Wasp Killer Zombie Fungus Apocolypse

I still remember the first time I saw one of them. It was a warm sunny day, in fact, the first not-rainy day in weeks. My sunlight-elaborated spirit carried me along the narrow forest track, and the fresh air that filled my lungs with every breath had an earthy, reviving scent to it. A cheerful tune on my lips and all my riches in a small, worn backpack, I made my way to nowhere in particular. I was nought but a tramp, sleeping wherever I found a dry spot, and eating whatever I found on my way. Mostly wild turnips, fabulously seasoned with the wild onions that grew like weeds back then.

Back then, there were many plants. We could actually go outside safely and enjoy the cloudy sky, or the fresh breeze. Oh yes, things were a lot different. I was just living a content vagabond life, wanting to be free from all sorrow and responsibillities. The people nowadays will never know what true freedom means.

What it was that cought my eye I don't remember. Was it the bushes' bright yellow blossom, or its sweet scent? Was it the absence of humming and chirping? Or just a general feeling of unease and solicitude? Whatever it was that made me stop my gay stroll, I curse it to this day. I would rather I had died an ignorant fool than lived with this terror.

Curious as I was, I investigated the strange, thorny bush. There were a few of those around, but I had never regarded them as anything special. You already know what I saw, you have seen plenty of them. I was not terrified at first, not even disgusted. Merely my scientific interest had been stimulated by the otherworldly creature clenching a spinely branch. Idle curiosity made me break off the branch and take the abomination with me.

The week went by so ridiculously fast. It feels like we just came back from Waitawa yesterday. It was my second and last week at Atiu Creek Regional Park, and probably my last. The work was pretty diverse - of course we did some planting and weeding, but we also spread out sheep wool as fertilizer. Why would sheep wool be used to fertilize, you ask? Because there's a lot of sheep shit in it. They don't use toiler paper. The recently-planted wetland looked as if the Marshmallow man had just exploded above it, or as if a bunch of sheep stepped on a mine field.

I have these pictures from Xandra's camera, since I forgot to take pictures this week

For one day, we repaired a path in the park. It was only about one hundred meters, but it still took a long time to take care of it. That means: Cutting down all the trees and bushes that hand in the way, getting rid from branches and leaves on the path, and re-digging a large portion of it, where the soil slid down and the path became to narrow. We walked there two weeks ago, on our first weekend in Atiu Creek, and I remember that it was really slippery and many of our group almost fell down. Now it's totally save to walk there. At least until the next rain shower.

Everyone should help building walking paths in the forest for at least one day. I know people who do not understand why there is an admission fee for some nature parks. If you are not aware of the amount of work that goes into maintaining facilities, walkways, and the forest in general, you could think that they are just "selling nature". Keep in mind that not every place has volunteers, keep in mind that you need to buy good tools even if the work is done by volunteers. And if you are not willing to build the safe, easy walking path yourself, don't complain about donating a small fee that's probably less than the gasoline you needed to get there. We live in a capitalist society, and not letting you enjoy the beauty of nature on a sturdy, work-intensive track for free is not the worst of it.

I thought it was dead, and at first, it was. Wasps weren't something note-worthy back then. They excisted and would occasionally sting you if you bothered them. They weren't appreciated by the general public like the fuzzy honey bees, but tolerated. Even if I was not yet conditioned to fear anything that can fly, I should have been more carefull. The thing, I am not sure if I could call it a wasp at this stage, looked gruesome. By the paleness of it’s body I could tell that it had died some time ago, and yet the wings had not started to decompose. The little insect was firmly clenching one thorn, it’s hairy legs were completely stiff. But that, of course, was not the most peculiar thing. What was truly revolting was not the small, striped insect itself, but what grew out of it. Stalks. Dozens of brown, bristle-like fungus-stalks. In my ignorant carelessness I did not drop it in disgust, I carried it with me. If I met a scholar or someone with broader knowledge of the forest and its creatures, they could maybe tell me what it was. Obviously, that was not necessary; I figured it out by myself.
That night, I found refuge in a welcoming village inn. The money I made by playing my tin whistle was enough for a meal and I promised to help the innkeeper with weeding the gardens for a bed.
Amongst the other guests there was a little girl with her parents. The family was traveling to visit her grand parents. They were too old to farm their land and relied on their children to help them with their work.
I went to bed late; too worthwhile were the conversations and too good the ale to go to sleep. My pest of a new pet I placed on the closet at the other side of the room, so that I could look at it before falling asleep.

We spent one afternoon walking around and collecting seeds. All the plants are eco-sourced, that means that in their nursery,  they only plant seeds from trees and scrub that already grow in the park. It is a bit too early in the year to be able to find a whole lot, but we did not leave empty-handed. It was a bit of a challenge to get the seed pods from trees, but luckily one person in our team could climb like a monkey.
The most exciting part about that day was something else. On a gorse bush, of course, I found I dead wasp. Usually, a dead wasp is more comforting and less interesting than a alive one, but this thing was really freaky. It was attacked by some kind of fungus. It’s really gross. I love gross things. The first thought that ocurred to me was, naturally, Zombie Fungus. However, that probably only attacks ants in Brazil. Still, the way that it clenches the thorn is odd. I don’t think wasps usually die like that just randomly. It would be so cool, and scary, if this actually was some kind of mind-control-zombie-fungus, but it’s far more likely that it’s just some plain old, boring fungal infestation. I couldn’t really identify it, but I found a picture of an Asianpaper wasp attacked by unknown fungus in Auckland, but it doesn’t have much context to the article. Anyways, thinking about Wasp Killer Zombie Fungus is by far more interesting.

On Friday, we weeded for a bit, but we needed to leave the house relatively early to go back to Auckland.
Unfortunately, we did not get to kill a lot of gorse. I did try to rip them out when it could. That quite easy with the baby-ones, but they do have e a strong rooting system.

Screams of horror disturbed my idle slumber.  I drowsily tried to figure out what was happening. Screaming, so much screaming. And a vicious humming. I jumped out of bed, and ran downstairs as soom as possible. People were running aroung in the taproom, running from something. I couldn’t make out quite from what. I felt something tugging on my trousers, the little girl from earlier. It was too loud for me to hear what she was saying, but I didn’t need to. I saw her mother laying on the ground, lifelessly. Her father was desperately hitting the air. I knew what to do, I grabbed and ran, as fast as I could. You might think me a coward, that I should have stayed and fought. I didn’t, I abandoned people who showed my kindness to save myself. I am not proud of that, but I don’t regret it. Afterall, I could save the girl. Maja was her name. The poor thing had just lost everything: Parents, the little savings they had, her future. I had barely owned anything in the first place and I could do without my spare shirt or my tin whistle, but she was all alone. Well apart from me.
I tried to keep her calm and protect her from the agonizing screams of our companions, and so we spent the rest of the night hiding in the bushes.
The sun rose, and the screaming stopped. The humming didn’t. It became louder and louder. It came closer. In the pale light I could make out a little wasp coming towards me. A grossely misshapen wasp with brittles growing out of its body. Could that be the dead one I found? I heard a rustling sound. The innkeeper had managed to flee as well! He was hiding not far from us. He started screaming, and ran away as the wasp approached. That was his last mistake. Faster than any man could run the wasp darted towards him and stung his throat. His face started to swell up, then it turned blue. I covered Maja’s eyes, she had seen too much gruesome tragedies. He coughed up blood as he tried to catch one last breath. It was over within minutes. We remained calm, and for some reason the wasp left us alone. Maybe it didn’t see us, maybe it knew that I was the one who brought it to all these people. It was my fault, I realized. Had I just left the monstrosity where it was or crushed it, this tragedy would have never happened. It was my fault. I killed all these people.

Now I’m sitting in a bus to Rotorua, eating chocolate cake from Little Birds. For some reason, bus rides make me very creative. This time, we are going with Naked Bus instead of Intercity. And it is a lot cheaper, the wifi actually works, and there are plugs where I can charge my laptop. I don’t know what the catch is, but for now it seems a lot nicer than Intercity. We even got a seat with a table, and it’s a lot nicer to write on there than just at the seat. The bus also has a toilet. I really don’t know why Intercity is so much more expensive.
I’m excited to see Hobbiton and of course the Geothermal Wonderland.

What happened next you already know. Maja and I tried to get to the next town as fast as possible, but without money to hire a coach or buy a horse, we could only walk. Everytime we foud a little village, someone told us a new story about people getting attacked by wasps. The villagers thought these survivers were crazy, so we kept our story to ourselves. More and more people found seemingly dead wasps and brought them home for examination. Usually, they didn’t live to see the next day. I heard one boy bragging about his curious find: a strange, brittly wasp that he now kept hidden in his parents’ cellar, and maybe managed to save his life by burning it. To this day, fire is the most effective weapon. That’s why we have all these torches. Helping him didn’t do us any good. While he was yelling at me for destrying his discovery, a swarm of wasps attacked the village. I had sent Maja to the market to try and beg for some bread earlier. She was stung. I couldn’t save her. The boy and I only survived because we were in the tightly sealed wine vault. That’s where I got the idea of building this underground bunker. I built it shortly after losing my last companion, and tried to bring as many people in here as possible. We have supplies, we get by. For the most part, we are save. I don’t know how long we have to stay in here. When we send up scouts they never make it back down. We have to be patient. We might be the only ones left.