Here is a family of owls on a tree, but whether they’re still alive or not, it’s hard to tell. They are mucked over, glued to the branch, and might as well be a burl on bark or a gall on a leaf.

Farther along they encounter a deer. Its grayed antlers branch upward. It doesn’t startle, remaining rooted in place. When they walk right up to it and examine it further, they discover porous holes running through it and gray cracks along its ribs that ooze black. There is nothing left. The deer has been consumed entirely by the necrotroph that stole its shape.

Is this what awaits Seattle? As the spores spread, will the biome gradually expand and shroud the city? Will the houses and skyscrapers be plastered gray? Will the forms of people root to sidewalks and park benches like molten sculptures? Everything they’re seeing right now is only days old. The biomass of fungus can grow exponentially, doubling in unit time. It is the ultimate colonizer. What will the Sound look like in two weeks? What will the Pacific Northwest look like in two months?

Jack’s foot catches in the undergrowth and he nearly trips. When he looks down, he sees something grinning up at him. What looks like a gray round face. A slimy hand manacles his calf. He kicks at it and it opens its mouth, revealing gray-black gums, and hisses. His foot is yanked suddenly downward and he’s lost up to his knee. Another yank and he’s down mid-thigh. He cries out for help and Nora and Mia take his arms and pull and pull and pull—and finally he falls forward as the thing withdraws with a sucking sound back into its burrow.

As soon as the thing is out of sight, Jack doubts what he witnessed. Because what grabbed him was recognizably human. He’s reminded of his own laboratory when they discovered the Tapir locked inside that thick fungal casing. Would he have eventually become a black-gummed creature that hissed from the shadows? How many different subspecies were they dealing with? Fungus was typically simple, but the diversity of growth and behavior seemed to hint at something more like a colony.

The wall of the forest gives way to a meadow, its grass glopped over and matted. In the near distance they can see the correctional facility, big stone structures drifting in and out of view. There is no fence, because the sea serves as a moat and because the low-security prison houses the geriatric and incapacitated.

As they march forward, they can see the guards and nurses and patients alike waiting for them outside, as gray and still as statues.

* * *