Hello, everyone! This is the first chapter of the week and... Eh? What’s that? I didn’t post anything last week... Nooo... You are mistaken...

Anyway, I had a lot of work to do last week and now that I have a little more free time I decided to recover those lost chapters.

I am going to post at least another two chapters tomorrow and with that finish the quota for last week.

Without further ado, please enjoy!

Volume 1 Chapter 4: Encounter

Eight days have passed since we came to this new world and I must say this much about our current situation: it’s boring as fuck!

Now, let me be honest here... One point two billion years in the future + last humans alive + awesome base filled defended by a huge wall and more firepower than some small countries + terrifying jungle = boredom?

I mean, are you serious? We expected, or to be more exact, I expected to be assaulted by mutant monsters that can spit fire through their but holes followed by an army of giant insects that are under the command of a huge emu riding an elephant, not this freaking boredom... Especially after that strange tattoo appeared on my chest...

Three days ago Sy sent drones equipped with all kind of sensors to scan the surroundings. We managed to map everything in a fifty kilometres radius, but what made us gasp for a second when we received the data was that there is literary no freaking living being around. Trees, trees and... Oh yeah: more trees. This is a sea of trees which, although looks like the perfect environment, it seems not to be... Sy suggested a radical theory that there are no more animals on the planet, only plants. In the end, we dismissed that idea as ridiculous.

Anyway, away from that, anything else is quite nice I might add... Jake set up the solar panels which produce more than enough energy for our daily usage. In those conditions, the emergency generator’s power has been rerouted towards the defence systems. After that, I and Jake took the initiative to clean up everything in a one hundred meters radius. It took us quite a bit of time in combination with a few hundred litres of fuel used by the heavy machinery, but it was worth it.

Now we are planning our first exploration mission like I like to call it. To be honest, we could just live in this place for a few good years with what we have right now, but that would be boring and none of us wants that. Sy is interested in... Well, everything around us... I just want to have some fun and Jake pretty much shares my enthusiasm. It might sound childish and so on, but all of us lost almost everything only a few days ago. A tragedy of that magnitude is not something you can just pass through in this short of a period.

“Seth, pass me the impulse grenades.”

“Here you go!”

I pass Jake a suitcase filled with micro-impulse grenades... Like I said earlier, we are preparing for our first mission. This land might be dead, but we don’t want any kind of surprises. In those conditions we are inspecting all the equipment and weapons just to be sure everything is in perfect condition.

“We have a total of two hundred impulse grenades that seems to be in perfect working conditions.”

“That is good to hear... How about the nano-suits?”

“There are Six nano-suits and sixty batteries. Those should be more than enough for now.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right. We are in quite a good shape, to be honest...”

“Indeed. Never would I have thought that your obsession with the real life zombie apocalypse was going to be this helpful to us in the future.”

“Hey! You never know when a zombie apocalypse is going to take place!”

What? It’s true! All those preparations, the pulse Gatling guns, the huge plasma cannon and the reinforced wall were for a real life zombie apocalypse.

I get on my feet and turn towards the exit.

“I am hungry. Jake?”

“I’m OK.”

Turning around, I start walking towards the kitchen.

‘AWOO OOO AWOO OOO’

””...””

That was the proximity alarm. There is something moving towards our position. Both I and Jake hurry towards the command room downstairs where Sy is.

Less than a minute later we arrive at our destination where we find Sy looking towards the big monitor in the middle of the room.

“Guys, faster! You MUST see this!”

Looking at each other for a second, we approach the monitor just to witness... Nothing. There is literary nothing that can be seen. And still, Sy is looking towards a certain tree not daring even to blink not to miss whatever we are missing. My gaze stops swirling around and is directed towards the same tree.

It is a huge one... At least thirty meters tall, with a brown trunk and brown leaves. Looking closer, there are long red lines that seem to pulsate around its trunk. It looks extremely peculiar, but that’s it.

Actually, now that I think about it I don’t remember such a tree around our house...

‘Craaaakkkk’

Slowly, a branch starts moving on its own. It touches the ground a few meters in front of the tree and, at this point, we witness one of the strangest scenes we’ve ever seen. The tree’s trunk lifts from the ground and moves forwards.

With a ‘Thump’ the huge trunk hits the ground. Next, the same branch from earlier moves another three or so meters forwards and the trunk is lifted from the ground again.

“Well, my theory about animals not being around anymore might not be so far outstretched, right?”

““Yeah...””

Uhhh... I am not surprised... At this point I am terrified. Looking at Jake, his face looks quite grim as well. I mean, we’ve been working around those trees a few days ago, cutting them and moving their bodies away. We were fortunate not to encounter this thing back then, otherwise who knows what might happen.

‘Baaanggg’

A loud sound wakes all of us from our dreamlike state. The tree monster or whatever it is reached the outer wall and started hitting it.

“Uh... Sy, what should we do?”

The situation looks quite bad, to be honest... I mean that thing, although I don’t know if it has any kind of intelligence or not, is still attacking our wall. We can’t afford to let something like that to happen otherwise our first line of defence is going to fall.

“Calm down. It can’t even scratch the outer layer, not to mention the Adamantium core. ”

Her words made me calm quite a bit. Well, she is right. I mean that wall was created to resist a point blank antimatter bomb, not to mention a small little tree.

“Sy, are the impulse Gatling guns enough for killing that thing?”

Jake inquires exactly what I wanted to find out from Sy. Well, unless we are dealing with some kind of unknown material, we should be able to...

“No problem! We can turn it in swish cheese in seconds!”

Yap, that!

“Do it!”

“Why? It’s not like it can hurt us or anything and I really want to study it!”

“You can study it after it stops moving. Until then, living with a huge tree monster that is banging on our gates is not an option!”

“Uhhh... OK...”

Sy puffs her cheeks and turns around towards the control matrix. Two Gatling guns appear on top of the outer wall and target the big tree.

‘Wooommmmmmmmmmmm ....mmmm’

A barrage of pulse bullets is launched towards the moving tree. Big holes, the size of a fist, start appearing everywhere. The tree doesn’t seem to understand what is happening as it just starts falling towards the ground.

‘Thuummmpppp’

Its big body hits hard the ground. His branches are still moving slowly around which shows that it is not dead yet.

The automatic pulse Gatling guns keep shooting it. The branches filled with holes can’t support their own weight anymore and starts falling to the ground. The big trunk is almost severed in more than one place by the rain of death.

Less than twenty seconds later, the fight is over. The tree can’t even be recognised anymore. Everything left is a mess of branches and pieces of wood covered in some kind of red liquid which I really hope is not blood.

All of us are looking towards this scene with various expressions.

To be honest, there is only one thing passing through my mind.

“At least we are not fighting against an emu riding an elephant that commands an army of giant insects!”

““...””