DRYANNA

Looking like a throwback to the psychedelic 1960s, or an early episode of Scooby Doo, the multi-coloured Volkswagen Kombi Van drove as far into the forest just outside Elroy, on the Glen Hartwell to Willamby rail line as it could before the four passengers had to get out to walk.

Dressed in multicoloured ponchos, and groovily tie-dyed T-shirts and slacks, the four teenagers staggered out of the Kombi. They had already risked passing a joint around between them, so were a little wobbly at the knees as they piled out of the van.

One of them fell to the floor of dried pine needles and gum leaves. Which for some reason struck the other three as hilarious. For almost a minute they couldn't stop laughing.

Grabbing their bong, drugs including a bag of weed, plus an oversized hippy blanket, they staggered off into the forest. Still laughing a little, although none of them could remember why.

After a kilometre or so, they laid out the blanket and plonked themselves on it.

"Ouch," said a strawberry blonde hippy-dip as she sat on a small rock. Again the four hipsters found this hilarious and chortled with laughter for a minute or more.

"Give me some XYZ," demanded one of the hippies. Referring to the latest alphabet soup drug, named because it was said to be the End. And since it had a twenty percent mortality rate, even amongst casual users, it was well-named.

"Hold your horses," said a shaggy-haired redheaded hippy. And again they all roared with laughter.



Half an hour later they were well and truly zonked out of XYZ, ice, marijuana, and a little meth, when the first hippy-dip said:

"Hey man the trees seem to be moving ... this is great shit!"

Looking up the shaggy-haired redheaded hippy saw two huge red gums, their roots pulled right out of the ground, advancing toward them slowly.

"Man, you're right," he said.

"What're you mean 'man'?" she demanded: "I'm a girl."

"All right then Manette, you're right," he said, and again the four hippies started laughing hysterically.

"That was a good one," said the second boy, Madness. Nicknamed because of his love of the great SKA group, and also for his tendency to throw major temper tantrums if he got too doped out.

"Hello, Mr. Tree-Man," said Strawberry Fields, the hippy-dip who had sat on the rock, as the trees kept creeping toward them centimetre by centimetre.

Again the hippies chortled idiotically at this.

Holding out a reefer, the redheaded hippy, nicknamed Danger Man, because he was a tremendous coward, said: "Would you like a toot on my reefer? Or do you grow your own?"

Again the hippies almost split their sides laughing.

"That's a good one," said Strawberry Fields almost swallowing her reefer in excitement.

"Hey girls," said Madness, "what happened to the spirit of peace, love, and karma sutra? Shouldn't you chicks be naked already."

"If that's what you want?" said the second hippy dip, a brunette, Penny Lane. Actually named Penelope Lane, trying without success to pull her T-shirt off, forgetting that she was wearing a poncho over top of it. As she fell over backwards all four hippies roared with laughter again.

"Penny Lane is in my ears, and on my cock," sang, for want of a better word, Madness. Making them all roar with laughter again.

"Hello, Mr. Tree, you're getting closer, aren't you," said Strawberry Fields as a huge red gum, sneaked up close enough so that she could sit with her back against it.

"They're all getting closer," said Danger Man, almost wetting himself, as he suddenly dried out. His dope-soaked brain started to realise that something was badly wrong. He said: "Trees don't usually walk, do they?"

The others roared with laughter.

Penny Lane finally managed to pull off her top, then wriggle out of her tie-dyed slacks, slipping down her psychedelic panties at the same time. Before realising that no one else was bothering to get undressed.

"What's the matter?" she asked, doped to the gills: "I fort we was having an orgy?"

"Trees don't usually move," repeated Danger Man.

Penny looked around and saw that six trees had them surrounded, closing in until they were almost trapped in a closed circle of living wood.

Screaming, Penny jumped to her feet and tried to run back to the Kombi van. However, a long vine-like tentacle whooshed out from one of the trees to grab her and raise her fifty metres into the air.

It squeezed the life out of the brunette until her innards actually burst out of her stomach. Before tying her splattered corpse to its upper branches with the vine tentacles.

"What the Hell?" demanded Madness. Desperately hoping that it had been a drug nightmare. Since he really did fancy Penny Lane.

"Penny Lane," he half sang, half-whispered under his breath. Still hoping that she was really still alive and sitting on the shaggy blanket beside them.

Jumping to his feet, Danger Man said: "I really think we oughta get outer here." He tried to leap through a small gap between the six trees. Only to have the two trees suddenly lurched together, crushing the life and guts out of him. As had been done to Penny Lane moments ago.

"I think we're gonna die," said Strawberry Fields, starting to cry. Shrieking: "If this is getting back to nature, you can have it! I don't want it!"

"It's all a dope nightmare," insisted Madness, refusing to believe that Penny Lane and Danger Man had been squeezed to death by trees.

Besides he really loved Penny Lane, and at the risk of seeming like he was selling out to the establishment, he had planned to propose to her. So that they could live happily ever after. Like in the fairy tales, and most of his dope dreams. Apart from the really creepy ones. Like the feral, killer trees one that he was sure that they were all having now.

"There's nothing to worry about..." he said as one of the trees sent out tendrils to grip him by the ankles. It swung him a hundred metres into the air, then released him to fall back to earth.

"It's just a dope nightmare, a dopemare," he insisted. Right up until he landed headfirst on the bed of dry pine needles and gum leaves, breaking his neck, and dying on impact.

"Madness, you okay?" asked Strawberry Fields too doped out to realise that it was impossible to survive such a fall.

Finally, as the trees surrounded her until they were pressed up hard against her, the truth broke through, that she was the last of them left alive. She started to sing:

"One is the loneliest number..." until the trees crushed her to a pulp and she stopped singing.

One of the trees inched back to where it had originally been rooted into the ground. But the other five stayed where they were, surrounding the crushed remains of the strawberry blonde hippy-dip.



At Deidre Morton's two-storey boarding house in Rushcutters's Road, Merridale, Terri Scott, Colin Klein, Freddy Kingston, Tommy Turner, Natasha Lipzing, and Deidre herself were sitting down to a sumptuous breakfast of sausages, fried eggs, baked beans, steamed carrots, Brussel sprouts, toast, and marmalade, plus various other goodies.

"You do feed us well, Mrs. M," said Terri an attractive blonde police woman of the local constabulary on the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area.

"Yes, doesn't she," said Colin Klein. A tall redheaded English reporter, currently on long service leave down under, researching local myths and legends of Australia. And doing remarkably well lately.

"She does," agreed Natasha Lipzing, a tall anorexically thin lady of sixty-something. A spinster, she was Mrs. Morton's oldest tenant, having been living at the boarding house for over thirty-five years now.

"Yes, she does," agreed Freddy Kingston, a shortish, chubby, balding man with a more than healthy appetite.

"Yes," agreed Tommy Turner, a short, obese, man of sixty-plus with longish yellow hair. Less enthusiastically than the others, still smarting due to Deidre Morton having taken away his secret stash of alcohol which he had used to drink in his room at night. Even worse she had ordered the local liquor shops not to serve him. And when Deidre Morton, short and fat that she was, gave an order strong men jumped to obey.

"Are you still sulking because I took your secret stash away?" asked Mrs. Morton.

"If a man can't have a little drink sometimes!"

"I don't mind you having a little drink," said Deidre: "It's getting sloshed out of your brain that I object to."

"Yes, you did make a fool out of yourself at Mi Ling's wedding," said Terri. She stopped as she remembered the tragedy of Mi Ling's new husband committing suicide on their wedding night before they could even consummate their wedding.

"A little drink with your meals is supposed to be good for you," insisted Tommy.

"Oh, very well," said Deidre. Getting up, she walked across to a small cabinet, took a key from a lanyard around her neck, She poured Tommy a snifter of whisky from one of his seized stash, and handed him the glass.

Smiling for the first time since she had confiscated his liquor, he gulped the whisky down and then held out his glass for more.

"Sorry, one per meal is your limit," said Deidre, putting the whisky away and locking the cabinet.

Looking glum again, Tommy said: "Now I know why they say that one is the loneliest number."



They were just finishing up when there came a knock on the door.

Deidre Morton went across to open the door and said: "Jessie, Sheila, come on in. We've still got plenty of food left from breakfast."

"Thank you," said Sheila a tall, muscular orange-dyed Goth woman, a fifteen-year veteran of the local police. Sitting at the table, she started to get stuck into the now cold baked beans, then toast and marmalade.

"So, is this just a social visit?" asked Terri.

"No," said Jessie Baker, a powerfully built redheaded policeman, sitting at the table.. "We've got another of Mr. Klein's whacky backy cases."

"Why do you say my whacky backy cases," demanded Colin Klein. "I'm not even always around when they happen."

"But they do seem to follow you around, don't they," said Natasha Lipzing.

"That's a vicious slander," insisted the redhead.

"Well, you are a bit of a monster magnet," insisted Sheila Bennett.

When they were all satisfied, Terri said: "Maybe we'd better go before a fight breaks out in Mrs. M's dining room."



At the site, outside Leroy, a nearby town they gazed in amazed horror at the crushed remains of the dopers.

"What the Hell happened to them" asked Colin.

"That, my friend is the question," said Elvis Green, the local coroner. Nicknamed due to his devotion to Elvis Presley, and his long black sideburns.

Looking at the crushed corpses, with their innards burst out of their stomachs, Terri said: "So there's three of them.

"Four," said Jesus Costello. Pronounced Hee-Zeus. The head surgeon and administrator at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. He pointed to where the crushed body of Penny Lane was tied to a fork in a great red gum by thick vines, fifty metres above ground level.

"How the shit...?" said Sheila Bennett.

"You got me," said Jesus.

"If you think that's whacky," said Andrew Braidwood, a tall lanky policeman with long stringy yellow hair: "Take a gawk at this."

He led them across to where great holes in the ground lay, with tentacle-shaped runners leading out from them.

"What are those?" asked Jessie.

"Well, if we were in a Pixar movie, I'd say that that was where the trees were originally growing," said Andrew: "Until they uprooted themselves and walked across to slaughter the hopheads. But since we're not in a Pixar movie, I wouldn't dare suggest that ... in case you had me locked away in the psych ward of the Glen Hartwell Hospital."

"They are puzzling," said Terri peering at the indentations, which really did look as though the trees had originally been planted there. "It would certainly explain the girl."

"The one up in the tree?" asked Jessie.

"No, the one crushed between five tightly grouped trees," she said. "If they had been there originally, that closely packed, how the Hell could she have pressed into such a tight gap."

"Tight enough to crush her to death," said Sheila.

"Exactly," agreed Terri. "Even if it were possible to squeeze yourself into such a tiny space to crush yourself to death ... why would you do it?"

"They were hopheads," said Jessie Baker. "God alone knows what they thought was going on."

"Which would explain why they didn't run like Hell if the trees did start chasing them," said Colin.

"But again," said Andrew: "Outside of Pixar movies, trees don't chase people as a rule."

"That is the one flaw in my theory," admitted the redheaded journalist.

"Maybe it's time to bring in our expert on local and indigenous legends," suggested Terri Scott.

"Good idea," said Colin as they headed for her police-blue Lexus. "I haven't seen the old bloke in a few weeks now."



At Harpertown Bulam Bulam a grey-haired elder of the Gooladoo tribe, resided outside the township of Harpertown in the Victorian countryside. Although he lived in a lean-to in his tribal village, he owned and worked a small grocery shop in town.

An early riser, he had been up for hours. He was restocking his shelves at the grocery shop when he saw the pale blue Lexus pull up outside in Chappell Street.

As Terri and Colin entered his store, he raced forward and said: "My two favourite people in the whole world ... if we don't count my grandson, Bobby."

"How is Bobby?" asked Terri.

"As mischievous and precocious as always," said the old man. "In other words, I could love him to bits.

"So, after all this time why have you finally come to see me?" he asked, leading them across to sit down in the back room of the store. He didn't bother to lock the front door of the shop since in Harpertown everyone was honest and wouldn't steal from the much-loved indigenous Australian.

"All this time?" asked Colin. "It's about two weeks since we saw you last."

"More like fifteen days," he insisted, refusing to be corrected, by his friends.

"Actually we do need your help as an expert on legends and mythology," said Terri: "Or as we now say in this area, whacky backy Colin Klein-type cases."

"How dare you," said Colin. "I am not a monster magnet, no matter what you, Bulam Bulam, Sheila, Don Esk, Andrew, Jessie Baker, Paul Bell, Natasha Lipzing, or everyone else might insist."

"Perhaps not, but we've got you outnumbered," insisted Terri, grinning. She went on to tell Bulam Bulam about the inexplicable tree-murders.



Half an hour later they arrived at the site of the massacre of the four teenaged hippies

Bulam Bulam looked with wonder at the four corpses, being loaded onto stretchers to be carried to the waiting ambulances a way away.

"Here's one of the big puzzles," said Colin. He pointed up as they lowered the remains of Penny Lane, on a pulley system set up by two local loggers who had climbed the tree to install the pulley.

"How the Hell...?" asked Bulam Bulam.

"That's only half of the sixty-four million dollar question," said Terri. She led him across to the peculiar, tree-trunk-and-root-system-shaped holes.

"They look as if the trees uprooted themselves and walked across to crush the four teenagers?" said the old man, staring in amazement.

"That's our theory," admitted Terri.

"Another Colin Klein case indeed," he teased.

"How dare you?" said Colin giving the game away by laughing.

"Any guesses?" asked Sheila Bennett as the orange-haired Goth chick walked over to them.

"A Manitou," said Bulam Bulam.

"A whatsamatush now?" asked Sheila.

"American Indians believe in nature spirits called Manitou which inhabit all things," explained Bulam Bulam: "Living or non-living. Anything from trees to cars, to rivers, to rocks, to dirt to ... you name it.

"All things have a spirit, which is usually benign. But sometimes Manitou, especially plant-tree Manitou can be evil. This is similar to the European legend of Earth, wind, rain, and fire elementals.

"What we are dealing with here is a tree Manitou, or a dryad as it is called in European legends. It is not that the trees themselves came to life. But the dryad entered them, like a ghost possessing a living person, wore the trees-like clothing and used them to kill the harmless, doped out teenagers."

"So how do we stop or kill a dryad?" asked Terri.

"Fire will do it, since wood burns. Likewise strong plant killer. But if the dryad has already left the tree, all you do is kill a beautiful tree."

"And possibly start a bushfire," said Colin, "since we are in the middle of a sweltering summer."

"Yes, there's that too," agreed Bulam Bulam.



Less than a kilometre away, Harry Hancock was waking up his tenants at his small campsite. He had four four-bed wooden bunkrooms each with a small en suite. Also, a gym-cum-storage building, and a dining room-cum-kitchen building. All were built without planning permission or permits of any kind from the local council.

Although Jewish himself, Tony led his campers in an exercise program, followed by Christian prayers each morning before breakfast.

This morning, however, the campers from Cabin 3 had not appeared for either exercise or prayers.

That's their prerogative I suppose, the lazy Heathens, he thought: But I can't let them sleep through breakfast. Or they'll starve, and then I'll be in the shits.

So thinking, he headed down the pine needle and gum-covered path toward Cabin 3 to rouse them. Only to discover that Cabin 3 seemed to be gone. In its place was a strange tree-like shrub-like growth, three metres tall, with a semi-circular roof of thick vine-like growths. Almost like an old covered wagon, but made of plant matter.

"What the fuck?" asked Harry. He continued forward to attempt to look into the 'wagon' like growth. But the vines and tendrils were too closely packed and he was unable to see anything.

Returning to the Leisure room-cum-supplies hut, he found a petrol-driven whipper-snipper, returned to the wagon-shaped growth, and began hacking away at it. No easy task since the vines were as thick as a big man's ankles and strong enough to suggest that they had aged there over many years or even decades. Which wasn't possible, since they had not been there the night before.

"Come on you fuckers," said Harry as the whipper-snipper wire broke off for the thirteenth or fourteenth time.

Deciding that he couldn't spend all day there, he rang around to some loggers that he knew and told them to bring their axes to do some serious chopping.



"What the fuck is this?" asked Angus a bull of a man, with long red hair. Looking at the vine-wagon.

"That's why I need you blokes to chop it away so that I can find out what it is?" said Harry.

"You're the boss," said Harry. He led the other two loggers across and they started to slowly chop the almost steel-hard wood away.

"What is this shit made of?" asked Shamus an amateur bodybuilder, as they struggled to chop through it. "I've heard of a rubber tree, but this is more like a cast iron tree!"

"Bastard!" said the third logger, Robbie, as the head of his axe broke against the iron-hard wood. "How long has this shit been growing here?"

"Well, it wasn't here last night," said Harry honestly.

"What!" said all three loggers as one.

"You heard me," said Harry. "Frankly I can't believe it myself. But there was a cabin there last night at 9:00 o'clock."

"Shit," said Angus, "well, the axes won't cut through it." He led Shamus and Robbie across to their Ford Ute to drop in the axes, and pick up massive petrol-driven chain saws."

"If this doesn't do it, nothing will," said Shamus. He smiled confidently as they returned to attacking the vine wagons with the chainsaws.



Twenty minutes later they were making some, if slow, headway when the first of the chains broke and flew off. Sending Harry Hancock leaping to the pine needle and gum leaf-covered forest floor, covering his head with his hands.

"Fucker!" said Angus, going back to the Ute to get a second chain. This time he sharpened the chain by hand for ten minutes first and it started to make some progress. As the chains broke and flew off Shamus and Robbie's chainsaws.

"Aaaaaah!" Shamus screamed in rage. "No fuckin' tree has ever defeated me before." He went over to the Ute and took out a huge power drill with a fifty-centimetre long, three-centimetre thick drill bit and began drilling into the iron hardwood."

Angus and Robbie stood back to watch, putting away their chainsaws.

"That's a steel drill bit," said Angus: "Since this stuff is as hard as steel, it oughta do the job."



After half an hour, Shamus had managed to drill six deep holes into the steel-hard wood.

"Ready," he said.

Angus and Robbie took across to him some sticks of TNT, which he placed into the holes. He let the fuse wire out almost a kilometre, with Harry being certain to put almost another kilometre between himself and the explosives site.

Angus connected the fuses to the plunger. Pulled the plunger up, then pushed it back down. And the TNT went off with a mighty boom, blowing steel-hard pieces of wood for five hundred metres.

Revealing Cabin 3 hidden within the vines, which actually emanated from within the cabin itself.

"Well, I'll be buggered with a broomstick," said Harry seeing that the lost Cabin had been found.



Over at the first death site, they had lowered Penny Lane from the gum tree and all four corpses had been taken to the Glen Hartwell Hospital. Jerry Green, Cheryl, Derek, and Jesus Costello had also left for the hospital. The police were walking across to their cars to follow:

When they heard the massive boom from only a kilometre or so away.

"What the fuck?' asked Sheila Bennett.

"Come on," said Terri. She, Sheila, Colin Klein, and Bulam Bulam piled into Terri's pale blue Lexus to lead the police in the direction of the explosion.



The loggers were wondering whether or not to risk another explosion when, with sirens blaring, Terri and the others arrived on the scene.

"What the Hell," said Jessie Baker as they stared at the partly revealed Cabin 3 within the wooden structure.

Harry Hancock, knowing that he was probably going to get shit-canned for not having the proper or any, permits for his campsite, quickly filled them in on what had happened so far at cabin 3.

"Have you seen any of the residents from cabin 3, so far today?" asked Colin Klein.

"No, that's why we're doing this."

"They're probably dead," guessed Bulam Bulam correctly.

"Before we do any more blasting," suggested Terri, "let's make sure of that."

She went across, as close as she could get to the partly revealed cabin, and called out: "This is Terri Scott, your local police chief." Actually, that was debatable, since Jessie Baker and Donald Esk were both sergeants like Terri, and it was uncertain whose jurisdiction Elroy and its surrounding bush were.

"Is there anyone alive in there?"



Still uncertain, they went to Glen Hartwell to get a parabolic microphone, which can pick up whispers from a great distance.

"Is there anyone alive in there?" repeated Terri. Then they all listened to the parabolic microphone without hearing any answer.

"I think that means no," said Colin Klein.

So, everyone else retreated for cover. Jessie Baker, Andrew Braidwood, Sheila Bennett, and Donald Esk went back to the other cabins to reassure people who might have been frightened by the explosions.

Then the loggers set up another series of explosions, then another, then a fourth set. Before they had blown away most of the growths from outside the front of the cabin, plus enough inside for Terri, Colin, and Paul Bell to squeeze into the cabin.

Inside they found all four campers dead. One of them had long shoots going into her mouth, exiting through her ears, her eyes, her vagina, and her anus. A second seemingly had been turned into a redwood statue, with roots that broke through the wooden floor, extending down to the earth below. The statue was quite attractive, except for the knowledge that it had once been a living human being. Another had vines tightly wrapped around her throat, breaking her neck and asphyxiating her. The fourth was sitting on the floor of the cabin. But with a wooden chair inside him, somehow having become part of the substance of the camper. Both the camper and the chair had long roots breaking through the floor boards, going down to the earth below.

They managed to squeeze back out of the cabin, to the relief of all three of them.

Shocked by what she had seen inside, Terri said: "If we lived in the DC comics world, I would think Poison Ivy was responsible, turning people into plants, making vines as hard as steel to strangle people, bonding people with wood."

"What'll we do with the rest of it?" asked Angus.

"Blow up the rest of it, so that we can get the remains out," said Terri going on to tell them what she, Colin, and Paul had seen. "We'll arrange to notify the next-to-kin. And burn the vines."

"If they will burn?" said Angus, not convinced.

"If they will burn?" agreed Terri Scott.



It was almost dark by the time that they had blown apart both the cabin and the steel-hard plants surrounding it. With difficulty, they managed to lift out the four corpses and transport them to the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital to see what could be made of them by Elvis Green and Jesus Costello.



It was long past tea time when Colin and Terri returned to Mrs. Morton's boarding house, However, Deidre Morton quickly reheated their tea of home-made fish and chips, including thick-cut chips, battered fish, calamari rings, steamed Dim Sims, potato cakes, and pineapple fritters with a generous sprinkling of sugar.



The next morning at breakfast Colin asked: "So where are we starting today?"

"Technically today is a day off for me," said Terri: "So I'm going over to Percival, to see how Mi Ling and Tung Wu are getting along."

"Excellent," said Colin: "Mind if I come too."

"Not at all. I'm sure they'll both be glad to see you," she said, leading him out the front door to her blue Lexus.



Half an hour or so later, they were led into Tung Wu's house, which was tastefully made out in all Chinese decor. Which was at odds with the white three-piece suit that Tung Wu wore. Although it fitted in perfectly with the red, gold-animal-specked floor-length dresses that Mi Ling and her mother Swan Li both wore.

"Terri, Colin," said Tung Wu, a tall, muscular man, giving them each a bear hug.

"Hello," said Mi Ling walking over as quickly as her restrictive dress would allow, to kiss them on the cheek, followed by her mother, who also kissed them.

They were going across to sit down when Mi Ling, looking startled, pointed to a silk-topped wooden chair and said: "Where did that chair come from."

Looking perplexed Swan Li said: "Honey, we've had that chair since before you were born. It was a wedding gift from your father's parents."

"No that is that chair," insisted Mi Ling, pointing to an identical chair in another corner of the lounge room.

"What the?" asked Tung Wu. "How long have we had two of those chairs?"

"We don't ... we've never had two of those chairs," insisted Swan Li. "Just the one your parents gave us."

"Get away from those chairs!" shouted Terri Scott, startling everybody. Although they did what she said.

"I think we might have found our dryad," said Colin Klein, as Terri pulled a point-thirty-eight from her handbag.

"Everybody out of the house!" ordered Terri.

Mi Ling, Swan Li, and Tung Wu raced to the front door, opened it, and found themselves unable to leave because of what seemed like wooden bars growing almost one on top of the other.

"I hope this isn't your favourite chair," said Terri, opening fire on one of the chairs. Which collapsed to pieces.

"Gran and Gramps will be pissed," said Mi Ling.

"They'll be more pissed off if you get killed," pointed out the redheaded reporter.

Reloading, Terri opened fire on the second chair, which screeched like a banshee. It quickly transformed into a lithe, one-hundred-and-sixty-centimetre-tall woman. Green-skinned, green-haired, green-eyed. Bleeding a thick green sap from where she had been shot by Terri Scott.

Hissing snakelike at the policewoman, she looked at the shattered chair, then pointed at the policewoman. The chair suddenly sprouted shoots, which acted as legs as the chair literally threw itself at Terri, knocking the attractive blonde out.

As the chair went to hit her again, Colin Klein leapt forward and struggled with the chair, managing to shatter it into small pieces. However, as Dryanna stared at the chair, it continued to grow more shoots which linked together to hold the chair together and strengthen it.

Racing across to Terri, Colin picked up her gun, reloaded it, and fired across at the dryad. After making certain that Mi Ling and the others were not in the line of fire.

Shrieking again, Dryanna pointed at the vines blocking the front door, and they spread apart to allow the dryad to race out and run down the street. Attracting the attention of an astonished crowd of onlookers.

"Everybody out, before the vines close up again," ordered Colin. As Mi Ling and her parents pushed out between the vines, Colin Klein picked up Terri and carried her out onto the front lawn of the house in Cochran Drive in Percival.

Sheila Bennett, Jessie Baker, Paul Bell, Andrew Braidwood, and Bulam Bulam arrived, sirens blaring.

Colin quickly filled them in on what had happened, then asked: "Has anyone got any point-thirty-eight bullets, I'm almost out?"

"My spare gun takes them," said Sheila. She reached into her handbag and took out the gun plus about fifty point-thirty-eight bullets.

To Bulam Bulam, Colin asked" "Do you know how to use one of these things?"

"Of course," said the Elder.

Colin handed him Sheila's gun and half the bullets and said: "You and Sheila stay here to protect Mi Ling, Terri, and the others. While we go after it."

"Okay," agreed Bulam Bulam.

"So what are we looking for?" asked Jessie Baker.

"If you can imagine Harley Quinn's BFF Poison Ivy with green hair and green eyes ... it's nothing like that," said Colin leading them over to where a trail of green dots led along the concrete footpath.

"I see now why you're a reporter," teased Donald Esk: "You're so bloody good at explaining things."

Pointing to the thick green sap, which Dryanna was bleeding, Colin said: "Just follow that."

They followed the sap trail for a number of houses, then heard a woman in her front yard say: "Hey you, what are you doing crouching in my front yard."

Hissing like a snake, Dryanna stood up and ran across the yard to the grey deal-wood fence, then merged with the fabric of the wood, to finally step through it into the next yard.

In the yard, she raced across to the white weatherboard front wall, then merged with the wood, and vanished inside the house. But not before Colin Klein saw her.



"Who the Hell are you supposed to be?" asked an obese mother as the woman suddenly appeared in the room.

"Shego," cried her three-year-old as a hammering came at the front door.

"That's not Shego," pointed out the mother as Dryanna raced out into the corridor to charge down toward the back of the house. Still leaking thick green sap from her bullet wounds.

As the hammering came again, the mother waddled across to the front door where she was confronted by Colin Klein and the others.

"What're ya want?" demanded the obese woman.

"Did you see a green woman enter your house?"

"Shego!" shouted the tyke.

"She is not Shego!" shouted back the woman. Then to Colin: "Yeah, she ran down the corridor to the back of the house."

Pushing past her, they raced into the house just in time to see Dryanna merge with the back wall to exit the house.

They raced down the hallway, reaching the back door as the evil dryad merged with the deal wood back fence to get through to the alleyway behind the house.

They raced across the yard, ran across to the bolted door, which fortunately was unlocked, and ran out into the alleyway. To see no sign of her.

Leaping up on top of the two-metre-plus tall fence, Donald Esk saw the dryad running across the lawn chased by two bulldogs. Reaching a flower pot, she pointed at it, then at the dogs, and a gigantic tentacled flower monster shot up to devour one dog, swallowing it whole. It then grabbed the second dog and threw it over the tall fence into the next-door neighbour's yard.

"That's one way to take care of savage mutts," said Esk. Dropping down onto the slightly overgrown lawn, he called: "The green bitch is in here."

The others climbed the fence with difficulty, then hurried after Donald Esk, as he chased Dryanna who merged with a paling inner fence, then raced out into the front yard to run furiously down Namatjira Drive, named after Australia's greatest ever painter, Albert Namatjira.

"This way!" called Don as he thundered after Dryanna. Who despite her injuries was right up there with a young Cathy Freeman when it came to speed.

"Look at her go," said Colin Klein. Gasping, desperate to get his second wind. "If she weren't a murderous psychotic monster, I'd be impressed.

"Well, no one's perfect," said Jessie Baker, as they raced forward. Struggling to catch up with Donald Esk, let alone the fleeing dryad.

At the corner of Namatjira Place and Albert Street, the dryad raced around the corner. Then by the time that Don Esk got there, she had vanished again.

"Where the Hell?" said Don, walking slowly into Albert Street, as Colin Klein and the others thundered along, until finally catching up with him.

"Where...? Where...?" started Colin, too exhausted to finish the sentence.

"Damned if I know," said Don. "She turned right into Albert Street, then seemed to just vanish."

As they were standing around, getting their breaths back and looking around for any sign of the dryad, Andrew said: "The green slime goes into here."

He pushed open the white paling gate and they headed into the front yard, following the dribbles of green sap, leaking from Dryanna's wounds.

"They go onto the grass," said Colin and they all crept onto the lawn. Wary in case it suddenly dragged them by the ankles.

"G'day, can I do something for you?" asked the homeowner coming outside to see what was going on.

"We're cops," said Jessie Baker, holding out his badge.

"Yeah, I know," he said, "I recognise you from that Ninja Runner man-thingy case."

"The Death Runner case," said Colin Klein.

"Yes well ..." started the fifty-something man. Stopping as he stared at his roses beneath the front window sill. "Where did they come from?"

"The roses? Didn't you plant them?" asked Colin.

"Yeah, but only a week ago," said the homeowner, "now they're almost up to the window sill."

Lifting his point-thirty-eight, Colin asked: "Is there anyone in that room?"

"No, I live alone."

"Fair enough," said the redheaded reporter. He, Jessie Baker, Donald Esk, Paul Bell, and Andrew Braidwood all opened fire upon the beautiful yellow Charlotte roses.

Shrieking in terror and pain, Dryanna transformed back to her human form and tried to run away. But with a couple of dozen bullets in her she collapsed onto the grass.

"All right cuff her hands and feet,' said Colin. "And for God's sake lift her off the grass, so that she has no physical contact with it."

Jessie and Andrew raced across to do as instructed.



By the time they returned to Cochran Drive, with Donald Esk carrying the dead dryad across his left shoulder, Terri Scott had already been ambulanced to the Glen Hartwell Hospital.

"You got her then?" said Sheila Bennett, stating the obvious.

"Yeah, but she gave us quite a chase," said Colin. "If Don hadn't been faster on his feet than the rest of us, she would've got away."

"There's just one thing that I don't understand?" said Mi Ling.

"What's that, honey?" asked her mother, Swan Li.

"What the heck are we gonna tell Grandpa and Nan about that chair that Terri shot to pieces."

They exchanged worried looks, then Tung Wu said: "Uh-oh!"
THE END
© Copyright 2023 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia