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

by H. R. Romero

  She isn’t sure at first, perhaps it’s a minor shift in the stance the children take, as their inner ears collaborate with the remainder of their adolescent brains to maintain a delicate balance, as they sway to and fro. If one might come along now the children might appear as if they are listening to some music unheard by anyone else in all the world.

  But as hours tick off, one by one, and the golden orb arcs from east to west, the children’s faces, now sunburned by solar radiation, follow it across. Their postures shift to absorb the abundant solar energy warming the Earth. Their bodies’ rock gently, their faces stay fixed to the sun. The children dance and swoon, nearly imperceptibly, hypnotic metronomes are they.

  Merna marvels at their movements which sync in time with the heartbeat of the solar winds, a slow-motion ballet. She would rather write it off as a balancing mechanism that makes them rock in place like marionettes. And then she says, “They are just like… I don’t know… just like…,”

  “Just like plants,” says Shaw.

  “I’ve seen this. Well, not this, exactly. But a collective reaction to stimulus. Last night, during the storm. Not one, but all of them.”

  “Subjects.” Shaw corrects her once more. He is unforgiving in his want, to beat this thought they these are innocents.

  Dr. Valentine remains silent. She maintains her doctrine. These are children with a right to be freed from this terrible, terrible thing that’s happened to them. A small part of her wonders if they can ever be what they were ever again. The thing inside of them has scooped out what they used to be and has made them something entirely new. How could anyone come back from this? “They were all standing in front of the boards, reaching out for rain that they couldn’t see.”

  “I made the same observations, weeks ago before you arrived. There’s a strong reaction and pull toward anything that would sustain plant-life.”

  Bastard. A taste of rotten garbage slips past her tongue and dribbles into her throat. The sourness of the realization of his out-and-out betrayal scrapes her palate raw. Her cheeks flush, not from the sweltering heat, but rather her resurfacing anger towards him. Her blood pressure rises. Her ears go from pink to scarlet, bilaterally, across the scaphoid fossa and helix.

  The sun sinks in the western sky, and as it does the hospital building which houses the children, casts a grey shadow, slowly skulks across the courtyard, inch by inch, caressing sand and pebbles as it goes until the intense evening light dims around Hawthorne, cloaking him in the colors of his inner spirit of greys and deep lavender-blue.

  His swaying becomes mildly spasmodic, losing the smoothness of the swaying motion. His tilt from side to side slows in comparison to the other two children. Something is happening, but just what is not certain. Valentine senses a change coming over the boy. She surmises it must be being brought on by the casting of the shadow onto his body. He’s emerging from his pseudo-hypnotic state, of that, there’s no doubt. Lightly, he begins to whistle as he often does, softly at first, then the whistling grows steadily louder.

  When the shadow falls across Rose, her sway becomes more animated, and Dr. Valentine can see that an area of her brain, the vestibulocerebellum is auto-correcting itself, so the child doesn’t fall. Amazing that the creature she saw laying on the table in the operating room, with all its digging and tunneling and hollowing out of the brain had left the hosts critical neuro functions intact. Of course, there was a plan all along. If it planned to use the host’s body, then it was only logical for it to keep areas of the brain intact that it would need to control it and keep it alive.

  Rose’s sticky eyes flutter open, but she still isn’t completely lucid. She wakes confused and mumbling. She remembers being brought to the courtyard, and then her mind drifting away, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was helpless to the seduction to which she found herself subjected.

  Hawthorne is whistling his tune somewhere behind her. The drowsiness is wearing off, but the sweeping energy is still present; the pleasure of it threatens to overwhelm her again, but she’ll resist its calling to her. The whispers and promises of fulfillment. She could bust from its presence in her, but at the same time, wants it to never end. Never find its way out of her body. How long it will last, she doesn’t have a clue.

  There’s another person whistling… it’s started off slow, but gradually it picks up both tempo and pitch, to match Hawthorne. She has memorized Hawthorne’s tune, and the second whistler matches Hawthorne perfectly, note for note.

  She searches for the source of the accompaniment, and there, outside the fenced courtyard, the green man who always seems to find Hawthorne’s tune so infectious. He is performing maintenance on a jeep. The hood is propped open, and he’s hanging over the radiator so that he can see way down into the engine.

  The man wipes the sweat of a long, hard day from his gritty neck with a greasy, green rag. The rumble of a vehicle grows closer. Rose pays it no mind. She fights to keep her eyes open.

  She focuses on the whistling green man who stares off into space, lost in deep thought, ill-focused and disoriented.

  The shadow is now falling across Ivy, and the girl is swaying from front to back, bumping into Rose occasionally. She is waking too. Rose is aware that Dr. Shaw, Valentine and the green men are in the enclosure along with them, but for some reason that she can’t understand, she feels an undesirable omen is lingering over them all; a foreboding sense of doom. A thin invisible tendril connects Hawthorne to the whistling green man’s mind.

  Rose heard Dr. Shaw asking the green men to return the subjects to their cells. That’s a funny word, cell, but that is exactly what it is. Not her room, with the little light hanging from her ceiling with the Milky Way encircling it, but a cell. She’s a prisoner, she does not belong here, and she doesn’t like it at all. But she will stay here with the other children because they belong together, wherever they are.

  Rose watches the whistling green man walk in a stagger, encircling the jeep, he approaches the passenger side. He reaches in and pulls out a bayonet. He draws its blade from a hard-cased sheath. The blade makes a scraping sound against the hard casing.

  Private Osbourne is coming to lead them back inside. Rose doesn’t move, even a little, when Ivy tugs on the cable to lead the way back into the hospital. She’s too enthralled by the whistling green man’s actions, He lifts the bayonet directly in front of his unshaven face. He admires the bayonet as if it’s a beautifully sculptured idol. His eyes tear. His lips pucker. He whistles. Mirroring Hawthorne’s tune exactly, note for note, inhaling and blowing through dry, pursed lips and plunges the bayonet into his abdomen. The blade, bloodied, is withdrawn from his protruding guts and the driven into his side. The man’s face doesn’t show the least bit of pain. It’s not registering as pain. He is numb to the self-induced violence and continues to whistle while he carves great holes into his weakening body. Blood spurts and sprays the ground where it soaks into the dirt. Stabbing and stabbing himself, over, and over again.

  Other green men come to life in response to what’s happening. The approach the man, to stop him, to render aid to him, but before they can get to him, they, each, in turn, stop dead in their tracks and whistle too. They’ve become a macabre choir acting as one, and the conductor of death is a little boy. Hawthorne has them all under his influence. His mind has taken their individual will away and has replaced their need to self-preserve with suicidal intent.

  One of the green men climbs a ladder leading up to a water tower. Another draws his service revolver and tries to put a bullet smack dab into the center of his brain, but he overshoots, the power of the weapon comes out the other side of his head, hitting someone in the shoulder. The green man who’s climbed the tower reaches the top and throws herself to her death as if the act itself is effortless. Her neck breaks with a wet snap where she lands.

  Not all the green men are acting under falling victim to Hawthorne, only those who have come to help the whistling man. There’s a sphere of influe
nce surrounding the man, instantly affects anyone who steps into it.

  Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw, horrified at this awful thing taking place, and both are backing away from the three children grouped in the yard, so they don’t get caught up in it too.

  Private Osbourne and his companion in the courtyard are shouting at their comrades through the diamond-shaped holes in the fence, trying to stop them from acting in such a grisly manner. They’re shouting out to others to go and help, but then, they quit shouting, and together they drop their weapons to the ground. Hawthorne has them under his control too. The guards grip the fence and bash their heads against the support-posts repeatedly. The grate their faces across the galvanized chain link panels. Their faces are soon reduced to the consistency of ground meat in record time.

  Ivy smiles at what carnage her brother has created. She resembles a feral animal drooling over the kill. Rose spins around. Her intent is to do what she can to make Hawthorne end the bloodshed, but before she can do anything at all, a shot echoes throughout the base and a sticky spout of blood sprays her directly in the face.

  A bullet has pierced flesh and bone, and Hawthorne’s head cracks open like a thin-shelled egg. The metallic smell of fear permeates the air. Rose is familiar with it. There is always a hint of it carried on the air and permeating the uniforms of the green men. It coats the inside of her nares. The odor is robust, and hangs in the air like fog, concealed from her eyes, only registering on her sense of smell and taste.

  Ivy, in shock by what has happened to her brother, screams at the very top of her lungs. The nature of the scream is unearthly. It’s so loud that it’s painful. All over Camp Able, people hurry to cover ears, struggling to protect the thin tympanic membranes from Ivy’s sonic bombardment.

  Noses dribble blood in response to the change in atmospheric pressure that the sound is creating. Faces of the men and women here demonstrate clearly, the indescribable pain that Ivy’s scream is inflicting.

  Rose has covered her ears instinctually but lowers her hands. Ivy’s wailing isn’t affecting her in the same way that it’s affecting everyone else. Forcefully, she takes Ivy’s hands in hers, in desperation she shakes her, but it doesn’t make her stop screaming. Nothing makes her stop. She shakes Ivy harder, still no effect. Ivy’s wail is a continuous assault. Doctors Valentine and Shaw have fallen to their knees and are covering their heads with their arms as if they’re being physically beaten. Rose is screaming, pleading for Ivy to stop, and then silence, but only because Ivy is drawing in another deep breath, so she can cry out again. In that moment of short, but blessed ringing-silence, a second shot splits the terror down the middle. Ivy falls to the ground, exhaling her final breath from her lungs.

  Rose is sticky with the blood of the dead brother and sister. She stands motionless, in the courtyard, still holding onto Ivy’s lifeless hand. She locks eyes, filled with anger, on the man who had just murdered two of her kind. He’s kneeling next to an old bomb service truck, his handgun aimed, and his sights are glued on her. The little hairs stand up on the back of her neck, and a cold ripple of horror trickles down her spine. She knows that she’s the man’s next target.

  Dr. Valentine staggers across the courtyard, wiping the blood from her nose, she’s shouting urgently. Rose stands her ground, looking death-daggers at the assassin with the gun. Dr. Valentine rushes to stand in front of her, waving her arms in the air, and saying, “No, Major Connors. No! She was trying to stop it! Please, don’t shoot her!”

  It seems like forever before Connors grudgingly lowers his sidearm and casts a stare so intense that Rose can feel its invisible punch. He gives orders for the body of a man named, White Deer, who had succumbed to his injuries and burns to be taken to the morgue.

  Hollander steps out from the driver’s seat and assists in attending to the injured and dying men.

  “Shaw, Valentine, my office, one hour!” says Connors, who also goes to the aid of the fallen.

  Chapter Twelve

  “We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.”

  -Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

  Connors’s office is centrally located, next to the parade grounds. The office once belonged to the base commander, Bantam was his name, A dusty name-plate still sits on the desk, bearing his name.

  Bantam had been forced into early retirement by a Grub. The thing had buried itself near a latrine, this was the story he’d heard from some of his men. What a crappy way to go. Literally. Either way, the office was vacant, so he assumed command, and moved right in after he arrived from California. The officer in command at the time was relieved in more ways than one, not wanting to shoulder the weight of leadership, happily turned the base over to him.

  He can feel his insides begin to quiver as adrenaline peters away, and he thinks about how the world has changed, how many men have died under his command, since Los Angeles.

  No one could have possibly foreseen such a thing happening. The object which flew into our atmosphere and settled above the Los Angeles skyline changed everything in the wink of an eye. The spaceship sent humanity sprawling headfirst into a race for its existence.

  During the first days following the disaster, Dr. Valentine had said she’d seen a crack open in the bottom of it. Something must have leaked out, wreaking destruction on a scale never before witnessed by human beings; an extinction event.

  Connors isn’t for certain, but he has reason enough to believe the whole world was thrown through the windshield when this thing whatever it was stomped on the brake pedal. He and a few others rode the crest of the wave leaving L.A. which carried death along with it. He saw the rapidity of the change, the mutations of souls, now lost. He saw it in the towns and cities as the people turned into bloodthirsty savages. How bad this all is, how widespread, nobody truly knows. It could be worldwide, it could just be contained to the United States.

  The night he and his ragtag convoy left Fort Irwin in Barstow, California, the countryside was crawling with the Turned. Every street, every field, everywhere… just crawling with those things. And those who hadn’t transformed, into sideshow freaks were either in the process of transforming or being dispatched by unspeakable post-human monsters.

  The hellishness of what they can do is frightening, and it's growing more powerful every day. What was that old saying? Connors thinks hard, pushing his memory to recall it… yes. He opens a desk drawer and searches a small, leather-bound book for what he seeks. Someone, most certainly, Bantam, had stashed it for safe keeping. He finds what he’s looking for, nestled right up next to a half-full bottle of scotch. He flips through the pages, and runs his finger along the printing, smudging the lines of dark ink as he goes, making faint trailing smudges across delicate, gold-gilded pages.

  He reads to himself, Exodus 22:18 KJV. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And had it not been for Merna Valentine jumping in front of that thing in the courtyard, he would have laid her brains out, right along with those other two. He would have sent the thing on a one-way elevator ride, to the front door of Hell.

  Dr. Valentine was shouting something during the attack. Was there any truth to it, or was she only trying to save the thing? Was the kid trying to stop the other from screaming like a banshee? Unbelievable. How could the kid howl like that? He tugs on his thick earlobes with his fingers. Between today’s weapons fire and the Queen of the Damned, singing her swan song, he calculated how much hearing he has lost.

  Someone knocks hesitantly at his door, and he calls out in response, “Come.” He slides the book back into the drawer, caressing the dusty bottle beside it with his fingertips, feeling the velvet smooth cover slide across them, before pushing the drawer closed. He rubs his fingers together to sanding away the dust.

  “You wanted to see us, Major?” says Shaw.

  Dr. Valentine files in behind him. Her face is pale. She’s psychologically fatigued by the day’s events; in the operating room an
d the courtyard. She swallows hard, her throat bulging slightly. She could sleep for a thousand years, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

  Connors rubs his face with his rough hands, and squeezes his cleft chin, pinching it tightly, feeling several days-worth of stubble poke his palm. “Sit down.” chair squeaks and pops as it pivots. He says he wants some answers, and he wants them right now. He’s pointing to where the courtyard should be if he could see it clearly through the cheap, wood-paneled walls.

  Dr. Valentine erupts, “He’s been keeping things from me.” She points a damning finger at her rival. “All of his research about the children. He’s been running his own experiments and keeping his finding from me… from all of us. He has no intention of saving them.”

  “Those things are not children. They’re only pretending to be children… just enough to disarm you, confuse you, and then murder you. They most certainly are not children,” says Connors. His spittle flies from his mouth as he shouts in her face.

  Shaw grins. He’s satisfied by the Major’s retort. He lowers his head and covers his mouth to hide his satisfaction.

  Valentine, looking defeated, reiterates, “He’s been keeping vital information that we need. Information which could help us put an end to all this.”

  The major shoots a questioning look towards Shaw.

  “By putting an end to all this, Dr. Valentine means to find a cure for the research subjects. She believes they’re an unfortunate bunch of kiddos, and they’re being affected by a curable affliction, and this isn’t the case, Major, I assure you,” Shaw says.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no,” agrees Connors, shaking his head and waving his index finger in the air before him, “What I just saw out there was cold-hearted, inhuman, twisted, and calculated. These… whatever they are… cannot be saved with medicines, or scientific mumbo jumbo. Nothing can pull those things back from the precipice. They are lost.”