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Thicker than Water

(983 words)

The trees got Daphne last night. We’d camped in what I thought was a secure spot, an old garage with brick walls and a concrete floor. I’d paid careful attention to the trees lining the crumbling streets, their leaves gaudy crimson in the fading light, the corpses of raccoons and feral dogs ringing their trunks. They were maples and slash pines. No real threat unless you were lying on soft ground out in the open.


In the garage, we’d found a cache of bottled water, enough to get us through a few days, maybe even a week if we were careful. We’d felt fortunate, blessed, and that fleeting moment of hope blinded me.


I didn’t see the oak behind the garage.


In the night, it sent roots questing through the dirt like hungry worms, pushing through the concrete with slow, relentless strength. When I woke, the water bottles were split and drained; Daphne lay on a bed of cracked earth and the shredded remains of her sleeping bag, her skin pale as milk, roots twisting through her body like wooden tumors.


I loved Daphne as much as you can love anything at the end of the world, but I didn’t scream or weep. I’m long past such things. When all the water dried up, so did my tears.


The tree was keeping her alive while it fed, using the frenzied pumping of her heart to drain every drop of blood. I hefted my axe and looked into her eyes, hoping to see some spark of the woman I’d loved, to say goodbye, to say I’m sorry. I saw nothing but terror, so I freed her before the tree could consume what little life remained.


The roots withdrew from Daphne’s corpse in stiff, jerking movements, like those old films that speed up the frame rate to show plants leaning toward the sun.


Of course, it’s not just the sun they want. They need water, too, and after human folly and greed turned oceans, rivers, and lakes into dust-choked wasteland, they had to adapt, change from passive feeders to active hunters. The trees rapidly evolved to exploit the one source of water that was still abundant—gushing through our veins. They’re too slow and too obvious when you’re awake and moving, but you have to sleep sometime, and there are always roots beneath you.


I thought about burying Daphne, then grimaced. If I put her in the ground, the trees would find her, drink the last drops of fluid, and turn her skin and bones into mulch. I couldn’t allow that. They’d taken too much from us already.


I had another idea. More fitting. More just.


I picked up my axe again, a good felling model I found in an abandoned hardware store in Maine, and went out back.


Someone had built an iron cage around the post oak. They did that in the beginning. Everyone thought we still needed the trees so the world didn’t suffocate; everyone thought that we could just contain them. Laughable. I’ve seen an oak push roots through the undercarriage of a semi to get at the people inside, to get at their water.


The oak behind the garage was small, barely topping ten feet. Its placement probably didn’t provide it many opportunities to feed. Not until we came along. When I got back there, I wasn’t surprised to see the oak’s leaves were bright red with stolen vitality. That’s one thing I just can’t get used to. I remember a green planet, not this dry, bleeding husk. Now every forest, every jungle, every leaf swaying in the choking breeze of a parched Earth is the color of a dying sun.


I approached the oak. I’m sure it could sense me, feel the life pumping through me in thumps and gushes. Its roots had cracked the concrete around its cage and bent the bars outward. Some of them wriggled toward me, inching along the concrete. I stepped over them and pulled my knife from its sheath at my hip.


The oak had a coppery stink, and beneath it, I caught a whiff of Daphne. That combination of dirt, sweat, and the sweet, herbal aroma of her favorite gum. Every time we’d scavenge an old grocery store for water and other supplies, she’d somehow find an unopened pack, neon green and reeking of mint. It was so uniquely her. Some people said the trees drank more than our blood. I didn’t want to believe them. But there she was. Her smell, Wrigley’s Doublemint, blooming from the leaves of the tree like an old memory.


I brought up my knife and pushed the point against the bark. I began to carve, working silently, putting my weight into the blade so my mark would last. When I finished, I stepped back, avoiding the nest of squiggling roots that had assembled at my feet. I smiled and discovered I had a few tears left.


Into the oak’s trunk, I had carved:


DAPHNE


+


DAVID


I put my knife away and picked up the axe. Its weight felt good in my hands, its purpose felt right in my mind. I cleared the roots away first, hacking them into kindling, even as they stretched upward, drawn to the salty tears streaming down my face. Then I turned to the tree.


I keep the axe sharp, and the first swing cut deep, showering me with bark. The coppery stench intensified as the sap flowed, but so did Daphne’s precious scent. I swung again, breathing it in, letting the smell awaken memories of our time together. The sweet moments we shared, the kind words we spoke to one another in a lonely, cannibal world.


When the oak toppled, the sound of its trunk splintering had a keening quality, like a long, groaning scream. Daphne’s smell mercifully faded, and I chopped the oak into pieces to build her pyre.

Aeryn Rudel is a writer from sunny California currently confined to the gloom-shrouded Pacific Northwest. He is the author of the baseball horror novella Effectively Wild, the Iron Kingdoms Acts of War novels, and the flash fiction collection Night Walk & Other Dark Paths. His short stories have appeared in Factor Four Magazine, On Spec, and Pseudopod, among others. He is a heavy metal nerd, a baseball geek, a sword dweeb, and knows more about dinosaurs than is healthy or socially acceptable. Learn more about Aeryn and his work at www.rejectomancy.con or on Bluesky @aerynrudel.bsky.social.

Ninja Jo artwork for Radon Journal Issue 9
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