As I run down the hall, I can hear its rumbling coming up behind me. I make a sharp left, and start to hear someone’s faint, but audible, howls of agony. I feel sorry for the person, but at the same time, I’m worried I’ll end up in worse shape than them soon. I vault over a desk, and just as I’m about to clear it, my foot catches. I hit the ground in a somersault, and I quickly get back to my feet and continue my sprint, but I know I’ve lost valuable time. I’m starting to get a little bit of an ache. I’m not sure I’ll make it out of this mess. Its rumbling behind me is much more distinct, and the so are the yells. As I round the next corner, I jump over a broken wall and keep running. 

I’m still “inside” of the building, if you can call it that. Its entire east wall is broken, its north wall is the only one intact. The south wall is most of the way gone, with maybe six feet of it still standing, and the west wall has several large gaps. The ceiling has all fallen at this point, and I’m surprised I can even see what was once there. There are a couple of old classrooms still recognizable, but not many. I ran into what was once Mr. Nelson’s room, but I’m sure that at this point Mr. Nelson, almost everyone’s favorite English teacher, is long gone. The cries are close at this point. I turn my head around and try to see if I can tell what is following me, but I can only see three of its extensive tentacles covered in thorns and scattered red flowers.

My name is Johnathan Armand Thatcher, and no, this is not normal. I am 19 years old, and tall, with ruddy blonde hair. I'm kind of feisty, which in the past three weeks has proven to be helpful. Although I like to draw, I haven’t had much time to do that recently. About four weeks ago, I was your average 19-year-old, attending college and such. Back then there were only a handful of plant attacks in a year, and we were well prepared for them. Very few plants would attack as a group, and with our various weapons, we made short work of them, to the point where it was uncommon to have any human casualties during a skirmish with them. Now, that’s not even remotely the case. About four weeks ago, I don’t remember exactly how long ago, when my friends and I were visiting home, there was a massive rumbling in the neighboring forest to our home town in Black Forest, Wyoming, formerly Jackson Hole. Suddenly, thousands of the plants, many in variations no one had ever seen, came rushing out of the forest, demolishing everything in their path whether that be person, animal, or building.

The story, or rather, legend, behind the plants is that some 300 years ago, in about 2035, a nuclear power plant, near a large forest, had exploded, creating some of the earlier plant creatures, such the “winging nettle”, properly known as “stinging nettle”. They highly resemble a giant wasp with green and black bands instead of black and yellow bands. I guess that the biggest difference is that they don’t have jaws like a wasp, instead their mouths are more like a mosquito’s. They have a jagged stinger about 2 centimeters long, and since it’s got the poison from the nettle, it hurts like that plus a wasp’s sting. It kills! (Not really, but it hurts a lot.)

I was just on a scavenging mission to get some food, and once I had gotten some, I decided to go through my old high school as a shortcut, and to see how much was left. Then I heard the rumbling. I immediately knew something was after me, and I felt my spine tingle. I heard a bursting noise as the earth some distance behind me split open, and the biggest plant creature I’ve ever seen came roaring out of the ground, clearly looking for something, or someone, to eat. Due to my luck, it happened to be me that it wanted to eat. However, I really don’t want that somebody to be me, so I’ve got to keep running as fast as I can through the school.

I ran through another hole in the wall and saw the origin of the earlier shouts. There is one of the grinders, as I like to call them, attacking a teacher that I am not familiar with. His left arm is gone, streaming blood out of his shoulder, and he is covered in cuts and tears, and he kind of looks like he’d just been through a butcher shop. His white shirt, that I’m sure used to look very nice, is shredded to bits, and virtually soaked in blood. I can’t stay, so I just tossed him a small knife, and wished him luck as I ran by. 

The grinders, earlier mentioned, are another kind of plant mutant. They have an oblong head with a large split that goes about three quarters down its head horizontally, making it a mouth. Their jaws can separate like a snakes’, although I haven’t seen many snakes for the last few weeks. They can execute about 400 pounds of crushing force with their jaws, and when you add that to the sawblade-like growths from their upper and lower jaw, kind of like teeth, they are lethal. They have three eyes on either side of their head, all black, sort of forming a triangle shape. Their heads are a dark, deep green, that I’d probably look at and admire if, you know, they weren’t trying to eat me and shred me to bits.

I’m approaching on where my “Survival Squad,” as all the survivors call them, have made base. That’s pretty much the group of people you stay with, and protect at any cost. We’ve got our base well defended, courtesy of Nate. He’s a nerd, but he’s invaluable to our team. We made one of the few buildings still standing our base, and we welcome almost anyone else in, if they can make it there. It has three mountable ballistae on the roof, the same number of those of us with good aim, which are Elizabeth (Eliza for short), Tom, a larger Polynesian, who is our muscle (I swear he could wrestle a bear), and me. There are also automatic wall-mounted turrets that fire a volley of about 200 bullets a minute, which have been engineered by Nate to light on fire, to do more damage to the plants. Other than that, our defenses are pretty much us.  There are only five of us out of me and my friends that I know for sure are alive. There have been rumors from other survivors about several others being alive, but I haven’t seen them.

As I approached the building, I shouted to Eliza, a Hawaiian girl of about average height, with piercing brown eyes, to open the door and to prepare the ballistae, after she saw me coming, she looked past me, saw the plant behind me, and her eyes widened immensely. She yelled to Nate to get the defenses prepared and ordered to Tom to “pick up his lazy rear and get onto a ballista.” I saw Tom get onto the roof and wave to me, yelling, “John! It’s about time you show up, but we don’t really want your guest!” That’s pretty much Tom’s sense of humor for you. I leaped through the solid steel door to our base and looked around to see our salvaged furniture in place, with our several red couches pushed against the walls and Tom’s recliner in its usual corner. I ran up the stairs, pulling out my gun as I did. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) As I exited the hatch on the roof, I finally get to have a good look at what had been chasing me this whole time.

It's an immense creature, the size of your average redwood tree in length, and even thicker than that. It has a massive, segmented body resembling a centipede with hundreds upon thousands of legs underneath its body, each colored a dark brown, and having bark like an oak’s covering them. Its massive armored segments are probably about as long as I am tall each, with thorns running down the middle of each of them. The thorns are about 20 centimeters long each, so not very large compared to the creature itself. Its armor is a leaf green with sky blue ovals running along its sides. If that isn’t terrifying enough, it has jaws that would make a stag beetle cry, with their barbed points and saw-like parts closer to the face. It only has one compound eye, growing right above its jaws, which is a deep maroon color. It also, as I noticed earlier, has eight tentacles growing out around its jaws, four on each side, covered in thorns and small red flowers. All in all, this thing is terrifying.

I heard a loud twang and watched as a 2-meter-long ballista bolt went flying past me and embedded itself into the creature, which I will call the centitree. (Sorry, my puns are terrible) The bolt vibrated for a while, and then the creature roared. The roar was deafening, and Tom fell to the roof, covering his ears. The roar felt as though it was everywhere, vibrating my very essence. It was like an enraged lion was 50 times louder than it should be. Then, the centitree came rushing to the wall, and four of its tentacles wrapped around Tom’s legs, and lobbed him quite a distance away.  He groaned as he hit the ground, so I at least know he is alive. I unloaded about 20 bullets into its head, dealing no visible damage, other than making it flinch. 

Natalie, a beautiful Korean woman, and a strong combatant jumped off the edge of the roof with her homemade katana pointing downward and jammed it into the centitree’s head up to the hilt. The creature shuddered, obviously weakened, and it bucked, sending her flying. She went limp when she finally landed, and Tom slowly hobbled to her to make sure she was okay. There was a vibration from our base, and the front walls of our base separated and widened, along with a scraping noise, and a mechanical suit rose out of the ground, with twin cannons on one arm, missile launchers on its shoulders, and a flamethrower for its other arm.

I turned to Elizabeth, and we simultaneously said, “Where did that come from?” She then responded that it was probably built by Nate.

“When did he get time to make that?”

“Why would I know? I’ve been busy!”

“Well, I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

We then saw Nate, a quiet African-American the youngest of us, dashing to the mech suit, which was about 7 meters tall, compared to the centitree, it doesn’t look all that powerful. Nate, our most valuable teammate, is about to jump into this tiny machine and fight a massive creature that had already taken a katana and several ballista bolts. He hopped into it as its back opened, and then it closed behind him, and a mechanical whirr sounded as the mech turned on. 

Nate has the most determined look in his eyes. Ever. Not once has someone been more determined than him. He yelled to us to mount the ballistae, and to help him out. I quickly yelled to Nate before the centitree attacked, “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“If I can’t, we don’t have much hope.”

“Do what you can, and we’ll try to help.”

“We have to do this.”

“Watch out!”

As I yelled this, the centitree attacked, lunging forward and wrapped its tentacles around Nate’s mech. Nate cursed, then pushed a switch, and six missiles launched from his mech’s shoulder, hitting the centitree full on in the face. It let go, hissing as it pulled back, and I saw that most of its tentacles were charred. Nate’s mech fired both cannons into the centitree, and then punched it. It roared again, and I launched a ballista bolt into a chink in its armor. It whimpered in pain, much like a dog, and then one of its armored plates broke off.

I yelled to Nate, “Target the hole in its armor!” Suddenly, Nate’s mech leaped up, flying over the centitree, and the cannons retracted to reveal a massive razor blade. He began descending, but the centitree leaned backwards, as if doing the limbo, and bit off his flamethrower arm using its massive jaws. Nate continued flying downwards, heedless of the danger, and smashed into the centitree, with the razor extended. Purplish blood went flying everywhere, and the centitree collapsed with one final roar. Eliza and I both went running outside, and we saw Nate get launched out of the centitree’s bloody mess, presumably ejected by the mech, and then a colossal explosion ripped the centitree in half, and Nate was knocked sprawling.

Eliza ran over to Nate, screaming, “Nathan, are you okay?!” I went to check on Tom and Natalie, since Natalie was not looking well. Tom, concerned, informed me that she had several broken ribs, a fractured leg, and a broken arm, as she hit the ground on her side. That’s why I’m glad Tom has medical training. There’s no way I could fix that.

Tom carried Natalie into our base, and I helped Eliza carry Nate, still unconscious, back inside. We laid Natalie on a hospital bed that we had salvaged next to another bed for Nate, because it felt like he had broken a couple of bones.

We survived. I wasn’t sure we all would. But, as long as we keep surviving, and staying together, we can still have a good time, along with any other people we find along the way. Maybe one day, the apocalypse will end, or be solved, and we can live normal lives again, after rebuilding our civilization. Like Nate said, “We have to do this.”