Now I recall the kind doctor with gratitude. I lie in the middle of a wheat field, arms outstretched between the dried stalks, smiling just like him. My eyes stare motionless upward, reflecting the eternal blue sky. Where was this? With Tolstoy? Or in the legends about Tengri? Perhaps both at once? Maybe... For something intangible permeates that mysterious cultural substance. Just as my rhizome is now sprouting through this entire field. I have already grown attached to this foreign yet simultaneously familiar land. I can't get up. Nor do I want to. With difficulty, I pull my hand away from the soil, open my palm, and feel something twisting and tickling within it. On the inflamed, swollen skin, an eye opens. Green. With sharp black eyelashes. "Don't play around! It's boring... But you must learn to enjoy this silence. Soon it will end. Soon we'll go hunting." It's amusing to watch myself from the outside. Any blogger would envy such a selfie. The whole field, all this wheat—these are my eyes and ears. I sway in the wind, I hear birds calling, I sense the slightest vibrations... Voles rustle in the grass. A hedgehog scurries along the forest edge. And this... It's hard not to notice now. A pair of Bradley armored vehicles drives onto the dirt road alongside the field. The gunners huddle closer to the woods—they're afraid of mines. But they're worrying for nothing. The holding company has coordinated with the military through its channels to ensure the area isn't mined. After all, we're filming a movie here. Now even a six-winged "seraphim" drone with a camera hangs suspended in the air above us.
Unnoticed, the BMP runs over an inconspicuous puffball mushroom in the grass. It bursts open like a pus-filled pimple, spewing black viscous liquid onto the machine's steel belly. The target has been captured, though it hasn't realized it yet. Thin yet strong rhizome threads stretch from every blade of grass and stem, emerging from beneath the ground, wrapping around the wheels, crawling across the armor. Thanks to genes borrowed from spiders, breaking these bonds will be very difficult. The engines struggle harder and harder to turn over. They emit a death rattle and finally stall. Thin muscle fibers inside each thread synchronously contract, literally pressing the armored vehicles into the ground. There are six people inside each one. They jump out, weapons at the ready, looking around, still not fully grasping what's happening. Lunchtime has arrived.
Someone decides that camouflage netting has fallen onto the vehicle and tries to remove it by hand. This proves to be his last mistake. Sensing the delicious taste of human flesh, the rhizome immediately reaches toward it. It pierces the skin, tears apart the flesh, penetrates capillaries, vessels, veins... The circulatory system is a ready-made route. It's fastest to grow into the human body through it. From the sudden surge in pressure, the soldier's face turns crimson. Blood flows from his nose, eyes, and ears. They try to help him, drag him away from the immobilized Bradley, lay him down on the grass, but only waste time. Their comrade is being digested from within. Now he's simply a ticking time bomb. Throughout his body, hard black needles emerge from under the skin, right through the camouflage fabric. In another minute, continuing to agonize and bleed profusely, he becomes covered with them like a hedgehog. Cell walls break down. Tissues fill with fluid. Internal pressure rises to its limit. His torso, now reduced to a hollow shell, ruptures with a loud crack. The spikes scatter in all directions.
Three nearby soldiers are hit by a swarm of deadly stingers. They try to cover themselves with their hands. They fall to the ground. They attempt to scream. But it's already useless. They no longer have mouths or eyes—their faces have turned into a continuous inflamed ulcer, swelling with bloody blisters.
Forgetting about their "brothers", the others scatter in panic. Six run along the road, two head straight across the field. My human eyes cannot see them running, but now I feel every step they take. I sense the terror radiating from their bodies. "Come to me, my Bandersnatches..." Fleeing an unknown threat, the first group tries to hide in a grove of trees. In vain... The grass seems to grow thicker and tougher. Thin, long blades strike at the frightened people's legs, cutting into their flesh, entangling them, pulling them down. One soldier falls, and right before his comrades' eyes, sharp grass slices him from all sides, tearing him apart, grinding him into minced meat, drawing him inward. And suddenly he is just compost. Just earth. Panic completely overwhelms the rest. The commander curses, breaking into a shrill, hysterical scream. Chaotic gunfire rings out. Where? At whom? How foolish. They are incapable of doing anything, yet still cling to life.
Having received energy for growth, the rhizome activates. Black filaments sprout from the stems, taller than a human, reaching toward the sky, flowing and swaying as if caught in an ascending air current. Now I wouldn't see anything even if I were standing nearby, but I know what's happening within this tangle. Microscopic roots twist and thicken, constrict, forming an impenetrable, dense cocoon around their victims. It's hard to say what causes death: suffocation or a digestive enzyme dissolving flesh alive. They say the brain can survive for about nine minutes, meaning they're aware of what's happening to them. But this personal hell doesn't last long. Very soon, the rhizome reaches the brain itself. It loves to finish everything off, leaving only bones behind. "Chewing your food thoroughly helps society... A society of clean plates." I involuntarily smile, remembering how Valery Semyonich joked that I liked to take seconds at the cafeteria. Now my second helping is running toward me on its own.
Two soldiers in full combat gear dash across the field. Lucky ones. After what they've seen, they no longer fear mines, a possible lurking sniper, or the operator of a kamikaze drone. All of this now feels like deliverance—they have witnessed death as it truly is. But it's still close. Closer than it seems. The black rootstock has already begun contracting toward the center. Biomass volume beneath the surface grows. The ground under the soldiers' feet trembles. The first stumbles over a curved tentacle, falls into loose black soil—though it's no longer quite earth. Rising up, it instantly covers him like a blanket, compresses him, bends him backward, breaks him in half, and begins to consume him. His face freezes in a death mask of pain and horror mixed together. From the place where his eyes and mouth once were, black worms wriggle out of the bloody skull. Flesh on his chest collapses, exposing ribs shattered by pressure. His abdomen caves inward, revealing the spine, because there's practically nothing left of his internal organs either. Only a dry skeleton remains of what was once a man.
His comrade freezes, finally realizing that running is pointless. The soil, saturated with living cells, bubbles and writhes around him. The young man struggles to lift his gaze from the skeletal corpse... and sees me.
Right now, I'm not in my best form, but I'm still myself. Even all the buttons and chevrons are still in place. Except that dark slime is spreading all over my body, several tentacles have emerged, and a pair of dozen new eyes have opened. Pretty ones. Green. They all stare intently at the soldier. And they want to eat. And he reads this in them.
Mykola (for some reason, I decide that's his name) slowly takes his rifle off his shoulder and, jerking the bolt, chambers a round. Will he really try to shoot me? The magazine will clearly be too small... No. He turns the weapon around, pointing the barrel directly under his chin. "No!" A black tendril grabs the stock firmly, wraps around it, wrenching it from his hands.
"Wait... — my voice comes directly from the belly of the writhing black mass. — Coming here was a mistake... Right?" The young man nods in agreement. I notice again that he's no more than twenty years old. And hasn't lived very long at all.
"You should know... You're not to blame for anything. Whatever you did... I forgive you. I'm not angry with you. — Without a human mouth, each word is difficult to utter. — What's your name?"
"Bogdan..."
"Not quite... Well, as they say... God - given. God - taken..."
Under the soldier's feet, a round, toothed maw opens up. Letting out a ridiculous yelp, he plunges headfirst into it. The crunch of bones is drowned out by the chomping of the digestive sac. I pull my hand out of the biomass. The old one, human, without extra eyes. I run my fingers through dried wheat stalks. I look up at the eternal blue sky. There, a drone still hovers. I hope it enjoyed the performance. The hunt was brief. But the harvest was glorious.