“Not everything, Dr. Valentine. The Turned-animals and plants and the Turned-children will survive,’ cries Rose, her heart sinking with anguish because of what she has become in Dr. Valentine’s eyes.
“I can’t let you do it,” says Dr. Valentine. She lifts her sidearm and fires directly at Rose’s head.
A mist of warm, copper-scented blood sprays into the air and a fine speckling of it covers Dr. Valentine’s face, she stands stunned that she has killed, not Rose, as she has intended, but Major Connors who threw himself in front of Rose at the last second. But there is no time to weep before his body slides down the curved hull of the ship, and tumbles into the immense canyon and disappears from sight.
Rose whimpers and tears trail from her eyes. The woman who had once come to her rescue, the woman she had loved like the mother she’d never known, has caught a spear, deep in her back. The barrier has finally failed.
The last rays of the sun are dowsed behind the mountains, and the buds in her hair have all blossomed into beautiful, but deadly flowers in the moonless evening. The stars are beginning to peep out one by one.
Dr. Shaw falls to the hull, hopeless and beaten.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Shaw,” says Rose. Delicate golden-red pollen, from her blooms, catches a ride on a gust of wind and blows toward the Red Queen and her Army. They are preparing to launch their spears and destroy Rose and the remaining human. “We’ll die you know, but the Turned-children will create a new world after the evil is cleansed from it.”
“Self-sacrifice is a noble and human quality. Where did you learn it?” Asks Shaw.
“From Major Connors’s Bible. A man they called Jesus. Goodbye, Dr. Shaw,” she says, as the last of her pollen blows through the angry Queen’s ranks. They are infected with a deadly pathogen, and they’ll all be gone before the sun rises.
The spears are launched and fill the air with a death sentence. Rose looks toward the twinkling stars, and she imagines herself far away, gazing into the Milky Way, above her, on the ceiling of the world.
She’s a happy little girl.
Meet the author
H.R. Romero is a pen name for a well-known American author. He resides in a small Texas town with his family. He has several How-To books and Children’s novels to his credit.
He spends his free time pondering what it must be like to die, by holding his breath for hours on end.
You can contact the author at: HRRomeroAuthor@Hotmail.com
Copyright
The Girl Who’s Made of Leaves
COMING TO AUDIBLE.COM
Late 2018
Copyright © 2018 by H.R. Romero
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.