Strange Highways

these pods were more virulent than those that had killed the gang-bangers in the alleyway.
     I dove to the right, behind an exhaust housing. Cautiously, I peered over the top and saw Stone standing by the wheelhouse steps, his bright eyes flashing, his palms flattened in my direction.
     The boat rushed closer to the shore.
     But not fast enough to suit me.
     Two pods spun over my head, landed on the deck behind, and ate down through the planking. Before long, the yacht was going to be honeycombed with the white tentacles, each as thin as a thread but as strong, surely, as a steel wire.
     A whining sound arose, the sound of tortured metal. The deck of the boat shuddered, and we seemed almost to come to a stop. Then there was a jolt, and we sped forward again. The bottom had dragged over a shoreline rock formation, but we had not been grounded.
     And then we were.
     The boat hit the second reef, tore out its bottom, and settled into four feet of water, most of its bulk still high and dry.
     I rolled back across the deck, grabbed the rail, heaved myself over the side. I struck shallow water and went under, striking my jaw on a hunk of smooth driftwood. My mouth sagged open, and I swallowed water. So this is what it's like to drown , I thought. Then I closed my stupid kisser and struggled to the surface again. I broke water, flailed my arms, pushed up, and staggered toward that blessed beach, sputtering and coughing and trying not to pass out.
     I may not have a number of qualities that modern society considers admirable - like refined tastes and finesse. But there's one thing I do have, damn it. Grit.
     I was five short steps from dry ground when the pods of fungus erupted before me. Two. Then two more. A wild tangle of white snakes rose up to block my escape. I turned and looked back. Graham Stone, alien Anglophile, looking like an evil Cary Grant, had left the ship too. He was splashing toward me.
     I turned to my right. Two spores fell there. The pale snakes twisted out of the water, seeking, wriggling toward me.
     On my left, two more.
     No respect for tradition at all.
     The water was only halfway up my calves, not deep enough for me to go beneath the surface and swim away. Besides, if the fungus was going to take me, I'd rather it happened up here, where I could see what those filaments were doing.
     Graham Stone came relentlessly onward, holding his fire now. He knew he had me.
     We were on a dark stretch of shore. No one to whom I could call for help.
     Then from the left arose the furious whine of a small powerboat driven to the limits of its performance. A whooping siren wailed to life, one of those ooga horns from ancient automobiles. Out of the gloom and the falling snow, Bruno appeared. He was standing in a two-seat twelve-footer, holding on to the wheel for all he was worth. The craft was hitting better than fifty miles an hour. It skimmed the water, the bow in the air. Since the boat sat higher in the water than the yacht, it passed over the rock formations and kept coming.
     "Bruno!" I shouted.
     He was a textbook example of a man - or a bear - in the grip of an anxiety attack. His big eyes rolled wildly, and he braced for the worst.
     The little boat hit the beach, the screws churning frantically. It slammed forward through the sand at twenty miles an hour for ten feet or so, struck a rock, stopped dead, and pitched the bruin over the windshield, across the bow, and onto the beach, flat on his enormous back.
     And he got up. He looked dizzy, and he was covered with sand, but he had survived.
     I started jumping up and down in the water yelling, "Get him, Bruno! Get him now!"
     Those white tentacles were threading their way closer to me, even though Graham Stone had stopped approaching.
     The bear raised his head, looked at me, felt for his floppy hat, then shrugged when he couldn't find it.
     "Get him, Bruno, get him!" I bellowed.
     He took out that silly-looking pistol of his, and while Stone tried to hit him with a spore of fungus, my friend the bear burned the sonofabitch on the spot with the Disney .780 Death Hose. The only thing left was some ashes, which floated away.
     I knew I was going to have to get one of those. Maybe Mickey Mouse sold them out of a secret shop in Tomorrow