H Romero - The Girl Who's Made of Leaves - Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Dr. Valentine calls softly to the young girl, but her voice is lost over the short distance and drowned further by the drumming of the rain on the board over the window.

Three times she calls out and each time she increases the volume of her voice, but doing so elicits no reaction.

This is not imitation, it’s something much more. More critical, yes, but what does it mean? She jumps again, shaking, startled by the storm erupting to full force outside, and draws in a sharp intake of breath. she’s always hated storms ever since she was little.

It’s the rain . They’re reacting to the storm. She remembers that it was raining on the night it happened, too.

It was cold on the night of February 24 th1942. Rain fell from the charcoal-painted sky, landing on the tin guttering, a tinkling rivulet of cold water chimed on its way in the downspouts before spreading out on the frozen ground below.

The flowerbed outside her daughter’s window stood bare, cleared of the dead and overgrown boxwoods, which have built up there, unkempt and tangled, over years of disregard of the house’s previous inhabitants.

The beds would have to wait until spring to be planted with flowers. Any yellow flowers would do. Savannah, Merna’s daughter, loved yellow more than any other color in the world, and yellow flowers, to Savannah, smelled sweeter and looked prettier any other flower in the whole world.

There were bright flashes of light, one following the other. At first, Merna thought the flashes were lightning lighting up the hand-poured glass window panes of her home, but when she parted the heavy drapes to look out, she realized it was the beams from massive searchlights positioned around the military base on the coast.

She could hear air raid sirens building up to an eardrum-bursting level. She placed her hands over her ears, protecting them from the roaring noise growing ever louder.

A small voice called for her, floating down a long hallway from the small bedroom. She ran to her little girl who was calling for her.

Savannah shrank into the comfort of a simple bed, adorned with a brass headboard. Crayons snapped beneath Merna’s bare feet as she moved through an obstacle course of toys to reach the little girl. She lifted her into her arms. The seven-year-old seemed to weigh no more than a big goose-down pillow.

Savannah covered her eyes with the backs of her tiny hands. Merna twisted at the waist from right to left and back again, rocking her from side-to-side attempting to ease her fear.

The entire house was lit unnaturally from the pallid glow of the searchlights, which crisscrossed, digging into the sky for something… something .

The rain outside slowed from a downpour to a fine mist, and everything except for the panting of the child grew silent.

Carrying Savannah to the back door, Merna gripped the knob frosted with the cold from the wintery weather on the other side of the solid slab of Beau D’arc. It felt like a hailstone in her hand as she twisted it. It was stubborn, but it turned, and the door swung open toward her.

The bottom of the weighty door scraped against the top of her big toe taking layers of skin with it. She whined, ground her teeth together, and chewed hard at her lip to help her swallow down the pain, and then she stepped onto the back porch.

The searchlights swung in the air, doing their jobs until they all gradually zeroed in on the same point in the heavens. And as they converged onto the single spot, the horizon blew apart like a firework show on the Fourth of July.

Shells exploded overhead, some falling into the neighborhoods far below and they burst open in great fireballs of reds, and oranges, and yellows, and blues, every shade in between.

Merna ducked and covered Savannah with her arms. Hugging her delicate, bony frame to her warm body even as percussive shockwaves rippled through her so that she could feel the vibration in her lungs.

Neighbors poured from their houses like Carpenter Ants from wooden hives. Like blood from open wounds, clotting in the yards, and gardens, and streets wearing pajamas, and nightgowns of pastel colors and cotton lacing.

Women had their hair up in curlers, some had cold cream on their faces making themselves look like mimes standing there to interpret the falling destruction raining down upon them all.

And the men were pulling their robes together, some stumbling over bicycles or other toys children left absent-mindedly in the front yards, trusting they’d still be where they left them tomorrow.

Men, women, and children stood in front of their homes and looked upward and pointed in confusion to what they were witnessing.

Pointing to the sky, over the city of Los Angeles, California. Something , floated there, dangling from an invisible string.

It reminded Merna of the hanging Chinese paper lanterns that she had seen at a bad Chinese restaurant.

Shells fell all around and throughout the neighborhood, rocking the earth beneath the feet of the bewildered populace. Savannah screamed in terror, directly into her mother’s ears. They cried with tinnitus. The high-pitched ringing unrelenting.

A nearby explosion and the corresponding starburst of blinding heat ripped Merna’s eyesight away from her. She stumbled, taking herself and Savannah to the ground in a heap. She blinked away the white spots dancing before her eyes as best she could.

Looking up into the black, smoke-filled sky, she could make out a small fissure which had opened in the underside of the object.

The area below of the hanging lantern ignited in a spout of sparks and flame, brilliantly illuminating the bottom portion of it, before flickering and fading.

Only a few short days after the incident the area beneath where the lantern had hovered had begun to transform people: her neighbors, good friends that Merna had known for years, both old and young were falling ill.

Some folks, unprovoked, began attacking others in the streets, for no good reason. Murdering, looting, and committing unspeakable and ungodly acts upon each other; everything about her happy life had come to an end as she had known it.

Her home, along with many others, as well as a large part of the city, had been destroyed by falling U.S. Army ammunition. The casualties of friendly fire lay in the skeletons of gutted house frames. And the bodies, too many to collect to bury, rotted in pools of clotted ichor where they fell.

Savannah, like many others, grew desperately ill right after the event. The hospital, or rather what was left of it, as some of it had fallen when the bombs fell, was overrun with injured and dying citizens.

Merna fought to get Savannah inside for treatment, even if it were for nothing more than palliative care.

She pleaded with anyone she could find, offering money, offering everything she had left, which wasn’t much. She told them she was a doctor with the Los Angeles Psychiatric Services Department, hoping the word ‘ doctor’ would get her the help she needed, but she was turned away, out of hand.

The staff at Mount Sinai hospital were doing everything they could to provide care to the hundreds of people filling its emergency departments to capacity. Finding no help, she tried some of the smaller physician offices, but they too were clogged with scores of people needing care.

Wandering aimlessly from place to place, Merna lay sobbing in a trash-filled culvert, her daughter, clutched in her arms, wrapped in a thin blanket she pulled from a trash bin.

They were both half-frozen from the cold. Merna’s shoulders bounced feebly with each ragged breath she took. Her wails were carried away on the thin winter winds, unheard on in the lonely watches of the small hours of the night.