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

I hope this works, he thinks. His palms sweat, and he turns for an instant to reassure himself that the payload is safe and sound in the back of the ambulance where he loaded it. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he notices that the herd is moving faster than he would have believed possible. He can’t see the queen. Where are you? Surely, she’s in there amidst the cluster of demons blazing a trail after him. They’re coming after the girl, or so they think. The colonel lowers the sun visor to admire the photo he taped there, his wife and children, all long gone, casualties of the war between human beings and the Turned . He runs his index finger across the faded photograph and his eyes flood with tears. It’s been so long he was beginning to think he’d forgotten how to cry.

She and her kind, her inferiors, stand quietly swaying in the moonlit evening on a planet that she will rule. Her mind is organized chaos. When she dreams, she dreams of death. Not hers, but the death of those who are not like her or her kind. The moonlight dances off her armor. She used to be like the pale soft things, the human things, but she has forgotten almost all of what it meant to be human, and she hates the tiny parts, the leftover scraps of her physiology that used to be human.

The human soldiers cannot be trusted to do as she wishes. She owes them nothing, nor they, her. They are at odds. Maybe the soldiers use the word: war. But she doesn’t think of it as war, as much as she thinks of it as a systematic eradication of all weak, human, life. A cleansing.

She understands that some change has happened to her and the Turned who are like her, changing them from disgusting soft things into something else. To her mind, it is the way it must be. In her mind, the evolution of the human being must eventually come to this. If not, then why has she become the powerful creature that she has evolved into. She is ashamed of the memories of her human past that even now slip away from her like grains of pollen carried on the wind. She and her brood will rise above all others and take the lead as only nature, no, as only evolution could have intended.

She calls her generals. They congregate around her like an evil cloak laid upon the shoulders of evil itself. She is a great queen, she knows this. But, what do her kind think of her? Do they feel she is great, or do they follow her out of fear? She decides that she doesn’t care why. One reason is as good as the other. She only cares that they do as she bids, without question. She must be smarter and wiser than the humans. She will wait for them to make the first move and she finish victorious, no matter what deceit the humans may attempt.

She is discussing with her kind her plans when a scout comes to her to inform her of movement at the human camp. As she had surmised; the small beings will try to escape. She moves to a place where she can see a vehicle that carries the little queen with a second vehicle waiting behind the first. They are trying to leave, and she cannot let this happen. Should the little queen mature, and be able to have offspring, it would jeopardize the future of the Red Queen and her army. She senses a deception and works to put a plan together. There isn’t much time to act. She readies her army and puts her plan into action.

The Colonel whips the Flying Fish into the parking area of the plant and bust through several barricaded areas. He drives toward the large hydrogen storage tanks with a legion of the red army on his heels. He needs to clear the plant and exit the other side in time to take his shot. The resulting explosion will vaporize him if he’s too close.

He slams the brake down, pressing it so hard to the floor that he’s afraid it will snap in half. His escape route is directly in front of him, but something else is waiting. The queen and her soldiers are there blocking his exit, while the others close in behind him. He is surrounded and trapped. Mere moments separate his life from violent death.

He knows what must be done. He switches his foot from the brake to the accelerator. He swings the Flying Fish around plowing overs some of the Turned. Others try to latch on to the vehicle but are dragged along with it. The colonel pulls up to the front of a massive hydrogen tank. He grabs the bazooka. It’s loaded and ready to fire. He exits the vehicle, nearly falling. The soldiers close in on him, sneering, screeching, and drooling. They reach for him. He closes both eyes, and pulls back on the trigger, sending his missile into the tank.

Rose crawls across the floor of the big truck. Old blankets are stacked in piles, along with some boxes of food and ammunition. The back of the truck has a large rectangular window which has a steel grating covering it. She moves slowly toward it. Rose uses her fingers to reach up and grab the lip of the window. She rises slowly to look back toward the base. Rose expects to see the devil following after her, but no, she and her army of lost souls have gone into the plant. No one is following. A brilliant flash fills the cabin, and a split moment later a loud explosion causes the ground to quake. Dr. Valentine sits up as straight as a board trying to look out of the rear window, but she must close her eyes to protect them from the glare. Rose squeezes tightly against Dr. Valentine, and for a moment she is blinded by the sudden flash. She can feel the truck picking up more speed. The major floors the accelerator pedal and takes them as far away from Fort Worth as fast as he can.

When Rose opens her eyes again, she finds Dr. Valentine looking out the window at the massive glowing cloud of explosive debris. Rose thinks to herself. Goodbye, Devil . Everyone is very quiet now, and the truck races on toward Arkansas.

Rose doesn’t have to ride in the back anymore, so now she’s sitting in the passenger seat. She loves to watch the trees as they pass by in a hazy blur and the way the roads twist and turn as they travel through the mountains. The major thought it would be safe enough to roll the windows down because the grates over the windows would keep anything bad from getting in, so she presses her face against the grating and feels the breeze blowing on her face.

The major made it seem like he was letting her do it, so she could look outside, and get some fresh air, but Rose thinks it’s more likely that with the vines growing in her hair, that he wants to be able to shoot her if she were to become dangerous. Right after they left Fort Worth, Rose noticed changes on her arms and legs, which have started to sprout vines too, and she’s kept it to herself. Still, Rose makes the most of the offer to sit in front and look outside. She would prefer to believe that the major is being nice to her, just to be nice to her. Either way, she gets to sit in the front seat.

“We’re coming to a town, we’ll need to get some gas and see if we can wrangle up something to eat,” says Connors, without taking his eyes from the old logging road they’re traveling on.

Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw are muttering back and forth to each other, but Rose can’t hear what the conversation is about, because of the wind blowing in through the window. Whatever it is, Dr. Valentine isn’t happy about it. Occasionally their voices rise and fall as one or the other gets angry. And once or twice Rose thought she heard her name mentioned. Rose turns to the major and smiles. He doesn’t smile back exactly, but he doesn’t give her a dirty look either. Weariness and worry cover his face, thicker than the layer of dirt and sweat that’s on it.