Spores

‘The forests have unleashed a tempest, and spores now dance on the wind.’ — Dr João Miguel Gonçalves. Mycologist.

For any first-time visitor to the sprawling complex of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environment Control on Bull Street, Columbia, finding the whereabouts of Doctor Aline Silva could prove as much a puzzle to solve as mastering a Rubik’s Cube. Doctor David Cavanagh, a senior CDC epidemiologist based in Washington, D.C., was due to meet the medical mycologist for a midday appointment somewhere in the basement of the historic Mills building, a five-storey Italian Renaissance style red-bricked edifice that was once part of the South Carolina State Asylum. His error, he acknowledged, as he now wandered the rat’s maze of subterranean corridors, was that he had waved off the precise directions the po-faced security guard at the ground floor reception desk had wanted to give him.

‘How hard can it be?’ he had said to the guard, who smiled (somewhat wryly, Cavanagh thought on reflection) and pointed to a wide corridor to his left.

‘To the end. Stairs. Down.’

When Cavanagh was told he needed to travel south to work alongside Silva in a time-pressured effort to combat an insect-pathogenic fungus that had jumped the species divide from ants to humans, several things were to strike him that felt prophetic in their significance. First, he was now to base himself in a former psychiatric hospital and establish a way of stopping a fungus that was infecting the minds of humans, causing them to behave in an erratic and aggressive way before then killing them and using their bodies as a fungal incubator. Second, if that were not disturbing enough in a world gone mad, the mutated fungus had somehow migrated from its point of origin in the tropical rainforests of Brazil to infest the temperate forests of South Carolina and Florida. Too close to home for comfort.

On the upside his fact-finding research on the medical mycologist had established she was Brazilian and one of the best in her field: a Doctor of Philosophy, with an MSc in Medical Mycology, and a BSc in Medical Technology from the American Society for Clinical Pathology. Further, Aline was a popular Brazilian name that meant ‘noble protector.’ Last, and in what Cavanagh would take as another good omen, Silva in Latin meant ‘forest’—a popular surname in Brazil. He had concluded he was to meet the noble protector of the forest. The circumstances would seem almost comical if not so dire.

Cavanagh rounded another corner and halted in front of a glass-panelled door. If he were not mistaken, the faint odour of sweet almonds mixed with rotten eggs suggested he had found Silva’s office. He could appreciate why it was located well out of the way of the building’s other users. The lettering on the glass panel confirmed his guess: Dr Aline Silva, Medical Mycologist. He knocked and entered. As he did so, his stomach rumbled. Lunch was no doubt already being served in a canteen somewhere on site. He wondered whether mushrooms were on the menu.

Dr Aline Silva, medical mycologist, gazed at the screen of her 24-inch iMac, once again absorbed by the images and verbal report in a vlog sent to her by a former Brazilian colleague, Dr João Miguel Gonçalves. He used to be… is a good friend, she thought, checking herself. It had been the last message she had received from Gonçalves for some time, whose reports had been escalating about a deadly outbreak in his municipality… until all fell silent.

His current whereabouts were unknown, with reports from the area sporadic and vague. The military was now in control and would be reticent about sharing information, as Silva recalled from her early medical research days out in the field. Several thousand kilometres away, she felt powerless to help her friend, assuming he was still alive. However, she could use his reports and biological samples to work on a cure for the cause of the outbreak he had discovered. He had named the invasive infection the Rondônia fungus, after the Brazilian state, believed by Gonçalves to have been the outbreak epicentre. He was of the professional view that this was a mutant strain of the zombie-ant fungus.

One of the world’s leading medical mycologists—and a native of Brazil—Silva vowed to work her butt off to make good on the data she had received from Gonçalves. To assist her efforts, she had been told help was on its way from the Washington Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office. Silva did not consider herself a natural cynic. However, she could not shift the belief that the CDC and other executive agencies had been slow to register the outbreak in Brazil—despite its frightening onset and rapid spread—until US citizens in South Carolina and Florida started showing symptoms of the same fungal infection… then dropping.

Silva refocused on the screen of her iMac as she reviewed again Gonçalves showing a corpse found in a remote ranch outbuilding. She knew tens of thousands of microscopic fungal spores must have covered the body, which was now almost completely enveloped in a dense matting of silvery threads of hyphae. This network of fine fibres had released chemicals onto its host’s flesh; her pupils dilated as she took in the otherworldly, horrifying image.

A loud knock on the glass panel of her door startled her, snapping her attention back to the familiar surroundings of her basement laboratory.

No doubt someone come to complain about the smell from my indoor mushroom farm, she thought.

She turned as an unknown man stepped into her lab.

‘Doctor Silva? I’m Doctor David Cavanagh, an epidemiologist with the CDC. Down from Washington to assist with your research to eradicate the Rondônia fungus? You were told to expect me?’

‘Oh, yes. Right. Hi David, it’s good to meet you. Let’s drop the formalities. Some here call me “The Mushroom Whisperer”—clichéd I know—but you can call me Aline. Fancy some lunch?’

[Header image credit: Thobar BIGS Design from Pixabay].