The Green Choke

The air hung thick and green, tasting faintly of static electricity and wet earth. Artie wiped a sleeve across his brow, leaving a streak of grime. The machete felt heavy, almost useless, against the dense, knotted vines that had swallowed the old access track. They weren’t just vines; they were part of the Bloom, a sickly emerald colour that pulsed with a faint, internal light, like a vein. Every swipe sent fine, shimmering spores into the air, making his throat itch. Mirella coughed, a dry, ragged sound. She was bent double, peering at her handheld scanner, its screen flickering a nervous orange.

“It’s accelerating,” she rasped, pointing a gloved finger. “Twenty metres in the last hour. And the density here…” She shook her head, pulling at a clump of the Bloom that had rooted itself into the worn tread of her boot. It didn’t break clean; it stretched, fibrous, like muscle, dripping a viscous, fluorescent fluid onto the forest floor.

Pete, nimble as a fox, was already halfway up a leaning hydro pole, its ceramic insulators fuzzy with the same growth. He scraped a boot against the galvanised metal, dislodging a shower of orange dust. “This stuff’s got tendrils on the main line,” he called down, his voice tight. “Looks like it’s… feeding?”

Olivia grunted, levering a thick section of trunk, heavy with Bloom, out of their path. Her muscles strained, the fabric of her worn work shirt pulling taut across her shoulders. “Feeding or choking, doesn't matter,” she said, her breath heavy. “It's got to stop here. Or we'll be living by candlelight, minimum.”

Artie nodded, his jaw tight. The ‘minimum’ part was the lie they all told themselves. If the Bloom took the main power grid that fed their small, isolated community, it wouldn't just be dim lights. It would be frozen food spoiling, no communication, no heating when the winter inevitably returned. They were already on borrowed time. The town council, the adults, they’d talked, held meetings, waited for the 'authorities' from the distant mainland who had yet to arrive. Too far, too remote. So it fell to them, the ones who knew the Whispering Woods like the back of their hand, the ones who weren’t waiting anymore.

“We’ve got to get to Junction Four,” Artie said, checking the rusty compass clipped to his belt. “That’s the last access point before the main substation. If it’s there, it’s game over.”

“And if it isn’t?” Pete asked, sliding back down the pole, landing with a soft thud. He kicked a loose rock. His face was pale under the green glow, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. “Then what?”

Artie just gave a terse shrug. He didn't have an answer for 'then what'. The air shimmered, making the ancient cedars around them seem to waver, their bark already fuzzy with the leading edges of the Bloom. He could hear the faint, high-pitched hum of the affected power lines, a sound that usually meant electricity, but now sounded like a groan.

The Expanding Labyrinth

They pushed on, the machetes and small axes more for clearing the way than fighting. The Bloom wasn't animal; it didn't attack in the conventional sense. It just grew, relentless, suffocating. But as they ventured deeper, the character of the growth began to change. The vibrant emerald gave way to a darker, almost bruised-purple hue in places, and the tendrils seemed thicker, more aggressive, forming intricate, thorny lattices that snagged their clothes and scraped at exposed skin.

“Watch your step,” Olivia warned, her voice low. She pointed with the butt of her axe. A patch of the purple Bloom on the ground had tiny, hair-like filaments extending from it, almost imperceptibly twitching. As Artie’s boot came close, a few of them snapped back, quick as a spider’s leg.

Mirella knelt instantly, pulling a small magnifying scope from her pack. “New strain,” she muttered, her eyes narrowed. “Or… adapting. It’s reacting to movement now.” Her fingers brushed against one of the filaments, and it recoiled, leaving a faint reddish mark on her glove. “Not just growing. Defending.”

A shiver ran down Artie’s spine. Defending. Like it knew they were here. The thought was absurd, of course. It was a fungus, a biological anomaly. Not… intelligent. But the woods felt different now, charged not just with static, but with a silent, unseen awareness. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, itchy and cold. He glanced at Pete, who was nervously chewing on his lip, eyes darting between the menacing flora and the path ahead.

They entered a section where the Bloom had completely consumed the lower canopy, creating a tunnel of glowing green and purple. The air here was heavy, humid, the scent of rot stronger, almost cloying. Their headlamps, usually so piercing, seemed swallowed by the ambient bioluminescence. Artie’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the oppressive silence.

“How much further to Four?” Olivia asked, her voice a little strained. She’d been using her strength to push aside thicker branches, her breathing becoming more laboured.

Mirella checked her scanner again, her brow furrowed. “Another half-kilometre. But the signal’s getting… weird. It’s almost like it’s being absorbed. Or disrupted.”

Suddenly, Pete stumbled, his foot catching on a thick root. He swore, a quiet, sharp expletive, and then froze. The ground around them, previously just a tangle of roots and fallen leaves, began to ripple. Thick, whip-like tendrils, previously dormant, erupted from the earth, reaching blindly, sluggishly, towards the source of the vibration. They were thick as his wrist, tipped with barbed hooks. One snaked towards his ankle, testing the air.

“Don’t move,” Artie hissed, his own breath catching. He gripped the machete tighter, but knew a single blade wouldn’t stop these. He remembered the reports, dismissed by the town as hysteria, of animals found drained, desiccated. This wasn't just a choke; it was a hungry choke.

Mirella, ever practical, pulled a small aerosol can from her pack. “Bug spray,” she explained, a wry grin. “Always brings my mum’s plants to attention.” She aimed and sprayed a blast of acrid chemicals at the nearest tendril. The purple vine recoiled violently, its tip shriveling back, a faint, high-pitched sizzle emanating from it.

“Good thinking, Mirella!” Olivia exclaimed, taking a cautious step back. The immediate threat subsided, the tendrils retracting slowly, almost reluctantly, into the earth. The air, though, now carried a new, harsher chemical tang, mixing with the existing earthy-sweetness.

“Just bought us a minute,” Mirella said, wiping sweat from her forehead. “This stuff is definitely more aggressive here. The deeper we go, the worse it’ll get.”

Artie looked at the path ahead, the luminous tunnel stretching into the green gloom. He could feel the weight of their community on his shoulders, the silent pleas of everyone back home. His parents, his younger sister. They were counting on them. He was counting on himself. He took a deep breath, the metallic-sweet air grating in his lungs.

“We don’t have another choice,” he said, his voice firm, more for himself than for the others. “Junction Four. Now.”

As they moved, each step was deliberate, cautious. Pete kept an eye on the ground for twitching filaments, Mirella on her flickering scanner, Olivia ready with her axe, and Artie, machete held low, scanning the eerie, glowing walls of the tunnel. The silence was punctuated only by the soft crunch of their boots on fallen leaves and the distant, unsettling hum of the overtaxed hydro lines.

The Bloom intensified, clinging to the tunnel ceiling, its tendrils hanging like monstrous chandeliers. They had to crouch, sometimes crawl, through sections where the growth was too dense. The air grew hotter, heavier. Sweat stung Artie's eyes. He could feel the fine, almost imperceptible vibrations through the soles of his boots, a low thrumming that seemed to resonate from the very heart of the forest.

He glanced at Mirella, who was biting her lip, her expression unreadable. “What’s that sound?” he whispered, barely audible over the hum.

She shook her head. “The scanner’s going wild. Fluctuations in energy readings. Too many to parse.” She pointed to a thicker part of the growth ahead, where the purple tendrils were pulsing with a brighter, more rapid light. “That’s… that’s intense. Like a hotspot.”

Suddenly, the ground beneath them began to tremble, a low, guttural rumble that vibrated through their bones. Fine dust and spores rained down from the canopy. A section of the Bloom-choked tunnel ahead, where the purple was deepest, started to distend, bulge, and then slowly, horrifyingly, split open. A rush of superheated, green-tinged air blasted outwards, smelling of sulfur and something deeply organic, like a burst abscess. The walls of the tunnel rippled, the fibrous growth contracting, then expanding, contracting and expanding, like a living, breathing lung. The humming intensified, piercing, almost painful.

“What in the name of…” Olivia began, her voice cut off as a wave of heat hit them, forcing them to shield their faces. The newly revealed fissure pulsed with an even more violent emerald light, casting stark, grotesque shadows that danced around them.

Artie felt a surge of pure terror, but it quickly morphed into a cold, hard resolve. This wasn't just a fast-growing fungus anymore. This was something else. Something awake. “That’s it,” he shouted over the growing din, pushing past the others. “That’s the core! We’re going in!”

He didn’t know what 'going in' meant, or what they would do once they were there. But the split in the Bloom, spewing its noxious breath, felt like an open wound in the forest’s heart, and he was inexplicably drawn to it, a desperate gamble. Behind him, he heard Mirella yell, “Artie, wait! The readings! They’re spiking…!” but his feet were already moving, crunching over the brittle, half-decayed leaves, towards the searing, unholy green light that promised either answers or total annihilation.