A leaf in the road. A leaf in the road!
I slammed on the brakes hard enough for the contents of my backseat to go flying. I put the car into park and flung open the door. A breeze was picking up and I had to chase it onto the barren side of the road and through skeletal trees to catch up with it. I halted its progress with my foot, and then, as though I hadn’t just stomped on it, I picked it up delicately by the stem. It was still green.
Was it an oak? Elm? I didn’t know trees. I thought it was a tree, but for all I knew it was from a bush or some other flowering plant. Either way, I hadn’t seen anything green in a long time. How long? Well, the ground beneath my feet in a heavily wooded space where no canopy hid the sky was devoid of crunch or rot. That long.
I returned to the road, removing my key from the ignition. Leaving it in the street, I followed the breeze in the direction it hailed from. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I wanted to see as much of the world as I could before it – or more imminently, me – inevitably decayed. If there was a chance to see a real, live plant though, that might change things. No one thought they would come back, and I was living on borrowed oxygen – oxygen from a tank I unintentionally overused in my quick run after the leaf. God, what had I come to?
One nice thing about the decline of the plants and therefore the animals and people was that when I slept the night under the stars – those that remained – I didn’t worry about anything harming me.
I rubbed the leaf between my fingers and, removing my cannula, lifted it to my nose. Chlorophyll. Dim, but unmistakable. God, I had forgotten what that was like.
I did begin to wonder if I was on the wrong track. I’d covered plenty of ground and there was no sign of the flora it came from. Maybe it was a fluke. Or maybe I’d missed something. Surely not, the leaf was too big, too mature to have come from a plant small enough for me to miss. I kept going.
A stone wall ahead blended in with the gray of the trees. When I came upon it, there was no question but to climb it. One leg on the outside and one inside, I had to catch my breath.
Green. As far as the eye could see.
Maybe my oxygen tube had kinked. Maybe I was hallucinating.
I dropped to the other side of the wall, the grass softening my fall. I hesitated, running my hands through it and wanting never to stop, but there was more here, and birds chirping.
Maybe I’d died and gone to heaven.
Maybe I should stop here before I found the catch.