Plant Defense 101

I woke up as Dave slammed the front door of his house. I rubbed my head gingerly. Feeling a bit dizzy, but I was still alive. Dave was looking through the peephole of his door. He was chortling with delight at what his plants were doing. After five minutes, the groaning of the undead halted. Crazy Dave turned his face me, expecting to have a question from me and I did.

"Where the hell did you get those plants from?" I asked. Dave smirked and chuckled.

"You mean those old things? Those were some special seeds from my stash! I worked for a big corporate agricultural company five years ago, yah!" He showed me an empty seed package from his pocket. The label was "Bloom and Doom Seed Co.". That was a ominous name for a flower seed shipping business. I looked at the things added to the seed. It looked normal enough, until I got to the part of use of radiation. When I read that part of the additives, my jaw dropped. Crazy Dave responded to my shock with a reassurance.

"Oh don't worry about that! Those seeds are perfectly safe to touch! As long as you don't try to eat them, you won't lose your hair or get sick! Or that's what my boss told me."

I gave the man a skeptical look. With all this contact with his special mutant plants and their seeds, there was good chance I had found the secret to why Crazy Dave was mad as a hatter. But how are these things be so evolved? The only plant that can do anything more than just grow and reproduce are Venus flytraps and other insect catchers. Dave showed me more of these advanced plants, such as walnuts and squashes. I led to the conclusion that Bloom and Doom Co. had tinkered with the genes with the plants, making them not only larger in size, but also turned a lot of these plants into literal home grown weaponry. To sum it out, it was a weird business plan that was also very suspicious.

I listened to Dave's plan of making a lawn base.

"Alright the first seeds you need to grow are the Sunnies."

"You mean Sunflowers?"

"Yah, those plants are most invaluable to surviving brainless folks. They make small suns to grow more plants."

I gave a confused look at Dave. Sensing my confusion, he decided to show me. We went outside near the Sunflowers. I looked at them more closely. They were tilting constantly as if they were listening to a music beat. After a few seconds, one of them glowed very brightly and then created what looked like a dwarf star. I freaked out when I saw that, jumping back when the miniature sun came out of the flower. Dave looked at me with an impatient look after he saw my reaction.

"What are yah waiting for? Go touch it! It's won't stay there forever!" With reluctance, I slowly moved one of my fingers to see if there was heat emitting from the orb. There was heat, but it was just toasty warm. I decided to poke the small sun. Immediately, I felt a warm, tingly feeling throughout my body. It felt like sitting near the fireplace.

"See? That didn't hurt yah." Dave chuckled.

"You need a certain of suns to plant things, such as the Sunflower needs 2 and the Peashooters," Dave gestured to the pea pods. "You need 5 of them to plant one, you getting it so far?"

I nodded. Crazy Dave continued on his lesson.

"Alright, when all fails, you should set up some sort of final protection against the undead. I got my mine on my head." He tapped on his metal pot.

"I have several lawnmowers, will that they work?" I asked him.

"Yeah, that's great idea! That'll ground those zombies up really good for fetilizer! But are you sure you don't want to wear a-"

"No thanks Dave, I am fine with my mowers."

"Suit yourself neighbor. You should be going. Here, take these with you."

By 1:00 PM, he gave me some seed packages to plant. I would have the time to do so because his home would distract the zombies for awhile, until they stopped going to his house completely. Quickly, I made a dash back to my house. I turned the doorknob to the left and entered my house. I grabbed my shovel from the backyard and my red lawnmower. Dragging my items, I went outside to the front yard. I placed the lawnmower in the middle of my lawn and began planting.

I dug a hole and planted a sunflower, which sprouted quite quickly. As it generated more sun, I planted two more of the plant. Just as I grew my first Peashooter, I heard a groan from across the street. One of the dead was shambling towards my lawn. I smiled as it was shredded to bits by my sentry. More of them appeared, going straight for my Peashooter. They suffered the fate of the first, being ridden with massive holes. I sat on my porch, gathering more suns as the monstrosities failed in their attempt to invade.

After a while, it started to get dull on that day. A week went by, and the zombies failed to breach my lawn defense. I was about to do another nap a day, until I heard a new sound from the horde. I tipped my gardening hat to see what was going on. Among the horde coming from the street, there were a couple of zombies with traffic cones on their heads. And the makeshift hats that they wore were taking all the damage from the Peashooters' peas! I furrowed my brow. Those cheeky ghouls! I searched my recent packages from Dave. There were some seeds for squashes, exploding cherries, Venus Flytraps, potato mines and …snow peas? I would have pondered further, but I found the answer on the label. 'This plant slows down unwanted guests will freezing efficiency!' I smiled. This was going to be fun.