. But why does it sound so distorted? Is it the song, or a broken record player, or just my broken brain?
The sound reverberates through the building, attracting everyone's attention. Somehow it's daytime again, where did the time go, and I can see others running and crawling and shambling down the halls and past the storefronts, drawn in by the disturbance.
But as I pass by a set of double doors, I hear another sound, quieter than the blaring music but much closer: Two sets of footsteps, two gasps of panicked breath. Changing direction midstride, I slam through the doors and instantly recoil, a blast of sunlight hitting me full in the face. Outside? But how?
As I pause, blinking, the image blearily resolves itself and I see that I'm actually still enclosed by walls and large half-shattered panes of glass. To my right, two small figures have just run past, still mere feet away.
One giant stride, then two. My limbs move better like this than they ever do under my own control. Another step and I leap, landing hard on one slight figure and bowling it over as a tall emaciated man – one of us – emerges from the shadows on the other side of them like a magic trick and attacks the second girl.
They are little girls, barely into their teens, but the fungus says it doesn't matter. Salivating uncontrollably, I gnash my teeth inches from the darker-skinned girl's face, as her adrenaline-fueled strength somehow holds me back. Her pistol clatters to the floor, but then a small knife – where did that come from? – embeds itself into my shoulder. I barely notice. What's a little more pain to someone who's being slowly eaten from the inside?
The thrust of the knife gives me an opening, and I seize the girl's hand with my teeth as it swings past my head. She gasps and pulls back, leaving a small chunk of her flesh in my teeth. Her friend has somehow dealt with my comrade already, opening his throat into an obscene second smile as the last of his blood leaks out onto the tile. She's covered in blood but not all of it his, and she grabs my girl by the wrist and pulls her away.
It takes me a moment to follow – that knife damaged me a bit more than I thought – and by the time I catch up the girls have barricaded themselves behind another set of doors. I hear their voices through the metal, cycling from relief to horror to a muted despair.
Come back, I whisper. I won't even eat you. We're friends now.
No response, at least not yet. Good thing I'm good at waiting.
Hours later, and it's dark again. The girls have been quiet for some time now, but I am roused by a sudden soft gasp, and then a scream. One of the girls is babbling desperately in a language that I – oh god no, not another thing lost – no longer understand. The other, the one I have bitten, can be understood perfectly well.
Eat, she says. Kill. Infect.
But shouldn't her friend already be one of us too?
I pound on the door, trying to reach them. Open it, free yourself, join us!
There's the sound of a scuffle, and then a single gunshot rings out. When did the pale girl get the pistol back? My new comrade lets out a shriek and then a gurgle, until the only sound left is the human girl's sobbing. It continues for some time, then fades away. She must have found an alternate exit.
Some time later, I find another way around the barricaded door. My girl lies almost -but not quite – as her old friend had left her. Her eyes are open, still mostly human-looking despite the reddish tinge and tracks of bloody tears. They slide over to fix on me as I shamble in.
Her friend must have had worse aim than she thought. The fungus is already knitting together torn flesh in her chest, replacing it with more of its pale white substance. Once the pain subsides she'll be ravenous, and we can go hunting together. But for now, I have the chance to prove I'm still a nice person after all.
I sit down on the bloodstained floor and lift the girl's head into my lap, humming a wordless tune to reassure her. With my silent voice I say, Welcome, sister.
All is well in the mushroom kingdom.