Overgrowth

“Fourteen days was all we had to adapt to the Overgrowth. Fourteen days was all it took for the majority of the world to step back into forgotten eras. Fourteen days was all we had before we ourselves had to grow up.”

Carson eyed his older brother, rubbing the abrasive bandages on his left arm, absorbing the words as best he could and trying to make sense of what exactly was going on.

“So you mean to tell me,” Carson said, “that tree outside, the one we used to play on as kids, grew that tall in just fourteen days? Sam, that’s ludicrous. That tree has to be six-hundred feet tall.

“Seven hundred-and-eighty-two feet actually,” Sam said with an air of practicality.

“And all those vines,” Carson asked incredulously, “thick as my leg! And the fields of grass tall as buildings! And those vegetables that look like something out of a fairy tale garden! You’re telling me this all happened in the past fourteen days?”

“Well yes,” Sam replied, “it all happened in fourteen days, just not in the past fourteen days.”

“What do you mean?” Carson asked puzzled. “What do you mean not in the past fourteen days?”

Sam chewed on his words for a moment before responding. “The Overgrowth - what you see outside - happened in only fourteen days; but for you, it has been fourteen months since you last opened your eyes. You were sealed up in what remains of that cocoon over there.”

Carson looked to his left, seeing the debris of the suffocating prison he’d woken up in mere hours ago, shivering a little at the memory of the panic he felt opening his eyes to utter darkness.

“I know it seems like you just woke up,” Sam continued, “but for us, we have been living through the Overgrowth for over a year now.”

There was a sustained pause between the two brothers as Carson began to feel the weight of his brothers words.

“So, for the past fourteen months, I was asleep, or dead, or something, in that cocoon, while you lived on in this overgrown world?” Carson asked.

“Yes,” Sam replied, “we’ve stayed here and we’ve survived.”

“Survived?” Carson asked quizzically. “What is there to survive? Sure the trees are huge and the grass is tall, but look at the vegetables in the garden. Hell, I could live off that zucchini for a month. What is there to survive?”

“Carson, what you saw outside may seem harmless, but trust me; the world we now live in, this world of the Overgrowth, is far more menacing than any of us ever imagined.”

Sam continued, “Carson, the day the Overgrowth started, the earth shook. Not just locally, but globally. Every continent, every country, every town on planet Earth shook. And then, before we even had time to figure out why, every living plant began to grow at extraordinary rates. The world was mesmerized by what we could only describe as a miracle.”

“It took us a total of three days to realize that the Overgrowth was anything but a miracle.”

“By day three, tree roots began to burst through water pipes. Smaller roads seemed to spontaneously implode as the plant life made its way through the surface. By day five, even the smallest house plants had overgrown and trapped people in their homes.”

“At the end of the first week, major highways were becoming un-drivable as the grass in the mediums overtook the roads, and by the end of day ten, shipping routes on every ocean and sea became impassable as the plant life in the water began to clog coastlines globally.”

“Carson, within fourteen days nearly every power plant, nearly every factory, and nearly every commercial or private utility line was overtaken. Buildings crumbled from the weight of their rooftop greenhouses, homes were crushed by the ever expanding foliage, and all shipping and trade came to an absolute halt.”

“In just fourteen days, the world was set back to the time of the dinosaurs.”

A hollow silence filled the air before Sam continued.

“And in the midst of it all a group of people, you included, were encased in impenetrable, unbreakable bark in a matter of moments. And now, as far as I know, you are the first who has awoken.”

The silence between the two brothers lingered longer this time. Carson rubbed the bandages on his arm reflexively, trying to find comfort in the motion. As ridiculous as everything sounded to Carson, he knew his brother was telling the truth.

Carson finally broke the silence.

“I see why this Overgrowth thing was bad at first, what with all the rapid destruction, but I still don’t see what is so dangerous about it now.”

With solemnity in his voice, Sam said, “Here then, I’ll show you.”

Sam drew a knife from his belt, shifted slightly in his seat, and threw the knife with pinpoint accuracy at a large vine that had been slowly creeping its way around the banisters upstairs. As the knife was just about to pierce the vine, the vine suddenly whipped itself out of the way then violently shot straight for Sam at a blindingly fast speed.

But Sam was prepared. Before he had thrown his knife, Sam’s slight shifting had allowed him to spring from the wooden stool and dodge the vine. As the vine streaked across a thirty foot gap in a fraction of a second, Sam leapt from the stool, whipped out another knife, and severed the first three feet of the vine just as it crushed the stool he was sitting on only a second before.

The vine wriggled for a moment, then went limp.

Sam slid his knife back into his belt, then knelt by the shattered stool. Breaking away the splintered wood, he grabbed the severed vine in both hands.

“I forgot to mention this as well, Carson. Maybe the greatest catastrophe the Overgrowth has caused is the drying up of every source of fresh water known to man. No lakes, no rivers, no wells. Nothing. The plants take it all. We rely on the rain and what we can harvest from vines like these. Here, drink up, I’m sure you need it.”

Carson hesitantly took the vine from his brother, peering at the pooled up water that seemed to occupy a hollow space in the vine. He took a pull of water and was surprised to find that it tasted normal.

“So,” Carson said, “the plants didn’t just overtake everything in the world, they also became violent and a little bit pissy when you throw sharp things at them?”

“Not just the plants,” Sam responded. “That plant was dangerous. I have enough scars to prove just how fast those vines really are. But the plants are nothing compared to the animals. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but the vast majority of animal life, outside of humans, have become nothing short of monsters. I don’t think words can do justice to just how fearsome they really are.”

Carson shivered at what his brother had just said. He was still wrapping his mind around how fast that vine reacted. It almost seemed to sense the knife was coming at it, and, in a fraction of a second, it not only avoided the knife, but bee-lined straight for Sam as if it somehow knew he had attacked it.

But that was crazy. Plants didn’t have minds. They didn’t even have instincts. And yet that vine reacted to an attack and then made a counter attack. And an attack powerful enough to reduce a wooden stool to a pile of splinters at that.

And if the plants were that terrifying, what could the animals do?

As Carson was staring at the destroyed stool, he noticed something glimmering in the sunlight trickling through the slivers of overgrowth on the house. He picked it up and cried out, “This is Dotty’s! This is my wife’s locket!”

“Hush,” Sam whispered to Carson, “I just told you about those monstrosities we used to call animals, and I’d rather not have them bounding towards us because you started yelling about Dotty’s locket.”

With the heart shaped locket in hand, Carson had a realization.

“Sam, multiple times now you have said ‘us’ and ‘we’. Does that mean it’s not just you who is living here?”

Sam lingered for just a moment before answering, “Yes. Dotty is alive. So are my wife Hallie and two of the neighborhood boys from a couple of streets over.”

“So,” Carson asked expectantly, “where are they?”

Again, Sam hesitated before answering, but finally replied, “Dotty, Hallie, Isaac and Jonas all went out to forage four days ago. They were supposed to be back two nights ago, but haven’t returned.”

Silence filled the room once more.

After a moment, Sam continued, “All of us took turns staying here to protect you. For whatever reason, one we never could explain, we knew it was important to protect you. So it was my turn to stay. In the past year and two months we have never had a foraging trip go seriously wrong. Until this one.”

“We never made a plan for what to do if the whole group didn’t come back. We never talked about whether the one keeping watch would stay with you no matter what or abandon you to your fate in order to find the others.”

“And I’ll be honest Carson, I made up my mind last night to leave you. But I was unceremoniously awoken this morning by your muffled screams and your violent attempts to free yourself from the cocoon.”

Carson grinned as he looked down at his bandaged left arm, understanding his brother’s choice of the word ‘violent.’

Carson looked back up at his older brother Sam and said with all the confidence he was known for, “If you were planning to go today, then let’s go find them!”

Sam wanted to protest, but he knew his younger brother too well. There was no protesting. So he sighed, let out a small chuckle, and said, “Alright little bro, but you have to listen to everything I say while we are out there. It will be a matter of life and death, and I’d rather be alive when we find our wives to see Dotty’s reaction to you being alive.”

Carson and Sam shared a smile they hadn’t shared for over a year, nodded to each other, and then began to pack.

An hour later, all was ready to go. Sam walked over to Carson with a new roll of bandages and suggested Carson change the old ones before they ventured out. Carson set his pack down, and as he unrolled his old bandages, he was shocked by the amount of dried blood on them.

But he was nowhere near as shocked by what he saw next.

The intricate lines of deep gashes he’d received after clawing his way out of the cocoon now formed the patterns of brilliant brown-colored bark that didn’t just encase the entirety of his left arm, but was the very substance of it. His hand and arm didn’t feel any different in their range of motion, but what was once supple skin was now rugged bark. And though he couldn’t explain why, he knew there were surges of power flowing through his left arm, power that was beyond anything he could understand.

“Sam,” Carson said hesitantly, “you need to see this.”

Sam stepped over, and shockingly, just nodded when he saw Carson’s arm.

“Interesting. Very interesting. I guess I’ll need to tell you more about those animals now rather than just waiting for you to meet one. I’d venture to say there is a connection between their bodies and your new left arm. Come on Carson, we will talk about this on the way. Our wives headed north into town, so that’s where we will look first.”