Botanicaust

Genetic modification has rendered Earth's croplands barren.

Some survivors turned to Science.

Some turned to God.

Some turned to the Unthinkable.

Dr. Tula Macoby is a proud member of the Haldanian Protectorate, a compound built by those who believe humanity must embrace the same technology that caused the apocalypse. Bio-engineered with photosynthetic skin, their mission is to eliminate the cannibalism ruling the world outside the safety of its walls, one conversion at a time.

When a prisoner who is obviously not a cannibal arrives in Tula's lab speaking a language she's never heard before, she's intrigued. His gentle but firm refusal to be genetically modified makes her question for the first time the Protectorate's policy of euthanizing anyone who won't convert.

But the law is clear; savages who refuse the alteration must be exterminated.

With time running out, will Tula risk everything to save the stranger from execution?

“Run!”

The girl didn’t know much of the Cannibal language, but she understood that word.

In the sky, a strange flying machine had appeared, its curved, metal belly glinting in the desert sun. Twigs of desiccated bushes trembled as the near-silent thing descended, and dust swept into the girl’s eyes and filled her nostrils. The woman gripping her hand lurched into a run, jerking the child off her feet and dragging her a few steps before abandoning her.

The girl twisted to squint at the sky. A cone of flame erupted from the machine and pounded the parched ground a few steps away, engulfing shrubs and people alike. Screams, worse than when Brother Eli was butchered, cut through the fiery roar.

As the familiar scent of burning flesh filled the air, the girl’s stomach cramped; she’d eaten to survive, but the smell made her want to cry. Hot embers settled around her, singeing her skin. She pressed her hands together like Mama used to.

“Jesus loves me, this I know...” The song scratched from her throat, as dry as the dust she knelt upon, tears cooling her heated cheeks.

Blackened cannibals lay scattered across the cracked earth, either screaming in pain, or silent in death.

The stream of fire eased as the bird settled to the scorched soil. Several figures emerged from inside the belly of the beast.

“Little ones to Him belong...”

They moved toward her.

Angels?

They had come from the sky. But these men were green, not cream or tan like her or the cannibals. A hazy sunlit halo surrounded the nearest man’s face. When he held out his hand to her, she thought of her last meal with the fingernail still clinging to the charred flesh.

She took his hand without hesitation.