Creepers Chapter 6

Chapter 6
A Growing Problem

When the Governor watched the video Vanessa shot and read the report written by Sheriff Musser he ordered the area evacuated. It was done quietly while they awaited the results of tests, tests that were being conducted by the best botanists the Governor’s staff could assemble. A team that was, temporally at least, led by Vanessa Fullbright.
There was no media notification just a quiet door to door request for evacuation, made by polite policemen. The reason given: a derailed freight train had caused a chemical spill, nothing toxic, just a chemical that could cause allergic reactions in some people. After all, no one would believe a rapidly growing plant was overtaking the community.
The ruse worked because the inhabitants in the green-zone were indeed reacting to the tons of pollen being pumped into the air by the plant. People with asthma and lung problems were beginning to die.
The Creepers’ growth was accelerating. The plant grew in a rhythmic cycle: increasing its area by spreading out, climbing up and sinking roots anywhere it could. New plants cycled through to maturity in a matter of days forming hornet yellow, clusters of berries that appeared just as a toxic resin begin to ooze and drip from the buds. Eventually it hardened into honey-brown stalactites that hung from the plant like brown icicles. Then its heavy white blossoms would open at sunset and spew their pollen into the balmy Florida breeze. Within days the blossoms and berries dropped to the ground, their petals and fruit becoming sustenance for a growing population of rats, mice, fire ants and feral pigs that had escaped from a nearby farm when their enclosure was crushed by the weight of the advancing Creepers.
The pigs and rats were unaffected by the pollen but died within minutes of ingesting even a small chunk of the toxic resin: they quickly learned to avoid it.
The trunks of the plant’s girth grew by the hour, creepers became runners, runners became vines and vines increased their diameter two and three fold overnight eventually growing to the size of redwoods. Supported by internal vines tangled into a scaffold, a domed labyrinth rose above the houses, rose above the fields of elephant grass, crushed it and turned it brown from lack of sunlight. A massive series of domed chambers, woven of vegetation developed within, room after room, grown of leaves, framed of vines and studded with pencil-sized thorns.
The interconnecting chambers formed free-span ceilings, ceilings, sixty, seventy some even over one hundred feet high.
Fire Ants, driven from their mounds and subterranean tunnels by toxins released into the ground water by the plants roots. They found refuge among its tangle of branches and leaves, drinkable water in its hollows, and food in blisters of sugar the vines produced, it seemed for the sole purpose of feeding the ants. In return, they drove off pests like tent caterpillars and grasshoppers who could digest the plants foliage. Water collected in natural bowls within, quenching the thirst of rats, rats that grew fat on hornet yellow berries and snow-white petals.
Soon, other creatures were about too: gators and piranha stalked the moats that meandered throughout the emerald maze. Mosquitoes bred in its tepid, waters. Ticks, fleas and deer flies came to suck the blood of pigs and rats. Cottonmouths and gators waited patiently beneath amber streams to snatch rat or pig.
The swamp adapted, evolved it remained but was overgrown, completely covered by towering canopies of green. Sunlight sifted through in beams the diameter of soda straws. The botanical caverns became home to bats, bats that bred by day and swarmed by night, streaking burnt orange skies with swirls of black.
It all happened in less than three weeks.