Chapter Seven of the online novel ED Day is now up. ED Day tells the tale of how survivors of an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic in Sydney rebuild their lives and their society in a city of the dead.
Here's an excerpt from Chapter Seven of ED Day :
The Botanical Gardens are spreading, growing out through the wrought iron fences and across the city streets. There's nobody around to trim the trees, or cut back the vines, or pluck the little shoots that are now sprouting here and there in the cracks of the footpaths.
....for a moment I saw Macqaurie Street a decade from now. The unchecked growth of the Botanical Gardens, of all those trees and vines, had spread through, or pushed down, the old fence. The Gardens were swallowing up the concrete and steel of the city.
The jumbled lines of dead cars that filled the street were beds for flowers and weeds. The road had cracked under years of heat and rain and cold, with no council maintenance crews to repair the damage. Part of the tarmac had collapsed into some old tunnel below, the rear ends of three cars poked up out of the hole in the street.
The windows of the old apartment blocks and the sleek blue glass facades of office towers were cracked and broken. Foliage spilled down from tenth floor window frames.
Where before ED Day there had been clean footpaths and gleaming facades, everything was covered with vines and flowers and weeds and plants.
I walked back to the Imperium, thinking about how long it will be before the animals and plants own this city.Are we really going to spend weeks and months fighting to keep plants and vines from taking root in the malls and court yards and public squares of this city? Of course not. We'd have to devote whole teams of survivors to sweeping away the soil and seeds that meet up in the cracks of concrete buildings and the gaps in the footpaths after rain and wind storms carry them through the city.
It's a fight we can't win.
Go Here To Read The Rest Of Chapter Seven.
If you're not yet a regular reader of ED Day, then go here to start at Chapter One.
