Part 1. The aftermath.
1
Waiting amongst the decaying forest, between the brambles and supporting trunks of giants, lay the remains of the city. The rows of houses crept out from the hub of over sized sky scrapers. Buildings once proud and shining now stood gutted and decayed. From these giants spread thousands of houses, spreading out like the empty bones of a giant brick carcass. Entwined between them, through them, over them, the forest grew angrily. The branches stretched twisted and misshapen. The bruised bark, split and wounded, took hold of all. The branches split the concrete, the roots divided the roads. The shed leaves covered everything in a thick layer of decay. Through the disappearing foliage, the city began to reappear. Finally, the onslaught of nature was abating, and the cities bones were revealed. There was no evidence now of how the previous winter had been so hard and white. The snows had melted, where it had covered everything in a never ceasing, blanket of deadly white ice. It had laid at least twenty feet deep. The temperature had plummeted to below 20 degrees centigrade. The surface, and its overgrown mutated growth, waited for the sun. Buried below the ice. The new year bought cold winds and heavy, never ceasing rain, intermittent with hail. This hail fell the size of fists on the cold days of December. The growth waited, the snows hung on, now protected by thick ice formed from the rains. Nothing even began to thaw until well in to spring. Even she had been reluctant show her face until the beginning of may. It was as if she knew what her warmth would reveal. With patches of ground exposed, the vegetation refused to show any signs of new life. As the days grew gradually longer, and sun grew warmer, the trees and weeds showed earlt signs of vigour, as if it may come back stronger. But by June it became clear something was different. Though the trees grew back, they became too heavy for their own trunks. The new growth began dying in the early summer heat, weighing down heavily on dying plants and trees. As the heat rose, and things began drying out, gravity and decay took their effect, and the death of the forest began. The rows of houses became visible, and more importantly, the roads became usable. There was still a large amount of growth in the streets and on the roves, but it was clean, normal growth.
'There, amongst the sycamores.' She moved away from the telescope and he angled his body awkwardly to the eye piece. He waited for a few minutes without seeing what she was referring to.
'Can we move it so i can see a bit better?' he asked. 'Its not easy for me in this chair.' She went to move the telescope but he held up his hand and she paused, mid movement.
'no wait.. i see him.' she grabbbed a pair of binocualrs from the window sill and they sat together and watched him silently for ten full minutes in silence, as if their uttering of a single word may scare him away.
'whats he doing?' she whispered eventually.
'he's putting together some kind of machine.' he whispered back.
The man was dressed in full camouflage so was extremely difficult to spot, in even the hot June sun. The fact he crept slowly and purposefully through the foliage filling the city streets helped him remain hidden, though it was not these two that he wished to remain hidden from.
'Do you think he's from Cassandra's lot?' She asked, hopefully. There was only a deep awkawrd silence in reply.
'I've lost sight of him.’ she said eventually.
Hes still there, he‘s creeping out of the trees now, you’ll see him aagain in a second..
Sure enough in a few moments he appeared from under the canopy, creeping cautiously now out in the open. Checking around him constantly.
‘There isn’t anyone for miles around, he’s quite safe.’ She said, partly to inform her father, partly to put her own mind at ease.
‘Yes, but he doesn’t know that… he’s quite right to be cautious.’ They watching him carefully pick a route through the deserted streets, now covered in a thick mass of twisted and mutated vegetation. He soon vanished up a street and was hidden from view,even to them in their 15th storey safe house.
‘ what do you think it was he put down there?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’ they sat thoughtfully for a moment, still looking through their eye pieces, trying to catch another glimpse of him. Suddenly, as if in answer to the question, a strange sound began floating up to them from below.
‘whats that?’ Tbey both began scanning the surrounding area for the source, but it was difficult to tell the direction it was coming from.
‘You know, I think it coming from where he was hiding in the trees.’ they both turned their attention to the contraption thee man had been working on.
‘I think youre right you know,’ he agreed. ’there is some movement coming from in the trees.’ They both watched in silence again, just listening to the sound, a strange rhythmic whirring noise interspersed with a regular drumming beat. It pulsed and filled the city, it was easily the loudest noise to have filled the air for more than a decade.
‘you know if he was from cassandras lot…’ he sighed in annoyance at her persistence of this subject.
