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

“A Wicked Briar. Did you know they could do this?” says Connors.

Shaw shakes his head, no.

Dr. Valentine takes the jar from him and inspects the contents carefully. “They’re dead.” She opens the lid and pokes one of the eggs with a pencil tip. It breaks apart like ash.

Shaw looks disappointed. Maybe he was hoping he could have hatched one. “They’re trying to create offspring. I’ve never seen any Turned do this before. This is completely new, but not entirely unexpected.”

Dr. Valentine, placing the lid back on the jar, gives it a little shake, and the rest of the contents turn to a pile of black dust and settle on the bottom. “Lucky for us looks like something’s gone wrong, at least with the clutch.”

“This was just a few of what it had,” Connors says, “There were hundreds just like these. All black and dried up.”

“let’s hope they don’t perfect the art of breeding,” says Dr. Valentine.

“Doctor Shaw, I’d like to take a gander at what you found in that brain. I want to see it, right now.”

The call’s gone out from Camp Able, as Major Connors ordered, to any base that’s still communications capable.

Camp Able, over the years, has lost contact from Camp Kane, in San Marcos, Texas; Camp Able’s sister camp. Camp Kane had been overrun and gutted by the Turned . Forty-seven fighting men and women. Nothing left but their skins hanging and drying like leather, from the ramparts, waving in the wind, like flags of defeat.

At one-time transmissions were sent back and forth from Kane and Able, nearly every day. Kane was meant to be a temporary base, originally set up as an evac point That was earlier, when the first death rattles of the world first began to ooze from the open cracks of the Earth. Kane, like Able, had been a home for soldiers and refugees alike.

Besides, Camp Kane, nobody knows how many bases are still in operation. That insignificant base might as well be located on the surface of the moon. Gone are the days when Kane responded to Camp Able’s transmissions, and except for a faint, static-laden signal the air’s been transmission free.

Some believe the defenses of Kane’s walls have been lofted ever higher since those first days, and if there’s anyone still alive there, then the gates are barricaded, self-survival becoming the trend.

The call Airwave placed a few short hours ago was different, because it triggered a response. But Kane had no one on base who studied parasites; Earth-born, or otherwise. And as it turned out Kane’s doctor had his hands full fighting off a severe sickness infecting the base. The radio operator made it clear that outside contact was unwelcome but promised to relay Able’s request down the pipe.

Nothing more than white noise hissed through the lonely speaker for days, until a disconnected whisper grows into a coherent string of information. Airwave, glued to a metal folding chair, frantically makes notes, taking them down in shorthand. He sometimes talks to himself and sometimes answers himself and sometimes tells himself jokes, only he laughs at. He’s been manning the radio in a lonely little boot devoid of quality human interaction for too long.

The pasty-skinned man nearly chokes on a hard biscuit. Washing down the lodge lump of dough with cold coffee, he sputters and responds to the message. Licking away the taste of bitter caffeine from his lips, he runs across the yard and the parade grounds, looking all the world like a chicken running for cover, before the major notices him, and moves to engage him, head on.

“Report, private,” says Connors. There is excitement on the young man’s face, and his body language shows something is brewing. Connors can feel the anxiety tightening his chest.

Out of breath, Airwave inhales deeply and tries again to talk, but he’s too winded. Instead, he hands the major the message.

Connors reads it silently to himself. His lips move silently as he scans each line. He crumbles the sheet of paper in his fist and hands the balled-up note to Airwave. “Thank you, that will be all, private.”

Weapons fire. The Connors and Airwave instinctively fall to the ground, where their reflexes drive them. Both place their dominant hands on their side arms and draw them.

The shots are coming from the southern entrance of the base. Another round of mixed-arms fire, followed by random shouting, raise Major Connors’s hackles. The weapon fire ceases, and he believes whatever transpired over at the south entrance has been taken care of. Until a steady eruption of gunpowder rises near the south gate in pale grey clouds of burning stink.

Men are running in every direction. A soldier stumbles around the corner of a steel-sided outbuilding. Catching sight of the major, he shouts, “Wicked Briars… the south gate.” He’s using his hands to wave Connors toward the south gate. The soldier is frantic. His movements are over-animated, a tell-tale sign that the man has probably soiled his fatigues.

Connors rallies men to the south gate, with raucous calls for support. At breakneck speed, he runs toward the fray, catching himself before he stumbles and falls over his tired feet.

More shooting, this time from the western side of the base. This stops the major in his tracks. The enemy is encroaching on two sides of the base. This is no coincidence. This is a planned maneuver. The Turned have shown up for a battle in impressive numbers. The perimeter of the camp is crawling with monsters.

Wicked Briars close in on the fortification and tear away at the walls, post by post, brick, by brick, and fence panel by fence panel, but soon, seeing that this is far too much work resort to vomiting acid. The goo the beasts spout onto the thick fences causes them melt, like silver wax placed too close to a flickering flame, dripping to the ground in steaming pools of heated slag.

A pack of what some of the enlisted men call Hobbles; oddly random variations of half-human, half-beast, scamper purposefully on their path through the lines of Wicked Briars. You don’t see many Hobbles. They are few and far between, easy to pick off, and more of a hindrance than an actual threat unless they get you down. Then it’s curtains for you. The things weave through the Wicked Briars like hunting foxes through tall grass, sleek and graceful, but blood-thirsty and skillful in the kill. They are hungry and salivate, foaming at the thought of gnawing Man flesh to the bone and deep into the marrow within.

Fight as they do, the soldiers are hopeless to match the sheer numbers near indomitability of the enemy foe. Airwave is lost to a blast of acid splashing over a wall. It came from nowhere. Connors barely missed being doused in the flesh-melting concoction.

Connors could hear the cries and random shouting all over the base, but one catches his attention.

“Major!”

It’s Hollander. “The base is lost. We’ve to get the hell out of here.”

The major cries out to the closest tower to sound the evacuation signal. The base has been overtaken. Hollander is correct; to stay and fight would be folly.

An errant shell is lobbed intended for a matter of great lethality but goes astray. The two men dive for cover, covering their heads from the noise and explosion to come. It spears the hospital building rending it open, directly down the center, like a butchered cow. The principal portion of the structure is destroyed, most notably, the cells of research subjects. Smoldering chunks of the building lay in pyramids of dust-shrouded rocks. Dust billows in fluffed curtains of brown and gray ash, choking out the sunlight. Calls and cries well up, and outward, from the broken wreckage and tangles of demolished inner-structure.