Chapter 123 Mimicry
"First, we have to find a way to get rid of these fungi... Otherwise, if even one spore is brought into the base... not only us, but the entire base will become a dead city."
"As for the cleaning equipment..." Yui glanced at the tablet in her hand, "Car No. 2 and Car No. 5 are equipped with high-pressure water guns, which are specially used to wash away radioactive dust from the vehicles..."
"That thing won't work," Ke Lan shook her head. "Water can't kill these carnivorous fungi, and it can't clear the spores that are scattered in the air and difficult to detect with the naked eye."
"If water doesn't work, what about fire?" Old Dog's eyes lit up, and he pointed at the flamethrower mounted on the roof of vehicle No. 1 - it was originally an obstacle-clearing equipment used to clear the road, but of course, in a critical moment, it could also be used to deal with the indigenous creatures that rushed forward.
In the current situation, using a flamethrower to clean up these fungi and spores is probably the best solution they can come up with.
The vehicles in the convoy are all armored vehicles, and even the tires are made of high-heat-resistant polymer materials. As long as the temperature of the flame and the amount of fuel are controlled, the flamethrower will not cause much damage to the vehicle itself. The thermal insulation layer equipped to cope with the harsh environment of Alpha can also protect the members in the vehicle from being "suffocated" by the high temperature.
"Car No. 1, check flamethrower and fuel, ready..."
Halfway through the conversation, Ke Lan suddenly froze... Not only him, but everyone else in the car was also froze.
Those white hyphae...they actually moved!
As if something was commanding them, the hyphae in the corners of the carriage, under the seats, attached to the supply boxes... began to gather together and form earthworm-like combinations.
Then, these combinations crawled onto the skeleton of a dead person by wriggling like real earthworms, and then... they began to entangle and fuse with the hyphae attached to the skeleton... In just a few dozen seconds, a humanoid creature composed of white hyphae and a human skeleton appeared in the field of vision of Ke Lan and others.
“I…” The skin on the old dog’s face trembled slightly, “Fuck… this thing… what on earth is this thing…”
"I don't know." Yui, who was sitting next to her, could no longer maintain her original calm expression. She shook her head woodenly.
Apart from Lao Gou and You Yi, the performance of the others in the car was not much better. Only Ke Lan remained calm... because it was not the first time he had seen such a scene...
Back then in the secret passage of the glacial ruins, he had witnessed with his own eyes the scene where a pile of meat turned into another old dog... that indescribable feeling of weirdness and fear almost drove the old dog crazy... But for some reason, among all the people who had seen the meat, he was the only one who retained those nightmarish memories.
Ke Lan glanced at the old dog calmly out of the corner of his eye, then patted the roof of the car hard.
“Bang! Bang!”
Everyone came back to their senses at this moment, and their first reaction was to reach for the weapons they carried with them.
Of course, except for Asano Akira who couldn't see anything.
"Everyone, don't be nervous." Ke Lan said in a deep voice, "Zhuoligetu, don't open the car door, and put down the gun in your hand... What, do you still want to go out and fight that thing now?"
"No... I just... I..." The honest Mongolian man kept saying "I, I, I" for a long time before finally admitting in a somewhat disappointed tone, "I'm just... too nervous."
"I know," Ke Lan nodded, "but there are spores everywhere outside now. If we open the car door rashly, everyone in the car will become the same kind as this monster..."
"I'm sorry." Zhuo Ligetu shrank back into his seat with a sense of grievance.
"Ke Lan," the old dog rubbed his cheeks vigorously with his hands, "this thing... don't you think it's weird? It could be transformed into a human, but that face of its, this is impossible... look..."
What Lao Gou handed over was the tablet that Youyi used. The screen showed the files of the crew members of vehicle number 10. Among the four photos, the appearance of one of them was almost exactly the same as the face of the humanoid mycelium monster in front of him!
This thing not only took on the appearance of a human, but also perfectly simulated the original face of the deceased!
"Nothing is impossible. After all, these fungi have devoured all the flesh and blood of the deceased... It is not too outrageous to simulate the prey by using all the 'data' recorded in these flesh and blood." Ke Lan said.
You know, to simulate the appearance of Lao Gou and Asano Akira, even a few drops of blood are enough, but the genetic information contained in the flesh and blood of the whole body is much more than a few drops of blood.
"Whatever it is, anyway...Car One, use the flamethrower to get rid of that guy!"
"boom!!"
The dozens of meters long flame column went straight to the carriage of car number 10, and the blazing flames kept licking the body of the thing... Soon, the white mycelium turned into charcoal-like black...
"Fire works!" Ivan said excitedly, but as soon as he finished speaking, his excitement turned into astonishment, "It...it seems to be still moving!"
Indeed, under the scorching heat of the flamethrower, the outer layer of white mycelium was almost completely carbonized, but the carbonized layer did not fall off, but remained attached to the monster's body, forming a piece of armor that could block flames!
It bent down, picked up the large-caliber rifle that the security guard dropped into the car, and then... pulled the bolt hard.
"...Impossible...It...It can use a gun?" Ivan gripped the back of the front seat tightly, not daring to breathe.
"Could it be..." Ke Lan rubbed his frowning eyebrows and thought, could these fungi still extract the memory of the deceased from the nerve cells after devouring the body of the deceased? Or did they only retain some actions that have been incorporated into instinct... such as walking, picking up... and pulling bolts that have been repeated thousands of times?
But that doesn’t make sense!
Everyone talks about muscle memory, muscle memory... but that requires muscles. But this thing right now is just a ball of mycelium wrapped around human bones to simulate a posture. It has no muscles, nerves, fascia, blood vessels... it has none of the organs that a human body should have. How can it inherit the instincts of the deceased?
To describe it with an idiom, it is "all show and no substance". No matter how realistically the face is simulated, it is just a ball of mycelium!
A charred figure jumped out of the carriage. Facing the impact of the flames, it staggered forward one, two steps...
"Stop attacking with flamethrowers, vehicle one, retreat, vehicle four, reload the anti-aircraft machine gun with armor-piercing incendiary rounds, and fire at the target!"