Invasion of the Fungus Zombies — John Argo

These are not your old, stupid, smelly, stumbling zombies. They are smooth, seductive, stealthy, and unstoppable. You've heard of Gen-X, Gen-Y, Gen-Z. Forget these generations; they are so Yesterday. Your generation, the newest and most deadly, is Gen-FZ (Fungus Zombies). They are taking over. First San Diego, then the world. To numb you for the final take-down, your seducer breathes a dark cloud of spores in your face. It sticks a black slimy tube in your neck, and takes you down to become a bracket fungus against the baseboard. When you emerge, you are one of them, ready to seduce your first victim. If you cut a mushroom's head off and set it on a sheet of paper, it begins seeding millions of tiny spores that fill the air, your lungs, and everything around. It is the perfect vehicle for the conquest of our world, using our deadliest enemies--from the Fifth or Fungus Kingdom all around us. And who would suspect? By the time a spore mensch has you in its arms, it is too late. It begins in little homes in ordinary neighborhoods around the city. A boy named Jimmy Mendez, 9, and his cousin Maribel Walesky, 10, await the return of their dads from the sea. The creatures that come home are Things - not men. They may look like merchant sailors, but they are silent and empty-eyed spore zombies, not the same dads who went to sea. At first, only the children can see this, but nobody will believe them. Jimmy watches the dad-Thing embrace his mom, and a long shiny black tube snakes from its mouth as it sucks life from her neck and makes her the next fungus zombie. Maribel also witnesses such a horror, but she is referred to Juvie as a nut case. Soon, people begin dying all over town, turning into zombie spore carriers seeking their next victim to infect. The alien forces behind it are well-organized. From a secret airstrip in the Volcan Mountains and Anza Borrego desert, they fly crop-duster planes across the city to efficiently spread their spores. By the time human authorities at last realize what is going on, it's all but too late. Lt. Linsey Simon, San Diego Harbor Police, and her husband, hard-hitting reporter Jack Simon, are among the first to realize that Jimmy and Maribel are telling the truth. San Diego, beautiful tourist capital of blue skies and balmy sea breezes, is already the first colony of the fungal or Fifth Kingdom of life on Earth.