Yay, it is time for Paula’s Tuesday Story! Images today are:

So, this was it. This was how it would all end. Not alien invasions, not deadly viruses, or bacteria, but plants. The species had first been discovered on an uninhabited island in the Caribbean, where it was rampant.

When it was brought onto the mainland, it had been rampant. The strain was known to be carnivorous so, when some was discovered in the wild, there was panic.

But there was more. People’s pets started disappearing, then people themselves. Starting in Japan, some seedlings found their way across the ocean into Asia and it took only five years before it entered Africa. When it was discovered that airborne spores could travel on the wind, like dandelions, nowhere was safe.

In thirty years, the plant had taken over, and humans were limited to a very few outposts. Once proud buildings decayed and crumbled. The only safe places were subterranean – the plant needed light, but humans could not live entirely underground. An elite regiment of people – called “runners” came into being, who would venture above ground, when necessary.

Cara was one such runner, but Cara had made a mistake. In unfamiliar territory, a left rather than a right, and she was tired, hungry and the light was failing. She decided to hide out in an old ruin – it had once been somebody’s beautiful house – until daybreak, when she should be able to get her bearings. In the meantime, she hoped that the plant would not pick up her scent. Jumpy, she thought she saw it behind every shadow, and she could not sleep, so she stood still, her adrenalin seeing her through.

Having stood like a statue for the last two hours before dawn, Cara decided it was time to make a break for it. But as she tried to make that first move, something had hold of her leg. As she stumbled, the last thing she saw before hitting her head was the foliage wound around her ankle.