They came in their thousands. We fought them as one.
It started during a winter storm on the North Eastern Seaboard which brought with it a strange green rain. Where it fell, everything withered, died, and was consumed. The residents of remote outposts in Maritime Canada escaped the worst of the early damage, but that was a blessing in disguise, for they were left to watch as first North America, then the world, was subsumed in the creeping green carpet of terror.
And that was just the beginning.
Genre: FICTION / Science Fiction / GeneralPart 1- The Arrival
The winter storm that blew through the Maritimes on 23rd February saved the lives of thousands of people. At the time most of them were too busy surviving to be grateful.
It had started quietly enough, with a cold breeze from the Northwest blowing a few lazy snowflakes around in the early evening. Thereafter the velocity and the volume ramped up like an accelerating truck until, by the time Alice Noble went to check on the boat-shed, it was blowing a gale and she knew it would be piling up drifts that were already several feet deep.
She had been listening to the steady rise of the storm with some trepidation as the winter had already proved to be a hard one, and the boat house roof was showing signs of wear. She was relieved to find everything still intact when she opened the door from the kitchen and walked into the large barn-like space.
The Zodiac sat snugly under its winter tarpaulin, looking strangely sad in its deflated state. It seemed like a long time since the hot summer days out on the Bay with the tourists, but that was the price you paid for being here – the summers were magical, but the winters were there merely to be endured. It was no surprise to her that many of the island’s inhabitants left in December for more clement places, but she couldn’t afford that luxury, and stayed behind with a few hardy others, hunkered down in solitude against anything Nature could throw at them.
And tonight it’s throwing plenty.
The main door of the shed rattled violently. It was taking the full force of the wind and the old hinges creaked and complained with each gust. But Alice had put a new set of locks on just this fall and she was confident it would hold. Before going back to the relative warmth of the kitchen she ran a hand over the tarpaulin covering the rigid-hull Zodiac.
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German
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Unavailable for translation.
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Silvia de Cataldo
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by André Nardini
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by María Florencia Zapata
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