Some Editing And A Bit Of Progress

 

Illegal Food 2025

 

It’s like a game.  They try to kill us, and we try to live.

One of the main ways they try to eliminate useless eaters is by starving them out.  A few years ago, they knocked out hundreds of food processing plants.  Food became insanely expensive. People began to go without heat or air conditioning, they stopped driving for leisure and they stopped buying anything much at all.  Then the dying began. I mean among those who had not died from the shots.

Growing food plants is frowned upon.  I know that.  It demonstrates an independence of mind.  They don’t want us to be thinking that way.  In fact there is a sort of officer’s mob, under the dept of Ag, who inspect homes and yards looking for hidden potato plants and such.  Potatoes are easy to disguise as a decorative planting. The Ag guys can and do demand to see your basement too or your sun porch or wherever a food plant might lurk.

Some neighbors do keep a couple of chickens. Not too many.  They do make sound after all.  No roosters!  That’s not many eggs, but a few and chickens can live on kitchen scraps and bugs in the yard.

The name of the game is to be subtle.  There are enough other noises for this to be possible, usually.

My parent’s place is  just outside of town.  They have a fairly large overgrown backyard.  No one bothers with landscaping now.

I figured that I could sneak in a few things.

My parents are among the dead.  I have a sister living.  We work on this survival thing together.  She is fourteen years old, and I am seventeen.

There are so many empty houses.  It’s pretty easy to get into them.  Dying people don’t lock up very well.  So, Lou and I, Lou is my sister, go looking for useful stuff sometimes.  Some people even saved seeds that are still viable.  Clothing is not a problem.  We can’t buy new.  But we can usually find something in a neighbor’s house.

The inhabited houses still get electricity for a few hours per day.  The uninhabited houses are dark.  Of course, only canned stuff, bags of rice or beans or flour and some non-food items are useful now.  It’s been over a year since the lights went out in these houses. 

We search for candles too.  Sometimes there are batteries that are still good.  There are lots of soaps and toiletries to be gleaned also.  I don’t know what we will do when we can’t find what we need.

We still get water.  That still works.  We wash a lot of our laundry by hand and hang it out to dry. 

Neither Lou nor I have jobs.  So, we get a little bit of credit from the state for some basic fresh stuff and some bills, like the water and sewer and the intermittent power.  We feel like unloved pets of the state.

We do ok for now, but we sure don’t know what to expect or what to look forward to.  Sometimes it seems like there is nothing, but days and days of this scraping by, projected into the future.

 

 

Incoming

I heard Lou come barreling down the stairs yelling. “Jen, one of those gov. cars is turning into our drive!”

We both stood at the front window, peering out the tiny opening between the heavy curtains.  A heavy black SUV drove up near the house and parked.  We had to quickly decide if we were home or not.

I shook my head no.  We pad quietly to a coat closet in the hall off of the living room, enter it and shut the door.  Then we got in behind the hanging coats and sat on the floor.  We become as small as we can.  We wait silently.

It sounds like they are whacking the front door with a tool of some kind.  Three sharp blows.  Silence. We hadn’t locked up today.  Oops. I hear our door open slowly.  I wonder what they can be afraid of.

Two Ag officers are in our house.  One man, one heavy woman it sounds like. She breathes heavily and noisily.  I never see a fat person anymore. In fact, I rarely see anyone except Lou and a few neighbors.  There are only a couple of children.  Most people have become quite stylishly slim.

We hear some quiet conversation between them.  They don’t know if anyone is here or not.  Good.  I hope they are scared.  But of course, they have nothing to fear from us.  It would be insanely reckless to oppose them in almost any way.

They walk through to the kitchen, never pausing by the closet in the hall. I wonder what they are looking for this time.  Last time they took a 25lb bag of rice.

We can hear them going through all the cupboards in the kitchen, slamming doors and laughing at our poor supplies.  It is still strange to realize that we are meant to die.  We don’t keep anything much in there.  They haven’t found the attic entrance yet and are probably too lazy or fat to go up there anyhow.  An attic isn’t a bad place for all the stuff we gleaned out of our neighbor’s kitchens.  The woman knocked some dishes off the table, and they went out the back door to look around the back yard.  Nothing much is out there.  It’s only April and the potatoes have not sprouted yet.

We stay put.  We are waiting to hear the vehicle start up and leave.  Lou and I look at each other there in the near dark, holding our breath.  I’m not sure why I decided that we should hide, but it just seemed simpler.  Why give them someone to pick on if we don’t have to.  At last, two doors slam and the van backs down the driveway and leaves.  I go lock the doors. 

Night is coming on, and it’s dark in the house.