The Hyphae Strain: Mold 69

1.) Hustlers     1964     

Big Texas was clear and bright; not a cloud in the sky. Peace prevailed. Without warning, chaos shattered the innocent-blue; deafening sonic booms sent the local jackrabbits scurrying - long ears trembling, eyes flitting, feet jumping, gone underground, hiding.

The Sky Gods made thunder without lightning or rain.

 44,000 feet above the dust and scrub, wispy white lines chased American warbirds from horizon to horizon; nosecones peeling, burnt fuel and metallic flake polluting the heavens.

Dry barren desert rocks shook. Molecules vibrated. The stratosphere ripped, was tainted and raped. Stoic aircrews rehearsed the closing-acts leading to Armageddon.

Far below the noise and fume, half-burnt Pall Malls hung from two sets of unhappy, nicotine-stained lips, and white smoke rose to intermittently obscure the bold red letters painted on a new stainless placard hanging above their heads. The sign clearly stated:

NO SMOKING.

The young men squinted up at the planes streaking past above their heads, eyes following the contrails. Sweat rolled off their foreheads, pooled in their ears.

One of them, a fidgeting Negro, prayed for relief from the heat.

The other, a disgruntled Hillbilly, demanded a quick death.

Each felt unwell; both cursed the day they had enlisted.

The fuel jerks were melting inside their thick rubberized jumpsuits. Salty stank erupted from every pore. The day proved very, very, hot atop the tarmac at Carswell Air Force Base. 

USN ensign Washington insisted blowing smoke made a body feel cool: “Like a splash o’ water on yo lips, when the wata’ well be back at the barn.”  

The air mass about the fuel jerks was thick with distortion. Falling rafter dust frosted their shoulders and sleeves, coating their sunglasses, forcing Washington to cover his half-smoked Pall Mall with an open palm. Nelson squeezed his earmuffs tighter around his skull and rocked impatiently on the balls of his feet - contemplating the upcoming off-load duty.

The United Stated Air Force’s most beautiful nuclear bomber muscled back to its lair.

Both men knew the death-machine taxiing towards them had initially been designed to deliver a high-yield nuke on Russian soil at Mach 2. However, this particular plane was essentially a mutated bigger brother of the other Conviar B-58As making up the Bombardment wing. The mutant’s top speed was classified. Today’s final flight was not registered on the tower’s log; the pilots were not SAC regulars, and enriched plutonium bombs would never drop out of the bomb bay or off the wing mounts; the bomb bay no longer existed, and the four strange looking engines - fronted by wicked conical spikes - were far too big to allow A-bombs to be mounted between them. 

The oversized Hustler called the Carswell High Security Hanger home. The hanger was a 50-foot-high by 100-foot-wide half-oval of shielded steel; a mighty half tube, where the fuel jerks were temporarily stationed – them, the tech crew, and extremely large and well-armed MPs, who admitted only those authorized on the Mandatory Short List. 

A very short list.   

New engines, titanium tipped delta wings, and the high-concept twin V tails were not the only features Black Ops wished to obviate from the general public, for what also could not be hidden by casual inspection was the plane’s unusual underbelly.

The underbelly had been customized; three massive conicular pods hung off the bombers underside - like bloated metallic tumors.

The fuel jerks serviced these oddities, pre-flight and post-flight. And only these two fuel jerks.

Nelson’s and Washington’s names were not typed, but handwritten on the bottom of the hanger’s Mandatory Short List. Their signatures were noted next to the purgatory-like duty station entitled On Call Maintenance.   

Nelson’s and Washington’s job descriptions were a simple, briefly vocalized set of terms hashed out by the coordinating Capitan: “Bilge goes in, bilge goes out today ... and nobody else is authorized to know more than that. You got that, Jug-heads?”

Aching fingers dug deeper into Washington’s jumpsuit pocket. Washington elbowed Nelson, and leaned into his face.

“My hands hurt, man. You hook up the hoses today, OK brother?”

Nelson yelled above the approaching plane. “Say what! I gotta do yo job too? I dun tol’ ya ta wear two pair o’ gloves, Man”

Movement at the back of the hanger caught Nelson’s attention. The personnel door at the back opened. 

“Hey! Capi’s comin. Ditch’em.”

The two nonchalantly tossed their smoking butts under their boots. 

A white handkerchief pressed over his face, the captain quickly sprinted across the hanger floor, choking slightly. He stopped just behind the men, and gestured for them to lean forward by tapping his forehead and ear.

Handkerchief still pinched on nostrils, he enquired in a nasal yell: “The lids are on, yes?”

Nelson nodded. 

“Jeeze, that festering brew is strong today. Are the hanger fans on?” The captain waved a hand under his chin as if swatting an invisible pest.

Washington nodded affirmative.

Nelson lifted an earmuff and addressed the captain over the engine roar. “Hey Capi, what’s the call? Top off the ports wit’ KZ?” He thumbed a dirty glove at the group of grimy orange fifty-five-gallon drums riding the fueling dolly; the fueling dolly the two fuel jerks had earlier positioned in the rear corner of the cavernous hanger under the exhaust blowers, and as far away from the big doors as possible.

The captain stepped over the hanger door tracks, and put his back to the on-coming plane, cutting-out some of the engine roar. He fished out a rolled-up paper from inside his freshly pressed jacket and then handed a document to Washington, before dabbing tears away and drawing in a shallow, coughing breath.

“That’s a need to know, boys, but I figure I owe you some Intel for the smell. Never saw it. You know nothing, correct?”

He snapped his fingers at the paper in Washington’s hand. Washy attempted to unroll the document with only one hand, making it hard for Nelson to read, too, until Nelson finally added his hands, stretching the paper open.

The paper denoted a graph. Two bold lines were scribed on a proximity field of quarter-inch squares: a blood-red line moved across the graph an inch lower than a wavering black line, except at the graph’s end - where the blood-red line curved-up off the paper.

The captain shed his handkerchief, revealing a smart, freshly-shaved face.

“Got it?”

He waited for their eyes to absorb the data. When both sailors looked up, the captain’s head wagged briefly side to side. Bellowing over the jet roar, he answered Nelson’s earlier question.

“New batch isn’t working out. Almost lost this plane. Flyboys barely made it back.”

The Flying Freak was close now; the men in front of the Security Hanger could make out visors and helmets behind the plane’s canopy glass. The captain turned and faced the roaring-monster and its large, wicked, dangling engines; he noted the belly pods, hanging like bulbous mushrooms - waiting to be plucked.

The captain pretended to slice his own neck with his thumb. 

The roaring reduced in volume and cut out, replaced by turbine whine, as the turbofans shifted into their deceleration cycle.

Washington and Nelson removed their earmuffs and pulled their earplugs.

The captain turned to the right, raised a hand above his head and made a few large circles with is forearm. A newly painted safety-orange lowboy tug fired-up across the taxiway.

“No, boys,” the Captain repeated in his official voice, “Nix the Stim. I need you to flush the entire system. All the pods.”

In his lowered unofficial voice, he added, “Project’s canceled. Too expensive.”

“So, that’s it?” asked an arm-scratching Nelson. 

“We’re out, thank God,” said the captain. “When you get the Go-Com brief from the flight engineer, pull the batch.”

Washington and Nelson turned heads at each other – their eyelids snapped taught; tiny smiles appeared.

The captain snapped the privy document back from Washington’s hand.

He smartly folded the graph and placed it inside his jacket pocket, and then smacked his hands together - as if ridding dusty palms of a dirty job.

“And I mean out clean, by the by. We’re still Navy. Sailors. Even if this is an Air Force base. I’ll officially remind you goofs that there is a No Smoking sign in the fuel re-supply for good reason.” He eyed their rubber boots. “And pick up those butts you’re standing on before the Air Colonel arrives.”

“Ahh... Yes sir, sorry sir, Capi!” mumbled Nelson.

A fidgeting Washington added: “So what’s gonna happen to all that stanky bilge, Sir?”

The captain glanced at the foul-smelling drums.

“Excuse me, Sailors, are you asking questions?” 

The jerks remained silent.

“Sorry, boys. Just be glad it’s someone else’s problem. Yes, I know. If I pulled your duty, I’d be smoking too. Ain’t the carrier, huh? I promise you two will get back on the Enterprise when this op wraps, so cheer up. When the flight engineer signs off, flush the bird, and prep the drums for return to the depot by fifteen-hundred. Then go have a brew and a broad! The heavy hauler will grab the whole batch late tonight. Let the MPs watch it till then. Go breathe some fresh air.”

The lowboy tractor maneuvered into position for the final slow pull into the hanger.  Inside the cavernous half-oval, three identical twenty-eight-foot-tall rolling ladders awaited the weary flight crew. 

They popped the canopies and removed their helmets. The flight engineer in the rear cockpit switched from flight duties to the post-flight power-down sequence. 

The captain flapped a spastic limp-wrist at the pilots, like a chicken who’d busted its wing. The bomber crew returned the gesture with index fingers upraised in the traditional Air Force to Navy salute. The captain chuckled.

Thick black diesel smoke belched from the tug’s side exhaust and hydraulics pumps whined; geared arms lowered onto mated connectors set on the Hustler’s front landing gear.  The mated pair began the inch-by-inch pull towards the High Security Hanger.

The fuel jerks shifted about on their heels. Washington was flexing his fingers like a man whose hands had fallen asleep. “So, after today, we don’t have to touch that Stim no more, right, Sir?”

“Ahh... No,” was the answer to Washington’s redundant question.

“Ahh, Captain? I was wondering if maybe I could see... um... is it ok to use the Base Infirmary, we...um, I mean...”

The youth’s voice faded before he could finish his words. He looked over at Nelson for affirmation; Nelson dead-eyed Washington.

The captain put a finger on his chin. Washington’s tone said: something was up; there was an unsettling grimace pinching Nelson’s lips. 

“OK, who’s got a light? Washington?”

The captain flicked a follow-me finger at the sailors, strode quickly past the hanger doors, and made his way around to the left side of the hanger, turning his back on the plane. Once hidden from general view, he deftly slipped a pack of Lucky Strikes from beneath his cap, and snapped the pack’s bottom with his ring finger. Three cigarettes magically appeared. Each man nabbed a smoke.

“Light please,” said the captain, nodding at Washington.

Washington’s trusty Zippo produced a familiar click, the flint wheel spun. Fire met tobacco; the three inhaled and blew smoke.

The something up was where Washington’s fingers met the Zippo. The captain’s Lucky Strikes slipped from his fingers onto the tarmac. 

“God damn it, Washington... What the hell?”

Washington bent over, gingerly retrieved the cigarettes, and offered the soft-pack back to the captain. However, the captain paused before reclaiming the smokes.

“Shit, man. Let’s have it.”

“It’s the Stim, Sir. Ate right through ma’ gloves. Got on m’ fingers. It ain’t just me neitha. You should see Nelson’s arm where he got splashed up.”

The captain eyed Nelson. 

“Well?”

Nelson rolled up his sleeve, revealing an ugly blight.

About six inches above Nelson’s wrist lay a black and purple circle -about the size of an Eisenhower silver dollar- compromising his pale Caucasian skin. The desiccated tissue was ringed by angry red.

The captain’s voice lowered pitch… and slowed to a crawl. “Supply... or offload?”

“Offload. Done splashed me com’en out da pod tank,” confirmed Nelson.

“Damn it! You boys have to be more careful. You were fully briefed on fuel toxicity.” He spun a circle on the tarmac. “Damn it, and damn it again! You’ve been wearing your masks, right?”

“Yes, Sir, always! Wouldn’t nobody? Can’t get near da stuff, lest ya has a mask,” proffered Nelson.

The captain shook his puckered red face, tapping his fingers on his tight black tie.

“This ain’t gonna look good at all.”

“Sorry, Capi.” Nelson looked at the floor.

“Yeah, we both really sorry, Sir! Stuff is jus’ really slippery. Don’t even act like no fuel or nothing I never dun seen. Almost like jumps out on its own. Like its alive or something. Weird stuff. Come on, Capi. Ain’t no gas I ever dun used do this to no one. What’s in the KZ, Sir?”

The captain frowned and shook his head some more. Hell might come down from on-high if knowledge of this incident made its way up the ladder.

“It’s need to know, boys. You know the drill. Shit!”

The captain pulled off his flight cap and scratched his head.

“OK. Listen up. I’m giving you boys two weeks off to get some R and R. Get the heck out of Dodge. Passes will be at the Com-off, tonight. Both of you. And keep it to yourselves. You got to do something about those fingers, Washington. Go get a manicure or massage or something. Tell you what, why don’t you two go see a dermatologist. Just make sure it’s discrete and off-base... and in the next town. Here’s the deal… I’ll make sure you get two weeks’ extra flight pay, for the double-trouble. OK?”

The captain reached into his pocket and pulled out a plump billfold. He tossed the wad to Washington.

“Here. Spilt that. A little hazard pay. Loose lips sink ships.” The captain winked.

“Sure, Capi.”

“Thanks, Capi.”

“Make sure you take care of those nails, Washington. OK?”

“Sure, Captain. Your smokes, Sir.”

“No. You keep ‘em, Washington, on me.”

Washington had touched the pack with nails as black as rotten bananas and desiccated skin as purple as prize fighter’s swollen eye.

The captain attempted a smile; it faded halfway up his cheeks.

            “And gosh darn it, be careful with that Stim! No more accidents, no spills. A drop goes missing after this and you’ll be carving tatters in the galley for the rest of your time here.”

            “Right, Captain.”

            “Sure, Captain.”          

The officer pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I know the brass. Just when you think it’s over, it isn’t, and at one hundred thousand dollars a barrel, I’m sure someone will find another use for that evil smelling brew. Don’t screw it up! Got it, Jug Heads?”

But the men never answered.

The Universe seemed to flicker briefly.

The men’s bones vibrated beneath their flesh. Their brains shook inside their heads and they could feel their blood boiling in their arteries and veins. Heating their bodies to the unendurable in a matter of seconds.

Jackrabbits jumped out of their holes - launching meters into the air above the desert floor outside the hanger. The crows flying overhead fell from the sky, smashing-down; lifeless, heavy thuds impacting the runway surface, just beyond the big hanger doors.

The concrete inside the hanger shattered, and a powerful sonic wave knocked the men about the plane off their feet.

The security MP’s affront the hustler, were slammed to the hanger floor. The concrete pad below them disintegrated into particulates and rocky bracken. The two Security officers thrashed about on the hanger floor, which had become broiling concrete flake and powder; their lungs pulling in suffocating volumes of oven hot dust. And then… their bodies ignited, burning blue hot, as if positioned in front of a blast furnas’ high pressure jets. Screams rebounded off the hanger celling fifty feet above, but The MP’s wails were soon overpowered.

Inside the hanger, the Hustler changed shape. The spinning turbines inside the four massive J-58s seized simultaneously. The torque force translated to the engine mounts, where the shear forces bent and snapped the underwing engine pylons like saltwater taffy. Those two engines began spinning like rifled bullets – both massive jet engines suspended in the air above the floor, levitating beneath the underwing surface. The cowlings designated - spraying razor-sharp metal shards in all directions

Underneath the Flying Freak the front belly pod broke free of its mounting column and became a twirling top, increasing in rotational velocity, becoming a spinning blur - whose surface the eyes could not focus upon.

The forward pod shot-out from under the plane and mowed-down one of the post-op ladder handlers - a man who was already prostrate atop the boiling fuming concrete sea beneath him. Only a frothy blood-red paste marked where the enlisted man had once existed - as the two-ton pod flattened the ladder handler like a chipmunk under a truck tire - spattering the man’s circulatory fluid in all directions. His remains and blood immediately ignited in a white-hot fire that flared – smoky red-hot ashes that mixed with the concrete dust cloud.

The two other post-op technicians burst into flames where they stood. The ladders in front of them turned into red-hot skeletons, the aluminum rails and steps melted, just as the eight-meter-tall ladders leapt off the ground and accelerated upward into the air in an arc, accelerating fast enough to punch holes in the hanger ceiling. The ladders pierced though the hanger dome with three ear-shattering booms.

The front pod changed course, still spinning like a deranged dreidel, and began circling the bomber about three-meters beyond the wing tips, nose and tail - remaining mostly in an upright position as it spun around the bomber, but cavitating wildly.

The center and rear pods had broken free of their connective columns, but remained spinning underneath the plane, their rotational velocities geometrically increasing; creating dual hi-pitched screams as they ripped the air - turned into plasma - about them…and then disintegrated. Metal shrapnel flew wild, punching holes in the delta wings and the airframe.

As the middle and rear pods disintegrated, the tip of the left wing arced over the top of the fuselage; a rippling sail in a fierce gale. The right wing curled down onto the fractured hanger floor, intersecting the concert pad’s metal rebar - red-hot glowing bars - which stretched up to meet the curving right wing tip. When the wing tip mounted engine touched the ground, it instantly melted into white hot metallic slag. The whirling engine’s shattered into thousands of tiny shrapnel bits - which fragmented into a spray, like a lawn spinner - showering the high velocity bits in a tight plain, puncturing the hanger with a multitude of holes - that let the sunlight in, creating hundreds of sun-rayed fingers in the growing smoke and dust cloud arising off the demolished hanger floor.

The two repair technicians at the tool station aside the hanger walls were blasted into bite-sized chunks by the hail of metallic shards.

 Below the Hustler’s nose the low boy tug tuned white hot, and melted onto the blistering ‘crete, tires instantly afire, black smoke billowing; the heat so fierce and immediate the driver had no time to scream before his humanity transitioned into a solid block of charcoaled-carbon.

A loud explosion erupted from mid-plane; the ejection seat had fired. The pilot and seat did not fly high into the sky as expected; an invisible hand plucked the seat out of the air, and hurled the flight engineer in a tight arc, smashing mechanism and man into the sizzling concrete. The masses - biological and metallurgical - attempted to integrate with the broiling surface; the unit pancaked, and a frothy red paste steamed from between the flattened metal cage. Two more bangs from the forward ejection seats - with an equally grim result.

The hanger roared and squealed as the invisible hand re-shaped the structural steel I-beams into right-bending curves, popping the hanger doors, bending them into bowls. The twisting force stripped the roof of its sheet metal panels - sending the panels spinning to the ground. The panels smacked the concrete, rolling up like delivered newspapers, and began rotating violently in a series of concentrically curved rows, following the forward pod around the plane.

The right wing snapped near center at its weakest point - the gear well. As the rear landing gear mounts snapped, what remained of the fuselage collapsed onto what remained of the spinning pod cores.

The pods cores fully disintegrated, and with that… the fuselage fully disintegrated.

The fireball that enveloped the plane produced a pure white field of light, and what blasted forth from the conflagration might only be described as a flock of metallic wagon wheels. Uncountable spinning disks arced away in every direction – far beyond the panel stripped hanger dome – some disks sent moving so fast and far way, they were no more than remote specks in the blink of an eye. Sonic booms ripped the air. 

Inside the hanger, a single note rose in volume, breaking every panel of glass. In the corner, the orange fuel drums erupted like beer cans hit with a hammer. A frothy foam shot into the air, dissolving into vapor, and the vapor condensed into a swirling stream of tendrils which twisted and revolved in the shape of an oscillating spring - the mists spinning incorporeal above the hanger floor. 

And then the vapors vanished: absorbed; sucked into a midnight black and indigo vortex- which had sprung into reality above of the carnage

The gyre condensed and shrank into a dull dot which simply winked out, sucked into the vortex. A vacuum force roared, and produced a suction strong enough to pull in all plane debris and wreckage, smoke, dust, and the remaining flaming objects inside the hanger. The hanger floor was sucked clean, revealing a hole in the earth where the concrete pad had once been.

The bomber was gone – the plane that had once been the Flying Freak had disappeared.

Miles away from the rising black toxic-cloud, jackrabbits flopped randomly upon dry desert sands. Their furry faces were blank, teeth gnashing the air, their bodies thrashing – spastic and torn. They could not break for their holes, nor could they hide – for the rabbits had neither memory of where their holes were, nor what had frightened them out into the blazing desert sun.