Green by Gareth Clegg

The airlock cycled, and the heavy external door cracked open with a hiss of pressurised air forcing its way out. Then the smell hit me. It was sweet and fresher than the plants grown in our hydroponics labs. I strode out into an ocean of colour, my eyes widening. “It’s so green!”

“My God, can you believe this?” Elle said, peering over my shoulder.

After five generations underground, humanity’s return to the surface filled us with both excitement and trepidation, but nature had recovered. More than that, it flourished. Everywhere was green. The foliage, moss, grass, everything!

We stared at the vast forest encompassing three sides of our compound’s airlock. The small hexagonal bunker, once pristine white, now crawled with vines and moss, covering the entire structure.

The spongy surface gave as I stepped onto a mossy patch before us. My foot sank over an inch into the verdant mass, leaving a deep bootprint as I ruined the virgin growth. We followed the great explorers of history, breaking new ground for the first time. Would our names survive alongside the likes of Amundsen, Armstrong, Hillary and Tenzing?

Elle bounded past, adapting quickly to the spongy surface, heading toward the trees. Massive trunks thrust upward to vast canopies way above.

“Jack, it’s amazing. Come on.”

I glanced back to the airlock. “We should catalogue what we’ve seen so far, before—“

“Don’t be such an old fart. We’ll never have this chance to explore such untouched beauty.”

I faltered, torn between our orders and following her deeper into the forest. She was right. My bootprint was the first for over two hundred years. The report could wait.

I walked across scanning the tree-line, but she’d disappeared further into the dim interior. 

“Elle?” I called.

“Over here,” she replied, muffled and distant.

I altered course, feet crunching through ground plants towards her call. After a few minutes, I stopped in the darkness, breathing hard, my hands dropping to my knees. Where the hell was she? The dense canopy here blocked the light, leaving the forest dark and silent.

It was too quiet. I hadn’t heard any animal sounds since exiting the airlock.

“Elle?”

“Help me.” A low and raspy reply from behind one of the massive trunks.

A carpet of moss covered her body like a shroud. Only her face remained, eyes staring upward. “I… can’t… move…” Her desperate voice was a whisper, breath pushed through unmoving lips.

I reached toward her, just nose and mouth visible through the creeping mass of green.

“Don’t… touch…” she managed, before the plant sealed over her. She convulsed, then fell still.

I stared in disbelief until a numbness above my ankle alerted me to the moss already halfway to my knee. I gasped, then my leg collapsed.

“What the hell?”

While hiding from the ruin we’d caused the planet, nature had adapted and removed enemies to ensure her survival. We were just another parasite—but she was the ultimate ecological killing machine.