In the After

Vivian’s desk. She looked up cheerfully. “You doing okay?”
    “Yeah . . . about lunch . . .”
    “Don’t worry about it. People expect post-aps to be a little jumpy,” she told me.
    “Well, I was just wondering about what you were doing earlier, when I first got to class . . . when you were all talking to figure something out.”
    “The think tank?”
    “That’s it. Can I call a think tank?”
    “Sure.” She stood and started arranging chairs in a circle. “Come on, guys. Andrew, Hector, Haley . . . Amy needs our help with something.”
    Everyone gathered in a circle and stared at me expectantly.
    “Well,” I started hesitantly. “I just have a lot of questions. I guess I want to know . . .” I took a deep breath. “How are there still so many Floraes when their main food source—us—is mostly depleted? How have they not died of starvation, or left, or whatever?”
    They considered for a moment.
    “They could eat other things,” Haley offered.
    I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen them eat vegetation. They are definitely carnivores.” I told them what I observed from the safety of my electric-fenced home. How they can’t see well, but have amazing hearing. What they looked like up close. What they smelled like—damp earth and rotting flesh. How they shuffled along until there was meat, then sprinted with single-minded determination.
    “What about their blood?” Hector asked. “Is it red, green, thick, thin?”
    “Blackish green. I don’t know how thick it is.” I remembered the night we met Amber, how that gang of men killed a bunch of Floraes, how their blood splattered against the sidewalk and pooled into the street. “Actually, it’s fairly thick, like syrup.”
    Hector scribbled in his notebook before he looked up at me. “They don’t eat anything but meat. I think they get the rest of their nourishment from the sun.”
    “What?” I asked, doubtful. “You figured that out in five seconds from greenish-black sludge-blood?”
    “No, it’s been right in our faces the whole time,” he explained. “What are they called?”
    “Floraes?” I felt dense.
    “Florae is short for Florae-sapien. They’re plant people. It was so obvious, but they don’t educate us about the Floraes.”
    “It makes sense,” Vivian said. “They’re green. They need the sun. They like to be underground at night.”
    “They know,” Andrew spoke for the first time. “The people who run New Hope, they don’t want us talking about it.”
    “What? Why not?” I asked. “Any knowledge that the people of New Hope have about the Floraes would only serve to help them. Wouldn’t it?”
    Hector gave me a pointed look. “I don’t know. None of us have ever been asked to study them. Maybe the people in charge decided it wasn’t important?”
    Meaning my mother decided: she and her creepy colleague Dr. Reynolds.
    Suddenly Jacob looked grim. “Guys, maybe we should lay off the Florae talk. We don’t want to end up like Frank.”
    “What happened to Frank?” I asked. A heavy silence followed and everyone looked uncomfortable.
    “He was working on an undesirable project and was told to stop,” Jacob explained quietly. “He wouldn’t, so he was sent to the Ward.”
    I looked at him. “I thought the Ward was supposed to be for people who were mentally unstable. What was his project?”
    “Not sure,” Jacob told us, “but I know he wanted to study a Florae up close. It’s all he talked about. It became an obsession and I think it pushed him over the edge.”
    “But they study them,” I said. “The Guardians do, in the wild,” I quickly added, not wanting to scare anyone, especially after Rice’s warning.
    “So they must know a lot,” Haley chimed in.
    “Like where they came from?” I asked. I turned to Hector. “Any clues about that?”
    He shook his head.
    “The news said they were aliens,” Tracey offered.
    “But I’ve seen them, up close. They don’t have the intellect to turn a door handle; I don’t think they could have manned spaceships.”
    “Why don’t you just ask the director?” Vivian asked me.
    “My mother doesn’t talk to me about these things,” I admitted. “She’s a master at changing the subject.”
    “Amy, she would have the answers,” Hector said. “If anyone does.”
    “If they don’t like us to talk about the Floraes and don’t want anyone to know that they’re studying them, they know something they don’t