Fruiting Bodies by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (Tor.com, January-February 2022) has an inchoate start that has the narrator, who is from a generation ship whose crew appears to have settled an inhospitable volcanic planet, looking for a woman called Morayo. There is also mention of the arinki, (indigenous?) creatures who come out at night.
As the narrator searches for Morayo, she comes upon one of the other ship members who has been infected with a planetary fungus and is dying:
“How long?” Eranko asks after a moment.
“Turn around.”
He does as I ask, and I carefully pull aside the few lank bits of reddish-blond hair he has left. I run my fingers over his skull—there.
A round, almost imperceptible bump. The pileus of a fruiting body preparing to pop his head open.
I was a mycologist, Before. The transmission and development of the contagion are quite similar to those of the entomopathogenic Earth fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, only differing in minor ways. The zombie ant fungus, it was called. The colonists had hoped I would be able to save them, given my expertise.
“A fortnight, at most,” I tell him.
Eranko gives a shallow, croaking sigh. The infiltrating mycelium has begun to decompose his lungs. Less than a week, then.
The narrator (spoiler) eventually arrives at the settlement and rescues Morayo. During this episode she kills four men and we learn that she has been given a serum developed by Morayo, which has adapted her to the planet (although the narrator is accused by the men of being one of “them” before the killing starts).
Then the story abruptly stops.
This piece could definitely do with another draft, especially sentences like this one:
But the greatest of our reproductive technology died with the Before, so I suppose it would be more accurate to say that only a piece of me is their future to them.
What? I also note that the “Great Filter” idea is clumsily introduced at the start of the piece, in the first paragraph and then the third. It would have been be clearer to link these: “Ancient Scientists called this the Great Filter. Our Great Filter was the arinkiri—the night walkers.” But what we get is the first sentence in the first paragraph and then the Great Filter idea appearing again after a wodge of terrain description in the third:
“But now, those of us still living call our species’ Great Filter the arinkiri—the night walkers.”
This story is unpolished, unclear (probably because there is too much going on in its short length), and it ends abruptly. There are a couple of reasonable body horror scenes (see above) but this is one that should have been left in the slush pile.
* (Mediocre). 2,700 words. Story link.