title: wild green tide
fandom: original / The Mountain (song) - Dave Carter and Tracey Grammer
contents: post-apocalyptic fiction

author's note: I've had this idea since I saw the prompts for jukebox_fest, but hadn't been able to sit down and write it.

Cara wove her bike carefully between potholes on the busted street. Sunlight filtered green through the canopy of needles above her, dappling in shadows on the ground and disguising the worst of the damage. She'd already bent one wheel rim this month and had to ditch that bike -- she really didn't want to have to hike back home on foot again.

Especially since the trips kept getting longer. She and the others had already cleared out the houses just inside the treeline, so now they were foraging further and further inside.

Cara shivered, despite the heat of the day, and glanced furtively up at the treetops. The crows were raucous, calling back and forth as they fluttered between branches. But it's not like the plague had ever bothered them.

When the green wave rolled over the northwest, there was no vast silence. No woodland animals running from disaster. No warning. Just a pollen-yellow wind, and the transformation left in its wake.

Cara stopped at one of the low brick houses. Unlike most, this one was intact, and had a better chance of holding supplies that hadn't been ruined by rain. But standing out front was a cluster of trees that had buckled up the street and blocked the little dog-gate in the chain link fence. Two tall ones and a smaller sapling, their limbs entwined like they'd held each other as the end came down.

Cara shivered again, and decided to ride on.