Rooted in Death

Twenty-one-year-old Penelope Vale should already be dead.
The first sign was the cough. Then the petals.
When the spore plague began spreading across the countryside, entire villages disappeared beneath creeping vines and choking fungal growth. The infected coughed up flowers as the parasite rooted itself in their lungs, spreading through blood and nerves like a living garden. In days, the body stopped belonging to the person inside it.
Most victims don't last a week.
Penelope has lasted three.
With the first dark blossoms beginning to form in her breath and thorn-like veins creeping beneath her skin, she follows the last desperate rumour anyone has left: the cure may lie in a forgotten village where the infection first bloomed. If the plague started there, perhaps something within its ruins can stop it.
But the village is not empty.
Its former residents still wander the streets, bodies twisted with roses, ivy, and fungal growths, their minds long gone while the garden inside them walks their corpses through the fog-filled roads. They protect the heart of the plague without knowing why.
And the closer Penelope gets to the centre of the village, the faster the flowers inside her bloom.
If she cannot find the cure soon, she will never leave the village.
She will become part of its garden.