Agamogenesis

by

Michael Picco

It’s grown up past the window now. I can see that it’s daylight outside. There’s a dim sort of translucency to it before it gets established and hardens. Soon it will be impossible to break off without using a jackhammer or a flame thrower. Neither of which I have or hope to possess.?

I could break the glass… let it in. This new strain would be through the apartment in a day, maybe less. Longer than me. Seal-All® loves human hosts — or rather human lungs. Soft, wet and moist, it grows so fast, you can see someone suffocate before your eyes. But, they’re already dead, really. If it’s gotten to your lungs, then it’s already made it through your sinus cavity and gotten into your brain…into your limbic system. Sprouting and rooting its way through your skull, you can hear a man’s cranial ridge fracture — rip right open. It’s a quick death, I will give it that. But, by the looks of it, it won’t be painless.

I could break the glass. Undo the last six days of sealing and burning and blasting this shit back to hell. The Devil’s Kudzu, that’s what the news called it. The media and their P.R. spin. What is it? Science gone wrong. No wait, that’s not quite right. The science behind it was sound enough… it was just that nature had other ideas. Nature made it better. Stronger. Much stronger.

I guess it started out as an innocuous industrial sealant. The early stuff even had a floral scent to it — do you remember that sickly sweet smell under every overpass? That was Seal-All® — Rust’s Worst Enemy!TM. They sprayed it everywhere, too: on bridges, in buildings, on cars… anything made of metal (or in the case of cars, those few parts that were still metal) that could rust got a nice healthy coating of Seal-All®. One coat, and you never had to paint anything ever again. Or rather, you couldn’t paint anything ever again, because the damn stuff would eat whatever was painted on it.? It was completely impervious to graffiti. The gangs hated it. You could always tell a Seal-All® surface: there’d be that dull gleam, that almost wet look to it. Remember how your clothes would stick to metal coated with it? That was Seal-All® eating the clothing right off your body.?

Yep, you could coat something in Seal-All® and never have to paint it ever again. Ever. See, it was organic — one massive organism. Where it got chipped, it would grow back. Where it got scratched (IF it got scratched, which was almost never), it grew back. They painted the San Francisco Bay Bridge with it, remember? That sick, greenish-orange that didn’t quite match the original paint? They “painted” it and then laid off all the workers that used to spend their days scraping off the old paint and repainting the bridge over and over and over again with regular paint — real paint. It was a about a week later when one of those guys went after one of the support girders with a sledge hammer. Big guy. He went after the stuff for four or five hours before the hammering finally got the attention of the port authority. In all that time, I think that he managed to chip off a piece the size of a quarter. The port authority captain picked up the chip, put it back in place and in less than five minutes it looked like it was brand new again. I remember the captain just laughing about it while they hauled the disgruntled worker away.

But, if you look at the footage really close, you can see that the shit is bruised. You could see hundreds of hammer marks all mottled and dark. The surface around them looks tighter somehow. You know. like an old scar.?

I could break the glass. It’s only a matter of time before it engulfs this building like it did the others. A slow, dull gray-green tide. There’s probably enough air in here for a day or two, but it’s already gone stale. There’s almost a 300 gallons of spray foam in and around the foundation, the doors, the windows and the roof — the place is airtight. My old man would say that I’ve painted myself into a corner here. What can you do when you’re the last one left? Who will write your obituary? Hell, who will read it? Nobody to bury you, either. No need, I reckon. This shit will bury me just fine, eulogy or not.

When it was everywhere, on everything, that’s when it mutated. Started growing and reproducing. The last of the radio broadcasts seemed to think that it was an adaptation, really, on a mass scale. The bioluminescent batch (the one that would glow at night, remember?) that was so strong, you needed dynamite to remove it. It lived in virtually any climate. Hell, the Department of Defense even used Seal-All® to coat submarines! But it wasn’t supposed to grow, or at least not grow beyond where you painted it. You put it on a chair, it stayed on the chair, right? Then the chairs started sticking to the floors. You’d try to pull out a chair and a chunk of floor would come with it. Nobody could figure out why it started growing. And nobody could figure out, exactly, how to stop it, either.?They even tried Agent Orange toward the end, for crissakes. After the flames cleared, a new colony could be seen under the blackened, curled residue. That gray-green sheen!

It wasn’t long before cars stopped running — the engines completely choked. Then lights went out. Remember the fire brigades? Bonfires on sidewalks, and buildings and bridges day after day — just like the gangs had done earlier — only to discover that the shit had grown back overnight? Then it became airborne. No, wait. That’s not right, exactly. It had to do with spores or something, though. That’s what the scientists said. “Agamogenesis” is the term they used.? Remember that kid in Milwaukee — the first one… well, “infected”? They kept him alive for three hours before his head cracked open like a melon and that thing like a tree root came rolling out? That’s when people really started to panic. I hear that they?tactical-nuked?Milwaukee shortly thereafter. Too late, too late. Seal-All® adapted quicker than us dumb monkeys ever could.

Just since I started writing this, the damn stuff has gone that tobacco brown color half-way up the sill. It’s got the weird glow around the edges, too. I guess I’ll need explosives to exit this place. Not that there’s anyplace to go. When it’s gray-green like that, it’s outer “bark” is as tough as steel, but inside, it’s still growing. Expanding. Sealing everything.

I could break the glass.

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