The sheriff takes one look at the Woodsman and puts his hand on his gun.
“Stop where you are!” he commands.
“You will pay,” the Woodsman says. “My trees, my trees!”
“Who are you?” The gun is in the sheriff’s hand.
“I am the Woodsman—keeper of the Saturian trees.”
He releases a flurry of red leaves in the sheriff’s face, and the short man crumples to the ground.
The Woodsman opens his right hand, and a banging noise from the trunk shakes the car. Bang. Bang. Bang. The ax slices through the cooler and then through the lock on the trunk to fly back into the Woodsman’s hand.
“You will all come with me now,” the Woodsman says, holding the ax in one hand and taking a silver pod out of his pocket with the other. “All is not lost. You all will help me replant my trees, and you will help them grow. Together we will start again.”
Trey looks for something, anything, to help them escape. But then Louise gets out and stalks toward the Woodsman, shouting, “You have taken years of my life. You have taken our youth.” A confused look crosses the Woodsman’s face as she points to her sister and Sasha. “We. Will. Not. Go. With. You.”
She leaps, fast and furious, ducking when he swings the ax and then tackling him to the ground. She smacks a red leaf over his mouth and nose. His eyes go wide, but the ax falls from suddenly powerless fingers.
“You are no longer the Woodsman,” she says, standing over his limp form. “You are just a man who will soon go to jail. You will pay for every minute you stole from us.”
The rest of them jump out of the car. Sarah is hugging Louise, and Willa is peeling the leaf off the sheriff’s face. Leslie picks up the ax and stands guard over the Woodsman. Trey looks down at the Woodsman and realizes that his left fist is still clenched. When Trey gingerly pries the Woodsman’s fingers apart, three silver pods roll out. Trey catches them before they can hit the ground, and their power crackles across his palm like electricity.
Promise, such promise! They speak directly to his mind, so pleased, so excited, so tempting. You alone hold the power to save Earth. Serve us, and we will reward you beyond your wildest dreams!
For a moment he can almost see it: an end to extinctions and deforestation and drought, to hunger and inequality. All will be healthy and happy with us, the voices promise. But he has seen the aliens’ plan, and behind their promises he sees all humanity helpless and enslaved, sucked dry as the trees displace all other living things from the planet.
“I am saving Earth,” he mutters, but the seeds seem to be feeding on his every thought. Suddenly all three pods pop open, and three tiny, snakelike creatures escape and slither across the ground.
“Catch them!” Trey yells as the creatures start to burrow into the dirt. He catches one, and it twists so hard around his finger that it turns blue. It feels like a leech, sucking all his thoughts out of his mind. He digs his nails into its scaly sides, and it screeches and lets go. He throws it to the ground and stomps on it. “Keep it there!” Leslie calls, and then she’s beside him, kneeling down, slicing the tiny thing into pieces with the ax. It twitches a few times and is still, and then the thing dissolves into a horrible-smelling slime.
“Do you think there are more pods?” Trey says to Leslie.
“I don’t know. I got the other two things though.” She holds the ax firmly in her hands. Trey looks around. Willa and Louise have bound the Woodsman’s hands and feet with duct tape they found under a seat in the car, and Sarah seems to be working on a splint for Dominic’s arm.
Then the sound of shrieking tires splits the air as a white BMW turns the corner into the park, followed by four police cruisers.
“That’s my dad,” Leslie says faintly.
The BMW pulls up behind the sheriff’s car, and Leslie’s dad is out the door before the engine dies. “I told you to never come here,” he says, sounding angry but hugging her tight. Seven police officers, one with a dog, split up between the dazed sheriff and the trussed Woodsman. “Do you understand now? Do you understand why I never wanted you to come here?”
“I’m sorry,” Leslie says. “I’m so sorry.”
Louise steps forward. “Andrew, your daughter and her friends saved us,” she says, gesturing at Sarah and Sasha. “They freed us all.”
“Louise?” Mr. Miller says, stepping closer and gently touching her face.
“Yes,” Louise says. She reaches out to him.
“I searched and searched for you. I never gave up.” He pulls her into a tight embrace.
“I dreamed for years that you would find me,” Louise says. “And you did. You created a daughter who is fearless, who fought for us.”
Mr. Miller’s hard face softens. He turns back to Leslie and hugs her again. “You did something I was unable to do—you found my friend. You saved her. Thank you.”
Trey watches with a smile, but something tugs at his thoughts. What if there are more silver pods—more seeds, more slithering roots ready to take hold in the earth?
He tries to explain everything to one of the officers, but they don’t believe him until Leslie steps up next to him, a red leaf in her hand.
“This is how I was kidnapped,” she says to one of the officers. “Here, smell it.” He rolls his eyes, but when he sniffs, the leaf attaches and he falls to the ground.
She quickly tears it off, and another officer makes a phone call—evidently to someone important, because in less than hour, a convoy of three black SUVs flies down the highway and surrounds them all.
Chapter 20
Six people—four men and two women—in dark suits and sunglasses get out of the first two black SUVs. Two head straight for Trey and Leslie.
“What are we going to say?” Leslie asks.
“I don’t know,” Trey admits. “But they need to know there might be more pods.”
“We need to show them the cavern too,” Leslie says. “Who knows what else is down there.”
The black-clad crew approaches, and Trey and Leslie take turns telling them about the Woodsman and the trees.
“You need to show us where these trees grew,” a woman with pale skin and dark hair says to them.
Trey looks over at Dominic and Willa, who are talking to two other agents outside an ambulance, and then he sees Louise, Sarah, and Sasha being ushered into one of the SUVs by another agent.
“Where are they going?” Trey asks the woman in black.
“We are going to have a doctor check them all out. How are you doing?”
She looks at Trey and then at Leslie.
“Fine, I think,” Trey says.
“Good,” she says. “We need you to show us these trees.”
Leslie’s father is there in a second, saying, “I’m not letting my daughter enter those woods without me.”
Soon Trey and Leslie are retracing their steps to the campsite with Mr. Miller, two special agents, two police officers, and the police dog in tow. The fire has gone out, the tents are still standing, and a bag of marshmallows is sitting on the ground, now attracting ants.
“We were sitting here,” Trey says, picking up the bag and popping an ant-free marshmallow into his mouth. “And then we ran over here somewhere to follow Willa.”
The police dog, a German shepherd, sniffs the ground and leads them down into the ravine. What seemed like hours of travel in the dark turned out to be barely a mile straight through the trees. As they approach the shack, the dog freezes and begins to growl. The breeze picks up, and the scent of rot fills the air.
Hundreds of angry, black flies buzz around where the trees once stood. As they swoop down on the humans, the woman in black catches one in her hand, pulls out a plastic bag, and zips it inside.
“Interesting,” she says.
She nods at the other agent, who takes a small silver canister from a pocket inside his dress jacket, pushes a button, and sets it on the ground. As he steps away, the canister begins to flash blue, and the flies head for the ligh
t. With a crackle and zap, the light incinerates them.
“Don’t go near that,” the agent says, nodding at the light, but Leslie and Trey have already backed away.
“They should totally sell that in camping stores,” Trey says.
“Too dangerous,” the agent says.
The officers move to where the trees once stood, and Trey warns, “Don’t touch the red leaves!” But when they get closer, he sees that the leaves have turned crisp and dry, and when he steps on one, it turns to dust.
“Look for silver pods,” Leslie says as they walk around the grove. Everyone looks down, but the pods they find have shriveled up, and inside the seeds have turned to goo.
One of the officers and both agents descend into the cavern, flashlights shining, guns drawn. Trey and Leslie wait off to the side.
“Look,” Trey says. A few feet away, the sun glints off something hanging from the branch of a pine tree. The two of them slowly walk toward the silver light.
Two silver pods are hanging just a few feet above their heads. They are open, and whatever was inside of them is now gone. Trey has a horrible feeling that somewhere in the woods, another alien tree will take root.
Chapter 21
The next day, there is no parade, no story on the front page of the paper. Everything has been classified as Top Secret. Trey and his friends, and their parents, have signed papers and sworn never to talk about the alien trees or possessed rangers or empty silver pods.
“We don’t want mass hysteria,” the lead agent explained. “For the sake of our nation, you must keep this quiet until a full investigation is complete.”
Everyone has gathered at the Millers’ house to meet Sasha’s parents, who flew in from Russia on the first available flight. They embrace Trey, Leslie, Dominic, and Willa in turn.
“Thank you,” Sasha’s mother says. “Thank you for returning our son to us.”
“My father and mother wish for you to have these,” Sasha says, handing each of them a red envelope.
“It will never be enough,” Sasha’s father says, “but it is a token of our great gratitude.”
Trey opens his first. Inside is a check for a hundred thousand dollars. He looks at Dominic, Willa, and Leslie, who are all are wide-eyed too.
“Thank you,” Trey says to Sasha’s parents. Sasha’s father wraps him in another bear-like hug.
“It is the reward money,” Sasha’s mother says. “And we reward you.”
When Trey is released from the hug, he turns and looks at his friends. “Who’s up for another camping trip?”
They all raise their hands.
Trey has a lot of phone calls to make, and some packing to do. But in a year, they will meet again at Lake Helen. And they won’t be just camping: they will be searching for any sign of sprouting alien trees, searching for slithering black roots.
About the Author
K. R. Coleman is a writer and teacher. She loves teaching students how to tell a scary story at the Loft Literary Center. Her writing has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Paper Darts, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Canvas, and Revolver. She is a recent winner of the 2014–2015 Loft Mentor Series and Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant. She lives in South Minneapolis with her husband, two boys, and a dog named Happy.
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