The Bone Planter

The ground did not just shake. It breathed.

I sat on the ridge overlooking the ruined city, my back against a granite headstone that belonged to someone named Miller. My lungs were still burning from the sprint out of the mall. The air inside my gas mask tasted like old copper and stale sweat. In my lap, cradled like a radioactive artifact, was the bleached human skull. Inside the skull was a scoop of clean dirt. And pushing out of that dirt, bright and defiant under the hot spring sun, was the marigold.

It was screaming orange. It was the most ridiculous, beautiful thing I had seen in three years.

Then my teeth rattled.

The vibration started deep in the bedrock. It wasn't a sharp earthquake. It was a rhythmic, heavy thud. Thud. Thud. Like a giant, buried heart waking up from a long, ugly sleep. I looked down at the skull. The dirt inside was shivering. The fragile green stem of the marigold shook.

"This is highly inconvenient," I said out loud. My voice sounded flat and tinny inside the mask. I stood up, gripping the skull with my left hand and the rusted iron pipe with my right.

I looked down the slope of the cemetery. The graveyard was built on a hill, a sprawling mess of tilted stones, wrought-iron fences, and dead grass. But the grass wasn't dead anymore. It was moving.

A crack appeared near a large marble angel thirty yards below me. The sound was like a dry tree branch snapping right next to my ear. The earth split. A geyser of yellow spore-dust shot into the air, catching the bright spring sunlight and turning it into a toxic, floating haze. I checked the seal on my mask. I hit the side of the filter cartridge with my palm, a nervous habit. If that yellow dust got into the intake, my lungs would turn into a terrarium by midnight.

Thud.

The marble angel tipped forward and vanished into the earth. It didn't fall. It was swallowed.

"Okay," I muttered, shifting my weight. "Time to enact an immediate horizontal departure."

I started moving along the ridge, trying to keep high ground. The vibrations were getting faster. The Vined—the massive fungal network that had choked the world—was usually a slow, creeping horror. It grew on buildings. It turned corpses into mossy statues. It took its time. But this was different. This was aggressive. This was a bloom event. The heavy concentration of bodies in the cemetery had turned the hill into a massive, underground battery of organic matter. And now, the fungus was cashing in.

I stepped over a sunken grave. The ground felt soft. Too soft. Like walking on a mattress. I looked down. The dirt was shifting, bubbling. Thick, white filaments—the mycelium—were pushing up through the soil like worms fleeing a flood. They were the thickness of my wrists, pulsing with a sick, milky fluid.

I kept my eyes on the marigold. "Do not die," I told the flower. "I just spent my water on you. You represent a significant biological investment."

I broke into a jog. The heavy boots I wore slapped against the uneven terrain. The spring air was hot. Sweat rolled down my forehead, stinging my eyes, pooling in the rubber chin-cup of my mask. I couldn't wipe it. I just had to blink and deal with the burn.

To my left, a mausoleum cracked open. The stone doors blew outward with a violent crunch. A massive, coiled root system erupted from the dark interior. It looked like a nest of pale snakes. It ripped through the roof of the stone tomb, pulling chunks of concrete into the air. The roots sought the sun. They reached upward, thick and wet, dripping a clear slime that hissed when it hit the dry grass.

I veered right, dodging a spray of gravel. I needed to get off the hill. I needed to get to the highway overpass in the distance. Concrete didn't rot. Concrete didn't grow. Concrete was safe.

"Hey!"

The voice cut through the sound of tearing earth. It was a wet, ragged sound.

I spun around, nearly dropping the skull.

Standing fifty feet away, staggering up the incline, was the Scavenger Leader from the mall. Silas, or whatever his name was. The guy who had tried to steal my water. The guy the half-turned fungal man had dragged into the fountain.

He shouldn't be alive.

He looked like a car crash. His leather jacket was shredded. His face was a mess of bruises and deep, angry scratches. But that wasn't the worst part. The left side of his neck was covered in a thick, fuzzy layer of white mold. It was growing fast, feeding on the open wounds where the fungal man had choked him. The spores had gotten into his bloodstream. He was turning. Fast.

He held his machete in a white-knuckled grip. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils blown wide. He was looking at me, but he wasn't really seeing me. He was looking at the skull. He was looking at the bright orange flower.

"You," he choked out. He coughed, a wet hacking sound that sprayed a fine mist of yellow from his lips. "You left me."

"I am entirely uninterested in participating in your revenge narrative," I yelled back. "I strongly suggest you look at the geological instability beneath your boots before attempting to stab me."

"Give me the water," he growled, taking a heavy, dragging step toward me. His left leg was stiff. The fungus was already getting into his joints, replacing cartilage with mycelium.

"The water has been utilized," I said, holding up the skull. "It is dirt now. And a plant. Your request is physically impossible to fulfill."

He didn't care. The logic center of his brain was currently being eaten by a mushroom. He raised the machete and charged.

It was a clumsy, desperate run. I didn't wait for him. I turned and sprinted toward the far edge of the cemetery. The ground bucked under my feet. A massive fissure opened up directly in my path. I hit the brakes, my boots skidding on the dirt. I teetered on the edge of the crack. It was deep. I couldn't see the bottom, only a writhing mass of white roots and the smell of ancient, turned earth.

I looked back. The Scavenger Leader was closing the gap. He was fueled by the sudden, violent energy of the infection. The spores gave you a burst of adrenaline right before they paralyzed your nervous system. It was a biological trick to make you spread the infection as far as possible before you became a permanent garden fixture.

"Your persistence is both mathematically improbable and intensely annoying!" I shouted, backing away from the fissure.

He swung the machete. I ducked. The rusty blade whistled over my head, slicing through the air with a heavy metallic hum. I brought my iron pipe up, blocking his backhand swing. The impact vibrated up my arm, making my elbow ache. I had to keep my left arm tucked tight against my chest to protect the skull. Fighting one-handed against a guy high on fungal adrenaline was a bad equation.

I kicked him in the stomach. My boot connected with something hard. He grunted, stumbling backward, but he didn't fall. He just looked down at his stomach, then back at me. He smiled. His teeth were stained yellow.

"You can't hurt me," he whispered. "I don't feel it anymore. The pain is gone. The noise is gone."

"That is a textbook symptom of advanced nervous system degradation," I said, backing up. "You are literally dying."

"I am waking up," he said.

He lunged again. I sidestepped, bringing the pipe down hard on his wrist. I heard a crack. He dropped the machete. But instead of crying out, he just laughed. It was a bubbly, wet sound. He threw himself at me, tackling me around the waist.

We hit the ground hard. My breath left me in a rush. I twisted as we fell, making sure my left arm stayed up. The skull hit the dirt, but it stayed upright. The marigold shook violently, a few specks of dirt flying out of the eye sockets.

The Scavenger Leader was on top of me. He smelled like garbage and wet moss. His hands were wrapped around my throat. I gagged, pulling at his fingers. His grip was like iron. The mold on his neck was pulsing, reaching out with tiny, hair-like tendrils toward my mask.

I brought my knee up, driving it into his groin. Nothing. The spores had completely numbed him.

My vision started to blur. Black spots danced at the edges of my sight. I couldn't breathe. The filter on my mask was digging into my chin. I reached out blindly with my right hand, my fingers scraping through the dirt, searching for the iron pipe.

Thud.

The earth beneath us heaved. A massive root, easily the size of a tree trunk, burst through the soil just inches from my head. It shattered a nearby tombstone into gravel. The sudden violent movement of the ground threw the Scavenger Leader off balance. His grip loosened for a fraction of a second.

I rolled violently to the right. I grabbed the skull, tucking it under my arm like a football, and scrambled to my feet.

"Get back here!" he screamed, scrambling up. He was missing a shoe. His foot was covered in a thick, gray slime.

I didn't answer. I ran. The cemetery was completely coming apart now. The graves were opening like terrible, hungry mouths. Bodies, wrapped in decades of mold and rot, were being pushed to the surface by the erupting root system. The fungus didn't care about the dead. They were just fuel. It was building something.

I navigated the chaos with pure, frantic instinct. Step. Jump. Dodge. Breathe.

My thighs burned. My lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. I kept my eyes locked on the iron fence at the bottom of the hill. If I could get over that fence, I would hit the asphalt of the old access road.

I glanced down at the skull. The orange petals were perfectly intact. The color was so bright it felt like a hallucination against the brown and gray of the ruined world.

"We are making decent progress," I gasped to the flower. "Please continue to not die."

Suddenly, the ground gave way beneath my right boot.

It wasn't a crack. It was a sinkhole. A hidden crypt beneath the soil had collapsed under the pressure of the roots. I pitched forward, the world tilting violently. I threw my right arm out, dropping the iron pipe. I hit the edge of the hole hard, my ribs screaming in protest. I slid downward, dirt and gravel pouring over my shoulders.

I hit the bottom with a bone-jarring crunch. The wind was completely knocked out of me. I lay there in the dark, gasping, staring up at the jagged patch of blue spring sky framed by the hole I had just fallen through.

I panicked. My left hand felt empty.

I sat up, ignoring the sharp pain in my side. "No, no, no."

I patted the ground around me in the dim light. My fingers brushed against smooth bone. I grabbed it. The skull was upside down.

My heart stopped. I flipped it over. The dirt was gone.

"No."

I fell to my knees in the dust of the crypt, my hands frantically sweeping the floor. It was a stone floor, covered in decades of debris. My hands felt old bones, pieces of rotted wood, fragments of silk. Then, my fingers brushed something soft.

I picked it up carefully. It was the marigold. The stem was bent, but not snapped. The root ball was still clinging to a small chunk of wet dirt.

I let out a shaky breath that fogged the inside of my mask. I grabbed the skull, scooped a handful of the spilled dirt from the floor, and packed it back in. I carefully settled the flower back into the dirt, pressing the soil around the roots.

"That was a catastrophic failure of logistics," I whispered, my hands shaking. "But we have achieved recovery. We are fine."

I looked around. I was in an underground family vault. Stone shelves lined the walls, holding rotted wooden caskets. But the caskets were shattered. The entire back wall of the crypt was gone, replaced by a massive, pulsing wall of white fungal roots.

This was the source. This was the belly of the beast.

The roots here were different. They weren't just blind, searching tendrils. They were woven together, forming a solid mass that glowed with a faint, sickly bioluminescence. It was a pale green light that made the shadows in the crypt look sharp and angry. The air down here was thick. My mask filter hissed with every breath, working overtime to scrub the concentrated spores from the air.

I needed to climb out. The hole I fell through was about ten feet above me. The dirt walls were loose, crumbling every time the earth thumped.

I stood up, tucking the skull against my chest. I reached up with my right hand, trying to find a handhold in the dirt. I pulled. The soil broke away, showering my helmet in debris. I coughed, tasting dust despite the mask.

"Well, well."

The voice came from above.

I looked up. Silhouetted against the blue sky, peering down into the hole, was the Scavenger Leader. He looked worse. The fungus had spread up his jawline, creeping toward his left eye. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving.

"I strongly suggest you seek medical attention," I called up to him. "Though I suspect the window for effective treatment has closed."

He stared down at me. Then, he did something entirely irrational. He jumped in.

He didn't climb down. He just stepped off the edge and fell. He hit the stone floor of the crypt with a heavy, wet thud. I heard a bone snap in his leg. It was a loud, sharp crack. But he didn't scream. He just rolled over, his neck twitching violently, and began to drag himself toward me using his arms.

"The noise," he hissed. "The roots are talking. They want the clean thing. They want the green thing."

He meant the flower. The fungus was a hive mind, driven by a biological imperative to consume and assimilate. The marigold was pure, uninfected life. It was a beacon. And the spores in his brain were forcing him to get it.

I backed up, pressing myself against the glowing wall of roots. I was trapped. I had no weapon. The iron pipe was gone, dropped during the fall.

He dragged himself closer. His broken leg dragged behind him like a piece of dead meat. His hands, caked in dirt and blood, reached out for my boots.

"I am not accepting visitors at this current juncture," I said, my voice rising in panic. I kicked out, my boot connecting with his shoulder. He absorbed the blow, his fingers wrapping around my ankle.

He pulled. I slipped on the dusty floor, falling backward against the roots.

The wall of mycelium was soft. It felt like pressing against a giant, warm lung. It pulsed against my back. I scrambled, trying to kick him off, but his grip was locked. He hauled himself up my leg, his face inching closer to mine. I could see the individual white hairs of the mold growing out of his pores. His breath fogged the glass of my mask visor.

"Give it," he whispered, his voice a chorus of wet clicks.

He reached for the skull.

I reacted with pure, unthinking violence. I didn't use my hands. I used my head. I snapped my neck forward, driving the hard plastic and metal filter of my gas mask directly into the bridge of his nose.

The impact was brutal. Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed across my visor, obscuring my vision in a red smear. He reeled back, his grip on my ankle loosening just enough.

I kicked him square in the chest, pushing him away. He rolled onto his back, thrashing blindly.

I wiped my visor with my sleeve, smearing the blood but clearing a small window of sight. The crypt was shaking violently now. The thumping sound was deafening. Dust poured from the ceiling in thick sheets. The structural integrity of the vault was failing.

I looked at the wall of roots behind me. It was splitting apart. The massive fungal mass was pushing upward, tearing the crypt into pieces to reach the surface. Thick vines the size of industrial cables were ripping through the stone.

I saw my exit.

As the root wall tore open, it created a jagged, upward slope of crushed stone and thick fungal stalks. It wasn't safe. It was actively moving. But it led up.

I grabbed the skull tight. I stepped onto the first thick root. It was slick, but my boots found purchase. I started to climb.

The Scavenger Leader saw me moving. He let out a noise that wasn't human. It sounded like a massive insect chattering its mandibles. He dragged himself toward the roots, his bloody hands grabbing at the white vines.

"Stop," he shrieked.

I didn't stop. I climbed. It was agonizing. The roots shifted under my weight. I had to time my movements with the thumping pulse of the mass. When the roots contracted, I stepped. When they expanded, I held on tight. My right arm screamed with the effort of pulling my body weight upward. My left arm stayed locked around the skull.

I was halfway up the slope. The daylight from the surface was getting brighter. The air was getting hotter.

Something grabbed my boot.

I looked down. The Scavenger Leader had managed to pull himself up the roots behind me. His face was unrecognizable now. The fungus had completely overtaken his left eye, replacing it with a thick, gray mushroom cap. He was a puppet, operated by the strings of the Vined.

"Your persistent violation of my personal space is unacceptable!" I screamed.

I tried to shake him off, but his fingers were embedded in the leather of my boot. He was pulling me down. I felt my grip slipping on the slimy root. If I fell back into the crypt now, I would be buried alive under tons of shifting stone and fungal mass.

I looked at his face. I looked at the thick, pulsing vine right next to his head.

I made a choice. It was a harsh, ugly choice, but this was a harsh, ugly world.

I let go of the root I was holding with my right hand. I balanced purely on my left leg and the tight grip I had on the skull. I drew my right foot back, bringing my heavy boot up high.

I drove my heel down with everything I had.

I didn't aim for his head. I aimed for his hand. My boot crushed his fingers against the thick fungal root. I heard bones shatter.

He didn't react to the pain. He just stared up at me with his one remaining human eye. It was empty. The man from the mall was entirely gone.

I kicked again, stomping on his wrist. His grip finally failed. He slipped.

He fell backward, tumbling down the jagged slope of roots and crushed stone. He hit the bottom of the crypt just as the massive fungal wall finally gave way. The entire ceiling of the vault collapsed inward. Tons of granite, dirt, and heavy mycelium crashed down, burying him instantly in the dark.

I didn't watch him die. I turned and lunged for the surface.

My hand caught the edge of the iron fence at the top of the hole. The metal was hot from the sun. I pulled myself up, my muscles screaming, my vision swimming with exhaustion. I dragged myself over the edge and collapsed onto the hot asphalt of the access road.

I rolled onto my back, staring up at the bright, clear spring sky. The blue was so sharp it hurt my eyes. I lay there, my chest heaving, the filter of my mask hissing aggressively.

I waited for my heart rate to drop. I waited for the adrenaline to crash.

When I finally found the strength to sit up, I looked back at the cemetery.

It was gone.

The hill was no longer a graveyard. It was a massive, horrific garden. The earth had been entirely displaced by the fungal mass. Giant, pale mushrooms the size of houses stood where the mausoleums used to be. Thick, yellow spore-clouds drifted over the ruins, coating the remaining headstones in a thick layer of toxic dust. The thumping sound had stopped. The bloom was complete. The Vined had claimed the dead.

I sat on the asphalt. The road was cracked, but it was solid. It wasn't trying to eat me.

I looked down at my left arm. My jacket was torn. My gloves were ruined.

I slowly uncurled my fingers.

The skull was dirty. The bone was smudged with mud and blood. The dirt inside was packed down tight.

But the flower was there.

It leaned slightly to the left. One of the orange petals was torn. But it was alive. The bright, defiant color was still screaming against the gray and brown of the apocalypse.

I touched the torn petal with my clumsy, gloved finger.

"Your structural integrity is compromised," I whispered to the plant. "But your survival instincts are commendable."

I felt a strange tightness in my throat. It wasn't the spores. It was that spark again. That stubborn, stupid spark. I had just survived a violently collapsing crypt, fought a mutated scavenger, and watched an entire cemetery turn into a monster. All for a handful of dirt and a tiny green stem.

It was irrational. It was poor resource management. It was arguably insane.

But as I sat there on the ruined road, holding a dead man's skull with a living flower inside, I didn't care. The world was a rotting, ugly mess. It wanted to turn everything into cold, mindless mass.

I wanted to keep one thing warm.

I pushed myself to my feet. My legs felt like lead. Every joint ached. I looked down the access road. It stretched out toward the massive concrete pillars of the elevated highway. That was the goal. High ground. Concrete. A place where the roots couldn't reach.

I adjusted the strap of my pack. I checked the seal on my mask one last time. I cradled the skull against my chest.

I started walking. The spring sun beat down on my back. The air smelled like death, but the asphalt beneath my boots was hard and real.

I took a step. Then another.

The earth groaned one last time behind me, a low, settling sound of total destruction. I didn't look back. I just focused on the horizon, and the impossible, bright orange thing resting in my hands. But as the dust settled and the road stretched out ahead, I noticed the shadows shifting between the abandoned cars on the overpass. The highway wasn't empty.