A Canopy of Roses
#2— The Rose Farm Trilogy — Flash Fiction
No one ever suspected New Zealand.
Indeed, no one had the faintest idea they were even in the process of developing nuclear weapons. It was New Zealand, after all. Two islands of natural wonders, people with strange accents and plenty of sheep. A whole nation out of bounds, on the sidelines of the world.
They almost got away with it, too. After much of the Eastern Australian seaboard and South-East Asia had fallen under a field of mushroom clouds, the New Zealand Prime Minister claimed that although they did have a top secret nuclear weapons program, the attacks were a result of a fundamentalist incursion.
Everyone believed her until a soldier defected and told the world the truth. By then, though, it was already too late.
Even after New Zealand was demolished by a healthy coalition of the global community, other countries had already decided on their own attacks. It had only taken someone to show them the way.
The nuclear winter was vicious, but none more so than the one that blanketed Europe.
Acid rain poured for months as dark clouds, plumes from a scorched atmosphere, refused to abate. Radioactive winds howled across the continent as survivors struggled to remain survivors.
Years passed — slowly, painfully.
After a while, the worst of the winter departed. The survivors formed communities and found new places to live, outside of the old city centres.
Time marched on in this changed world.
The survivors ventured out, rediscovering old places, and uncovering new. People traded goods and stories, and before long, the memory of the apocalypse was blunted.
One day, a band of travellers were wandering through the former Bulgaria. On the outskirts of Gurkovo, on the banks of the Tundzha river, they came across what was previously a rose farm.
The farm was now a forest. The rose bushes stretched up toward the sky; fallen petals covered the ground like a fragrant carpet, in range of colours from red to dirt-brown. The roses themselves were enormous, thanks to the radioactive fallout. The ones closer to the ground, the budding youth, were the size of a human head, while the ones high up in the canopy were as big as tyres. Bees danced lazily on the thick, musky air from flower to flower.
The travellers stayed for as long as they could, but as they were leaving, they knew it wasn’t long enough.
