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

by H. R. Romero

  “There are so many of them,” says Dr. Valentine.

  “Not for long,” says Sergeant Hollander.

  The fire is burning hotter and brighter. The shadows are receding as the light increases. The Doldrums are crawling along an ever thinner, more revealing border of the failing protection of darkness. Able to find their targets, the green men go on the attack. Like a nest of angry hornets, bullets fly to find the enemy, turning them into quivering corpses.

  Five men were lost to the Doldrums. Rose wonders how many will make it alive to where they’re going. Unable to sleep, she wedges herself into a well-lit corner, next to Nettle, and Dr. Valentine. She begs silently for the intoxicating, morning sun to make its appearance.

  Early the next morning, as the sun peaks above the hazy horizon, they waste no time loading the vehicles and moving out of San Antonio. Rose shakes blood clots and dust bunnies from her feet, never to look back again.

  The thundering of battle has brought something from the surrounding countryside. An evil no one has seen since before the beginning of the end. A different kind of enemy. This one’s not at all like a Wicked Briar, nor is it like a Doldrum, hiding in the dark like a petty thief waiting for an unsuspecting mark.

  This enemy is organized, cold, and calculating, and she watches everything the humans are doing from her perch on a distant hillside. Her drones stand at her back, waiting for her to give them a command to follow. They’ll follow her and do whatever she asks of them. Their own survival means nothing, compared to the greater good and the survival of the hive, and of their queen.

  There are more than troublesome humans milling around down there. She can smell Rose’s fertile odor blowing towards her on the changing wind. The small thing isn’t human like the others. She’s a threat to the queen’s rule, a festering boil on the skin of her monarchy. Instincts programmed into her DNA, demands that this new challenger is wiped from the face of her kingdom.

  It’s another queen, younger by the immature stink of pheromones, but no less, a risk to everything she has struggled to construct. The order of things as she has laid them, and the future as she has foreseen it to be. Even now the young queen’s chemical markers entice her drones, making them uneasy, confusing their thoughts of loyalty. Only the true queen shall live and rightfully rule this planet. The little queen must die.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “As a child, I never imagined that all the real monsters in the world would be human…”

  -Unknown

  The serenity of the Stage Coach Inn graces the long, straight road of Salado, the white-painted face of this unassuming place luminesces in the ruddiness of the sun.

  A great, gnarled oak tree grows near the inn’s porch, running the full length of the front of the building. Its trunk has grown since the inn was constructed. Here and there, the girth of the tree pries the deck-boards up like broken teeth. The tree, reaching to the sky, its mammoth limbs bending beneath their own unmeasurable heft, triggers a memory for Rose.

  Her full memory hasn’t returned, as Dr. Shaw thought it might, but somewhere in the deepest recesses of what’s left of her mind, she recollects playing in a tree, much like this one. In her memory, a woman was calling to her, “Be careful and come back down from there before you break her neck,” the woman laughed, as she ran around the bottom of the tree, nervous about the possibility of Rose falling. This woman must have loved her to care if Rose fell from the high boughs. Rose wants someone to love her again. The memory is faded, like blue jeans left on the line, it’s color bleaching away in the harsh summer heat.

  A wide and swaying river runs along the side of the inn, and curves around to the back, running past a pebble-laden bank. There was once a tire swing hanging in a pecan tree. The rope still hangs there, but it rotted through, only frayed remnants of the rope remains, and the tire lays on the ground beneath it; dry rotted. She can’t see the bottom of the river, but she can see the surface moving as large fish, or some other thing swims hurriedly like an invisible arrow beneath it.

  “This is the place,” says the major. We’re staying here for the night.” He throws open the doors to one of the trucks and carried in supplies, the food, and water they’ve collected along their journey. He doesn’t need to issue any orders, the green men fall in and help him unload everything.

  There are Turned here. Rose can smell fleeting traces of them. But, there are always Turned, somewhere, all the time. Later the green men will form search parties, like they always do, in each new place they stop for any length of time. They’ll scout for hostiles and survivors. It’s more likely they’ll find hostiles and no survivors. In fact, they haven’t found any survivors at all since leaving Camp Able behind.

  The town is beautiful; like nothing she’s ever seen before; picturesque and peaceful, but that’s the dangerous thing about places like this. It pretends to be a protective haven for road-weary travelers, with its little houses and shops, it’s fountain and stone-clad walkways, with moss growing between the pavers, all the while harboring death.

  Oak and pecan trees densely cover the surrounding countryside. She picks up a pecan and holds it between her dirty fingers, pinching her soft fingertips against the shell. She knows it for what it is; a seed. She feels a strong connection to it as if she and it are one in the same. How could such a small thing grow into such an extraordinary tree one day? If planted, it will change the world around it as it matures. She kneels, feeling the dirt pressing into her knees. She scoops a handful of soil out of the ground leaving a small hole, places the seed in and covers it over.

  The green men don’t trust Rose, never have, and she’s used to it, and they trust Nettle even less. Nettle’s hands have remained wrapped up for a long time. It’s hard for her to do anything, at all, for herself. They lead Nettle around, secured to the end of a long pole. A leather belt fastened to the end of it and buckled securely around her neck keeps her at a safe distance from everyone. Nettle’s neck is rubbed raw, and it’s starting to bleed. Rose doesn’t like it, and often says things in Nettle’s defense. “She can’t help what she is,” says Rose, “Leave her alone, she’s just a little girl.” The plea doesn’t help anything, and everyone continues to treat Nettle like some kind of diseased animal.

  Rose is ushered, roughly, into the foyer of the inn, and right inside the door, next to where some of the supplies have been stacked, is an easel. On the easel is perched a small paper menu. It’s somewhat faded, and there’s a spot of mildew creeping along its corner, it says Hush Puppies, Tomato Aspic, Banana Fritters, and Strawberry Kiss. What must a Strawberry Kiss taste like?

  Major Connors and most of his men have gone out to look for survivors, and hostiles, and supplies, just as Rose knew they would. Two green men stay behind, one to prepare the evening’s meal, and another to keep watch over their temporary base of operations, as the major calls it.

  Lieutenant April, is in the kitchen, trying to formulate a recipe out of the odds and ends which have been scavenged from unlikely places, while the second, Private Nelson, strolls from room to room, from the front of the inn to the back, peering from each window for signs of the enemy.

  Rose, Nettle, and Dr. Valentine sit in what used to be the dining room amidst the old, round, tables covered in dusty, red-checkered tablecloths. Big square windows open out onto the babbling river. The surface of the water glistens like shards of glass, tumbling end over end in the sun.

  Dr. Valentine is particularly quiet today, she’s been different since San Antonio. Sometimes Rose catches her looking at her and Nettle out of the corner of her eye. She never says anything. Something’s changed, but Rose can’t put her finger on it.

  Nettle is huddled in the corner, where she spends most of her time doing nothing but rocking gently and talking to herself. She’s always watching the windows and doorways. She’s searching for an avenue of escape, and she’ll take it too if she gets a chance. It wouldn’t take much to make Nettle want to run away from the major and the green men.
She rubs her hand-wrappings against the floor and the furniture, trying to loosen them, and Dr. Valentine, when she catches her doing it, warns her not to do it anymore. As soon as Dr. Valentine is distracted though, Nettle returns to scraping the tape on anything that looks like it might tear the bandage.

  Rose has found a spoon and is preoccupied, looking at her distorted reflection. Her hair is cropped short, but it’s been growing longer since there’s no one around to cut it. She asked the barber at Camp Able why the children had to have their cut so short, and he said, it’s to keep the bugs off your mangy heads. She told him she likes bugs so it wouldn’t have bothered her having a few extra around in case she ever got hungry. He never spoke to her again after that time.

  Her eyes are shaped differently than Dr. Valentine’s or Nettle’s. Her skin is a different color too. “I look different than you, Dr. Valentine. My eyes are different, and my skin…”

  Dr. Valentine acts as if she hasn’t heard her, but she pulls herself back to the present and answers softly, “You’re more different than you or any of us can possibly understand. Both you and Nettle and the other children back at Camp Able are very… unique. But yes, if you mean your physical appearance, you were Asian, once. The body you’re in… it has Asian traits.”

  “Asian…” Rose says, trying out the word to see how it feels on her tongue. Plus, maybe saying it aloud would make her feel more Asian, and less like a monster to be feared by so many.

  “You said the body I’m in was Asian. What do you mean? How could I have been something before that I’m not now?”

  “Before the accident changed you, at least one of your parents were Asian. I suspect both probably were. It’s why you have Asian traits like the single epicanthic fold of your eyes, your black hair, and the coloring of your skin.”

  Rose gazes into the spoon again, turning it from side to side, considering what Dr. Valentine has said. “Sometimes, I remember a woman who used to come into my room at night. She would kiss me on the cheek, but I’m not sure if it’s real or not… it may have been only a dream… or something I made up in my head.”

  “I think you might be remembering your mother.”

  “What happened to make us the way we are? Whatever we are,” says Rose, “Why is it everyone’s so scared of us?”

  “The entire world was on the eve of a war. Everything was much different than it is today, Rose. People were fighting against tyranny, rather than fighting to stay alive. We were standing up for ideals and freedom. I was living in a place called California at the time; my daughter, Savannah, and I. We were happy, just the two of us.

  Men were leaving their families to go overseas to fight. But, then something very unexpected happened. We thought the only monsters were the Germans and the Japanese. Until we looked up into the sky and found death staring back down at us.” Dr. Valentine’s voice sounds distant and haunted. “A flying-ship… It came from somewhere else and parked itself right over the city of Los Angeles. No one knew if it intended to do anything, other than just hovering there. But, I guess the military being afraid it was the Nazis or the Japs invading, well, they didn’t wait around to find out. They threw everything we had at it until they cracked it wide open and all the spirits of Hell and all Damnation came pouring out, spilling on top of our heads. We didn’t see anything of course, but it was the only possible answer for what came after.”

  “Is California a long way from here?” says Nettle.

  “It is,” says Dr. Valentine, dryly. Nettle’s question pulls her away from the memory.

  “Then how did you get here?” says Rose, gazing into the spoon again. Her nose looks larger, in the reflection, than it is in real life, she knows because as she looks at it in the spoon, she feels it with a free hand. She turns her head from side-to-side studying the image inside the concave utensil.

  “Major Connors. It was him. He had found me… rescued me. We hadn’t planned to come all the way to Texas, but with each passing mile, the contamination outpaced us. What we found was people were changing in every town we came to.”

  “Into the Turned?” Nettle says.

  “Yes, into the Turned, but at first it wasn’t bad. There were small physical changes early on and then people began to attack any and every living thing. We kept moving on, mile after mile… day after day. It wasn’t long before things became much worse. We realized we couldn’t outrun it anymore, so we decided it would be best to take shelter at Camp Able.”

  “Where did you find us? Did you bring me with you from California?” says Rose.

  “I found you near Camp Able, one day when I was out doing field research, Rose. Nettle, you and the other children were already at Camp Able when Major Connors and I arrived.”

  Rose remains quiet, gazing into the spoon, and thinking more about Dr. Valentine’s story, before laying the spoon on a small table, and asking, “Where’s your daughter now?

  “She’s gone. She became ill and died a few days later.” A pang of deep guilt throbbed within Dr. Valentine. “I helped her die, to ease her suffering. I didn’t know then that if I’d left her alone, she would have recovered. She would have become something like you. Something not quite human.”

  “What are we?” says Rose.

  Dr. Valentine takes a deep breath, making her chest rise, she holds it a moment then exhales slowly, her shoulders slump as the breath whistles gently when escaping through her teeth. “I think you’re, two, very sick little girls, but I believe we may still be able to help you, and other children like yourselves, somehow.”

  “Dr. Shaw doesn’t think so, does he? He doesn’t think we can be helped. He thinks we’re monsters, and he wants to kill us, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does, but I want to believe that there is still hope, and I’ll try to find a way to help you.”

  The men return to the inn by 1700 hours. Something has Connors very anxious, even more than usual. He calls Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine outside to speak with him. Dr. Valentine instructs Rose to wait with Nettle and not to go anywhere. To make sure the girls stay put, Private Nelson is assigned to keep an eye on them. He’s not observant, he’s exhausted, and points the barrel of his rifle in the general direction of the girls and chews his dirty fingernails.

  From where Rose is seated, directly in front of the large, wood-framed windows, she has a good view of what’s going on outside. Strapped across the hood of one of the trucks is an animal; large and brown. Superimposed images of earth’s creatures closely matching this one, flicker across her vision. The sensation isn’t as strong as the first time she experienced a flood of information. Perhaps she’s become conditioned to the vertiginous feeling it causes within her. Before the experience would upset and nauseate her, but now she welcomes it when it happens. The pictures and words help her to classify and categorize things like the animal, outside.

  Strange symbols scroll before her eyes, even if she closes her eyelids, she can still see the information clearly. She’s been unable to decipher them, but this time, it’s as if someone flicked a switch. The symbols are changing and rearranging so she can read them. The correct image of the animal, eventually, flashes before her vision and freezes, and the symbols hovering over the image reads White-Tail Deer - Odocoileus Virginianus – Planet Earth – Herbivore – Non-Hostile. The information is prerecorded in her brain, but its absent of one small, but important variance. The very same detail which is most likely Major Connors’s concern, and has Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine’s full attention.

  Major Connors is holding something which is attached to one of the bodies of the deer. It presents as long, and wispy, and green, much like a vine with bifurcations along its main trunk. The source of his apprehension is plain to Rose. The contamination is spreading beyond humans and affecting the planet’s wildlife.

  “So much for fresh, venison,” says Private Nelson who’s looking over her shoulder, and out the window. He wrinkles his nose, showing missing teeth, he sneers at Rose, and Nettle, in turn, giving a stare
meant to cause them to melt into trembling puddles. “Gosh darned, Turned-thangs.”

  Within the hour the carcasses are removed as from the inn as safely possible and burned, and afterward, everyone goes to the river as a group to clean up. Layers upon layers of dirt and odor are scrubbed from wearied bodies. The water has a powerful revitalizing effect on everyone.

  In happier days, before the Turned came, people would have come down to the river to swim and socialize with each other. They’d have played games, and had barbeques, and picnics would have dotted the waving bank. Even a marriage or two might have been performed near the water’s edge. Maybe those days are gone. Maybe not. Who knows? But even now, after so much death has flooded the land with spilled human blood, the clean rushing water still offers a gift which lifts the spirits of even the most hopeless of souls, and temporarily washes away the weariness. Even Rose and Nettle find, somewhere, deep inside themselves, a playful and genuine child-like spirit, whether it truly belongs within them or not.

  A beautiful bronze statue resides in the river water, perched squarely on a large, flat-topped boulder. The statue is one of a lovely young woman with long hair cascading down her back. The passing waves wet the woman’s bronzed face, making it appear, to those who gaze upon it, that the woman is sobbing. Tears cascade down her face. She has the tail of a big fish. Her scales are sturdy, and thick, and gleam prominently in the hot sun.

  When Rose looks at the expression of the woman, frozen in time, she thinks of Dr. Valentine, because to her, the woman looks so sad; so broken. She takes a place, wet with river-water, in front of the statue. On the rock, there’s a large catfish, and next to the fish is a bronze plaque which reads: THE SIREN OF SALADO.