Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter One Opening Salvo

 

 

All war is deception.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Maybe it was the years of chemical warfare initiated by suburban homeowners, maybe it was an alien invasion or maybe Darwin was right and it was just the logical result of genetic drift. No one knows how it happened. I don’t care. I kill them. I’ve got a flamethrower on my back, a machete in my belt, and my name is Crete. I’m a Horticulturist, one of the front-line soldiers in the war against the weeds.

The nights are long on watch duty, also cold and lonely, filled with darkness and slithering, deadly vegetation constantly seeking a chink in the castle’s security. They tell me it used to be simple, a little weed killer in a spreader, a couple of squirts of spot weed killer, then lay back on your deck to enjoy your lawn. The old videos show people frolicking on neatly trimmed fields of green. They thought nothing of wearing the thinnest of coverings as they casually strolled, hand-in-hand, through parks, chewed on blades of grass and built their houses of vegetative materials. How strange and idyllic it must have been, back in the golden years of humanity. I almost wish….

 

 

“Crete!” Captain of the Guard Glass had rounded a corner on the castle battlements and caught me leaning against the steel plate wall. When I jerked in surprise, he continued, even angrier. “Daydreaming again! I’ve caught you, haven’t I?”

“Aye, Captain,” I hung my head in shame.

“What if the weeds had attacked? Your position would have been overrun. You would have died. Worse yet, your failure might have meant the end of this enclave.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No. You weren’t thinking.” Pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt, Captain Glass called for a replacement. Then his harsh glare softened. “I should never have allowed your mother, may she rest in peace, to let you read all those books. Now you think too much, just like she did.”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“I know, Son.” The older man ruffled his son’s hair affectionately before allowing himself to resume a stiff, military bearing.

A moment later, another young man in the uniform of the Horticulturists rounded a corner and saluted.

“Assume Crete’s watch” he barked out his order with punctilious formality. “Crete, report to detention.”

 

 

The line of sullen men, ten in all, stood by the heavily fortified steel gates with drooping heads and shifting feet as they listened to the huge man with scars crisscrossing his face pacing before them.

“Listen up, meat,” Lieutenant Forge bellowed. “This is a dangerous job. The most dangerous job any of you will ever undertake. You’re going out into the ‘Wilds’ to gather food.

“For most of you, this is a punishment detail. That means most of you are screw-ups. Well, you can’t afford to screw up out there. If you do, you’ll die. Worse, others might die instead of you. If you don’t think you can work as a member of a team, step forward and you’ll be marched back to detention until you can be given alternative punishment.

“Excuse me, Sir,” a thin blonde boy, barely out of his teens piped up. Crete could guess what he was going to ask and was not disappointed. He would have considered asking himself if his father hadn’t already told him.

“Yes, soldier?”

“What’s the ‘alternative punishment,’ Sir?”

“Lashes…,” he said simply…

The group murmured.

“…and banishment,” he went on, matter-of-factly.“ Bottom line is, either way you’re leaving the compound. You can do it as part of a team, with at least some chance for survival, with the possibility of helping to contribute to the survival of your community, or you can do it on your own — and die.”

 

 

We wore the standard issue gardening uniform; assorted supplies in a survival pack, flamethrower and steel armor with a rebreather, a hundred and fifty pounds of the best protection our scientists could come up with, but it was miserably heavy and hot. Not an inch of bare skin existed, though, which was an absolute requirement. The glass visors were so darkly-tinted that they reflected like a mirror, to protect against being blinded by the actinic radiation from violent explosions. Only the number codes, stenciled in large print on our chests and backs, identified us in any meaningful way.

Lieutenant Forge was number one. I was number seven and the boy who had asked about alternative punishment, his name was Silica, was number eleven. The numbers were an indication of our ‘Wilds’ training and experience. Dad had taken me out once to burn away some especially aggressive creepers that kept blocking a sewer exhaust. That gave me more experience than four of our group and less than three. You might wonder why the numbers only went up to two digits. The answer was simple, no one had ever survived service amongst the Horticulturists for long enough to make larger numbers necessary.

Lieutenant Forge’s instructions were very simple. “Stay together, flamethrowers on and aimed away from anyone else, fry anything that moves or looks green, and I mean anything.”

The weeds in front of the sally port still smoldered and stunk from the napalm burn. Until recently, a burn would give us a chance to get well through the gate and set up before a full-force attack could be initiated. It was supposed to guarantee at least a hundred yards before the really bad weeds, but lately they had been shooting poisonous homing burrs into the area as soon as the fires died down. Some of the burrs were fast-growers and sprouted creepers right on the protective suit, but most seemed to be burrowers. If they found something metallic, they would burrow into any cracks or crevices until they found soft human flesh and then consume it. I had only seen that once. Even after flaming the man, trying to burn off the plant, he had continued screaming and jerking. It wasn’t pretty.

When the flames were almost out, the gate opened just wide enough to allow us to slip through one at a time. We formed into a rough double line, weapons drawn, scanning the ground and sky. It was a clear day with puffy blue clouds. Below us was scorched earth, not brown and vegetation free, but black and partially crystallized from repeated incineration. In the distance, but not distant enough, were the weeds; bright green and constantly moving. Everyone jumped as the gate slammed shut behind us. We were really on our own now.

 

 

“Deploy missile.” We were about fifty feet from the quivering slithering wall of green and almost a mile from the castle. So far, we had been lucky, as if we were in the eye of a storm. Not even a homing burr had attacked us yet, but we knew that would never last.

“Aye, Lieutenant.” Brick responded. He was a tall man, but thin, the only other man beside the Lieutenant to have more than two expeditions. He unstrapped a bazooka from his back and mounted it on his shoulder. With a quick check for authorization from Forge, he shouted, “Fire in the hole,” and fired first one and then a second missile into the foliage. The flame bloom was nearly blinding, even though we had turned away and were wearing our tinted protective gear, because they loaded those missiles with a lot of magnesium and HE, to make the resulting blast as hot as humanly possible.

I know it had to be my imagination, but I swear I heard a high-pitched scream of pain as the missiles ignited. We rushed through the opening, bypassing the larger fires and jumping over the rims of the craters formed by past foraging expeditions. I could hear the swishing sound as they came. As soon as the initial plume of flame had died, the homing burrs attacked and we were in a free-for-all fire-fight.

Four and Eleven were down immediately. Apparently, the burrs had learned a new trick. They’d somehow managed to coördinate their efforts well enough to target single humans.

At Forge’s instruction, Three and Five hosed down Four with flame while Nine and I did the same for Eight. We tried a couple of short bursts, hoping to burn them off before they could do any damage. It worked, but new burrs covered them almost as soon as we got the first batch burned off. The second time it was clear that we were going to roast Eight alive if this happened again. We could smell the beginnings of burnt flesh already.

I think it was Five who figured it out first, at least he was the one who shouted above the din for us to burn the burr on top of Eight’s head. We tried aiming for just that one burr, but it had a tougher exterior than the others and didn’t burn off. More burrs were already covering portions of his suit and it was unlikely that he could stand yet another full flaming.

Eleven must have known that too, because he violated protocol, yanking off his helmet and throwing it away. We stood there stunned, waiting for the burrs to swarm over him. But instead, they swarmed off towards the helmet.

“Snap out of it! We still got incoming burrs!” Forge screamed and we went back to dishing out mayhem.

About a hundred yards into the alley of flame, Forge called for two more missiles. They cleared another aisle and we moved forward. It took five sets of napalm missiles to make it through the kill ring. We camped for the night in the center of yet another missile blast crater. Guards were set at the perimeter of the encampment and lights were shielded to keep away any inquisitive plants. I don’t know about the others, but I was asleep instantly.

 

 

Eleven died during the night. No one saw it, but a creeper managed to make it into his suit. It sucked him dry, crushed his bones and left only a few drops of blood on the bottom of the suit.

Some of us wanted to blame the perimeter guards, but Forge wouldn’t let us. He gave a brief speech about duty and responsibility, told us this was why we needed to keep our helmets on, and got us marching again. We didn’t even bury him. We didn’t even say his name as we walked away, leaving what was left of him behind like yesterday’s garbage. As we marched, weapons drawn, trying to watch everywhere at once, I said my own personal goodbye to Silica, a man I’d barely known, but a good soldier nonetheless.

 

 

We were now in an open area. Forge called it a pasture and said it was safe — at least as safe as anyplace outside the walls. We thought it was spooky. It just wasn’t right. There were no walls, just waving green everywhere we looked — except for the circle of blackened, scorched earth around us.

“About a mile from here is a town,” Forge told us. “When we get there, we split up and check each building. We’re looking for canned goods or anything else that’s sealed. Check each item carefully. If the seal is broken, even the slightest, burn it. If it’s intact, we take it back. And remember, if it moves, burn it. Don’t think, don’t wait, burn it.” Then, as we watched aghast, he marched off into the waist high grass without burning it first.

We looked at each other, afraid to follow and unsure what to do. There was a light breeze and the grass whispered around Forge as he walked. He turned abruptly as he heard the click of nine flamethrowers being turned on at once.

“Flame off, ladies. If we flame these fields we’ll have an uncontrollable fire. It’ll burn down the town we’re trying to scavenge from.”

“But you said…”

“I know what I said. I said move anything that moves. If you see a creeper in the grass, flame it. If you see homing burrs, flame them. If you see a pseudoshark, flame it. Just don’t flame the wheat grass.” With that he turned and continued his march through the grass.

We shrugged, formed into a line and marched nervously after him. After getting elbowed by Five and Seven, Six called out to him, “Sir? What’s a pseudoshark, Sir?”

 

 

I was learning to hate marching. It wasn’t the walking; it was the boredom. It gave me time to think. I was wondering why there were no homing burrs, no creepers or any of the other forms of deadly vegetation that surrounded the castle. It was as if the weeds knew we were in the castle and was laying siege to it — to us. Did weeds think like that? Did weeds think?

I knew the official answer; Dad had told me enough times. Weeds responded reflexively to movement, to heat, to the existence of chemicals only present in human bodies, whatever, but they didn’t think. They had grown up around the castle because of our presence. Lethal weeds like those which surrounded the castle weren’t present in the open plains where our detail was walking now because there were no humans there, and they couldn’t spread into areas where there was no food supply. The pseudosharks came into sight before I could figure out why the official answer didn’t quite ring true.

We were interrupted by movements in the tall grass. Instantly, every flamethrower was aimed in that direction. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I remembered Forge’s instructions before we left, “Fry anything that moves!” and apparently so did everyone else. Only Forge’s bellowed “No!” prevented us from flaming them.

“What in the name of Harry Harrison are those?” someone called out, it was difficult to say who, because the radio links made almost everyone sound the same, scritchy and distorted. ‘They’ were gray balloon-like things with shiny silver ridges extending from end to end and they wandered around on the ground as if they were foraging. Mostly, you could only see them because the shiny silver ridges poked up above the wheat grass. Once you got closer, though, you could see that green vines trailed from them back to what looked like a twenty-foot tall dandelion, complete with a yellow flowering crown.

“Are they pseudosharks? They look gray and oval like the pictures,” someone else said.

“If they were pesudosharks we’d be flaming them, wouldn’t we?” Someone said angrily.

“Don’t take the Prophet Harrison’s name in vain!” another voice exclaimed piously.

“Don’t tell me what to do, you little snot!”

“Shut up!” That last was shouted by Forge. I recognized his voice, at least. “Nine, I don’t want to hear the Prophet’s name spoken in vain again. Six, yes, those are pesudosharks. All of you, you don’t flame pseudosharks, ever! They’re mostly napalm. Where do you guys think we get our reserves from?”

“So what do we do with them?” someone asked. However Forge did it, telling those voices apart from each other, I didn’t have the knack.

“Think of them as an especially deadly version of a mobile watermelon. They’re not completely root-bound, like most plants are. They can move around to the length of their vine, usually about fifty feet. We take out our nets and trap them. The only tricks are not to flame them and watch out for those fin-like leaves that grow out of their backs. They’re razor sharp, and can cut a man to pieces in a heartbeat.”

“If they have razor blades on their backs, how do we net them?”

A couple of the others murmured, “Good question.”

“You lay the nets on the ground and one of you acts as bait to entice the pseudoshark onto it. Then two others run around it and yank the net around it, making sure not to pull the net too high, so it can’t slice it with its fin. Pull it to the end of its tether, cut the tether, and then tie it off so it doesn’t ooze napalm, then wait for it to die. Usually takes about five minutes. Does everyone understand?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Good. Deploy in teams of three. I’ll stand watch. I want three dead sharks in ten minutes.”

It actually wasn’t as hard as it looked. The pseudosharks were dumb. It took about three tries to find that, if we moved slowly enough laying the net, they wouldn’t charge, so all the guy being the ‘bait’ had to do was to stand fairly near the net and then flap his arms around until it noticed and started stalking him.

I was elected to act as bait. Actually, I got told I was bait, but since I was the smallest of the three of us, it made sense. I just stood between the nearest pseudoshark and the net and waved my hands. I didn’t even need to make noise.

It was surprisingly quick, almost as fast as a homing burr. I bolted as fast as I could backpedal. It was going to be close, but I thought I could make it, until I tripped on the net.

Ten and Six grabbed the net and tried to pull me to safety, but it was a forgone conclusion now. I wasn’t going to make it. I was dead; I just hadn’t finished dying yet.

Forge was running toward us, screaming something. Ten was closest and he understood first. He stopped tugging at the net and stood still. Then, Six did the same.

I was quietly muttering Harrison’s Last Verse when the pseudoshark veered toward Forge. It was almost funny when I could think about what happened next. Just like a cartoon, it reached the end of its tether — about two feet from Forge — and bounced back. Then, it kept jumping at him, trying to reach Forge even though it was clear that it couldn’t. Dad once talked about a dog that his grandfather had that used to do the same thing. He had some videos of ‘the Good Times,’ before the plants went psycho, and I saw it once.

Forge just stood there laughing at it and waving until I was back on my feet. “Are you ready to try again?” he called out to me.

When I had swallowed my fear and nodded, he froze. Taking my cue from him, I began yelling and waving. It took a moment, but the pseudoshark noticed me and charged. This time it worked. After some quick net work by Ten and Six, we had caught ourselves a pseudoshark.

Looking about, the other teams had each caught one too. Strangely, all the other pseudosharks had disappeared.

As I ran to cut the connecting vine, Forge turned to check on the others — and then just disappeared. One moment he was standing less than twenty feet from me, the next he was gone, sucked down into the earth.

We ran to where he had been standing. When we got there, we found an eight-foot deep pit. At the bottom of the pit was a gaping maw with more rows of teeth than I could count. In the center of those gnashing teeth was Forge’s upper torso, bouncing around as more and more of it disappeared.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“Damned if I know. Don’t matter. We gotta get Forge out.”

“Are you crazy? Look at him. He’s already dead.”

“So what do we do?”

“We burn it, just like Forge told us to do,” Two said, running up to us. “We burn it.”

Nine flamethrowers began torching the thing that had burrowed underneath to take Forge. For ten seconds there was a constant sea of flame at the bottom of the pit. When Two ordered us to halt, the rows of teeth were still there, gnashing away at the charred bones that were all that was left of our troop leader.

“Harrison’s Word! How do we kill that thing?”

“I don’t know, but look. It’s going away.”

The teeth were covered over by a thick greenish membrane and then it was gone.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Two said with a worried look. “Call it a giant burrower for all I care, let’s just take the pseudosharks and get out of here before it comes back.”

We grabbed the shark carcasses and started a fast march away. That’s when another hole opened up immediately in front of us. It had instantly swallowed up Two, Three, Four, Five and Six. It would have taken me too, if Eight hadn’t pulled me back from the crumbling edge of the precipice.

The four of us who were left began flaming the giant burrower, but all it was doing was turning our dead fellows into cinders. It didn’t seem to be bothering the burrower at all.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Ask Seven. He’s in charge now.”

“What?” I looked around, but he was right. I was the most experienced person left. Harrison’s Word, were we in trouble. I thought fast.

“Dad says… said… never to run from an enemy. It will just chase you down and kill you. Either way you’ll probably die, but if you stand and fight, at least you’ll die a hero.”

“Great. We’re already fighting — and losing. We need more.”

“More. More. That’s it! More.” I looked around frantically. There was still one shark left. We were in luck.

“Quick. Toss the pseudoshark into the pit.”

“What?”

“Toss it. Now! Do it!”

Ten grabbed the net and tugged it toward the edge. It was almost there when the edge crumbled. With a scream, he dropped to the waiting maw below. His scream cut off almost immediately.

Before I could say anything, Eight and Nine bolted, back toward the castle. They made it about fifty feet — I watched them — right into the center of the pseudoshark flock. They were dead before I could turn back to the giant burrower.

I was alone. Clearly, a plan was needed. First, I considered giving up the scavenging foray and returning to the castle. If I made it, I could at least advise the families of my platoon-mates that their sons died bravely.

Ending the mission didn’t bother me. We had left a cache of missiles just beyond the worst of the weeds so I’d have enough of them, but the image of firing missiles while flaming homing burrs and creepers, all with my hands full of pseudosheep, just did not go over well. I realized that I would never be able to fire missiles and flame weeds at the same time, even with my hands free. That meant that even if I was able to find food and raw material, I’d never be able to make it back to the castle.

If I couldn’t go back, I needed to do the impossible. I had to find a way to survive amongst the vegetation. This would be a good trick, when I couldn’t even afford to go to sleep without risking being sucked dry by a creeper like Eleven.

I had no idea what I would find there, but my only hope was to get to the village. With luck, maybe I could hide from the weeds there, at least until another scavenging party came by. But to get there, I had to make it past the giant burrower.

Dropping to the ground, I got my feet behind the shark and kicked at it until it fell into the pit. Scrambling to my feet, I quickly stuck the flamethrower over the edge and shot a quick burst before rolling away from the pit as fast as possible.

Before I could roll clear, I was tossed away by the huge blast. I couldn’t hear anything and the world seemed unwilling to stop shaking. Struggling to shake off the concussion, I crawled back to the edge of the pit, which was a lot bigger now.

At the bottom of the pit was the giant burrower, or rather parts of it. It was definitely dead and it was definitely a plant. It looked like the plants were still mutating, because this was something new.

Checking the fuel level on my flamethrower was depressing. I had less than an eighth of a tank. None of the flamers from my now deceased team members had survived either. If I was going to survive, I had to catch another pseudoshark to refuel my flamethrower, but the only way I knew how to do it required two additional people — people I didn’t have.

Standing just out of reach of a conveniently located fuel supply, I tried to decide what I could do. I was fairly certain what I had in mind wouldn’t work or we would have been told to do it that way in the first place, but I didn’t see too many other options. Using some of my dangerously dwindling supply I flamed the connecting vine on one of the pseudohsarks about half way between it and the huge, dandelion-like central plant.

My hope was that my burst of flame would neatly cut the vine in half at a point where there was not enough napalm to allow it to explode. If it worked, the pseudoshark, disconnected from its root system, would die and I’d have the napalm supply I needed. Instead, the flame ignited the vine, which burned like a fuse in both directions.

I debated running out to the edge of the vine and stomping out the flame before it reached the pseudoshark, but it was moving much too fast. My only alternative was to throw myself to the ground and pray the blast wouldn’t kill me.

The blast from the pseudoshark I had tried for rolled me back at least ten feet and left me with ringing ears and a dull headache. Then the second blast hit and I was knocked unconscious.

 

 

When I came to, the first thing I noted was the dirt and plant parts covering me. I screamed and struggled to my feet, brushing it off. That’s when I realized that I was deaf. I hadn’t heard myself scream and I couldn’t hear myself yelling as I confirmed that I could no longer hear.

I hoped my hearing would come back eventually, but I was more concerned about the devastation I had caused. Where the dandelion had been was a huge pit, maybe fifty feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. I could see a few roots wiggling and squirming at the bottom of the pit, trying to slide back into the ground. Where the pseudoshark I’d tried to capture had been was a smaller hole, probably about ten feet wide and four deep. Looking further I could see several smaller craters where other pseudosharks had blown up, but at the far side of the large crater there were two pseudosharks weakly flopping about on the ground.

I staggered around the various cavities in the ground to reach them and by the time I did, they were still. I tapped them a couple of times to see if they were still alive, but they were nothing more than inert bags of napalm now. Each had a trickle of napalm leaking from the end of its vine so I knotted them off and tossed them over my shoulder.

I had ammunition and I was still alive. Judging from the position of the sun, I had about two hours to find someplace safe before nightfall and if I didn’t get moving soon, I would probably be burrower food. There was only one choice. I headed off in the direction Forge had said there was a village, where I could see a strange sort of oblong mountain, almost like an upright domino, in the distance, with jagged foothills on either side.

 

 

Growing up, I had explored every nook and cranny of the castle and had thought it huge. The village was much bigger. It seemed to go on forever, filling the horizon even before I was near enough to see the end of the tall grass I had been walking through. More impressive was the way it went up — and up. Dad had always described villages as small and quaint, whatever that was. This was anything but small. I wondered if this was an especially big village, not that it mattered very much. The sun was going to be down in about two hours and this was the only place I’d found were I could get away from the weeds.

The first homes were set far apart with tall grass, trees and vines covering them. Many were partially demolished. As I moved closer to the village, the houses moved closer together and seemed to be in better shape. I passed several more dandelions, but steered well clear of them.

When the buildings started to change shape from pointed roofs to flat ones, after what seemed like many miles of walking, the grassy road changed to blacktop. The blacktop was buckled and overrun with weeds — small ones, not the killer weeds. Initially they were everywhere, but by the time I made it to the what must have been the center of the village they were few and far between and the buildings had changed shape into enormous towers of what looked like grey stone laid so carefully that I couldn’t actually see any joints. There was still the occasional killer-sized dandelion growing in the grassy areas Dad had told me they used to call ‘parks’ and, less frequently, I’d see large holes in the ground that I assumed were from some sort of giant burrowers, although the edges seemed curiously even and rectangular.

I selected the tallest building — which I eventually realized was the ‘mountain’ I’d seen from far off and now felt a little foolish about being so naiïve as to think that — I could find and climbed as high as I could before it was too dark to see, reasoning that I’d be well above the range that the plants could sense me, and would have a good lookout position where I could see all around me. Every few floors, I’d go to one of the huge windows and look out. The windows themselves were amazing — glass, or something like it, from ceiling to floor, an astonishing weakness that instantly identified them as dating from before the War — and I was hesitant to even approach them. The view through the glass kept getting more and more impressive the higher I got, and the building itself seemed warmer, and the light seemed brighter, so I finally approached close enough to one wall of glass that I could see all around that side of the building. I was trying to fight a sense of vertigo as I stood next to the edge of what looked like a cliff, kept from falling only by something I could barely see, but the outside world was truly wonderful. I could see other, but smaller, clusters of buildings in the distance. Looking far off to the west from my perch up in the sky, well above the smaller buildings around me, I could even trace back the path I had taken by the signs of recent burning and explosions, even at this distance. Almost over the horizon was a large expanse of green, but all I could see of the castle was the encroaching mound of plants laying siege to our… make that… my… former home. I realized I must be imagining it but, if I stared long enough, that distant green carpet seemed almost to seethe ominously, imperceptibly slithering, shifting, as it collectively jockeyed for the best positions from which to assault the walls and narrow gates that pierced the stone walls.

Suddenly feeling really tired after my long trek, and then the climb up what seemed like endless flights of stairs from the street, I went to lie down on the carpeted floor on the other side of the building, staring off to the east, away from home, but it was a long time before I finally succumbed to sleep.

 

 

The next few days were extremely busy. It was time to do what I could to assure my own survival, at least long enough to debrief another scavenging party regarding what had happened to mine.

After eating my next-to-last survival ration for breakfast and refilling my flamethrower, I began searching through this building and those nearby. I needed to decide where I would live and then make certain that I had what I needed to survive. Creature comforts would be nice, but more importantly, whatever site I chose needed to be near food, water and the other essentials of life.

I thought heat might be a problem, but the sun beating in through all the glass made the building downright hot during the afternoon and early evening and the concrete structure surrounding the glass seemed to hold the heat well into the morning. Maybe if it were the heart of winter, I’d have a problem, but that was at least four months off, more than enough time for the next scavenging team to arrive.

Food came from all the canned goods lining the aisles of what must have been one of the ‘supermarkets’ we had been sent to find. I’d almost passed it by, expecting something to mark it, the smell of rotten food, flies, I didn’t know what. Instead, it was just a storefront less than a block from where I was living. The name didn’t even say ‘supermarket’ and I had no idea what a ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ was, so I almost passed it by. In fact, I would have, if it weren’t for a movement I caught out of the corner of my eye. Just as I was passing the through the doorway — which displayed a large red sign with the letters ‘IGA’ on it in white — something skittered around a corner and disappeared inside the store.

Training took over immediately. Flamethrower drawn, I scuttled into the shadows and slowly crept up on the entrance to the store just like Father had drilled me to do. His words came to me, “Suffer not a weed to live.”

At the door I stopped to reconnoiter. Nothing was moving, but there were rows and rows of boxes and cans. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven. I actually forgot about the weed for a moment as I stared in wonder at more food than I had ever seen, but sanity instantly returned as something moved near the back of the store.

Carefully, I snuck from aisle to aisle, peering back into the dimly lit rear of the store, looking for the stem and root of whatever was in there. I could hear faint scurrying sounds, but nothing moved.

Whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t going to be a greenie. Chlorophyll would be useless in that dark environment. My best guess was a fungus, but none of them had turned traitor yet. In fact, they were currently the main source of food at the castle.

Having reached the end of the rows of shelving, I looked back. The front door seemed a long way away. If a weed attacked, I was unlikely to get out that way. With a deep sigh, I started down the row before me, figuring that one row was as good as another.

I passed box after box of cereals with flashy colors so bright they were visible even in the dusky light half way to the back of the store. At the end of the aisle, the light was so dim I could just make out gray shapes. A light was going to be a necessity or I would be blundering blindly into whatever had to be back there. Besides, I could always hope that whatever was back there would be blinded by the light.

It took only a moment to dig a flashlight out of my survival pack. To make certain it wasn’t me that was blinded, I turned and aimed my flashlight back down the row I had just come through, closed my eyes and turned it on. Then I slowly opened my eyes to let them adjust.

Flamethrower in one hand and flashlight in the other, I jumped out into the aisle that stretched from one end to the other of the back of the store. I expected some kind of weed, but what I saw was nothing but boxes and shelves. Nothing crawled towards me. Nothing flew towards me. The floor didn’t crumble beneath me. My first thought was, ‘Boy, what a letdown.’ Then my brain kicked in and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I carefully shone my light in every corner I could find. I knew I’d seen something, but where had it gone? If there was a weed less than a block from my new temporary home, I needed to know. It was a matter of self-preservation.

Clipping the flashlight to the flamethrower, I cautiously slipped from aisle to aisle, expecting a huge green tentacle to push past the cans and boxes at any minute, yanking me off my feet.

After the third aisle, I was trying to guess where the inevitable attack might come from, and how I might succumb — crushed by the boxes of corn flakes, beaten by the cans of beets, or it might even catch up to me by the ketchup. It’s amazing how fast boredom can set in — even when you’re facing eminent death.

Whatever had been stored in the odd containers at the back of the store was now rock-like and black, except for the multicolored mold that coated the walls of the white chests. They had glass tops that rolled from one side to the other, opening up the interior, which was filled with cylindrical tubs of some sort. The aroma wasn’t too pleasant, although it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Along another wall was a stainless steel free-standing closet, the the doors were like windows, with what used to be clear glass in metal frames. Inside, there were row after row of plastic containers of what looked like milk, but they looked and smelled like they’d all spoiled so long ago that only the faintest traces of something cheesy remained. I picked one up and dropped it through clumsiness, since my hands were encumbered by my heavy Horticultural gloves. The plastic split into a million dusty pieces, and the contents looked like cheese, but not any kind of cheese I recognized. Curious, I took off one glove, so I could investigate further.

I’d just knelt to taste it — it didn’t taste bad, despite the pungent smell — when I heard it, a faint scratching sound off to the right, followed immediately by a deep sinking feeling in my stomach. I had my flamethrower facing down as I knelt. It had the drop on me. Without moving anything but my eyes, I peered into the dim corner from which the sound had come.

It was small, whatever it was, just a blur of movement along the edge of the my vision. Quickly, I raised my flamethrower and aimed toward whatever it was….

It was a rat! It was alive! I could just barely remember the last time we’d had rats to eat, but it was gone, and I couldn’t risk burning piles of real food, food that the next group could carry back and store until the next successful foraging expedition, even for a roasted rat.

 

 

I slept that night on the bare vinyl of a room on the thirty-seventh floor facing west. It wasn’t as soft as the carpet in the room above, but the building was hot enough that the cooler flooring was welcome and I liked the view, I’d decided, now that it seemed slightly more likely that I might actually make it back home. It would make it easier to see the next team of Horticulturists when they came this way as well, so I could warn them about the few plants I’d seen in the village and tell them where the ‘supermarket’ was, and that there was more food available in that one store than even a dozen foraging parties could carry away. My own pack was full again, with beef! in blocky cans, round cans of peas, corn, potatoes, and even spinach, and seven glass bottles of some sort of fizzy water that they called ‘Evian.’

 

 

When I finally woke up, I had trouble opening my eyes and I felt like I’d just taken a beating. Every muscle ached, and I panicked until I managed to pry open my eye lids, which seemed to be almost glued shut with some kind of crusty film. It was well past noon, since the floor near the windows was already flooded with sunlight, and it was already getting back towards being almost uncomfortably warm.

I struggled to my feet and found my pack, opening another bottle of water so I could wash out my eyes. I used more water from the bottle to wash a foul taste from my mouth, spit it out on the floor, and then staggered to the window, anxious to see if another party of Horticulturists were already on their way. The view back our track seemed unchanged, however, which meant either that no one had set out yet, or that they’d encountered few, if any, hostile plants along the way. I wasn’t counting on that at all, considering the level of opposition we’d met during our own foray beyond the encircling wall of plants, so I figured that I was on my own for now.

I could have just sat here waiting, but my father had drilled a sense of duty into me that wouldn’t let me be idle for long, despite my occasional lapse into daydreaming, so I decided to do my best to guide any foraging party to where I knew that there was an enormous cache of food just waiting for them by laying out a trail, with notes along the way.

After painfully descending the stairs, I went back to the ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ to pack up as much food and water as I could carry, intending to carry at least a small cache of rations out far enough into the outskirts of the village to relieve any party that might be in trouble so far from home. I’d do this as many times as I could on all the likely approaches, and had already used some of the boxes from the store to make crude signs with the Horticulturalist symbol — two crossed machetes — on them to mark the spots.

The ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ had a ready supply of small-wheeled carts available, so I used some rope I’d found on something they called ‘Aisle 6’ to link together six of them in a sort of ‘follow-the-leader’ train and filled them up with food and water bottles. I brought several bottles of the cheese as well, since it smelled really good, now that I’d gotten used to the smell, although I had to be careful not to break the brittle plastic bottles.

Six carts was about all that I could handle, even on the smooth blacktop streets, since I was still stiff and sore from spending my night on the floor, but I imagined being welcomed as a hero, if I could somehow figure out how to haul my train of little carts all the way back to the castle. Maybe there were other stores with more practical carts somewhere along my path back to the outskirts of the village, since these would obviously never work once I reached the edge of the smooth blacktop roads.

It was slow going, and a hard grind, making my way back the way I’d come, because my arms and legs were getting more painful with every step and I was short of breath. The wheels of the little carts kept getting caught in cracks as the roads got worse, threatening to overturn them all, until I finally just sat down panting in the middle of the blacktop street, weary beyond really caring whether a plant found me and ate me or not.

It seemed like the sun was setting early, because it was getting dark….

 

 

When I woke up the sun was just rising, and I automatically turned to face it, feeling its welcome warmth on the skin of my face, since I seemed to have forgotten my helmet somewhere. I felt a lot better now, and I struggled up from where I’d sprawled beside my carts, seemingly unharmed. The rest must have helped quite a bit, because the carts seemed lighter now, and the soreness in my arms and legs had disappeared, so I trudged off down the road, until the road got so rough that I couldn’t really move the carts at all, even when I tried to take them one at a time. Those small wheels just seemed to sink into every crack and soft spot, so I looked at the houses around me, trying to find one still in good shape, with an intact roof, and no visibly dangerous plants around.

There was one just up the road with a covered porch, so I carried my stash of food to it one armload at a time until I’d emptied all six carts, then I stacked them all inside the door, which wasn’t locked, and the interior didn’t look like it had been disturbed by anyone, so I jammed one of my cardboard signs into the crack of the door and dusted off my hands, satisfied that I may have saved someone’s life. Any foraging party that made it this far would have enough food available to simply turn around and bring it back to the castle. I knew for a fact that I’d stacked up more food than I’d ever seen come through our gates before, so I felt quite pleased with myself as I began walking back toward the ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ for more food and water. I left the carts where they were, since there were lots of them in the store, and I thought that I might be able to find a better cart if I kept my eyes open on the way back, but I took the rope, reasoning that it might come in handy.

For some reason I was feeling quite cheery as I strode off down the road, and soon felt so energetic that I actually began to jog along, looking intently from side to side until I happened to see a sign several hundred yards down one of the side roads that said, ‘Sunset Nursery Supply.’ Looking closer, I noticed that there were a number of low carts in the yard behind the sign, surrounded by a fence that looked like it was made of thick string.

Curious, I ran down the side road toward the ‘Nursery Supply’ store, arriving just a few seconds later. The carts looked like they’d be perfect, low to the ground and fairly broad, so they wouldn’t tip over, and the wheels were fat. The only trouble was that they were behind the fence, which was taller than I was, what I’d thought was string was some sort of coarsely-woven metal, and there was some sort of metal box on the gate obviously intended to keep it shut. Frustrated, I gave it a shake, but it must have been rusty or something, because it simply fell apart when I tugged at it.

I opened the gate and walked inside. The carts were perfect, in fact. It was obvious that they’d been designed for something exactly like what I had in mind, because each of them had a longish handle with a ring on the end just about right to put your hand through to pull it, and they also had a hook on the back end that you could drop the ring of another cart into, making as long a string of carts as you had. I had six, even after looking all through the grounds, but that was lots better than what I’d had before, so I was soon trotting down the road with a train of low carts rattling along behind me, every one of them much larger than the little carts from the supermarket. I felt like I was on top of the world. The sun was shining, I was on my way to pick up enormous quantities of food for the people back at the castle, and I felt strangely energized, happier than I’d ever felt before.

When I got back to the Klegelmeyer, everything was just the same as I’d left it, so I immediately began loading up my new train of carts with food and bottled water, happy to be busy despite my solitude.

It seemed like I’d been working for just a few minutes when I realized that I’d stripped the food from half a row of shelves, the one called Aisle 3, which held mostly canned vegetables, and had made a good start on the bottled water as well. My new carts seemed sturdy enough that I’d piled the boxes rather high, so I used my rope, and more rope from Aisle 6, to tie them down firmly, pleased once more when I discovered that the new carts had special smaller hooks along the top rails that seemed designed to fasten ropes to, one near each corner and one in the middle of each side.

It wasn’t long before I was trotting down the road again, pleased by how easily my train rolled along, and how nicely they tracked one after the other, since the long handles actually steered the front set of wheels, so the carts had not the slightest tendency to drift off to one side or the other, as the first carts had, and I actually started running, so was back to my chosen storehouse almost before I knew it. In fact, it was a little difficult to stop, since the weight of the carts was pushing forward from behind me as I tried to slow down too quickly, and the steering action of the handles worked to my disadvantage when the carts behind pushed on the carts ahead, causing the handles, which had been so useful when moving along at speed, to turn into a serious liability, trying to turn the wheels to one side or the other, which almost made my whole train fold up like a piece of string. I had to act quickly, speeding up again, then slowing down more gradually, until I had the train back under control and had come to a safe stop.

By that time, I’d overshot the house by almost a cross road and a half, so I had to turn the train slowly in a wide loop to return back to my storehouse at a more sedate pace.

For the first time, I was glad that there was no one looking on, because I felt a little foolish. I should have foreseen the problem in the first place.

 

 

It took four days to move all the useful items from the Klegelmeyer to the house, by which time it was stuffed almost full of cans, bottles, and unopened boxes of the same from the storeroom at the back of the supermarket.

Oddly enough, I was working so hard that I didn’t feel all that hungry most of the time, but I was also getting so sweaty that I soon stopped wearing my protective gear entirely, except for the lower part of my suit, preferring to work without even a shirt, so that the breeze could help to dry my skin. I did eat quite a bit of the cheese, though, and drank a lot of water, and that seemed to be enough. I was eating better than I ever had back at the castle though, so maybe it was just the fact that food was so readily available that explained my relative lack of appetite. Back home, I remembered being hungry all the time, anxious for the next ration to be passed out, but here all I had to do was to stretch out my hand, so I didn’t worry about food at all. I remember my dad saying once, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ which had never made sense to me, until now, when I finally realized that the phrase must have referred to food.

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved