Global Biomass
by Keith A. Kline
We have many names, but now we are Elaine Haskell, whom we encountered a few days ago in the little town of Marysville not far from the military base. Now we are Elaine Haskell because she adds flavor as we grow.
We were not Elaine Haskell this morning as we spread across five hundred acres of farmland, consuming everything organic in our path. Nor were we Elaine Haskell as we engulfed the rusting silo, with its corn dust and dry rubber gaskets. She offered no spice for those things.
We are Elaine Haskell as we surround the old wooden barn, its planks and beams and rafters infused with the mélange of her fruity pride over running a successful family farm and her acerbic resentment for the long hours her husband, Ken, spent there. We consume it, leaving nothing but tools and buckets and nails beneath us.
We are Elaine Haskell as we envelop the ancient oak tree, already tall when they moved in forty years ago. We devour the tree, with its sugary frosting of memories of the rope-and-plank swing where her son played, down to the tips of its roots until we fill the immense underground space it once occupied.
We are Elaine Haskell as we consume the farmhouse, with its framed photos and its old wooden toys stored in the basement. We savor the salty-sweet medley of the happiness of raising a child in their beautiful home and the sadness of Ken’s death years after their adult son moved to Omaha. When we are done, a tangle of pipes, appliances, and the box springs upon which her boy was conceived rests on the foundation below us.
We are not Elaine Haskell as we spread across the farmland until sundown. We will not be Elaine Haskell as we grow tomorrow, covering another thousand-acre farm. We have not yet encountered the family who lives there, so tomorrow we will be a mouse or a rabbit to add zesty prey seasoning to the fields.
We will not be Elaine Haskell again until we reach Omaha, or wherever we encounter her son. We discovered that first day, in the town of Marysville, the piquant helpless fear the humans within us experience when we consume their family members. As we grow to engulf the world, we will someday devour her child. That day we will be Elaine Haskell again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith A. Kline is a lifelong storyteller and a lover of speculative fiction. He is working on his first novel, a unique take on a zombie apocalypse. Keith lives in Maryland with his wife and their family of assorted quadrupeds.
