Harvest Wars

My dreams are filled with the mouth-watering scents of bacon cooking, meaty and thick. Crisp-edged, fluffy waffles fresh off the iron, dripping with sweet, golden maple syrup. A bowl of cereal bathed in creamy, ice-cold milk. Eggs, sunny or scrambled, warm and delicious. And of course, plenty of hot toast slathered in butter, to sop up anything left on the plate.

Breakfast was my favorite.

Before the harvest wars.

In all the crazy things happening around the world—terrorism, pandemics, wars, famine, global warming… never did I once imagine food would be our apocalypse. Genetic modifications turned wheat, corn, rice and barley into loaded weapons, and people weren’t the only casualties.

Cows, pigs, chickens… they all suffered the same fate we did.

Near extinction.

The delicious smells are a trick. A ruse, to lure people to one of the silos to either be captured and forced into field-labor, or worse—to become fodder for the steel teeth of a reaper. Regardless, as I rub sleep from my eyes and squint into the morning sun, my stomach growls.

“Shush.” I rub a hand over the hollow above my naval, hip bones sharp where they protrude against my skin, rebels lifting their heads in complaint of the abuse I put them through. My empty belly rumbles again, even louder. “Traitor.”

My hand strays to the locket around my neck, and I rub the small puffed heart.

“I’ll find a way.” I promised.

My parents. My grandparents. My brother.

I have one last stretch of farmland to get beyond, one final highway to cross, and I’ll be home free. The land north of I-9 is undeveloped, tangled woodlands dotted with lakes and streams. Easy to get lost in. To disappear. All I have to do is make it there.

Music joins the scents carried on the morning breeze.

I jump up, all other thoughts erased by the sound of strings, accompanied by a thumping rhythm. I should have guessed the smells were too good to be something as simple as a labor-trap. Food, music, all at this time of morning can only mean one thing.

Pollination.

With so few of us left, the silo warlords find creative ways to encourage laborers to spawn, providing food and alcohol in equal measure until the recipients are too drunk to know better, or to care. They’re called pollination days. And like bees, the creatures who partake bring pain, claiming their conquests with brutality and violence.

I’m in more danger than I realized.

As if drawn by my thoughts, footsteps rustle nearby. I drop into a crouch, one hand on the tree I slept against as if to draw strength from the aged wood.

A woman whimpers.

“Don’t fight.” A male voice growls, low and dangerous. “You been watching me too, ain’t you? I know you have. I seen you there by your momma, lookin’ at me with those big brown eyes.”

Whimpers turn to sobs, ragged with terror.

I can’t even see her and I can tell she’s younger than me. Nothing more than a child.

“Your momma ain’t gonna help you no more. No one comes back from the reapers.”

A sharp gasp is followed with a loud smack of flesh on flesh, and I can picture the surprise on both their faces. A moment of silence looms before a resounding thwack retaliates, sending the girl to the ground with a thud.

“You slapped me.” His voice has gone from dangerous to deadly. “You’re gonna regret that, bi—”

He never sees me coming. I’m half his size and weak from lack of food, but I’m fast and have a skill that’s come in handy more than once in our twisted post-apocalyptic world—I was the child of a woman who’d been assaulted as a teen and believed in self-defense. Six years of karate and one of taekwondo prepared me in ways I couldn’t have imagined, not only to keep myself safe, but put a man twice my size on the ground before he knows what hit him.

What neither of us anticipates is the sharp rock jutting out of the ground. His head hits with a sickening crack, followed by a gush of blood. For several moments, I can only stare, waiting for him to thrash against my hold. Instead, his body remains inert as the pool of red spreads.

I look up to find wide, brown eyes staring at me.

She can’t be more than twelve. Her brown hair, pulled back in a braid, frames a face dotted with freckles. Coupled with generous, pink lips, the specks sprinkled across her nose and cheeks somehow enhance her looks. She’s beautiful. Hollywood beautiful. There’s nowhere in this new world where she’ll ever be safe from men like this.

She looks down at him and I wonder if she’ll cry, but to my surprise her face twists and she spits on him.

I like this kid. She’s got spirit.

“Serves you right.” Her whisper is soft, but firm. Her eyes lift to meet mine. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean to kill him.” I’m ashamed to hear the tremor in my voice.

“Lucky accident.”

A soft laugh escapes before I can stop it and we both glance around, ears perked for anyone who might have been close enough to hear. There’s nothing, and the tension slowly ebbs from my shoulders.

“You’re not from around here.” Her brown eyes scan my face.

“No.” There’s no reason to lie.

She digests my answer. “Take me with you.”

I stand up slowly. “I can’t.”

I’ve come this far alone. I don’t need a liability.

“I can hunt.”

She’s managed to surprise me again. “Bow?”

“Slingshot. Just as silent, equally deadly, easier ammunition.” One side of her mouth twitches upward at what I can only imagine is the look of fascination on my face. “And I know every inch of this silo. I can get you through unseen.”

My fascination turns to skepticism.

“There’s a drain that runs all the way to the other side of the highway. Big enough for us to go through.”

A treacherous emotion bubbles up in my chest.

Hope.

How can I take her with me? I have barely enough for myself, let alone another mouth. And two will be harder to hide than one.

Still, I can’t leave her behind. She might survive this pollination day, maybe even the next, but life has painted a target on her. Sooner or later, someone will bring fate to bear. And if she’s right, and we can go through the drain… this could be my best chance.

“We have to go now.”

Something bright flashes across her brown eyes. She blinks it back and nods, motioning for me to follow her. We make our way, silent as cats, through the tall grass. I swallow convulsively against the saliva that fills my mouth at the smell of cooking food. Part of me wonders if it would be worth the risk to sneak in long enough to stuff my belly. But I’d risk more than rape. I’d risk being tossed into the churning blades of a reaper.

I shiver as I follow the slip of a girl whose name I don’t even know, trading one risk for another, choosing to place my trust in this stranger.

My foot catches on something solid, and I look down to see a piece of metal poking up from the ground. At first, I think it’s a sprinkler, meant to water the field. But then I lift my head and see the naked terror in my companion’s face, her eyes locked on my shoe.

“Mine,” she mouths, and my blood runs cold.

She motions for me to stay still as she searches the ground for something. Sweat trickles down my back, making me shiver. She finds what she’s looking for, digging a rock out of the dirt, and crawls over to me.

“Don’t move,” she whispers. “Let me push your foot.”

As if she has to tell me.

My lips are dry. In fact, my whole mouth is like dust. I need a drink. Badly.

She pushes the rock down next to my foot, then carefully pushes it against me, moving my foot sideways. I try to keep the pressure constant as she uses the rock to slide my leg over. Finally, the rock covers the metal and my foot stands on nothing but dusty earth.

Those brown eyes look up at me, and she takes my hand. “Run.”

We fly like the wind.

We are young. Lithe. Fast.

We make it seven, maybe eight steps before the world turns upside-down. The explosion behind us rips earth and air, sending us rocketing head over heels. Heat singes the back of my neck like a demon lover. But the rock did its duty, holding the pressure-charge long enough for us to make our escape. We are scraped, bruised and probably mildly burnt, but we’re alive.

Her hand tugs mine, pulling me up as smoke curls into the sky, a dark signal.

Already I hear shouts and motors.

“Here!” Her breath is a hiss beside my ear as she pulls me into a stand of tall rushes. “Quickly!” She draws me deeper into the stiff fronds.

Something pulls me the other way. I gasp as a something pings against my neck with a small snap. I yank my hand out of her grasp.

Where is it?

I have to find it, or everything is lost!

“We have to go!” Hot breath against my cheek.

No! I promised!

I search, frantic. It has to be here.

“They’ll find us!”

My hands slide along the fronds and I drop to my knees, searching the ground.

The roar of a motor swells and then cuts off, followed by thumps as feet hit the ground. “Someone’s out here. Find them.”

Another voice answers with words that send my heart spinning. “Look at this. It’s a locket.”

NoNoNoNoNo.

“Gold?”

“Nah. Not even copper.”

“Anything in it?”

My breath refuses to come. It’s stuck in my throat like a stone.

“Pictures.”

“Worthless.” There’s a soft rustle, and an even softer thud.

I can’t see through the reeds, but I turn my head, trying to hone in on the location like a bat with radar. If I move, they’ll find us, and we’re as good as dead. But I can’t leave without my locket.

I can’t.

“Hey! Over here!”

Footsteps pound in the direction we came from.

Away from us.

Toward the body we left behind.

I rush on hands and knees. Please God, please let me find it. I’m sure I’m moving in the right direction, but I don’t know how far to go, or how much time we have before they come back and find us. Tears fall from my face, dripping into the dirt.

My hand hits something cool.

Shaking, I scoop up the locket. I cradle it against my chest.

An arm touches me and I nearly scream.

Huge, brown eyes look from the locket to my face, then beyond me. She motions with her head, and I nod. We crawl through the reeds like muskrats, staying low. My knuckles scrape along the ground, but I don’t care. I won’t let go of the locket again. Not ever.

Metal bites into my skin.

A large cement pipe, half buried in muck and dripping plants, yawns. We move in a half-crouch, going as fast as we can.

I never look back.

Even when we finally emerge on the far side of the highway, muddy and exhausted. I clutch the locket, its precious promise hidden inside, tucked behind stiff photographs, miraculously spared. The seeds are hidden behind the faces of my parents—wheat behind father, and corn behind mother—safe within the puffed heart. They may not be enough to recover the earth, but they’re a start. A promise. Like the two of us.

Seeds of hope.

We run into the dense underbrush of the forest.

Into freedom.