Vern spoke to the mycelia. I know everything, Vern, and so do you.
The mycelia, as they always did, spoke back. Vern felt the fungus’s message through her body. She was to do little more than breathe in and breathe out. When she did, the spores came. They wafted on an invisible current of air. Though the dust cloud was minuscule, too faint for Vern to see, she could feel her body releasing.
Gogo, she said, but not with her mouth, with her mind. I need you. Wake up. Live.
Queen’s spores, once breathed in, had an impact immediately. It hadn’t taken long for the fungus to infect and make the soldiers’ minds its own.
Yet nothing happened when Vern did it; Gogo’s mind as opaque to Vern as ever. Five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, two hours. They were almost at the hospital now anyway.
“Hey.”
Vern looked down into her lap. Gogo’s eyes were wide open.
“You aint dead,” said Vern, a mirror of her words when she’d awoken from her ten-day sleep under Gogo’s care. Vern rested her palm on Gogo’s cheek.
“It feels like I am,” she said. “What happened?”
“You got shot in the chest. We’re on the way to the hospital now.”
Gogo blinked as she propped herself up. “Are you sure?” She patted her bare chest where Vern had ripped open the buttons.
There should’ve been a hole as round as a gaped mouth in her chest, hemorrhaging red rivers. There should’ve been an opening to the soft, moving parts of Gogo, a peephole to her heart. Gogo should’ve been spilling.
Though she was blood-slicked, no other evidence remained of Gogo’s injury.
“What is it?” Gogo asked, drowsy and frightened by Vern’s silence. “Is it bad?”
“It’s nothing,” said Vern. “It’s nothing at all. It’s blank. Erased.” The spores had saved her.
Just like they’d saved Ollie the night Vern had almost killed her.
The fungus inside Vern was more than an infection. It was the stuff of life itself, some ancient essence from an alien world, foisting itself upon her for its own chance at life. It was a gift, and it had chosen her.
25
VERN USED OLLIE’S HEAD to unlock her phone and call Bridget after parting ways with the boy and his SUV, who had almost seemed sad to see them go. Almost. The children, at least, were fine. Bridget had taken them to a friend’s trailer in the Muscogee Creek Nation, where they’d all been waiting for word.
“Baby, you all right?” asked Vern.
“I’m fine. Bridget’s friend Lloyd made chili and fry bread,” said Howling. “He said he’s gonna teach me how to make it, too.”
“And me, too!” yelled Feral. “When you coming to get us, Mam?”
Vern wanted the answer to be, Right away. “I got some business to take care of first, but then I’ll be right there.”
“What business?” asked Howling. “Has it got to do with the bad man?”
Vern nodded, though they couldn’t see her. “Yes. And I’m going to make everything so those people can never hurt us again, or anybody else. I don’t want to be worrying about y’all. You promise to behave for Bridget?”
She could feel Howling rolling his eyes. “Are you going to tell her to behave for me?”
Vern would never know what to do with this child. “Good point. Just remember to be kind.”
“I always am.”
“And to fight,” she said.
“I always do!”
“Good,” she said, her voice tense with emotion. She realized she was giving him a goodbye talk. She had to go to Cainland—didn’t have a choice but to save her kin, to save the people scheduled to be massacred in the name of science, efficiency, and a good old-fashioned cover-up. She was stronger than they’d ever know, but this mission was not without risks. There was the possibility she would not return to her babies.
“Put the phone on speaker,” she said.
The line clicked. “Feral? You there, too?”
“Yeah, Mam, but Bridget told me not to talk with my mouth full so I can’t talk much.”
Vern heard Bridget in the background. “I think you can wait to take more bites of food until your mam’s done talking to you.”
“But it’s very good electricity food,” said Feral with a soft, pathetic sigh.
“Feral, Howling, listen to me,” Vern said, but she had no more words of wisdom for them. “I love you, whoever you become.”
Vern ended the call.