Dead Tree

“What’s up with that tree?” Green Ranger pointed her chin at the backyard with a jerk of her head.

“What tree?” Pink Ranger sighed. He had his eyes glued to his phone.

“What tree? What tree do you think?” Green Ranger said, putting a tangerine slice in her mouth as she spoke. “The tree in the backyard. The only tree in the backyard.”

Pink Ranger sighed in an overly dramatic fashion. They had only known each other for a few hours, but she knew why he was so exasperated.

“Look man,” Green said. “I didn’t choose the names.”

“I know, I just—” Pink stopped himself and took a deep breath. Even through the pink ski mask, Green could see his face getting redder. “I specifically asked E…Red not to make me the Pink Ranger, and—”

Green sighed and looked over at the husband and his two children—all three blindfolded and sitting silently on the couch in the living room. The son had burst out crying about twenty minutes before, but had since calmed down after reassurances that they wouldn’t kill anyone. If Pink had actually finished saying their leader’s name, things would have gotten messy, but he caught himself just in time.

Green adjusted herself in the leather-padded diner chair and put her elbows up on the kitchen table, stopping Pink with a hand. “Look man, it’s 2021, no one cares about color-coded femininity or masculinity or whatever hang up you’re having about being called ‘Pink Ranger’. I don’t care, Blue’s upstairs shitting his brains out cause of the deviled eggs he ordered at lunch, and we won’t see Red or Yellow until the job’s already over. I don’t think it’s any ding on your masculinity if you’re known as the Pink Ranger for the next six hours.”

Pink scratched his neck, looked away, and shuffled in his seat a bit before speaking again. “It’s not that…”

“What?”

“It’s not a masculinity thing,” he said. “I understand why you would think that way and it’s an unfortunate part of my gender that even I know I’m not fully innocent of—”

“Stop,” Green interrupted him again with the wave of her hand. “What is it then? What is your hang up about the Pink Ranger?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Fine,” Green Ranger said, with a skeptical shift of her eyebrows. “Then I was asking about that tree—”

“I was six, okay, a six-year-old kid,” Pink was bouncing his right leg a mile a minute under the kitchen table. “Power Rangers was one of my first TV shows and the Pink Ranger, I mean wow, Kimberly Hart, instant crush, you know,” Pink’s hands flailed as he spoke, “You know what I’m saying right?” Green’s face did not change, but her eyes gave him a get-to-the-point look, so he moved on. “Anyway, my older sister thought it would be funny if she and her friends dressed up in pink ranger costumes and bullied me for a few hours before locking me in the basement.” He was silent for a while, eyes staring into the past as a he shivered slightly until he suddenly snapped back to reality, “it was so dark, I was too small to reach the light.”

“Wow…” Green Ranger didn’t know what to say. “Kids are cruel, I’m sorry man.”

“My parents found me six hours later…” Pink rearranged his mask, “…yeah,” he stood up and looked over at the tree in the backyard. “Anyway, what’s wrong with the tree?”

“It looks dead, but it’s not,” Green said.

“It is dead.”

“But look,” Green pointed to a clump of three peaches hanging from one of its branches, “it can’t grow fruit if it’s dead.”

Pink stared at the fruit with curiosity and massaged the lower half of his face with his thumb and pointer finger, then let out a drawn-out “hmm”. He tilted his head as his eyes fell to the base of the tree. Around the white-barked tree the grass had turned brown, in fact, all the grass in the backyard looked dead. “The fuck?”

A hollow flushing sound followed by rhythmic stomping upstairs preceded Blue’s return. “I am so sorry guys,” his hands were in Mother Teresa prayer position begging for forgiveness. “I am usually not this unprofessional. I don’t know what got into me, I always get the same meal before a job, bacon cheeseburger and fries, but today I go and there’s a fried fish-filet egg sandwich, new item. I think it looks good, smells good, but never again, the amount of liquid that just came out of my body—” he makes a gestures that signaled a large amount, “intense.” He retrieved a glass from the cupboard, filled it with tap water, chugged it down, then repeated this three more times before talking again. “So…how are things down here?”

Green sighed. “Things are fine.”

“The tree…” Pink pointed, “is it dead?”

“Is the tree dead?” Blue turned around and stared out into the backyard. “It’s definitely…wait…what the fuck…it has fruit though…”

“Look, look,” Pink pointed at the grass. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“It’s dead grass,” Blue said. Green stood up to look for herself.

“But it’s standing,” Pink exclaimed. “Dead grass doesn’t stand like that.”

“Doesn’t it…” Blue looked up, trying to recall a time where he’d seen grass like that. “No, I’ve definitely seen grass like that.”

“Where?” Pink said. “Where the fuck do you see standing dead grass?”

“What does grass do in the winter?” Blue asked. “It doesn’t die every year and grow back in the spring.” His eye went wide as he made the realization, “yellow fucking grass, dude, it’s always standing.”

“It’s springtime,” Green said. “It’s May, it’s been spring for at least a month.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Pink interjected, waving his arms in agitation. “Are you trying to tell me that grass hibernates in the winter?”

“Doesn’t it?” Blue asked. “Plants die in the cold dude!”

“Not all plants!”

Green sighed, grabbed her shotgun from the kitchen table, and walked into the adjacent living room.

“Hey, where are you going?” Pink asked, trailing after her. “We’re not supposed to…”

“Hey,” Green said, poking the husband with the barrel of her gun.

The man jolted back, his breathing immediately heightened. “Please, please! Just take whatever you want, there-there’s a vintage coin collection in one of the boxes underneath the bed in our room and…and…oh god, please don’t hurt—”

“Shut up,” Green lightly pushed him back onto the couch cushions. The son—roughly twelve-years-old—started crying while the ten-year-old daughter hurled threats at Green after feeling their father’s body bounce against the springy cushions.

“Hey, hey guys, hey,” Pink rushed over to the kids. “Everything is fine, everything’s gonna be okay, no need for tears. Green over here is just asking your daddy a question, nothing else, just some gardening tips.”

The boy sniffled. “Really?”

“Mommy told us not to trust strangers,” the girl said defiantly.

“That’s…” Pink looked up for a moment. “Well, that’s a good policy, but just for today, you can trust me.”

The boy looked reassured for a moment, but the girl wasn’t buying it.

Green sighed, grabbed the husband’s arm, and pulled him to his feet. “Come with me.”

“Daddy!” the girl cried as she jumped up from the couch and rushed to clamp onto her father’s leg—an impressive feat when done while blindfolded.

He crouched down, his voice was shaky when he finally started speaking. “Everything will be okay baby, everything will be okay. Just…just go over there and sit with Mark, okay? He’ll protect you.”

The girl looked unconvinced. “Mark’s afraid of the dark.”

“Well…” the father looked helpless.

Green nudged him with her shotgun. “I don’t got all day.”

“Just sit on the couch for now,” the father said. “I’ll be right back.”

The girl frowned and then retreated to her original seat.

“How about we watch—listen to some TV?” Pink asked. He looked disapprovingly at Green before sitting down on the couch where the father had been and grabbing the remote. The television clicked on to CNN, where the anchor described mounting tensions between the US and China after the disappearance of a US journalist and several demonstrations of military might, outlining the increased likelihood of war. “Let’s just…let’s just watch something else huh?” Pink flipped to another channel.

Green marched the husband into the kitchen, over to the sink and the window that looked out at the backyard. She noticed that Blue was gone again and assumed he was upstairs for another round on the toilet. “The tree in your backyard,” Green said. “What’s wrong with it?”

“The…tree?” he scratched his head.

“It’s dead, but it’s growing fruit.”

“Oh, well, it’s always been like that.”

“Always?” Green said. “It’s always been dead, but still bears fruit?”

“Uh…yeah” he said, still tense and uncomfortable. “My wife brought it home a few weeks ago, saying it was part of some research project she’d been thrown onto recently. She told us not to touch it and the kids haven’t been allowed in the backyard since.”

“What the…”

“So, what’d he say?” Blue said coming in through the side door with a peach in each hand. His blue ski mask was pushed up to his nose as he bit into one and offered the other to Green. “You want one?”

Green stared at him for a moment and shook her head. “No thanks. Did you just go pick the fruit from that suspiciously dead tree?”

“Yeah, I heard that fiber helps with diarrhea and those peaches just looked so good,” Blue took another bite. “It’s kinda weird, back home my parents had so many fruit trees in the backyard, but squirrels and birds and stuff would always get to them before we could. In twenty years of living at that house, we’ve gotten maybe like three pieces of fruit from, like, seven trees.”

“Usually it’s not the wildlife, but more a problem with excessive tree vigor,” the husband said. “That’s the main problem with home orchards. Excessive pruning or over-fertilization can cause your trees to feel like they need to expend energy on growing branches instead of fruit. That or frost damage, depending on the area you live in.”

“Tree vigor…” Blue said thoughtfully as he chomped into the peach, leaving the second one on the counter. “I’ve never heard of this, but it makes sense.”

“None of this explains the tree,” Green said.

“What’s up with your obsession with this tree?” Blue asked. “It’s just hibernating, maybe some genetic mutation or something makes it grow fruit in its sleep.”

“Trees don’t hibernate,” Green said. “And I just…I don’t know why I’m so fixated on this tree…” She turned around, dropped the gun onto the kitchen table, and sighed.

Blue walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”

“I just…I’m fine,” Green said.

“Are…are you sure?” The husband was still standing at the sink, still blindfolded, but there was obvious concern in his voice. “It is, objectively, a weird tree.”

“It’s just hibernating,” Blue said calmly. “Like all trees do in the winter.”

“It’s May.”

“Trees actually don’t hibernate,” the husband said. “The ones that are not evergreen grow dormant in the winter, which means they basically halt all growth and energy consumption to survive, then start back up again in the spring.”

“What’s the difference between that and hibernation?”

“I…don’t know…”

“See Green,” Blue turned to her. “Hibernation.”

“It’s not winter and it’s growing fruit,” Green said obstinately.

“Well what else…” Blue stopped suddenly. In a jagged, frantic motion, his hand dropped the peach and rushed to his mouth. He retched in such a way that his entire body swayed forward before just a bit of blood escaped from his covered mouth. He took a breath, wiped the red from his face and looked fine until, suddenly, Blue’s entire body retched in a whip-like motion vomiting a stream of blood onto the linoleum.

“Blue!”

Blue dropped to his knees and covered his mouth as hacking coughs forced blood from his mouth—each jagged exhale messier and more painful than the last.

Green dropped down to his level, but wasn’t sure what to do. She looked closer and small black lumps were mixed in with the blood. “What the fuck…”

“Gre…” Blue tried to say before vomiting more blood, then dropping face-first into the red puddle.

“What’s happening in there?” Pink shouted from the living room.

“What the fuck,” Green said, covered in Blue’s blood. “What the fuck!” her voice got louder. She stared down at all the red—more than she had expected—slowly covering the white faux-marble linoleum. The half-eaten peach caught her eye and she knocked it across the room.

“Oh my…” The husband said, letting the blindfold fall off his face. “What happened? What did he…?”

Blue wasn’t breathing. Green pulled off her left glove and checked his pulse. Her fingers easily pushed into his neck and what should have been his throat was a soft, sopping mess. She rushed over to the sink, pushing the husband out of the way, and washed her hands—using an inordinate amount of soap. “He’s dead…”

“How? We weren’t doing anything, he wasn’t…”

“The peach,” Green said. “He ate that fucking peach and…and this happened” She grabbed the husband’s collar and pushed him against the kitchen counter. “What the fuck is that peach?”

“I—I—I don’t know,” the husband said. “I swear to you I don’t. My wife told me to leave it alone, so I left it alone.”

“You know about trees.”

“My-my wife is a biologist,” the husband stammered. “Everything I know about trees is from her, she just says stuff and I listen.”

Pink’s jaw dropped when he saw the floor. “What the fuck hap—”

“Daddy?” the girl’s voice was behind him.

Pink quickly turned around and covered her eyes. “Oh, no, they’re just talking about that tree, let’s go back and see how Dora escapes that maze huh?”

“All she said was just for me and the kids to never touch that tree, it’s part of some experiment that she’s working on and we…we even got new locks for the backdoor just so the kids couldn’t go outside.”

Green sighed and let go of the husband—she could see the shock dawning in his eyes. She turned around as the sound of two cars squeaked into the driveway, the green Ford Fiesta that Red and Yellow had taken to meet the wife and a white SUV driven by the wife.

“We got it! We fuckin’ got it!” Yellow shouted as he rushed through the door, but upon seeing Blue—face down on the completely red kitchen floor—his look of victory turned to horror.

Red walked in through the garage with Deirdre Carter—the target, the wife and mother of the family they were holding hostage, as well as a famed biologist currently working at the US Department of Agriculture—and quickly froze after her feet slicked against the half-dried, sticky blood.

“Oh no,” Deirdre said, but her expression quickly turned from dread to relief when she noticed Blue face down in the puddle of darkening red. “Where are the kids?” She looked to her husband. “Where—"

“The living room,” Green said. “They’re watching TV.”

She rushed over to them and a joyful chorus of prepubescent shouting erupted from the living room. Red look over at Green. “What happened?”

“He ate a peach,” Green said, “from that tree in the backyard. Next thing we know…” she looked down at the blood and black lumps, “this happened.”

“Fuck…” Red sighed in frustration, hands on her hips.

“What are we doing here?” Green asked. It had been Red, Pink, and Yellow who had contacted Green about this job and—as per her general hiring stipulations, they only told her as much as she needed to know: hold a family hostage for an afternoon, guns loaded if necessary, but there should be no need to use them. Blue was a stranger—hired free-lance fixer that Green had worked with only a few times—she had no allegiances towards him. However, this…this was different. Green needed to know if she was in over her head.

“What are you talking about?”

“Blue is dead because of a peach, this lady is a biologist for the USDA, and you didn’t look surprised at this horror scene—none of that is a coincidence.”

Red and Yellow looked at each other from across the room. “We might as well tell her,” Yellow said.

Red sighed. “A week ago my dad died. The doctors said it was like he swallowed a cup of acid—vomited blood and necrotic tissue everywhere. They kept the body for observation, did an autopsy, but couldn’t figure out what had happened. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary’,” she said, shaking her head. “My brother died the day after—same thing, this time we all saw it—drinking a glass of orange juice.”

“You’re not saying—”

“From what we can tell, roughly eight percent of all fruit grown in the United States have adapted to better survive the changing climate and pollutants in the air,” Deidre said, walking back into the room. “A side effect of this adaptation is that the juices in their fruit becomes toxic to certain mammals, humans being one of them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Green said, staring out at the tree.

“We’re as confused as you are,” Deidre said. “That’s what we’ve been working on for the last two weeks, since these deaths began. Certain trees, well, specifically Snow White Peach trees like the one in the backyard, are the only ones to show a physical change that denotes their adaptation—”

“They look dead,” Yellow said.

“They maintain a certain level of dormancy, seemingly from their winter months, but still grow fruit and function normally. We thought we might learn—”

“You knew?” the husband’s voice wrought with anger. “You knew that this could happen and you still brought that tree home? Our children…” He stopped and shook his head.

“Eric, we were trying to—”

“What if Audrey had gotten into the backyard? Jon! What if we came home one day to all this,” he motioned to the ground. “And our daughter was…”

Deirdre looked down. “I…I know, I’m sorry, but the lab, with budget cuts and the last four years…there was nothing else I could do.”

“But, if you have all this data,” Green asked, “then why doesn’t anyone know about it? If people are dying, shouldn’t we be seeing it all over the news?”

“A cover-up,” Red declared. “It has to be. There’s no other way this didn’t get out. You realized that there was no way to figure out which trees had adapted, the government decided that the economy would take more of a hit if they recalled the fruit than if some small percentage of the population died from unknown causes, and decided to hide the issue until you guys at the USDA could figure out which trees were changing.” She closed her fist in stifled rage. “Then all they need to do is remove them quietly, the deaths stop, and no ones the wiser.”

“There’s no cover-up,” Deirdre said. “There was a Senate hearing a month ago, I was part of it.”

“What?” Yellow looked alarmed.

“It was live-streamed on the Senate website,” Deirdre said. As the words left her mouth, her face and voice changed, realizing that no one in the room watched Senate live-streams.

“How?” Red said. “How was this not national news? People are dying!”

“Last month…” Yellow said. “What was in the news last month?”

Green searched her memory and closed her eyes in disappointment. “No way.”

“What?” Red asked.

“That reality TV star divorced her football player husband and escaped the cult they were in,” Green said. “Ella Kardholm. It was a huge scandal.”

“Oh yeah,” Yellow said. “Wasn’t there a US House member involved somehow? CNN did some two hours long timeline about it…”

The room fell silent.

“Fuck,” Red’s voice broke the moment of disillusionment. She slammed the butt of her gun against the nearest surface, the kitchen counter, and walked out into the backyard before anyone else could speak.

“Dad,” Yellow addressed the husband who was still standing quietly next to the sink, “go to your kids and tell Pink to come in here.” The husband hesitated for a moment and then started walking before Yellow put a hand on his shoulder. “Remember that we still have guns and your wife in this room. Please don’t do anything that all of us would regret.” The husband nodded and then hastened his stride.

“Who…who are you people?” Dierdre asked.

Yellow sighed and looked down. “Red, Pink, and I met in an environmental preservation group.” He pointed at Green. “She was hired specifically for this job, as well as Blue down there.” Pink joined them in the kitchen and stood by quietly as Yellow spoke. “Red’s dad and brother died and we thought something was up. I asked around some forums and your name was dropped a week or so later from some people who know people. We thought…well, we were wrong.”

“Maybe…maybe we do it anyway,” Red returned clearly more affected and jumpy than before. “If we show people the research, maybe we can get them to pay attention, get the public to force some sort of government action? Do something.”

Deirdre looked at the downcast faces of her captors and a sense of solidarity and sadness overcame her. She had tried everything to explain the dangers of flesh-melting fruit to her superiors but—after the Senate hearing and their refusal to provide funding—the project was dissolved. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“What do you mean?” Yellow asked.

Dierdre felt some embarrassment well up in her throat—she cleared it before continuing. “They…some of the senators I talked to tried to do something. Recall the fruit, but…”

“What happened?” Red asked.

“Well, from what I understand, the resolution got attached to something else—a healthcare bill some other senators were trying to get passed—but there was a majority opposition against the healthcare initiative and eventually the entire bill died.” The look on Yellow and Red’s faces dropped even more. “It’s still up for appeal as far as I know, but that could take…it could take a while.”

“I guess four percent isn’t enough for anyone to care,” Green sat down at the kitchen table. “This job’s a bust.”

“Should we…just go home,” Yellow asked, looking to Red.

“I…I won’t call the police,” Dierdre said, feeling somewhat torn about the idea, but quickly deciding this felt right. “I…I won’t.”

Red stared at the ground in silence for a long while before looking up. “No. No, no, no. They can’t get away with this.”

“She’s losing it,” Green said.

“It’s over Red,” Pink walked towards her. “We…if all this is true, then we don’t have a chance.”

“No,” Red waving her gun at the group then resting it on Deirdre. “If this isn’t news, then we make it news.”

“What are you talking about?” Yellow said, cautiously approaching Red.

“Two people, a mother of two and the man who tried to rob her in her own house, both found dead in a horrific scene of blood and guts,” Red narrated. “That’ll get national attention. Then when they find out it was the peaches—”

“Oh god…” Deidre said.

“El—Red, you’re not thinking straight,” Yellow said. “We’re not murderers.”

“I’m willing to kill a few person to save hundreds,” Red said. “So that no one else will have to go through what my family did.”

“If that’s what you want to do, then we can just leave Blue here, why—”

“No,” Red shouted. “They’ll just write it off as a robbery or something, we need a bigger body count.”

“No,” Pink said. “This isn’t what we’re here to do. They have kids.”

Red stared Pink down. “Just mom, the dad can take care of the children.”

“She isn’t the reason this is happening,” Yellow said, getting closer to Red. “She tried to stop this.”

Red’s eyes were sharp, wild, she wasn’t going to listen. She grabbed the uneaten peach from its place on the kitchen counter and shoved it in Dierdre’s face—still pointing the gun at her head. “Eat this.”

Dierdre whimpered and shook her head.

“Eat it or I shoot you.”

“Red!” Yellow shouted. “Red, stop!” Red pushed the peach up to Dierdre’s lips. “Eleanor! Stop!”

Red turned to Yellow. “I won’t let this go. My dad and brother are dead. They’re dead.”

“You need to take a step back and see who the real enemies are.” Yellow pointed to Dierdre, “she is not one of them.”

Dierdre’s eyes went from Yellow to Red’s shaking gun. Yellow put his hand on Red’s gun and moved it away from the scientist’s face.

Pink put a hand on Dierdre’s shoulder. “Go to your family.” She stood there for a moment, but when Red didn’t move, she darted into the living room.

“Mom died cause she wanted to eat fucking garlic fries and some asshole shot up the festival and now my dad and brother are gone because people can’t figure out if it’s a good idea to recall acid fruit.” She dropped her gun and held the peach in both of her hands.

“Let’s go home El,” Yellow said. “We can figure out another plan. We’ll get them, I—”

“Drop the peach,” Green said.

“What?” Yellow looked confused.

“I saw what happened the Blue,” Green looked straight at Red. “You don’t want that.”

“Do you have a family Green?” Red asked.

“El?” Yellow wasn’t following.

“El,” Pink echoed.

“I do,” Green said.

“Are any of them dead?”

“My father,” Green said. “Never had money for healthcare growing up, by the time we got it, the cancer in his body was too advanced.”

  “Fuck,” Red said.

  “El?” Yellow called to her, but she wasn’t listening.

  “That’s just the way it is,” Green shrugged.

  “Isn’t it?” Red asked. She maintained eye contact with Green as she bit into the peach.

  “El!” Yellow and Pink shouted at the same time. “No! What did you…”

  “That’s just the way it is,” Red said before blood spilled out of her mouth. She raised the peach up and offered it to Green. Green took it into her hands just as Red collapsed onto the ground.

  “That’s just the way it is…” Green said, stared down at the peach, studying the bite Red had taken. The peach looked ripe, juicy, inviting and—as she stared into the jagged bite on the surface of its flesh—Green wondered if it tasted sweet.