The Girl Who's Made of Leaves: Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction

by H. R. Romero

  Repeatedly, in the past, he has tried to redirect her irrational thought processes; her belief that they are the redeemable spawn of human parents. These are not children. They once were, but not anymore. They are most certainly, quite certifiably, monsters. The ‘child’ in each of them, abducted by the affliction.

  Shaw knows that Dr. Valentine thinks she can save them all. They cannot be saved. Give it up, Valentine. They can’t be cured. They will never be innocents again. He shakes his head, no, they must all die… every one of them.

  Neville.

  Dr. Shaw turns the squeaky stool seat, searching for the person who called his name. It was a lady’s voice. It was faint, but he was sure he heard it. A woman called to him, the voice sounded familiar. But he can see no one, through the O.R. window, except for the guards posted there.

  Neville.

  There it is again. Must be Dr. Valentine coming to stir up the cauldron with the stick end of her witch’s broom. As he turns to continue collecting the specimens. He stops and exhales. He’s exhausted. He lowers his head to where the cleft of his chin rests gently on his chest. He thinks he knows the voice, but it can’t be.

  Neville.

  No, it is. It’s Laura. It’s impossible. How could he have forgotten the sweetness of it, or the panic within it the last time he heard it calling to him. He’s still haunted by her voice.

  He wakes in the night to see her leaning over him, her ghost accusing him of making such a horrendous decision. But it seems so very long ago, and now she’s dead.

  It was a long time ago.

  “Neville, there’re rats in here.”

  “Laura?” he ran to the cramped bedroom they used to share together, off base. His wife was collecting some of their belongings so that she could take them back to Camp Able and set up some semblance of a normal home for them. He has the baby tucked safely in one arm, and she’s chuckling all the way as he bounces her down the hallway on his hip.

  He threw the door open wide to find Laura standing on the bed, biting her fingernails, as at least half a dozen large rats scatter into whatever hole or cubby they can find.

  Their house was within sight of the base, just a mile or so outside the confines of the fence. What was he thinking? That this was going to be a family outing? The soldiers didn’t want him to go outside the fences. So, in the end, when he insisted that he and Laura were going to retrieve some of their belongings and no one could stop them, one soldier had been ordered to accompany the doctor and his wife and their newborn.

  Like an idiot, he didn’t bother to consider that they would be in danger. The reports of the Turned were still scattered at best, and the sightings and attacks were isolated and more prominent in remote locations in the western reaches of the state.

  He wanted to give Laura an opportunity to get the things that meant the most to her. Things which would be lost had she not come. He didn’t know how bad things would eventually get, and if they would ever see their house again.

  The smell of formalin pulls him from that dreadful day, and he finds himself looking into Lily’s glassy eyes. He takes a core sample of her iris, and cornea, and pushes the collected tissue into a small specimen container. It floats down, spiraling into the preservative, finally coming to rest on the bottom of the jar.

  Just like dear little Lily here, he’ll bring the research subjects in, one at a time, and study them until he has an answer… the answers… whatever answers he may glean from his countless hours leaning over specimen containers, and agar plates, and microscopes. Even Rose will come in… eventually to be studied until there is nothing left to study, not even the smallest piece of connective tissue.

  Neville!

  The voice calls to him again. Louder. But this time he knows it for what it is. A phantom of the past, a torturous condemnation that would never let him forget the choice to leave the safety of the base, with his beautiful, frightened wife, and defenseless child. Only a fool, he knows now, would have done such a stupid thing. And he pays the price for his ignorance, every long, long day without the two little lights of his life.

  A few boxes of odds and ends, a family photo album, and a some extra changes of clothing were all that they’d managed to save from the gnawing teeth of the rats.

  Before he opened the door to the living room, to walk back outside to the jeep, and leave their home for the last time, both he and Laura took one final look around their dust-coated living room. Laura took the baby from her husband and held her close to her breast as she cried softly.

  Laura said nothing as she turned and opened the door to walk, bravely, from their home. As the door opened, it did so onto the side of a blood-strewn jeep, and tattered remains of an olive-green military uniform.

  It was too late for him to help Laura and the baby. She stepped onto the redwood porch before he could stop her, he tried to reach for her, for the baby, but it was a fruitless gesture.

  That thing, that monstrous congealed heap of an unearthly creature, and the human pieces dangling from it, was on top of them before he could react.

  Laura screamed, the child shrieked. Mercifully, it was over before they had realized the end had come. They had been snatched away from him and out of his life forever.

  It hadn’t seen him. Too busy engorging itself on his wife and young daughter’s limp corpses. Neville Washington Shaw disappeared into the shadows of the house. He buried himself in the closet of the bedroom he had shared with Laura.

  The rats clawed and ate at him for hours until the soldiers from Camp Able came and found him cowering there.

  He shakes his head to clear the image from his mind, he knows it won’t stay away for long. He shakes the lingering fragments of the past away and wipes the tears from his clouded eyes with the sleeve of his lab coat.

  Yes, these things will answer for the loss of his wife and his sweet baby girl. The Turned and the research subjects are one in the same, MONSTERS! Predators. That’s all, and nothing more.

  He will keep going, keep cutting, keep digging. Deeper and deeper, until he has a remedy that will take them down once and for all, no matter what, no matter how long it takes. And, should he run out of subjects before he has all the answers, he’ll have the soldiers collect more, and repeat the process all over again.

  But, for now, he still has too many questions, some questions to which he already knows the answers. But the most important answer still eludes and taunts him, like for instance, why are the affected children so different than affected adults?

  Perhaps it’s because the physiology of the pediatric host is markedly different than that of the adult host population.

  Of course, they reacted differently to the affliction. But why did they not undergo the physical transformations… mutations… that the adult victims had undergone?

  He could only theorize; the pediatric bodies were a perfect, hospitable host, accepting whatever contamination they had met in the first place, during the initial event.

  Dr. Valentine had said it was something that had fallen out of the object.

  Perhaps the contamination is parasitic in nature and not an infection at all.

  Yet no parasite has been confirmed in any of the subjects’ specimens to date. None of the samples came back positive for any parasitical infestation whatsoever.

  He remains perplexed and frustrated, and anxious… impatient to a heightened degree. He has the feeling he’s chasing his tail, tugging at endless strings. Chasing squirrels, in fact.

  Shaw turns his past research over and over in his brain, one bewildering stone at a time, looking for anything he might have missed. Replaying the tapes will take days.

  He cuts Lily’s scalp with a number 10 scalpel. The incision is made from her right ear to her left ear, across the top of her head.

  Her sticky blood drools onto the autopsy table and puddles like thick syrup. Lines of the hemoglobin stretch like honey from the cut. He has tested the blood tirelessly. Whatever causes the thick, sticky substance in the
blood is still an unidentified, mystery component. Shaw is no hematologist.

  He’s unfamiliar with the element which has merged with the hemoglobin causing, what appears to be purposeful coagulation of sorts; designed by intent and supporting the optimal hemostasis of the host’s body, and whatever the hell else is in it.

  He peels Lily’s scalp gently forward. The feeling of it opening to reveal a potential clue, to an answer, to anyone of his questions is an exhilarating prospect.

  Her small skull is partially exposed, and the fresh smell of raw human tissue reaches him. He pinches his surgical mask tighter to the bridge of his nose, leaving blood-stained prints on it. He pays the smell of it no mind and proceeds with the procedure as planned.

  The temporalis muscle releases the scalp from the skull easily. Shaw peels it away by prodding the connecting tissues with his fingertips. A faint tearing sound accompanies the action; it satisfies his need to look inside the girl. He dissects the temporalis muscle with the scalpel and folds it forward until the flap lays across her nose, concealing her death-stare.

  It’s time for the bone saw. The clunky instrument springs to life filling the room with a whine. He forgoes making the notch that will allow him to place the skull back together after he removes the brain from its hiding place. No crying parents are waiting for their dead child to come back, presentable as an unblemished lamb, after an autopsy.

  The saw's teeth dig in, excavating a narrow channel through the bone, circumferentially around the exposed rise skull. The smell of heated bone lifts into the air covering the smell of raw flesh. The grinding hum of the saw disrupts the silence of the procedure room, rebounding from the surface of the indifferent walls, tiled in colors of sky blue and dazzling white.

  Splinters of bloody bone marrow sputter from the saw blade, rising into the air. A moist, red canopy of bio-sludge falling to rest in muddy clumps on his shoes.

  All the cuts have been made in precisely the right place. He removes the skull cap to expose the brain, by popping the loosening the corners with a Ragnell retractor where the saw didn’t connect the four channels. Reaching for a scalpel with a longer handle, he slices the tissue which connects the brain to the inside of the skull, cleanly.

  With a few more delicate swipes of the blade, he removes the brain, reaching in with steady hands. Carefully. So carefully. He exhales long and slow. If he's been holding his breath the entire time he is unaware of doing so, but it feels like he must have. He’s mildly dizzy with hope. He inhales and lets his breath out again, slowly, to release the stress which is building upon his shoulder making him want to shrug away the burning sensation. But he can’t shrug the stress away now. He must move his whole body in concert with the delicate organ he holds in his hands. Lily’s brain. Turning it to look at it from various angles, he frowns before lowering it to the autopsy table. The brain is completely unremarkable in every way.

  The stool groans with the effort of supporting his full weight, as he settles back. He folds his bloody surgical gloves in his hands and sighs deeply shrugging the tightness and discomfort in his back and shoulders.

  Unremarkable; the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, and the basal ganglia, all appear to be normal. Disappointing to say the least. The color, the shape, and the size of the sulci and gyrus of the subject’s brain appear to be what he would have expected to find in a girl of Lily’s age, who had died from normal causes, but this girl is far from typical… far from human. She’s one of them. She’s Turned. Damn. There should have been something. Some swelling, some infection, or an anomalous finding.

  He closes his heavy, aching eyelids. He rubs them hard, but not hard enough to rub out the sight of the normal brain. They are still closed when the sucking-sound gets his attention. He opens them sluggishly. Unremarkable, hell. The brain pulses in random places; the angular gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus, the superior temporal gyrus, and Wernicke's area… almost imperceptive pulses, every one, but nonetheless… it was pulsing and only for a second or two, but it did pulse. It was more than electrical pulses or spasms. Something was pushing on the tissue from within. Like an unborn baby moving within its mother’s womb Something is on the inside of the brain itself.

  Chapter Seven

  “People die… Beauty fades… Love changes… And you will always be alone.”

  -L.J. Smith, Night World, No. 3

  Major Connors and Sergeant Hollander are hunkered down in the well-worn seats of a 1944 Ford, bomb service truck; its engine turned off a short while ago still pops and crackles as is cools in the late hours of the evening.

  Sgt. Hollander takes what’s left of a stale, chewed-up cigar from the pocket of his fatigues. He picked it up from a handmade, clay ashtray, in an old abandoned house yesterday during a supply run. He tests the tip with his teeth, biting into it gingerly, not enough to break the dry wrapping.

  Major Connors busies himself, scanning the sun-baked street before them for signs of movement. The truck is an awkward centerpiece at a four-way intersection, taking up a good portion of it. It’s not as if anyone will want to try to pass. The streets are empty of other moving vehicles and have been for a long time. There’re some cars still on the streets, but they’re only occupants are desiccated bodies. Those who waited too long to evacuate.

  The bomb service truck’s nose points toward Elizabeth Street. It’s the best vantage point in town. Everywhere else is congested with bodies and debris or has way too many blind spots for the majors liking.

  Four days and three nights away from Camp Able has placed Connors right on edge. He’s dirty, and he can smell himself. It’s not pleasant. Smelling Hollander’s reek is no treat either.

  Hollander’s his same optimistic self, talking incessantly about how “When this is all over…” and “What I’ll do first is….” Connors ignores him as he always does when Hollander has nothing worthwhile to say.

  Private White Deer; Camp Abel’s resident Chickasaw Indian, and Private Austin have been No Contact for over fifteen minutes, nineteen minutes to be more accurate, and that’s against protocol. But, Major Connors won’t call them on the radio. It might blow their position should they be squatting down somewhere and trying to keep a low profile.

  “…a steak… this thick. Oh man, I can taste it. Can you taste it, Major?” Hollander holds his forefinger and thumb a good four inches apart measuring the imaginary steak. “Oh, and a tall glass of good ol’ Irish whiskey. Don’t forget the whiskey. The kind that burns all the way down and warms you from the top of your head all the way down to toes.”

  He chews on the soggy butt of the cigar letting the tobacco juice slide down his throat, making it clear that he is relishing the moment with the looks of pure delight on his face. He spits out a small piece of tobacco leaf that sticks to the tip of his tongue, out the open driver’s side window, and continues to yammer with a gravelly southern drawl.

  Connors is only half-listening, scrutinizing the street for any surprises. He reminds Hollander to be keeping his eyes on the three sixty.

  Hollander squirms uncomfortably in his seat, repositioning himself and intensifying his focus on the buildings surrounding their position. It’s not long before he resumes the previous discussion. “When this whole thing is over, major, the first thing I’m going to do is find the first finest redhead I can, get a cheap motel room, rip her dress right off, and….” Static interrupts Hollander’s lewd thought process.

  “—White Deer to Major Connors, come in, Major. Over.” The radio crackles unnervingly loud, but Connors doesn’t turn it down. The sotto voice of Private White Deer fades in and out on the SCR-536 walkie-talkie, mounted on the dashboard, cluttered with bottles and food wrappers.

  The radio should be getting a better signal. The major figures the interference must be in correlation to the surrounding buildings and businesses along Elizabeth Street. He acknowledges the call by saying, “Connors here. Over.”

  One lone bead of sweat dangles and drips from his pulsating right temple. It
runs downward following Connors’s crow’s foot finally to wet his eyeball. He rubs away the sting of the perspiration. The Texas sun, slipping down the face of the sky, is scorching. Connors sometimes thinks it might be possible for the State of Texas to be closer to the sun than the rest of the planet, by at least a few million miles.

  He is getting close to calling an end to the search. He bites his bottom lip, considering putting a search for his missing men to bed. The runners failed to return to base on time and were now, way overdue. “Any sign of the runners, White Deer? Over.” Harsh static answers Connors, initially. He waits for the signal to strengthen.

  White Deer’s voice rises above the interference, but the first part of the message was lost to bad signal. “… but it doesn’t look too good, Major. We found Private Parson’s pack, full of groceries and meds, dropped right smack down in the middle of Fifth and South Point.”

  Connors guts writhe, his mind settles in for the worst-case scenario; he’s lost two more men. He’s ready for this to end. He thought that staying put at Camp Able would limit the losses. And, he guesses it has, for the most part. That, and sticking close to the base for supply runs. Every now and then, though, you lose people, and every time he loses a man, he sets his mind to keeping with his plan, which is fortifying Able and staying close to home, for however long that may be. There’s no need to go anywhere and chance losing everything and get everyone killed.

  A folded area map lays on the dash against the windshield. It’s sun-bleached but still useful. He unfolds it, puts his reading glasses on, and scans it for location White Deer gave. He finds it tapping a finger on the spot. He listens to White Deer’s interpretation of what he and Private Austin discovered.

  “It’s pretty good stuff: canned goods, preserves, a couple cartons of cigarettes, and a bunch of aspirin. They would’ve never dropped this stuff unless they had to high-tail it out of here in a big hurry.” Static disturbs the communication briefly. “…tracks on Lieutenant Grayson. Over.”