Fighting for Today

Chapter Four

 We finally stop running down the tunnel. "I think we lost them," I breathe aloud, more for Tommy's benefit. We just need to keep moving away from the enemy. This particular tunnel was a heating duct. We learned about these in my school. All of the heating tunnels lead to underneath a superheated swamp, and these tunnels are used to heat all of the buildings in the city. This hadn't even crossed my mind since the attack. The duct system was a great idea, but now they will be used for escape and hiding for the rest of the living. As we make our way, more and more fluorescent creatures come out of the darkness. This tunnel has started being overrun with bright tendrils of plants. A lot of the plants on this planet have fluorescent roots, and so whenever these grasshopper-like creatures, we call them Epicon, eat it, they become fluorescent. Tommy shifts closer to me every time he sees one because he hates bugs.

 After running for what feels like forever and walking for a while also, we finally see light. Tommy starts to run towards it, and I quickly follow behind. We exit a few yards from the wall, a section that isn't broken. I recognize where we are as I look into the giant canopy of brightly colored trees. There is a small pool of water with bright blue algae covering all of it.  "Come on Tommy. The research center is this way." I start walking into the jungle. "Oh, and Tommy, you're in charge of sweeping our tracks. Just in case they do follow us," I say. Tommy sighs.

 I grab my machete from my back. Tommy sighs again. He has been wanting to learn how to use the machete, but he knows that now isn't the time to argue. This I got from my dad on my sixteenth birthday. He said he used it as one of the first people on the ground here. My dad never expected it to be used again. "Just a relic", he would say. Now, look at it. I am using it to survive. Life has changed as we know it, most likely for forever.

 I swing at the dark colored underbrush, trying to find some semblance of a path in this massive nature. The native plants here could be considered a force. Almost as if they could fight you just as well as the Originals. Some smaller bushes have giant thorns like knives, but thankfully they grow close to water so we would be able to see them before getting stabbed to death. Some smaller trees have nocturnal glowing green vines, but some rare ones glow pink. At first, we were with a large group of survivors fleeing the cities and setting up camp in the jungle, but when our numbers got too big the Originals found us. We all scattered like flies, and the sounds of people screaming, my heart beat in my ears, and explosions and gunfire as we fought back but still people were being captured. We barely made it out, and the images of that night still haunt my dreams. Some nights I would wake up screaming and that is how we found the glowing trees. We have been roaming the jungle ever since the large group by ourselves. The silence seemed defining and it was almost as if the plants moved around with us and held their breath as we passed. The only good to come of our time with the group was that I realized that I couldn't rely on anyone else to save us, and that more people meant more risk in an already too difficult situation. So I swore off people right then and there.

 I chop a few more times, and then find a very deadly plant. "Hold up Tommy!" I say just as he bumps into my back. I point at the plant with my weapon. "You see those flowering plants right there?" He nods his head. "Those are the spewing flowers. They are the ones that leak poisonous gas if they sense movement, so don't get close." I am so glad that they were in this small clearing instead of the underbrush. Then we would have been on top of them before I would have noticed. I look around and notice the small rather overgrown path that was used to get to the station. I look back at the path we just took and see no footprints with no trace we were ever there. Tommy did a good job. I just take some of the limbs I cut off and put them over the trail. Then we make our way to the old path.