Spores

(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1sx7wf/spores/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1t2fy5/spores_cont/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1t4yvf/spores_cont_part_3/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1u8uy2/spores_part_5/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1urjwh/spores_part_6/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1v3mpd/spores_part_7/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1vd2cu/spores_part_8/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1vo8as/spores_part_9/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/1vws5c/spores_part_10_end/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2bq8vt/spores_part_11/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2bzwvi/spores_part_12/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2c8twn/spores_part_13/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2cdx0x/spores_part_14/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2cmsr4/spores_part_15/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2cuboz/spores_part_16/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2d2xgn/spores_part_17/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2de279/spores_part_18/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2e01ch/spores_part_19/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2el3sh/spores_part_20/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2jkop7/spores_part_21/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2jxyah/spores_part_22/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2kmj0a/spores_part_23/)
(https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/2mqfjs/spores_part_24/)






   Spores chapter 25

Jemel stepped out of foyer of his apartment flat, pushing aside the glass door as he did so. A thin smear of blood streaked the glass behind his fingertips.

Black particulates swirled in the air in the building shrike storm, and he could feel them stinging his face and eyes. His vision was further obscured by the thin haze of noxious smoke settled in the city streets from fire that had engulfed three city blocks just upwind. A small girl, 6 or 7 years old, staggered past him coughing. Several of her dreadlocks seemed to stand upright, like horned protuberances , then Jemel realized that the top of her head was covered in stalks. Far distant, he heard a concussive whump of a large fuel or propane tank going off underground. The ground trembled beneath his feet like waves lapping at a shore.

An tan skinned, armored truck drove by slowly in the street, a pale, growling demon rolling silently through the smoky haze. Jemel staggered out from the front stoop, nearly falling, but catching himself on a bus stop sign. He retched a puddle of blood and black threads, gasping and coughing for air. He felt the first twinges of black lung take hold with a searing fire in his chest, as the monofilament threads encasing his lungs like a cage began to flex of their own accord. He reached a hand towards the rapidly disappearing taillights. Seconds later, he saw a bright bloom of light in the haze where the vehicle had gone, then was buffeted by a concussive blast that blew stale hot air in his face. A small piece of black metal clanged to the ground next to him. He looked up and saw two figures approaching, one of them holding what appeared to be a spent RPG launcher. The men were dressed in olive drab radiation suits that looked like they came from a Vietnam era surplus store.

“Next collection crew will be seven blocks south, near A222” one of them said to the other.

“I’m out of rockets.” the second replied.

“We’ve got grenades. We’ll teach these Nazi fucks not to come back to Croydon.”

Jemel’s hand reached out and brushed weakly against the second mans arm as they walked past. The man stopped and grabbed Jemel’s wrist firmly, but not cruelly.

“We’re gonna get these fucks back man, don’t you worry. We’re gonna burn this shit to the ground, and burn down whatever they try to build back up in it’s place. You’re not gonna die for nothing.” He said, before pushing Jemel’s weak arm away and down. Jemel reached out and steadied himself against a traffic sign post.

“Please…” Jemel croaked. “kill…kill me.” His voice was muffled around the nine spore stalks jutting out of his mouth, dangling from his chin like cables.

“Can’t spare the bullet mate. You walk down to that corner though and there’s a nice fire going.” He said pointing towards the direction of the recent explosion. “You fall down into that and that’ll do ya quick and fine.” The two men hustled down the sidewalk and were quickly out of sight.

A large wind gust nearly buffeted him down as his weak grip on the sign post almost failed. He felt more particles blowing up his billowing shirt and settling on his skin. He looked back at the doorway to his  building. He could see the stairs leading up to the 2nd floor where his family had been hiding. His mother, father, two sisters, grandmother, his aunt and her two kids, and a man from his mother’s work were still upstairs. They were all dead, their bodies drug into one of the only two bedrooms. At the bottom of the apartment stairs was a decaying body, covered in gently swaying black tendrils like a novelty potted plant.

Jemel stepped away from the pole and took two shambling steps towards the street. He lurched off the curb and his leg buckled underneath him, sending him crashing face first into the pavement. His vision was filled with glittering lights and shapes. He started to draw in breath but felt a sudden vice lock down his airway. His chest wrenched down like a power tool, and blood, vomit, and spore ejected from his mouth.

He fought again to draw in breath, with no success, and blackness overtook him quickly.

Thirty seconds later, Jemel’s chest rose again steadily, held for a moment, then fell again, with a small puff of spore from his mouth whipping away into the rising winds.







				Chapter 26

Chris turned away from the microscope and jotted several lines of notes onto a notepad beside him.
“How do you do that?” Jia asked him without looking up from typing into her notepad. “My hand cramps just signing my name.”
Chris lifted the pen from the paper and held it up in front of his face, looking at it intently.
“There’s something….calming about it. Like meditating. Didn’t your ancestors advocate the art of calligraphy?” He responded.
“I honor my line by solving this problem quickly.” Jia said. “Is that the forty three series?”
Chris nodded. “The last two samples in the series. Borine Arsenide solution. It’s just come up to an active temperature. I’m just waiting to see if there is a reaction.”

The interior lab door slid open and Jia’s husband Hu San stepped in. Hu San switched his air line from his protective suit to the overhead pipes. He shuffled over to his wife and they briefly touched their covered heads together in one of their rare displays of public affection.  Hu San took a tray of petri dishes from cooler and brought them to the workstation next to Chris.
“Sleep well?” Chris asked.
“I have.” Hu San answered. He paused for a moment, then turned to face the two. “Dr. Grinwich left this morning.”
“Shenme..Shihou?” Jia asked.
“Around four, I think. He take one of the snowcats. He said he going to try and reach the coast, the whaling outpost there. He will bring back food if he can.”
Chris looked to the small porthole window that was visible on the other side of the observation room glass on the far wall. It was snowing heavily again.
“We’re two hundred miles from the coast.” Chris said quietly. In truth, he could not blame the man. He felt the dull ache of hunger nearly constantly now. Their rationing had lasted them three months past the resupply drop that had never come. Their small research station in Antarctica was equipped with enough fuel to heat and power the facility for years to come, but the store rooms could only hold so much food.
“I’m sure he will be fine.” Jia said.
Chris nodded, but they all knew the snowcats carried fuel for 2/3rds that distance. They were meant for transport between the buildings and the airfield.  Grinwich would have had a hard time walking fifty miles across the ice during the summer months.
“Have we completed the forty three samples?” Hu San asked, placing the next batch of fifty vials on the table across from Chris. “We can start with forty four and have the samples warming by noon.”
Chris looked into the microscope one more time. The single Shrike spore was magnified a hundred times and seemed like a strange comet of black glass, one tendril from the fungal organism twitching despite the lethal solution it was bathed in. Chris sighed and pulled the specimen slide from the tray, dropping it into the metal incinerator slot built into the table. Thus far, the only thing that was found to guarantee the complete and utter destruction of the hardy parasites was the sustained high temperatures of incineration. This solution was wholly impractical for treatment however.
“Ahhh. Forty three echo ten.” Chris said as he slid the last sample under the microscope. “I knew you were the savior of humanity when I birthed you last week.”  He said jokingly.
Hu San shook his head and pulled another tray from the specimen cooler. “When you finish with that will you help me place these samples into thermal baths? I would like to start with alpha series by dinner.”
Hu San waited for his collegue to respond for thirty seconds before looking over at him, still looking intently into his equipment.
“Dr. Farley?” Hu San asked. “Have you heard me?”
“Dear God.” Chris muttered under his breath, not looking away.
“Chris?” Jia asked, concerned.
“It’s neutralized!” Chris said. “It’s completely unreactive.”
Jia jumped from her chair and ran over to Chris’s station, pulling the scientist away from the microscope before looking into it herself for nearly a minute.
“He’s right. The cell structure is starting to break down. This is it. We’ve found a cure.” She finally said.
Hu San walked over to his wife and held onto her hand. Chris leaned back into his chair and looked at the ceiling. The small group remained quiet for minutes, No cheers or excitement.

“When was our update transmission last acknowledged?” Chris finally asked.
Hu San walked over to a small calendar planner on the table and flipped through numerous pages.
“October 10th.” He answered. “Thirteen months and three days ago.”
“I’ll update our automatic distress signal.” Chris said. “Let anyone still listening know that we found a treatment. Maybe….” He stopped himself. He was a scientist after all, and baseless expectations were beneath him.
“I think we should have our last MREs tonight.” Jia said. “I think we’ve earned more than stale crackers tonight.”
Chris nodded his head in agreement. Going to sleep one night without being hungry would a nice change.
The three scientists smiled at each other in joy, savoring the victory they all knew to be hollow.





                                                                                Chapter 27

“Sttttttoooooopppppp!” Evie screamed at her older brother.
“Evie. Stop. Mommy has a headache.” The woman seated in the passenger seat of the RV said. “Tyler, stop bothering your sister.”
Kate reached across and squeezed her husbands hand, he turned his head and gave her a thin smile before she spoke again.
“Craig, how much gas do we have?”
He looked down at the fuel gauge. “About a quarter tank.”
“Maybe we should turn it off again for a little bit?” She asked.
“We can, but I’m worried about it getting cold again.” Craig said. “It’s gotta be, five, ten degrees out.” He looked ahead at the lines of glowing red taillights that stretched for miles ahead of them. “We’ve only moved about a ten miles in the past six hours, nothing the past forty minutes.”
As if to punctuate his statement, a Ford explorer several cars ahead of them suddenly went dark, and two men got out. They struggled to push the powerless vehicle into the median strip, adding to the growing cluster of cars that crowded the grass strips paralleling the roadway.
As soon as the car was off of the pavement, the empty spot was filled in immediately by the line of cars waiting.

“We should have left last week.” Kate muttered.
“We were under a mandatory curfew. They were arresting people in the streets. We couldn’t have even gotten gas until the evacuation order.” He said.
“Mom, Can I plug up my phone? The battery is dead again.” Tyler asked.
“No sweetie.” She answered. “We need to save gas.” Why don’t you and your sister try and get some sleep in the back?”
“But it’s only seven!” Tyler protested.
“Just lie down and close your eyes for a bit.”
Tyler and his sister dutifully retreated to the bedroom area of the RV where they climbed under the covers.
Craig killed the engine and reached back to grab his winter coat.
“I’ll crank it to warm us up in about an hour.” He said.
“I’m going to go and snuggle under the blankets in the back.” Kate said, standing and stretching her arms and back. “You want me to take over at 10?”
He smiled at her. “Sure. I’ll wake you.”
In truth, he had no intent to wake her up until after midnight.
As the minutes droned on, Craig became mesmerized by the curls of exhaust from the line of cars still visible in the headlights of running cars. He closed his eyes for a moment.
A car horn blared behind him and he snapped awake. He looked at his watch. 9:15.
It took him a moment to reorient, but then he noticed the slowly growing gap just ahead of the car directly in front of him. He pressed the ignition button and the big engine rumbled to life. He heard soft murmuring coming from the back of the vehicle, and his wife’s voice softly soothing one of their children who had been woken. He pulled the big vehicle forward slowly, moving forward to fill the space of the again creeping parade of cars. He looked over to his left, down into a small economy sedan. In the rear seat was a old woman laying down, barely illuminated by the headlamps behind them. Her head was towards the side that Craig was on, and he could see a nest of black tendrils sprouting from her eyes, nose, and mouth. She shifted her body slightly to the side.
*Not yet lady. But soon enough* He thought to himself. The beam of headlights playing through the car looked diffused, somehow, to Craig. Like the air inside was filled with dirty particulates.
Looking into the front seat, he saw a man and woman. They were wearing towels wrapped around their heads, leaving only their eyes exposed. The woman in the passenger seat absently rubbed at her eyes over and over again as he watched.








                                                                  Chapter 28

Caleb looked outside the window of his shelter, the only one he had installed. A stiff evening wind pelted the triple paned glass with tiny fleck of black spore. The sides of the storage container gave a soft, almost imperceptible ringing noise as they vibrated under the pelting of thousands of tiny grains of death a second.

His makeshift shelter, three shipping containers welded together in the woods, had been in place for years before the shrike outbreaks. When the first whispers of a plague came to him at his old home, he had, as he had done several times before, packed up his SUV and disappeared into the woods for several days.

When he had first come to his “bunker” as he called it, he expected to be returning back to his townhouse and his office job just like he had in the past, making up some excuse about a sick family member or plumbing problem. Caleb had begun to question the sanity of his prepping lifestyle, the tens of thousands of dollars he had spent on materials and construction necessary to build a partially buried structure 13 miles off of the closest paved road, and then stocking it with years worth of dehydrated goods, water purifiers, and a half dozen air filtration units that had air intakes above, and beneath the support beams underneath the containers.

“This is Xray niner seven bravo, X97B calling on all metered bands, over.” He said into the microphone in front of him. “Xray niner seven bravo broadcasting in the clear, any takers?”

He leaned back from the desk, sweeping up the empty MRE package on the table in front of him and depositing it into the trashcan next to him. The can was nearing full and he knew he would be making another waste dump soon.

“If you’re out there listening, My name is Caleb Weatherton. I’m…I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done in my life, but I’ve never had cause to be ashamed before. I don’t think it matters so much anymore, but I’d like to confess something just the same.”

He swallowed hard.

“ I killed a man three weeks ago.”

Open air answered him. He waited for about 30 seconds before continuing.

“Maybe not killed. Like stab killed, but I let him die. I watched him die. His name was…..Al….Alavarado..I think. He worked for me. He helped build this place for me. I guess….when this all went south….I guess he remembered this place out here. Maybe he was hoping that no one would be here.”

A single salty tear dropped from Caleb’s eye and he quickly brushed it away.

“He…begged for me to let him in. He pounded at the hatch for awhile. Banged on the walls with a tire iron. Even smashed one of my air filters outside. He could’ve killed me. I think he knew he could, but he didn’t. He could’ve smashed open the window or punctured the walls…but he didn’t. He just….He just sat outside and screamed and begged and…”

Caleb took a deep hitching breath. “He sat down and cried and begged. He hid under his car during the spore storms, but it wasn’t good enough. I left him outside to die and I could’ve helped him but I was scared and selfish.”

Caleb let the microphone button click off. He sat for a while and stared at the equipment before him, thrumming with a soft electric vibration. A faint hiss issued forth from the speaker. Eventually he keyed the transmit button and continued.

“I guess I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I want to say it to…”  Caleb stopped briefly. “Alverto. His name was Alverto. He didn’t deserve to die. His….” Caleb’s voice hitched and let out a plaintiff sob. “ His daughter didn’t deserve to die. Now every time I look outside I see his car, and I see that baby seat strapped in the back of the car…and….and it looks like a fucking potted plant.” He released the transmit button again. He wiped tears from his eyes with his sleeve.

“I still hear her. When I sleep. Crying. Crying” Caleb said.
He looked out the reinforced plexiglass porthole built into the wall. The shrike storm was building in intensity. Tiny dark pellets of death filled the air like a black blizzard. The view to the car would soon be completely obscured. Written on the outside of the glass, backwards, so the intended viewer could read it from inside, were the words. “Her name is Rebecca. She is not infected. I left her in the car please save her.”


He reached over to the side of the desk and slid a Sig Sauer 9 millimeter pistol in front of him. The magazine was inserted, safety clicked off.

“I’m a fucking coward. Xray niner seven bravo over and out.”



                                                                      Chapter 29

The robot rolled over the top of a buried object, briefly tottering back and forth before the tracks finally pushed the machine forward enough to mount over and past the object. Once the treads were clear, a pivoting head on a single arm of the machine turned and pointed a camera backwards. The tracks through the black mound of spore revealed a desiccated human arm. The skin was mottled to tatters with limp black stalks of various sizes and the bone was exposed in numerous places beneath the loose drape of skin remnants.

The camera pivoted back, and the EOD bomb robot rolled forward on its twin tracks, leaving a path in the several inches of spore fall that had accumulated over the past years.

A gray, dusky sky provided a sad illumination for the machine. As it rolled down the center of the street, hollow shambles of buildings lining the streets reverberated and echoed the whirring noise of its tracks into a symphony of noises that would be heard by no one. Eventually the robot arrived at the front of a hospital facility, and followed another twin set of tracks into the building. The hospital main entrances doors were open, and drifts of spore went deep inside the structure. The robot passed a fleet of ambulances parked in front of the doors. Hanging out of the back doors of one of them were more skeletal remains, these still strapped into a gurney that was half in, half out of the vehicle. The figure was another nest of limp tendrils, and one arm of nothing but bone and sinew was still grasped around the rear door handle,  just as the former owner , who with their last ounce of life, had pulled themselves still strapped to the gurney out of the opened doors had placed it.

The robot motored through the drifts of spore piled up in the entranceway along the path that had already been carved through the accumulated spore from hundreds of shrike storms. As it crept through the hospital, the level of black powder decreased steadily until it was rolling on mostly empty floors. At times, it would stop, and the camera atop the arm would cantilever forward and examine the ground up close, before proceeding forward. It passed lines of gurneys on both sides, heavy sealed black bags on most of them. Each patient room was stuffed with dozens more of the bags. And in a few places, a seated or prone corpse covered with a forest of black stalks waited in one of the rooms for a visitor that would never come.

The robot turned a corner and stopped. Up ahead, a second EOD robot was laid on its side, with a vending machine across the top of it. The robot was crumpled up into the broken glass facing of the machine.

The first robot rolled forward, and the camera arm extended forward again, panning left, right, up and down over its fallen comrade. The arm moved underneath the lip of the vending machine and the claw manipulator began pressing up. The electric motors whined, but only the faintest creaking could be heard. The manipulator arm retracted, and the camera once again looked around. The machine had tipped and landed across not only the crushed EOD robot, but had jammed down onto an occupied gurney that had been placed across from it. The black body bag had split open from the massive impact, and a rotted leg had been forced out onto the floor. On what remained of the big toe was a white card tied to a string. The name, Brian Ruttre, DOB 5/19/74 CAPT. HPD was written on the card in black felt marker, the date of death was blotted out with a deep brownish stain.

The EOD robot reached down, manipulator pincers opening, and gingerly clamped down onto one of the unopened food items that had been spilled onto the floor from the broken vending machine. It lifted the bag of chips with a soft crackle of plastic. moving the item into a wire basket affixed to the rear of the robot. The arm moved back and readjusted, grabbing a plastic wrapped package of peanut butter stuffed crackers.  Back and forth, gingerly, the manipulator arm picked up an item, moved around, and deposited into the basket. Eventually the floor was cleared of food items, and the arm tentatively poked around underneath the crashed machine, prodding at an unbroken part of  clear plastic for several minutes without gain. The manipulator arm withdrew and fixed back atop the robot as it reversed course, turned, and retreated back out the way that it had come. As it passed an open hallway closer to the front of the hospital, the machine paused, reversed a few feet, then turned into the hallway. It appeared to be an administration wing rather than a medical ward, as the openings on the sides of the hallways were doorways to offices. Towards the end of the corridor, a flashing light could be seen through the glass of a closed office door. A machine rolled up to the turned and turned, manipulator arm extending upwards to allow the attached camera a better view into the room. Inside the office was a large antique office desk, pulled up on the far side was an ornate chair, seating a withered and blackened corpse. A gaping head wound was visible at the top of the corpse’s head, and a .357 magnum revolver lay on the desk in front of him. To the side of the room was a large panel with flashing red lights. The lights were placed on a diagram of the hospital floor maps, and seemed to indicate each patient room and surgery suite. The silent, steady pulse of the hundreds of micro LED indicators announced that all patient rooms and surgery suites needed urgent medical attention. The machine arm went out, gingerly grasped the door handle, twisted it, and pushed the door inwards with a popping noise of humid wood against tacky old paint. The robot slowly rolled up to the display panel, and the camera on the end of the arm moved side to side, up and down. Eventually the pincers of the arm moved forward, grasped a small tab of plastic and pulled open a recessed panel at the bottom of the map. The arm reached out again, wrapping around the sides of an oversized ultra life 12v battery pack  the size of a small paperback book held within. The arm retracted, and the battery terminals disconnected from the prongs within. The display board fell dark.

Placing the battery into the basket behind it, the machine turned again, rolled out of the hallway, past the exit doors, and back into the ashen world where it came from.