The Greening

💀 formerly, Fortune Favors the Bullet

They crossed the barren ground between the wildlands and the Sanctum by starlight, sprinting across the empty miles after the gibbous moon set.

Their silhouettes stood out harshly against the sterile sand, showing the outline of their thin bodies and close-cropped hair, completely at odds with their soft, southern accents.

Firenza led the pair, her youth and comparative strength from a decade of competitive cycling making her a natural beacon to Patricia, who had been a part-time clerk and full-time mother before the Greening.

As they waited to start their run for safety, standing under the doubtful shelter of the massive, tangled trunks of a speed-grown cypress, raised so fast that a turtle nest sat ten feet above where it had been assembled, Patricia laid a trembling hand on Firenza’s tanned arm, her light touch brushing the sun-bleached hairs, raising goose bumps. “What do you think happened to the others?”

Firenza rubbed her forearm, flattening the chilled flesh before answering. “What happened? Nothing.” She gazed across the wide, empty sand moat around the Sanctum. “They just died. They are probably beneath our feet, here, food for the Greening and the animals that benefitted.”

Patricia shuddered, picking up one foot and then the other to look, as if the gore of bodies would be stuck in her shoe, like dog shit in the park. “But it happened so fast. How could they be gone, and the trees regrow in just weeks? I know They—“ she nodded at the walls of Sanctum— “are supposed to be magic, but I don’t really believe that. They’re just scientists.”

In response, Firenza used a humorous inflection out of place in the newly virgin world. “Alien scientists!”

Patricia laughed as if the joke was funny, because that’s what you did for the only human being you’d seen for weeks. “I don’t know if they are alien. This seems like some eco-terrorist’s wet dream.”

“I pray to the Mother of God every day that they are aliens, Patricia. Else, our own people, nosotros familia, destroyed the earth’s human population without blinking an eye. It’s too much for me to imagine. I would rather die believing that my own species could not be so cruel.”

Patricia leaned against a cypress trunk, and she could feel it stretching and broadening against her skin. If she stayed still for a few hours, she might find herself trapped by its vegetation, caught between its limbs. “Do you think people were just swallowed up in the growth?” She glanced around at the trees uneasily. “It happened to a guy I knew.”

Firenza shook her head. “How many people would be so stupid? The tree limb grows a foot an hour, you’re going to notice it, yes?”

Reluctantly, Patricia nodded. She didn’t say that right where they stood, a whole apartment complex had once sprawled around a sparkling blue, kidney-shaped pool. Firenza was from further west, and had only arrived after everything man-made was subsumed in the Greening.

By that time, Patricia’s husband, neighbors and friends had already succumbed, disappeared. Patricia hoped that her daughter had been accepted into the Sanctum, but she didn’t know. She had sent her when she could no longer pretend that everything would be all right, when she no longer imagined that she could protect her.

And then, Firenza arrived, jogging slowly between the tree trunks, a straw hat covering her head from the sun, and a striped towel soaked in sweat over her shoulders. “Sanctum?” She had said, when she spotted Patricia perched on a vague concrete outcropping that had been a neon-dotted sign.

“It’s over there,” said Patricia, pointing into the green void of new growth without looking herself.

Firenza nodded, polite, but kept jogging. After a moment, Patricia joined her, and they fought their way through the changing, expanding swampland to the Sanctum, far up on a hill. Patricia knew this was where Jacksonville used to be, but the great, greasy, southern metropolis was buried. The walls of a new fortress rose around her, bleach white and surgically clean. Inside was supposed to be a garden, not a green hell like outside, but a real one, for the people left on Earth. The few, the chosen. The special.

(Patricia’s daughter was special. Else she would have returned.)

And now, they sprinted across the purified desert that separated the Sanctum from the Greening.

Patricia had asked Firenza why she believed that those within would open the gates for them, and Firenza had answered, “Because we are the last. They’ll relent. They’ll let us in.”

Patricia had no such hope herself, but running was all she had left. She would do it until the Greening claimed them both.

They ran like shadows across the pale sand, starshine making cutouts of their bodies. The towers of the Sanctum twirled and shifted, the black eye of each training on them.

Patricia heard a muffled thumpand saw the sand fly up, toward the Greening behind them.

Then another, closer. Thump and spatter. Thump, thump. Once, the sand sprayed across her legs, causing sharp pain, then warmth. She did not dare reach down to touch her leg. She ran on. “Firenza, are they shooting at us? I can’t hear the guns.”

“Too far away. And I think they’re darts, maybe.”

The thumps were now striking behind them, making a soft pat, pat.

Then, Firenza inhaled deeply, stopped, and sank back on her heels in the deep, clean sand.

“Firenza!” shouted Patricia, stopping later and having to walk back to her friend. “Are you all right?”

Firenza said nothing, but sat upright, eyes closed.

“Firenza? What’s wrong?” Patricia felt along her friend’s muscled limbs, searching for a wound. She found nothing but a rip in the chest of her jacket. Carefully, Patricia put her hand over the other woman’s heart, feeling for a pulse, then leaned over awkwardly to listen.

There was no sound except the fall of sand from her clothing as she shifted.

Patricia glanced around. The shooting had stopped.

Reassured, she leaned down to put a shoulder under the other woman’s arm. “Firenza, you must be in shock. There’s nothing wrong with you; come on. We can make it. The shooting stopped.” But when she pulled, the other woman didn’t move. The slender, muscular, brown arm lifted, but her body was like a statue.

Patricia tried again and again, tugging, pulling, finally shoving Firenza toward the great, white wall of the Sanctum. After a long struggle, she sat down, panting, and leaned against the other woman’s shoulder. “Firenza, you are heavier than you look. You have to wake up, now. We’ve got to go before the sun comes up.”

Taking a deep breath, she pulled away, feeling stickiness between her cheek and her friend’s shoulder. “It will be nice to take a shower, won’t it? I hope they have showers.” Patricia got to her feet and tried again, pulling and pushing Firenza under the unchanging starlight.

“What’s wrong? Come on! You’re not bleeding, you can’t be dead,” she said hysterically, resting her hands on the other woman’s shoulders.

“Mom!” came a familiar voice from behind her. “Step back!”

Patricia whirled around, shocked. “Aurora? Is that you?”

Her daughter, wearing a white, hooded cloak that covered her from her head to toe, glided up beside Patricia. At first, Patricia thought she’d grown taller fast, like the horrible trees, but then she realized her daughter was riding a floating sled. Patricia said over her shoulder to Firenza, “You’re right, it was aliens. We don’t have hoverboards on Earth, at least, not this century.”

Aurora maneuvered between her mother and Firenza. “Please Mom, we have to leave. In the sunlight, it will be even more dangerous.”

Patricia looked up at her floating daughter. “We can’t leave Firenza! She saved me. I mean, she led me here. She’s just in shock or something.”

Aurora pulled on her mother’s shoulder. “No, she’s been shot. The Greening is supposed to be over, but they left those things on.”

Patricia pulled away. “What are you talking about? If she’s been shot, we have to help her.”

Suddenly, Aurora shifted on the floating craft and fell against Patricia’s shoulder. Half-off, she kept one hand on the craft. Patricia fell a few feet away, and over Aurora’s raised arm and the floating craft, she saw something awful.

A tiny cypress canopy had burst from the crown of Firenza’s head.

As Patricia’s eyes traveled down to the sand, roots the size of her thumb writhed around the kneeling woman’s form, touching the sand and retreating, touching and retreating, like a winter swimmer dipping a toe into the ocean.

Behind Patricia, Aurora said warningly, “Mom, we’ve got to go. The tree is looking for soil.”

Patricia turned toward her daughter. “Why did you come out for me? You are one of the special ones. I’m not.” She didn’t look over her shoulder. She could hear the Firenza-Cypress sweeping the sand for purchase, for a place to root.

Aurora stepped onto the hoverboard and reached down for her mother’s hand. “Mom, everyone is special.” She glanced behind Patricia as she pulled her up. “And everything.”