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  Scorched Flesh

  Vine of the Earth (Book One)

  By

  Ian Woodhead

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright February 2015 by Ian Woodhead

  Edited by Linda Tooch

  Cover by Peter Fussey

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

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  Welcome to the end of the beginning

  From fist to fan shape took me twelve seconds, and for most of those moments, my hand took on the resemblance of an eagle’s foot. I prefer that analogy to it looking like the hand of an old man, deep in the grip of arthritis. Those tendons never get sick of complaining to me, not that I took any notice; what do they know anyway? Sure, there will be consequences. Give it a few more minutes, and every muscle and nerve in my hand is going to hate me for the rest of the day, like I care—not now anyway, not today.

  I feel my thin lips scrape against my teeth as I show these filthy cell walls a triumphant smile. It feels so alien to me, to find my emotions rising, to actually catch a glimpse of hope. I’m not going to embrace it, not just yet. How could I? I’m still their prisoner, but it doesn’t stop me letting out a harsh chuckle. My life could well be over, but what remains of our people will now have a chance to pull through, to even flourish, at least in a few decades.

  They tried to harvest our species like they had with so many of the others, only to discover we weren’t going to be so easily cowed. It was a close run thing, though, too close. It took us decades.

  We took back what was ours. I can’t claim that our species won, but I take solace that those vile things are scurrying back to where they came from. Not all of them, though; my guards remain. I fear that I’ll be seeing their hard shiny black faces until the day I die.

  From up here, I saw the last of the battles and the orbital bombardment that followed. They had no idea that we were able to hack into their living machines and change the coordinates.

  I’m beginning to babble already. I should be ashamed of myself. I for one know only too well how short I am on time. The wires, pipes and…other things they have inserted into me will not need changing for another cycle. My time will be up way before then, though. They’ll either figure out that I’ve tapped into one of their outgoing carrier waves, or the pale blue fluid that one of the drones injected into my arm will render me incapable of speech.

  I only killed the bastards. I left the thinking to the geeks and academics. Maybe if I’d paid more attention, I might have known exactly what they were pumping into my body. I digress again. I’ll try to stay focussed.

  1: The first signs were overlooked

  Each birth is a celebration, more so now than it ever was. Every new life we bring into this world gave us one more chance of keeping our race from dying out, and you, my son, were no exception.

  It is difficult for me to relate to your experiences of growing up. I guess that won’t shock you too much. It’s hard to relate when we only saw each other a couple of times a month. It’s more than just that, though. For a start, unlike you, our species wasn’t on the brink of becoming extinct.

  I know that you’ve heard the stories, seen the pictures, and maybe even watched a few of the surviving DVD’s, so you’ll know that at one time, there were billions of us on this world. It’s such an easy word to say, but unless you were part of that number, it’s impossible to visualise, especially if the largest amount of humans you’ve ever seen together is a couple of dozen

  You were brought screaming into this world a decade after they arrived. In that time, they had already reduced us to almost nothing. In fact, I bet that there’s more of us now than there were when you were born, nineteen years ago. Does that surprise you? I bet it does. You probably imagine that the whole human population took up arms against them, dying in our millions against impossible odds, but never giving up. Sure you do, it’s what we told you had happened.

  The simple truth is that they reduced us to almost nothing before most of us had a clue that they were even here. Nobody ever talks about the Mass Dying, and yet it is the one event that united us. It made the few that survived stronger, part of one cohesive unit.

  It was the largest wake-up call any of us could have imagined. Does that sound pretty weird to you? Sure it does, but that’s because you’re a Newborn. For you, life and death are coupled like lovers. You have no idea what life used to be like back before they arrived. Sure, you’ve all heard the stories about how our problems used to dominate our daily lives, and I know that listening to us talk about missed mortgage payments, about rising fuel costs, and the need to beat the latest level on our new app, sounds so alien to you.

  You can’t even imagine the heart stopping panic and shock of watching all those hundreds of people just die all around you. I was in the middle of a shopping mall at the time of the event. Unlike everybody else, I knew about them; I knew that we were all in deep shit, and yet, even that didn’t cushion my senses to what happened next.

  Thinking back, it was the noise that tilted the cogs in my brain. Their bodies just…well, they melted. Put a crimson candle on a hotplate, and you’ll understand what I mean. Now picture that happening all over the planet, all those billions of people turning into puddles of lumpy red goo. The noise came from me. I heard myself groaning, then whimpering, and finally, I started to scream.

  Does that surprise you? Not the screaming bit. I mean that nobody who survived has ever spoken about what happened on that bright cold day in April. Yeah well, just savour the words, because I doubt that you’ll hear them from anybody else. That isn’t the beginning of the tale, you know, not by a long shot. It’s just that nobody remembers how it all started. The real beginnings have all been forgotten. The mass deaths and subsequent events that followed had buried them, along with our mortgage payments, rising fuel prices and our obsession our ‘oh so clever’ digital irrelevances.

  ***

  Nineteen wasn’t a bad age to be. The crappy memories of school and college were fading fast. I had my freedom and money. Granted, the job that my mum forced me to go for took away a lot of that freedom, but the monthly wage did cover the essentials. The phone top up, game download fees, and, of course, the beer money, all took a large bite out of my wage.

  Oh yeah, and I can’t forget the board money that my parents, the two ‘older ones’ stripped out of my bank account. I did my best to erase that blemish from my memory, basically because I thought it was incredibly unfair of them to steal almost half my wage just for the privilege of allowing me to stay in my own damn room, and supply me with the occasional meal. Oh sure, mum did wash my clothes, I suppose, and do a bit of cleaning, but she did all that stuff before I got a job. So why did I have to pay her for a job she already did? Not that I’d dare bring this tiny fact up; knowing her, she’d probably expect back pay for those years too.

  ***

  I’m smiling again, simply because of how easy it was to slip back into the mindset of that poor naïve teenager who thought that paying his parents a pittance every month was the worst of his problems.

  ***

  My name is Travis, and you can blame my dad for coming up with that one. You see, he’s a total geek. His life revolves around the science fiction genre: TV shows, movies, games, books, as well as action figures. You won’t believe how much he spends on his
hobby. Believe me, that stuff isn’t cheap either. I daren’t ask how much of my hard earned money has contributed to his weird craving for all of that space nonsense.

  Anyway, the reason why I’m telling you this is because it’s where my first name came from. Apparently he named me after some baddie from a TV show that aired about a thousand years ago or something.

  My full name is Travis Fitzgerald. I guess that it’s not a bad name; knowing my dad, he could have picked a lot worse. I imagine going through school with the name of Han Skywalker Fitzgerald, and the marrow in my bones freeze.

  When I look into my wardrobe full-length inside mirror, I see a medium build, dark-haired teenager staring back. My hair isn’t cut into any fashion. The curls don’t appreciate being messed with; I usually just keep it short, although it could do with a bit of a trim. I’m about an inch under six feet, and apart from the weekend drinking sessions giving me a bit of a gut, I don’t think that I’m that bad looking. As for the gut, a few more gym sessions would soon fix that problem. Then again, maybe not.

  Gym fees would cut into valuable beer money. I could always ask my parents for a set of weights for Christmas, either that or just wear more clothing to disguise my growing paunch. I could always cut down on my drinking, but that sound’s about as enjoyable as slamming a pencil in my left eye.

  ***

  There you have it, that was me at your age, in a nutshell, a perfectly ordinary teenager, going about his business just like the rest of the crowd. I suppose to you it must have sounded like paradise, but then you have a comparison; back then I didn’t know any better.

  Although I wanted to follow the usual teen dream of magically getting rich, buying fast cars, and have a dozen beautiful girls to tend to my every whim, I knew that I’d probably take the same path as my parents. I’d meet a good looking girl, get married, buy a house, and have kids of my own. It’s what you did back then.

  How was I to know any different?

  ***

  “If you don’t get your lazy backside down these stairs within the next couple of minutes, young man, your sausages will go to Basil.”

  My sluggish brain managed to make me aware that Saturday had arrived; that meant for most of today, I’d have to fend for myself for food. The dreaded thought of our five year old Boxer cross chomping down on the only hot meal that mum would make for me today gave me enough incentive to force open my eyes.

  I just wished that my brain had supplied a little more information before allowing my eyelids to snap open. The bright sunlight streaming through my bedroom window almost blowtorched my eyes out of their sockets. I groaned in protest, and found the strength to turn towards the door. My traditional hangover went ballistic, and moved from mild annoyance, to dropping a safe on my head.

  Right at that moment, my soft black quilt felt as comforting as the soft flesh of an eager lover. I couldn’t get up, no matter how hard I tried. The house could burn down around me for all I cared, it didn’t matter, I knew my quilt would protect me from the flames.

  I mentally congratulated the dog on receiving its unexpected meal, and closed my eyes, knowing that I’d be no use to man nor beast until the after effects of last night’s drinking session had seeped out of my poor hurting body.

  It could have been five minutes or five days before I did manage to find my way down the stairs, I didn’t care. I would have still been under the quilt if it hadn’t been for that dream of a giant sausage, wearing a clown costume, chasing me through some generic underground carpark. I worry about myself sometimes.

  Downstairs appeared devoid of life, and that suited me just fine. Conversation with others of my family was always a rather stilted affair on a Saturday. After checking the living room, my stomach led me into the kitchen.

  “Well, good almost afternoon, sleepyhead. I’m guessing that you had a rather hectic night?”

  I presented a weak smile to the middle-aged blur leaning against the huge silver fridge in the corner of the kitchen. It took effort to keep my head steady, as the slightest movement sent a cavalry of horsemen galloping through my throbbing brain. I blinked, allowing my dad’s vile coloured t-shirt to offend my eyes. “I’m guessing mum’s gone out then?”

  “Yep, gone for almost three hours, Travis. I took the liberty of donning this as soon as the door closed. I see that you approve.”

  The faded image of the gold robot from Star Wars covered the man’s chest, while his squeaky mate, the thing that looks like a frigging pedal bin, rested on his stomach. Christ, my head hurt. “I thought you weren’t allowed to wear that anymore.”

  “Who’s going to tell her, Travis? Anyway, I believe that spending most of the morning in bed is a far worse crime in your mum’s book, don’t you think?”

  He had made a valid point. I silently thanked the gods that she wasn’t in the house. I’m not sure that I was in any condition to suffer mum’s relentless guilt trips, not in this fragile state.

  Why wasn’t I feeling any better? If it really had been three hours since mum had yelling up the stairs to inform me of breakfast, I should be feeling as right a rain by now. I had a strong constitution, at least, so I thought. Those extra hours hadn’t made a dent in this hangover. I still felt like death warmed up.

  The family dog chose this moment to brush past my legs, and pad into the kitchen. He stopped in front of dad, parked his butt on the dark blue tiles, raised his black and white head, and released a single bark. The dog’s tail was going ten to the dozen. It was obvious what he wanted.

  “You’ve got a bloody nerve, Basil,” I muttered, retying the belt on my dressing gown. “I can’t believe that you’re still hungry. What’s wrong, didn’t my yummy breakfast fill you up?”

  My dad chuckled, leaned over, and tickled Basil under the chin. “Travis, you’re right about him needing to assert his dominance over you, but not for that reason.” He walked over to the microwave, spun the timer, and pushed in the dial. “You see, Basil heard your mother having a go. He knows that the pack leader is pissed at you. He obviously wants me to give him your breakfast so he can eat it in front of you.”

  Through the frosted glass, the light showed my favourite red plate completing its first rotation. My stomach then joined my smiling face in celebration. Warmed up breakfast for warmed up death, it was the perfect marriage. My feeble body certainly agreed; it looked as though I was ready for some mum-made nutrition after all. “You seriously do come out with some weird crap, dad. Are you sure that I’m not adopted?” I stared at Basil, watching the animal shift his gaze from the microwave to the breakfast bar next to me. “Do you really believe that Basil is thinking all of that?”

  He shrugged “Basil is a pack hunter, Travis. They rely on each other in the wild to bring down their prey. This kitchen makes a poor imitation of the wilds of a Norwegian forest, but the principle remains the same. The prey is in there, and he wants it, preferably before you.”

  “Jesus, why do I even bother?”

  My dad grinned. “Who can tell what he’s thinking? The inner workings of a dog’s mind are as mysterious as your mum’s mind. Oh, and you can thank me later. She really was going to give the contents to the dog, you know.”

  I felt a brief guilt stab after that proclamation. Okay, so dad was a bit weird, but I guess most dads had some kind of deviancy built into their genetic makeup; they wouldn’t be a dad otherwise. Weirdness aside, I couldn’t claim that he didn’t look after me. “Thanks for rescuing my breakfast. Judging from how my guts are churning, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” The fleeting thoughts of me trying to blackmail him made a brief and unwelcome appearance. What would mum do if she found out he compared her mind to Basil’s, not to mention dad wearing the vomit inducing t-shirt. I suppressed a smirk, counting down the seconds on the microwave. Knowing dad, he’d already used that metaphor on her, and I know from painful experience that trying to pull one over on the pair of them was always counterproductive.

 
In another few more seconds, that red plate would be as good as claimed. My evil plan was to scarf the food within eyesight of Basil, just in case dad’s strange theory did have some merit. It’s about time that the mutt learned his place in this particular pack, and that was at the bottom. Just to prolong the agony, I’d take my time as well, saving those delicious sausages until the very last. Then again, maybe I should lock the bloody animal in the hallway; there’s only so long that I can resist his soft moo-cow eyes.

  “Dad, have you any idea how long mum is going to be?”

  He shook his head. “Why don’t you ask me an easier question? You know what your mum is like, Travis. All she said to me was that she heard that the new shopping mall was due to open its doors today. If that’s the case, it could be a full week before she makes an appearance, or at least until she runs out of money, whichever is sooner.” He pulled open the microwave door, grabbed a tea towel, and gently placed the plate on the breakfast bar. “What about you? What’s your plan for today, son? I mean, after you’ve stuffed your face.”

  I gently manoeuvred the dog’s body away from the edge of the table so I could slide out a bar stool. Drool soaked my bottom lip when the aroma from those three thick sausages found its way into my nostrils. Mum had outclassed herself this time. These weren’t the usual cheap and nasty value sausage bought from some discount supermarket. Mum must have paid the local butchers a visit. I felt the dog’s large eyes on me already, and I did feel sorry for the poor bugger. Basil’s nose was supposed to be like a hundred times more powerful than mine. The aroma from the cooling food must have been driving him insane for the past three hours.

  Compassion got the better of me, and I pushed one of them to the side of my plate. “God damn you and your soft brown eyes, Basil. If you stop bugging me, I’ll let you have this once it cools down.” I took my eyes off the dog, and smiled up at my dad. Jeffery Fitzgerald and I shared a similar physique. Unlike me, my dad knew what he wanted to do with is life once he’d left school. He’d joined the army at seventeen, and stayed there until a couple of years ago.