Wormwood Dawn (Episode VIII) Read Online Free

greater amount of fungus clumps; so much so that its face was unrecognizable. It was simply a lumpy, hard shell of fungus with a crack where the mouth would be. There were no eyes, and no nose, only the armored surface of the mold.
    “This is what the ragers eventually become,” Maynard said. “When I first found him, Julian here was like Johnny; just a rager. They’re blind, you see, so they are easy to catch if you’re smart and careful. But Julian is now another kind of thing. This is the last stage before they go into another state, that is, if they haven’t succumbed to the spore sack.”
    “Spore sack?” Toby asked.
    “Yes,” Maynard said. “Sometimes the shufflers as you call them will grow a spore sack inside them. When that happens, they burst, and then they die. What comes out is a big floating sack of mold spores; spores of the mutated fungus that fell from the sky.”
    “Mutated fungus?”
    “Yes, Toby,” Maynard said. “Our friend, the comet, left a nice gift for us in the atmosphere. Some of it infected a kind of fungus that was floating in the sky, and that fungus fell to the ground, mutated, and became this strange and mind-controlling thing. The rest of the nice gift simply infected life on its own, either killing it completely, or causing the mutations you are about to see.”
    “But there are dead people, too,” Toby said. “Dead people that came back to life before the big explosion.”
    “Yes, yes,” Maynard said. “I have not had a chance to study them completely, but I can say for certain that they did not simply come back to life. Something made them come back to life. That something, I believe, you will see soon enough.”
    “What will happen to Julian?” Toby asked, somewhat interested.
    “Ah,” Maynard said with a satisfied voice. “I am so glad you are interested. This means your fear is subsiding. Is that correct? Are you still afraid, Toby?”
    Toby wasn’t sure. He was definitely apprehensive, freaked out, and scared of what he might be shown. But there was something inside him that said Maynard would not hurt him; he merely wanted to share things with him.
    “No,” Toby blurted out. “I’m not afraid of you… or Sarah.”
    “Good,” Maynard said. “That makes me very happy. You have no reason to fear me, my little friend. Once I share with you all of these little secrets, I’m sure we will become very, very good friends. Brothers, you might say.”
    Toby wasn’t sure what that meant. It confused him a lot, but still he wasn’t afraid. But they couldn’t be brothers… could they?
    “We don’t have the same mom,” Toby said. “You’re older than my mom.”
    “Ah yes,” Maynard said. “I was speaking figuratively. But now that the subject has come up, where is your mother, Toby?”
    “I—I don’t know,” Toby said, feeling the sadness fall over him like one of Maynard’s curtains. “She just left.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know, but I heard the others say that she was sick.”
    “Hmm,” Maynard said, and then paused for a moment. “Interesting. I’m sorry to hear that, Toby. Truly I am. I know what it’s like to… lose a loved one.”
    Maybe Maynard had lost his mom, too, Toby thought. He sounded sad when he said that he had lost a loved one. Maybe in a way they were brothers; two people who had lost their mothers. He wondered how Maynard had lost his mother.
    “Now let us continue,” Maynard said. “Go to the next cage.”
    Toby went over to the cage next to Johnny’s, ready to pull the curtains back. But Maynard stopped him.
    “Not yet,” Maynard said. “Wait until I tell you what you are about to see. This cage is the first stage of the mutants. It’s what I call the proto-mutative stage. These are people who have become infected with the alien pathogen. What they become next depends on their own physiology. But first, this is what they look like. Pull the curtains.”
    Toby hesitantly stepped forward and pulled the curtains