Gunshots brought Mark from his hiding place in the trees to the mouth of the barn. Usually a sound like that was a bad thing to follow, and every instinct would normally lead him away from the shots. Except now the sound meant that someone was alive inside that barn; at least that’s what Mark hoped. It wouldn’t have been the first time that month he’d seen people shoot themselves just to escape.
But the whinny of a panicked horse brought to light another reason for the shots. The barn must have gone green. Tying a rag around his mouth and nose, Mark pushed the large door open, then leapt out of the way of a stallion as it galloped past. It hardly made it two steps beyond the exit when a shot rang out and it fell to the earth with a horrid cry. The dirt beneath it began to darken as blood poured from a wound deep in the horse’s flank.
Another shot brought Mark’s attention back into the barn, and he saw that the person causing the sound was a young woman. She was wielding a double barreled shot gun, taking horses down in their stalls. It was like she couldn’t even hear their screams; her face was manic and raged, though tears ran down her cheeks and she shuddered with horror each time she had to pull the trigger. Green liquid was splattered on her face.
“Hey now!” Mark yelled, reaching forward and grabbing the gun from the girl’s loose grip. He pulled the other half of his torn bandana out of his pocket and began wiping the girl’s face. She didn’t seem to react. The girl just became still and sobbed and let Mark clean the green off of her. “Hey now, sweetie, are you infected?” he asked, trying to stay calm. He used to have a daughter her age.
That was the first time the girl seemed to notice him, and she looked to him with wide eyes. “The horses,” she muttered dully, new tears flowing down her face, “they’re all green.”
“I know, honey, I know,” Mark nodded, putting his hands on either side of her face to try and get her to focus. “Are you infected?” he asked again, more slowly.
“No…” the girl looked at her hands, the light flesh beneath her fingernails. “I’m fine. The horses are gone though,” she looked around as though this news were new to her. “Where did the horses go?”
“We had to let them out, honey, they had to go away,” Mark tried to remain calm as he spoke. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen; bets were fair that she had never before touched that shotgun. But the green did funny things to people. “Listen, doll, tell me your name. What’s your name?”
The girl looked to Mark as though realizing for the first time that he was a person she didn’t actually know. “I’m Samantha.”
“Well, Samma,” Mark’s eyes crinkled as he smiled under his bandana “we’ve got to get out of this place. It’s not safe here anymore, you understand?” He pulled her up and set her on her feet. Then he pulled her up again as she fainted, and carried her out of the barn. A good thing too her eyes were closed, he thought, else she’d have to see the stallion shot down in the doorway, surrounded by a pool of vivid green.
~~~
“That was about five days ago I’d say,” Mark sighed deeply, throwing kindling onto a feeble fire.
“And she’s shown no signs of infection?” An owlish man sitting across the fire looked over his shoulder at the patch of grass where Samantha slept. They sat in the middle of a small clearing in a forest somewhere, neither knew where anymore. To one side was a dense collection of underbrush that shielded them from the deeper part of the woods, to the other was a loose scattering of trees, some trails, and a pickup truck with a teenaged boy in the back. He was sorting boxes.
“None, I think she’s clean,” Mark went on somberly.
“Your opinion of what’s clean or not isn’t what’s important here,” the owlish man scowled, pressing the tip of his pale fingers together pompously.
“Then why don’t you make a diagnosis, Doc,” Mark replied in a calm but very stiff tone.
The owlish man glanced over at Samantha again, inspecting her for no more than ten seconds. “No need to worry, old man, in your words: she’s ‘clean,’” he shrugged.
Mark leaned back from the fire, blinking smoke out of his face and breathing fresh air. “So you going to let us in this little club?” he asked in a voice that hinged on threatening.
“It isn’t a club,” the teenager replied, traces of the Orient thick in his voice and face. “We have to stick together, you have to stay with us.”
“Well hang on just a minute!” the owlish man rose to his feet to face the Chinese boy, “the more people we gather, the more we risk infection.”
“Shh, Doc, you’ll wake the girl,” Mark hissed, motioning for the man to sit back down again. The owlish man didn’t listen, but marched across the small clearing to the side of the truck bed, where the teenager was crouched among the boxes.
“You keep taking on refugees like this and I might just have to cut you all lose,” he threatened the boy, not troubling to keep his voice low. Mark rose too at his words, about ready to throw his weight around.
But he needn’t have bothered. Before he could take a step the Chinese boy in the truck laughed and shook his head. “Fine, cut lose,” he said and waved an inviting hand toward the thicket. “You forget that being a doctor doesn’t mean much anymore. You are not the leader just because of your glasses and  your PhD. If you want to leave, go ahead, but don’t assume you can take any supplies with you. Since you seem to like naming things that are yours, then I should remind you that this is mine,” he patted the side of the wheel well.
“It’s not yours, you dirty thief,” the doctor hissed, leaning forward until his thick glasses nearly touched the teenager’s face.
Still, the boy did not move. “Well the person who rightfully owns it is burned up in a liquor store. He’s dead now, just like everybody else,” he gave an evil sort of sneer that brightened his face and made his eyes flash. The owlish man blinked, then backed down and returned to the fire.
“I suppose we’re stuck with you then,” he muttered to Mark, again glancing over to where the girl slept.
“Much obliged,” Mark said dryly, not rejoining the doctor around the fire, but rather going over to the truck. “You got a name, son?” he tried asking politely, but found he was more on edge around the boy than the doctor.
The boy paused in his work, concealing a sigh. “Hasn’t been wise for a Chinese man to speak his name lately, much less say anything at all.”
Mark nodded, in agreement more than understanding. The green had started out as an epidemic in Asia after all. But Mark tried to remind himself that the source hardly mattered now.
“Well pick something for us to call you,” he bargained, his back stiff and face strained to stay casual
The boy looked up from his sorting, eyes inspecting Mark’s face, not liking what he saw. “Chin,” he said simply, then cast his eyes back down to the cargo.
“Alrighty, Chin it is,” Mark slapped the metal of the truck, then left Chin to his sorting. The bed was full of crates and a few drums of water. All of it would be green in about a week if not eaten or cooked. Some of it already was.
The men had hardly gotten settled around the fire again when a crash put them back on their toes. Chin was standing up in the truck bed, throwing crates out, and dumping one of the barrels of water over the edge.
“What the hell!” The doctor sprang back to the truck and reached for a broken crate on the ground.
“It’s green,” Chin’s prompt words stopped the doctors hand before it closed around a packet of thawing fish sticks.
“That means the rest of it could be green too!” Mark yelled, eyeing their last three crates as though they were an enemy. Then his focus snapped to Chin, “why did you bring along green food, all you’re doing is getting the clean stuff infected, you-” but he broke off as a rustling behind him signaled that Samantha was awake and on her feet.
“What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and surveying the tense scene.
“Nothing,” Mark answered tersely, still glaring at the boy.
“We’re going to have to cut some rations is all,” the doctor explained cautiously, eyes darting back and forth between Chin and Mark. “Turns out we can’t take as much as we wanted to.”
An odd silence fell between the four, and a sour wind blew through the clearing, the only sound in the absence of human voices. Then the Chinese boy jumped out of the back of the truck and opened the driver side door. “Got to be moving on,” he told the group in a blank sort of tone. “Three in the cab, one in the back,” and he took his place behind the wheel.
“Come along, young lady,” the owlish man muttered as he led Samantha to the passenger side door and held it open for her. His face was neutral until he glared at Mark, “perhaps you should be the one in the back for now.”
“Perhaps I should,” Mark nodded stonily, lifting himself over the side of the truck and into a spot between the crates and the barrels. The doors slammed and the engine woke up, pulling the truck out of the clearing. Mark watched the dinky fire sputter and die under his retreating gaze, and the food growing smaller and smaller as they drove away. Offered up as a sacrifice to the green.
~~~
“We don’t have time to waste gallivanting all around the forests,” the doctor was saying angrily through the open back window of the cab.
“I’m telling you, I saw something reflect the sun,” Samantha replied from the middle seat, looking over her shoulder to meet the owlish man’s face from where he sat in the back.
“Plus, we’ve got nothing but time,” Chin shrugged, glancing back quickly before returning his eyes to the trail. “It’s not like we have to be somewhere at a given time, there are no deadlines anymore.”
Mark leaned out of the window in the far passenger seat, trying to see what Samantha might have seen. “Could be a house out here in the woods,” he shrugged, sliding back into his seat, “I think it’s worth looking into.”
“I think you’re right about that house idea,” Chin said ironically as the trail suddenly widened and split ahead of them. One fork continued on as dank as before, the other was almost as well kept as a driveway, leading off to the right where the supposed house might be.
The doctor peered at the trail, then at the hillside where Samantha had seen something. “Fine,” he sighed, sitting with his back leaning against the bed side and waving them onward. The truck rumbled up the driveway.
“It’s certainly well kept,” Chin remarked of the neat trail, where tree branches and underbrush had been scrupulously cut to maintain perfectly straight lines. Though there couldn’t have been any upkeep lately, the path was barely overgrown, it hardly even looked neglected.
“Someone’s got to be up here,” Samantha said tensely, almost as if praying.
“If not, then there’s at least shelter up here,” Mark tried to reply comfortably; he was still shooting looks at Chin, unsure of his driving to say the least.
The path curved gently in a sweeping arc up a shallow slope to the crest of the hill, widened onto a clearing, ending in a turnout in front of a cabin. It wasn’t so much a forest cabin as a condo in the woods, with a modern sloping angled roof and a wall that was all windows; showing the open floor plan of a two story structure with a spiral staircase twining around the central support beam.
“Wow,” Samantha said dumbly, her sentiment shared by the rest of the group.
“Yeah, I’d say we found something,” Chin laughed a bit before setting the truck in park and hopping out of the drivers seat.
“Do you suppose it’s locked?” the doctor asked, vaulting the side of the truck and landing clumsily on the ground beside Samantha as she slid out the driver side door, leaving Mark to exit the passenger side alone.
“One way to find out,” Mark shrugged, picking up a rock and going up to the front door; ornate woodwork with glass pieces patterned together like a puzzle. He tried the handle; then he tried the rock. The door shattered, and after a ‘ladies first’ sweep of the hand from Mark, Samantha passed through the shattered remnants. The doctor followed, then Mark, cutting off Chin as the boy was about the enter.
“Hello?” Samantha called into the open floor plan. No reply came back to her.
“No one here?” Chin asked, peering up at the high ceilings and recessed lighting.
“There’s a car in the back behind the house,” the doctor pointed, and through another wall of windows they could see a back porch that led to a car port off to the left. “Might mean something.” He shrugged, pulling out a handkerchief and polishing his dusty glasses. Then he pulled a surgical mask from his pocket and put it over his mouth and nose. Offering the handkerchief to the girl, he bade everybody cover their face somehow. Mark and Chin both pulled out tattered bandanas, and the four began to search the house.
The kitchen was devoid of people, but the hum of a refrigerator led them to a wonderful oasis of salvageable food. It was easy to see beyond the kitchen bar that the first floor was empty, as the whole floor was an entire room in itself. Even careful checks behind the furniture and decorations were fruitless.
The second story proved a more tedious search. There were rooms and doors here, closets and bathrooms, bedrooms, studies, a library. Each door was opened slowly, with trepidation, as though a monster might attack at any moment. The house was dead silent.
The last room was the master bedroom. The bed of which was neatly made with a fluffy down comforter, and a little boy asleep among the pillows.
“I don’t believe it,” Mark whispered, pulling down his bandana. “Has he just been living up here alone all this time?”
“Can’t be,” Chin hissed, taking a tentative step inside the room. The little boy slept on. “Someone had to drive him up here at the very least.”
“Maybe they left him,” Mark shrugged, side stepping into the room and leaning against the wall beside the door.
Samantha tiptoed over to the bed and looked down over the child, holding her breath so as not to disturb him. She looked up to the others, “but if he’s fine then that means we can stay here and be fine too,” she whispered hopefully.
“No,” the doctors voice seemed loud after all the whispering. He sounded hollow and dead, standing at the door that linked the bedroom to the master bath. “We can’t.” He didn’t explain, but motioned for the others to put their face coverings back on and see for themselves.
A gelatinous tangle of arms and legs, entrails, hair and bile lay rotting in the Jacuzzi-sized bathtub. The bone that could be seen was tinted a  rich shade of leafy green; the flesh was so dark it looked almost black. It took a full ten seconds for anyone to realize that those were people in the tub, or the remnants of.
Samantha turned on the spot and vomited on the plush carpeting, the doctor’s handkerchief falling from her face, stained with bile. Mark knelt down and put an arm around the girl, rubbing her back comfortingly. The doctor shook his head, then closed the door, and for what it was worth, locked it.
“We can’t stay here,” the doctor said, his voice and hands shaking. He wouldn’t look down at Samantha and the mess she had made on the floor; for he knew that if he saw her being sick, he would be too. Never had he seen something so horrible. Not even back at the hospital when he was still helping to treat the infected masses. He’d seen green cadavers used for the rapid study, he’d even been in the first group to receive vaccinations against the green. But none of that mattered now. He still felt like he could fall dead, green and dead, at any time after seeing that bathroom.
Chin was gently shaking the little boy awake. “Hey buddy,” he spoke softly, calm though his eyes were haunted. “We have to go, you’re going to come with us now, alright?”
“Are you here to help Mommy and Daddy?” the child asked sleepily, rolling over and sitting up.
“Your parents don’t need our help,” the doctor replied, his voice hollow, not meeting the boy’s eyes. “We can’t help them anymore.”
“Are they gone?” the boy asked, looking around the room as if hoping to see them. “They went to sleep, they said I was a big boy and couldn’t sleep in the bed with them. They still haven’t woken up.”
“Hey, buddy,” Chin tried to smile under his bandana, glad that it shielded his weak attempt to look happy. “What’s your name, bud?”
“Jackie,” the boy began to sniffle, as if he understood why he was being distracted from the subject of his parents.
“I’m Chin, it’s nice to meet you, Jackie. Can I call you Jack?” Chin asked, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.
“Uh-huh,” tears were welling in the child’s eyes now.
“How old are you, Jack?”
“S-s-seven,” came the reply through the boy’s sobs.
“Well, that’s great,” Chin squeezed Jack’s shoulders with both hands, and the boy could feel that he was shaking too. “Come here,” he hugged the boy, arms wrapping easily around his thin frame, and picked him up.
“He could be infected,” the doctor said, his voice distant and almost professional.
“We’re taking him,” Chin proclaimed, “he can’t stay here.”
“And neither can we,” Mark agreed, pulling Samantha to her feet. “Let’s just raid the fridge and get out.”
Chin hefted the boy in his arms so that he was more comfortable to hold, carrying him out of the room and toward the stairs. “We’re going to go for a ride in a truck, Jack,” he said, trying to sound happy, “have you ever ridden in a truck.”
“N-no,” Jack’s sobs lessened but his tears still flowed, “Daddy just has the little car from work.”
“That’s great, then you’ll have fun,” Chin and Samantha ignored the kitchen and went straight to the truck with Jack, while Mark and the doctor found boxes to throw food into.
“You can sit up front with me,” Samantha said, trying to sound bright. Trying to follow Chin’s lead to keep the boy calm; but tears lingered in her eyes too, and a vile taste burned at the back of her throat, making it hard to smile.
The five left that place as untouched as they could leave it; with broken glass in the entry way, a rifled-through kitchen, and two green corpses moldering in a perfect ruin.
~~~
“I wonder if the oceans will go green too,” Samantha sighed, leaning over the edge of the truck bed as the group rolled over a small hill.
“Probably,” the doctor replied, sitting next to her in the back with the supplies. “The fish on the surface will get it from the air, when they die their rotting corpses will be eaten by fish from deeper waters. And so on, until the ocean’s floor is as green as the rest of us.”
“There really is no place then,” the girl shook her head, gazing out over the land. The truck had rolled out of the woods about a day ago, into rolling pastures that had once been farmland. A sharp breeze told them that the coast line was just beyond their horizon, and at first that gave hope to everyone; thinking the oceans might be saved from the plague. But as the doctor had said, the green would eventually filter into the waters.
The truck rumbled up the slope of a large and gentle hill, and from the crest Samantha could see that the forest had curved around the fields to come and meet them again. Only now instead of a sharp tree line, the woods tapered back into dense old growths. Dotted among the hills and their valleys were stray trees, old oaks and sturdy pines that had wandered away from their fellows.
A bit to their right was one such oak, thick and gnarled with twisted branches, slightly tipped as it clung to a sharp descending slope of the hill. For some reason, it looked…wrong. For some reason, it gave Samantha the creeps. For some reason, Chin stopped the truck.
“What’s the problem?” the doctor asked, leaning his head in the back window. Chin didn’t answer, he just set the emergency brake and opened the door. The others followed him out, leaving little Jack in the middle seat of the cab, deeply asleep.
“Chin, what is it?” Samantha asked as they followed the teenager toward the tree. The whole group stopped suddenly as they came upon the trunk, for now they could see around it to the other side. Hanged from a sturdy low branch, the hill falling sharply away from her feet, was a witch.
“God,” Mark broke the silence, repulsion full in his voice.
Chin took a shaky step forward, stepping carefully between the roots, investigating the witch. “She’s not green,” he observed somberly.
“I can see it from here,” The owlish man avoided the witch’s bulging eyes.
“It’s paint,” Chin explained, reluctantly touching the witch’s swollen leg. A smear of green came away on his fingertips, revealing the pink skin of a once healthy person.
“Body paint,” Mark realized numbly.
“My god, it’s a costume,” Samantha sobbed. Pointed hat, black dress, silvery shoes, and black and white striped socks. A young lady no older than twenty swayed before them in a complete witch costume.
Another eerie silence settled over the group, broken by the crunch of leaves as the doctor came forward, pulling a knife from his pocket. There was a wet noise and a gush and everyone turned away two seconds too late. The owlish man had cut a long gash along the witch’s arm and peeled back the flesh with the composure only a doctor could possess. A doctor, or a very morbid and curious mind.
The flesh inside was pink and well, the blood was still very red. There was nothing naturally green about this girl.
“Who would do such a thing?” the doctor asked, shaking his head and stepping away.
“Wilds,” Mark replied, his voice dead. “They don’t give a mind to green or not. They’ll…they’ll torture anything.” He dropped his eyes to the dirt, “I’ve seen them before,” he told the group, “in places with dense populations. It started in the cities. People who weren’t infected would just…lose their minds at it all.”
“We should give her a proper burial,” sniffed Samantha, wiping tears from her dirty face. The low rumbling sound of her companions stomachs came in reply. Mark and the doctor turned their faces away, ashamed.
The kids inspected what little they could see of the adults faces, and that was enough to see how mortified the men were with their thoughts; and how hungry they were. Samantha dropped her gaze, cold fury making her hands shake. Tears spilled down her face and she shook her head.
“Let’s go,” she said sternly, her voice sour.
“Samma,” Mark began quietly, not knowing what to say.
“No.” The owlish man came over to Samantha and rested a hand on her shoulder, peering at her through his thick glasses. “There’s a good chance our food is going green, that its contamination has merely been slower than others due to some factor. There hasn’t been time for research to know all the strands of the virus, it killed too quickly at first. With this girl, we don’t have that risk.”
“How can you be sure?” Chin spat, tearing his eyes away from the witch’s green face to glare at the doctor. “We could all get infected; even you with your fancy booster shot.”
“Dead meat doesn’t go green,” the doctor informed the group, his tone sharpening as he turned away from the girl. “It may rot, but the virus can’t effect it. And judging from the appearance of this subject,” his voice broke and he faltered, “she’s still…fresh.”
“Then that means the wilds aren’t too far away!” Chin shouted. “If they only recently did this to this poor girl then they could come up on us at any time.”
“They’ll stick to the woods,” Mark replied, his tone calm but firm, “if we keep to these open hills and post a guard, they wont even come near our campfire.”
“And what if they smell the smoke?” Samantha demanded, her eyes darting from the owlish man to the witch.
“They wouldn’t care,” the doctor replied sternly, “they‘re too mad to care about smoke and fire.” Silence blew through the group like a cold wind, cutting them in half.
“I’ll take Jack away from it all,” Samantha said at last, her voice trembling. “He shouldn’t know…what he’s…what he’s eating.”
“I’ll go with you,” Chin said, turning on his heel and following her back to the truck. His skin looked particularly yellow, as he fought the urge to vomit. The two went to the cab of the truck and the Chinese boy picked up the sleeping Jack.
“Can sleep through anything, this one,” Samantha said, trying to be conversational.
“Shouting matches, anyway,” Chin agreed, hugging Jack to him and accompanying the girl down the hill. At their backs, a dull thud told them that the witch had been cut down from her tree. The three went to the bottom of the hill and didn’t return until the smell of cooked meat enticed their hungry and regretful souls back into the group.
~~~
“Got another one over here, Max,” called a tall, dark skinned woman in a white suit, the hiss of canned air helping her breath. “Poor thing, this one must have been a child.”
“Good God, they just had at it, didn’t they?” Max came over to investigate, his white body suit crinkling as he squatted down next to the tiny mangled corpse. It was shriveled and twisted, the flesh so darkly green in places it looked black. The body still twined slightly, as the flesh turned upon itself, devouring.
“More dead green?” asked the woman sadly, shaking her head over the dank array before her. “This makes five in all.”
“And this one a kid, poor thing” Max shrugged, standing up and dusting off his gloved hands. “What do you want to do about the vehicle?”
“The truck might be too much hassle…” the woman blew out a long breath, “still worth a look at least.” She wandered over to an old red pickup, pacing around it with a sharp eye.
“How the hell did this happen?” Max asked, stunned, glancing around. “This is the worst case I’ve seen yet.” He peered through his breathing mask at the thick cloud of green mist that hung in the air, carpeting the entire hillside.
“Far as I can tell, they ate some dead green and it turned on them,” the woman explained, slamming the drivers door to the truck and throwing a grenade-like capsule in the bed.
“Too green?” Max asked, bemused as he watched the capsule disperse a caustic mist over the truck. The pair backed up as the vapor settled around the vehicle.
“Way too green,” the woman shook her head, a dry smile on her face. “So what’s this case you wanted to show me?”
“This guy here,” Max led her over to a bloated, mottled green man. He was only beginning to rot. “He ain’t like the rest around.”
“Isn’t,” the woman corrected off hand. “Why is he like this? Green is uneven, flesh isn’t eating itself. He looks…well he looks like a normal dead person, aside from the coloration.”
“He was immunized, I bet you a hundred bucks,” Max replied matter of factly, pointing a cocky finger at the woman. The woman was silent for a moment, inspecting the corpse with peaked interest.
“Must have been in the first wave of shots,” she pondered, nudging the swollen figure with her boot.
Max nodded. “They weren’t really able to do any definitive research when the green first broke out; made a lot of assumptions based on related incidents; other outbreaks, without knowing it was nothing like the rest. That first vaccine only protected against mild cases; the early onset of the green and limited exposure to it. This…well it wasn’t as bad as his fellows, but he was probably the first to go.”
“Couldn’t have been in as much pain as the others, poor bunch,” the woman shook her head, surveying the scene again. “They could have made it,” she sighed, “they could have been decontaminated…if not for that damn dead green.”
“They did well, for what they knew,” Max shrugged, “we followed their tracks this far.” They stared out over the hills for a few moments more, the green swirling around them.
“They almost made it,” the woman whispered shakily.
“Come on,” Max said quietly, tugging at the woman’s arm gently. “The suits won’t hold up forever.”
“Right,” the woman nodded, checking her vitals on a watch-like device at her wrist. “Lets go.”