The
jeep hit a pothole and Jessica groaned from the back seat. Her pain knifed
through him. He was her big brother. He was supposed to look out for her. He’d
thought when he left and hadn’t come back that he’d done just that.
He hated that she’d
gotten mixed up in this – hated that he’d had to hurt her. But there hadn’t
been another way. As much as he loved his plants, he didn’t want his little
sister to become one. He could still smell the decaying flower smell, but it
was fading. Nothing like the cloyingly sweet scent that poured from his
sister’s cuts while he sliced through her skin and Wanda stabbed her.
He glanced at the redhead
driving the jeep. Her hands gripped the steering wheel and her lips crooked up
in a cruel sneer. As an evil genius, he couldn’t help but appreciate her
rocking the Rambo Barbie thing. As a big brother, it pissed him off. She’d been
rough with Jessica – rougher than she needed to be. The hair-pulling thing was
definitely out of line. The jeep jolted again and Jessica whimpered.
“Watch where you’re
going.”
Wanda turned her sneer on
him and glared. “I am watching,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s not my
fault we’re driving on this crappy road, genius.”
“You forgot the evil.”
“No, I didn’t. After that
scene back there, I didn’t think it applied.” She tossed her red ringlets and
the hard angle of her jaw jutted out from between the curls.
Ouch. “She’s my little
sister. I didn’t want to hurt her.” He was evil. He’d made flesh-eating plants
for Pete’s sake. Tank and Velvet were probably still following behind them,
massacring innocent bystanders along the way. God knew what terror the metal
tree would wreak upon the townspeople. “I am too evil,” he murmured under his
breath.
She spared him an
eye-roll. “We’ll see. So what’s the plan, boy wonder?”
One moment of compassion
and he’d gone from sexy evil genius to Batman’s tights-wearing sidekick.
“I’m not sure.” Her I knew you weren’t evil snort made him
cringe. “Magnets might work. There’s not a lot of steel in the plants’
molecular make up, but it might be enough to contain them provided we can
generate a large enough magnetic field.”
“Where are we going to
get enough magnets in this backwoods town?” Her obvious disbelief in his plan
hurt. Man, give an evil genius a break.
“We could use copper wire
and iron, but a battery strong enough to generate the charge we need would
create too much heat.” He was going to string this out, to remind her he knew
what he was doing. “There might be a magnet at the dump. Even a town as small
as this one needs to sort its recycling. We could use that magnet to create a
containment field.”
“Why don’t we just use
Roundup?”
Horrified, he stared at
her. Kill them?
“No, no, no. I was
kidding about the weedkiller and the napalm. I can’t kill them.” He thought of
the way Velvet’s leaves danced in the sunlight – of how she’d teased him with
her tendrils. “I don’t want to kill them.”
“Jamie, they eat people.”
“You don’t run around
spraying living things with pesticide because they get hungry. Everything’s
gotta eat something.”
“Not something, genius.”
She sure knew how to hurt a guy. “People. Your creations eat people and they
can reproduce.”
That was a problem.
Growth he’d counted on, but reproduction – that was an unintended side-effect.
Still, it hardly warranted murder.
“We’re going to catch
them and contain them. We’re not going to kill…”
Wanda slammed the brakes
and the grab of the seatbelt cut off his breath and the last part of his
sentence. A Cadillac sat across both lanes of the road. The doors hung open and
the windows looked like they had been punched out. An aluminium walking cane
poked out the driver’s side window, and a crocheted shawl with bright yarn
flowers was draped across the hood.
Well, crap.
In front of the car stood
a tree, its leaves shimmering gold and iridescent green in the sunlight.
Stooped bushes, tangled and gnarled like laurel, danced on either side of it,
their flitting movements at odds with their bent shapes. Roots like spider-legs
scuttled across the rust-stained pavement.
That explained it. Old
people changed so fast, and it looked like they’d found something to eat. Jamie
leaned forward to see why the plants stopped in the middle of the road, but he
could only catch glimpses between the shining leaves. He opened the door,
reaching out to stop Wanda when she grabbed her door handle.
“I’ll get a closer look.
I am the evil genius.” He flashed her what he hoped was a sexy roguish grin.
“Wait here.”
“The hell I will.” She
shoved the door open and got out, leaving him to scramble out after her.
They were still too far
away to see what was blocking the plants’ path and he didn’t want to risk getting
closer. Creator or not, he didn’t like the look of those bushes.
He climbed onto the roof
of the jeep, cringing a little as the metal dented under his feet. Wanda jumped
lightly onto the hood, and he reached out to help her to the roof. Balancing on
the roof rack, he stretched to peer around the flashing leaves.
A black Hummer with
tinted windows blocked the road in front of the plants. A black-clad figure
stood on the roof and pumped something. Jamie shaded his eyes, trying to get a
better look. When the figure looked up, Jamie’s heart took a rollercoaster ride
from elation to horror.
Armed with an ordinary
green and white handheld garden sprayer, his mother fought off his plants.
