Fungal Possession

I recently read THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS, by M. R. Carey. I'm not a great fan of zombie fiction or films in general, because typical zombies aren't so much characters as rampaging forces of natural destruction. This book is something else, though. The monsters responsible for the collapse of civilization are called "hungries," never zombies, although most of them fit the Z-word stereotype. Melanie and the other children in her "class" on a prison-like military base, however, are different. They're conscious and sapient. She doesn't remember any life outside the building where she's confined to a cell except when escorted to the shower or the classroom. She doesn't know she and her friends are hungries, since the staff follows strict protocols to avoid activating the instinct to attack and feed. Still less does she suspect the children are experimental subjects, kept alive solely in hope that studying them may reveal a cure for the pandemic that triggered the apocalypse. Nor does she know what happens to her friends who disappear.

Their condition is caused by a fungus that infests and takes over a human body, replacing the brain with a network of mycelium threads. The resultant fleshly automaton alternates between two states of being, passive immobility and ravenous attack mode. Children like Melanie, in contrast, have varying degrees of cognitive capacity as well as, apparently, emotion and free will. Most of the uninfected people on the base agree with the sergeant in charge that these alleged traces of humanity are just mimicry by the fungus-infected host. From observing Melanie's inner life, we know better. She's more than a "dead kid" animated by a parasite. In this next generation of hosts, the organism has established a form of symbiosis.

A fungal network also breeds "zombies" and causes societal collapse in the post-apocalyptic TV series THE LAST OF US (which I haven't seen):

Fungi Superhighways

One of my favorite horror novels from T. Kingfisher, WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, retells "The Fall of the House of Usher" in science-fiction terms as a story of biological possession. A fungus lurking in the tarn has long since crept into the walls of the Usher mansion. From infiltrating the bodies of the hares that inhabit the nearby countryside, it has progressed to invading Madeline Usher. As a single super-organism with a hive mind, the fungus becomes more than sentient -- borderline sapient. It not only spreads through Madeline's body -- ultimately keeping her quasi-alive after she has technically died -- but takes root in her brain to learn from her. As the author's afterword notes, imagine how much the human characters could have learned from the parasite (and vice versa) if only they could have explained to it why most people dislike seeing dead things walk around.

The fungus in the walls of the gloomy mansion in Silvia Moreno-Garcia's MEXICAN GOTHIC doesn't kill its human hosts. Rather, its symbiotic infestation confers healing and potential immortality. The protagonist, though, in trying to rescue a relative from her terrible marriage to a member of the family, discovers the less than desirable side of this seductive trap.

Fungal possession in horror fiction is based on a real phenomenon, the notorious "zombie ant" parasitism.

Zombie Ants

In tropical forests, a fungus invades the bodies of hapless carpenter ants and takes over their brains. It compels the ant to perform the unnatural behavior of climbing to a height and hooking itself to a leaf, where it soon dies. The fruiting body of the mature parasite bursts out of the insect's corpse and broadcasts spores.

Unlike traditional demon possession, this kind of "invasion of the body snatchers" can't be cured by exorcism. The climax of THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS discovers a way to coexist with it, but at a heavy price. On the other hand, suppose a similar organism existed in true symbiosis with human hosts, bestowing not only healing and prolonged life but enhanced intelligence or some kind of hive-mind telepathy?

Margaret L. Carter

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