Free Spore by Tamara Jones Page A

run, get their attention, and once they’re chasing me, you head back home. Get those pics downloaded and put on a disk, okay? Or the cloud. Somewhere we can get them back.”
    “What? Are you nuts? You’ll get arrested!”
    “Better than both us of getting arrested and losing the pictures,” he said. Finger on the shutter button, he jumped down into the creek.
    Teeth clenched, he faced into the wind and rain, and lifted the bottom of the plastic, pointing the camera toward the water while watching the deputy approach. Lightning crackled to the west as he pushed the button. Before the image finished processing, he tossed the camera to Mare and bolted out of the creek and toward the tallest gravestones near the crest of the hill.
    “Stop!” the deputy yelled, but Sean skirted a knee-high gravestone and kept running. “You can’t escape!”
    Escape isn’t my plan, Sean thought, taking a zigzag route to the eastern bend of the creek and the splashed tarp. Someone down the hill hollered in pain as Sean leapt into the water and ripped the tarp half off its ring. Struggling to catch his balance in the mud and current, he scrambled aside before falling face-first onto a thrashing wad of white, foamy slime or knocking over the floodlight that shown down upon it. As large as a beanbag chair and releasing strings of delicate bubbles, the mass quivered and splashed about under the water’s surface like a fish caught on a line.
    The burbling slime-mass roiled, dousing Sean with water and foam as it flipped. Bits of it slid off and floated away, leaving a purple-tinted swirl in their wake. What the hell’s happening here?
    The deputy jumped down into the creek, hand on his gun, his uniform drenched and muddy. He was maybe twenty and looked terrified.
    Despite his own fear, Sean smiled at him. “Hey,” he said, gesturing at the thrashing mass as a human foot burst out, flecking them both with purple slime. “Whatcha got here?”
    “Nothing you need to see. You’re gonna come with me.”
    “Fucker maced me!” a young man’s voice screeched from the dark. “Fucking bastard asshole!” The deputy turned with a lurch toward the noise.
    A gun went off with a loud high pop that echoed through the storm. Out there, somewhere, a woman screamed.
    Be a warning shot for the kids. Let Mare be all right! Sean froze, heart slamming, while, before him, the slimy thing fizzed and fell apart, exposing an arm, a torso, the back of someone’s head. The deputy cursed and clambered out of the creek, leaving Sean alone. He crouched in the water and tried to help free the thrashing person from the muck.
    The kids continued to scream at the cops, and he heard a crash and sounds of fighting. It’s toward the gate, he told himself, as he glanced where the deputy had recently stood. Not toward Mare.
    “Filthy goddamn pigs! You’re breaking my fucking arm! Do you know who my dad is? I’ll have your fu—“ The rest was lost to the storm.
    A woman burst up beneath Sean’s hands, gasping and coughing up water, as the remaining frothy mass floated away and dissolved into a purple swirl.
    She slumped sideways and collapsed into the water, but tried again to crawl up the bank, looking up at him with fearful eyes, dark and gleaming. She dripped with purple mucus and white foam, and she slipped again as she cowered away from him. Her scream sounded like a trapped rodent. Despite his apprehension, Sean approached her and held out his hand.
    “It’s all right,” he coaxed, heart hammering. “Come on. I’ll help you.”
    How can this be happening? he thought as he examined her young face, surely no older than mid twenties. So human, so impossible. “Can you stand? Can you talk?”
    She opened her mouth and squeaked at him, and she barely resisted as he grasped her hand and drew her to her knees. The whites of her eyes shimmered lilac in the floodlight, the irises deep violet. Her skin was cold and clammy, goose pimpled, and she