Food Duty
--
My mom never asked what I wanted for Christmas, and I didn’t mind. It was the same thing every year, and I grew conditioned to it. The same way you become conditioned to cold running down your spine when Christmas rolls around every year, and the only light comes through the slits in between the wooden planks on windows. The only sound being the screams of neighbors being flung into the air into the clouds, never to be seen again. The smell of our burning Christmas gifts, keeping us alive until the yearly reckoning came. We were all conditioned like it was the taste of alcohol.
It really surprises me that the concept of Christmas gifts still exists.
My great grandma, before she was left to her own devices in the last migration, would always tell me stories of the Christmas’s she had as a little girl in Old Knoxville, most of the time there wouldn’t be snow covering her windows and her dog Maximus would be barking like he had rabies when the sun started rising and my great great grandparents wanted her to run down to tear off the wrapping paper. Sometimes she’d find a bike, and sometimes there’d by a new Calico Critters toy set, with snowflake covered paper surrounding it. Paper, there was another old concept.
Our gifts were coal, every Christmas. It was everybody’s gifts. And damn, we cherish it more than a damn B.B. Gun wrapped in dead tree skin, that’s for sure.
That and surviving another year.
--
“Harriet. You’ll be in charge of food tomorrow.”
My heart dropped at the sound, but I couldn’t argue. Ricky had been put on fuel duty. “Okay.”
My mother turned to the other two twins sitting in the corner messing with a piece of cloth wrapped around an icicle they grabbed from the windowsill. “You two will be on barricade duty with dad.”
Jeremiah, the older twin by two minutes dropped the icicle. “Aww, why can’t Harriet do it?”
“Because I’m feeding you little gremlins.” The snow outside bellowed against the window shaking them back onto the ground. Each plank of wood creaking loud and heavily. The snowstorm outside had started centralizing around their barracks, hovering above like a Gulf War helicopter. Another concept my grandmother brought up at one point. Her own great grandfather was a soldier in the deep sandy mess of it all. Sand, another concept. I wasn’t upset at them but knowing how young they were made me feel sick. Knowing that they got to live the easier stuff.
“Ricky.”
He looked to mother, his eyes still red and brushed off. “Yes ma’am?”
“You’ll be in charge of the rifle tonight. Remember that we only have a clip left. Be versatile, and above everything, be quiet so you don’t have to use it.”
He unevenly nodded through his freckles.
“Your father will be working on the boiler for most of today. It still isn’t working too well, so we need to keep it going for now.”
“What about the twins?”
“He’ll be moving back and forth for now. Now shut it.”
My mother was a blunt woman for her entire life, up until she died. Her hair as white as the eternal storm outside, and her skin as glazed as the bodies in the fire outside. A smile was on her face, as she slept with me by her side. But that’s too far in the future to talk about.
She looked at me with those eyes. The eyes ready to make a decision, but always drowning in dread. “Have you made up your room for prayer tonight?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Books all organized?”
The Humanity’s Bible on the far left and For Whom the Bell Tolls on the far right. “Yes ma’am.”
She looked down at her list. Father was teaching the twins how to do repairs. They had done it the last year as well, but their young minds just couldn’t always keep up with it. It was mostly clouded with what they did for the rest of the year. “For food, get carbs as usual, and see if you can pick up some water from the river. We’re running a little low. Then, you’re going to need to take one of the chickens.”
I could see her hand shudder like her voice when saying that sentence. Father looked back with furred eyebrows and quickly looked back in sorrow.
“Ye--yes ma’am.”
Ricky had already begun loading the rifle on his lap as she finished up with me. While fuel duty was easily the most dangerous of the jobs, getting food was one of responsibilities that no one wanted to have. It was a lot of work, and the chance of dying was still just as high. His hands were shivering.
“Do you still have the knife that grandma gave you?” She asked. Of course I did, it never left my room. A long nine inch rusted military knife from the Old World.
“Yes ma’am. It’s up in my room on my bookshelf.”
“Good, bring it with you when heading out. And don’t forget your coat, it’s supposed to get worse as the night goes on. Worse than it’s ever been able to get.”
She stood with the clipboard under her arm, and moved over to the kitchen. Bright lights were strung around the ceiling, leading her down the hall. I knew she was crying. Her eyes were shimmering in the dim light of the living room, and she was shaking almost as much as Ricky and I. Maybe it was because we hadn’t been out on our own before. Practice had been ingrained in our heads like nails on wood, slammed one after the other until we could smell the snow. Retract at the feeling of hands on our bare skin and attack.
I just waited for a while to think.
--
Christmas Eve.
Ricky and I left as soon as the World Clock began chiming outside the next morning, candles already blown out. It was one of the only structures that was still standing after the first attack. Most structures were burned up as a sort of counterattack on whatever was coming down from the skies. From what I was able to find out, our neighborhood was once a small town in upstate New York. One of the states that the USA was split into. We had houses lined up down concrete streets, tall evergreens in front of every little family. Now it was just ice and sludge on a fire smothered cobblestone path.
I gathered my gear and followed Ricky out. His eyes were hollow looking out the door. It could’ve been his death, it could’ve been my death, in just a few short steps. Christmas was going to be worse, but nobody was outside for that.
Our house was on the farthest ring of communities. They liked to call us the Glacier district, since we could see the river from our backyard when the sun actually managed to get light through. It was the source of life that could only be seen by what most people considered to just be an old memory. We both were able to hear the boats washing up along shore as we passed outside. Water was gushing, and bursting at the seams of audio. The storm still overpowered it though, furrowing my hair and freezing it down onto my skull under my hat like a ceramic doll. Ricky had it worse with the leather strap sticking to his shoulder.
The wind hit us, and it was either cringe or feel more pins and needles against our already wooden faces.
“Ricky!”
“Yeah?”
“You got any flares left over?”
“Don’t think so. Father needed them for the river!”
“Damn. I think the town square is coming up! You gonna be okay out there?”
“You kidding? It’s all I’ve practiced for at this point!”
The World Clock was the tipping point of confirming we had reached the square. We had seen the torches moving around, but as far as we knew, we had just followed the wrong string line path and arrived in the Frost Ring (named as such due to it’s warmer sections compared to the rest--including heated water). A former member of humanity was sitting outside, hands buried deep in the snow, and their head drooping down. I couldn’t tell what gender they were. The icicle stuck to their nose and ears told me that it didn’t matter anymore though.
Ricky spotted where he needed to go, right in the center.
With pure science, we managed to stay alive with coal. Each Christmas, the demons would come and drop them off to each and every person. They usually head back before the storm, but now we had a reason to get it. Reasons would be rampant back in the old days, in my great great great grandfather’s world. Sometimes it would be theft from a second-hand grocery store, and that would be two licks with the branch stick. Other times, it would be murder, and that got you taken by the demons. It would build up with us though. If we were nice, we were burned.
It’s the way things have always worked.
There was always that balance that kept us from being completely useless to each other, giving that teacher and student balance a nice ring to it. But it would still build up, and we would be taken, after being dropped off some coal and getting a lick from the sky.
Fuel duty was a dangerous job. Because, to do it, you had to be sure you weren’t to slow to get the coal and avoid our reckoning.
Ricky had never been, and it made me stop in my tracks.
He was saying something to me, looking at me. Not through, into me. I could see tears, and I knew it wasn’t the cold. Listening was just a fallacy for modern times however, but I wish I had heard him. Each word is as important as the last when they’re going out to save the world.
All I could hear as he left was a single word. “Thanks.”
Hand on the line, he walked ahead towards the group of men surrounding the massive fire pit in the middle of the square. Some were throwing in old wood they found on the river banks, others are disposing of the old and sick to keep the pipes warm and send some of it to each and every house it could get to.
An older brother running down the snowy path looking like a little boy that I could see riding a bike if the world ever got cold, while I pushed him on it. My hero.
One of the few books I had, passed down from parent to parent was something called City of Ember. Maybe it was because we were in a similar spot that my mother kept it. The red haired protagonist could’ve also been another reason, which all my grandmothers had at one point and felt related. Maybe. . . Maybe it was just a good book to them. When the candles were burned out, I would use the dim torch light of the street to light up my window. My eyes had gotten used to the dark, but I don’t know if I would’ve enjoyed it more if I didn’t have at least some light to help me read about Ember, and the scarce resources of humanity
--
The store was up on the hill, right behind the pyre in the middle of town square. It didn’t have as much light, but while Ricky boarded the bus outside, the heavy arches and dim torches still filled my peripherals.
I shuffled my parka and aimed for the steps. My marker was the arches. Some of the prettiest things I had seen by that point. Things got prettier after that, but for my age it was like seeing a boy without scars. Glass cages held fire at the top, reflecting out into the wild flaky weather. They had been made of brick and mortar, one of the last things of that material, and stuck out like a sore thumb.
Mothers and fathers were moving up alongside me on the steps doing the same. Keeping their faces out of the snow and taking shallow breaths. I was right in the forefront, trying to move fast to get there and out of the snow. My eyebrows had already begun falling victim to crystals on their ends.
Hands numb.
Legs sore.
Lungs dry.
Eyes smooth and searching.
The hill became flat, and I saw the door. A group of men were outside smoking cigarettes around the communion fire barrel, counting change and tokens for inside. Mother had given me seven tokens and a crumpled five dollar bill. All we had left was three silver coins and only for emergencies. The biggest fear anyone could have is if the demon didn’t want leftovers, and took only a portion.
Nobody likes the smell of cooked skin, especially when it can still scream.
I shook my head. That head space could get somebody a nice slap across the face. The store was simply labeled RATIONS on the outside, with red ribbon fluttering underneath it. It had been an old Walmart, but refurbished and rebuilt about half a hundred times to keep alive. This left a mangled creation that Frankenstein would probably end up abandoning.
Another book we still had in the World Clock.
I entered, feeling the soft jump from tobacco to pomegranates filing my nose. The heat kept it even more fresh.
--
“Hey Harriet.”
The money collector at the front had been my neighbor for a few years before he had been given the job of, well, money collector in the bi-yearly job drafting. His home had been a small floral pattern sheet over a cot in the back storage room for almost three years. Neither of his parents were able to visit except for the occasional birthday and when giving him their spare coin during Christmas.
“Hey Icky.” A nickname the twins gave him. It stuck quickly. Ricky never said anything about it.
I handed over our money, and he threw it into a small box by his feet. Based on how nice his boots looked, I got curious about how often he even left.
“How’s the family?”
I stuttered. “They’re--they’re okay. Ricky went off today.” His face quickly went from shock to sadness to acceptance. They were close once, but that inevitable task always comes to one of the family members. It made me smile that mother didn’t make me do it, but at the same time, I wouldn’t choose him to be the rifle wielder any day of the year.
“I’m sorry. I’ve heard it can be rough out there.”
“Don’t say sorry. Who hasn’t?”
“Aren’t they going to be heading to the lake this year?”
“Yeah.”
“Poor kid. I’m sorry Harriet.”
“Stop saying it.”
“Yeah. Fuck you. Ricky might die though.”
“It’s okay.”
“You heading to the river well after this?”
I nodded.
“Well good luck, be careful out there.”
“Thanks Icky.”
He gave a warm smile. His lips weren’t dry in the slightest
The doors opened up, leaving me to enter the world once again, this time with three months of MREs, two large boxes of instant noodles, a protein mound for Christmas, and a medium bag of assorted fruits and vegetables.
--
Ricky was all I thought about. He was going to the lake, helping to kill the scouts and collect their bags of coal, then coming back to stay outside for 36 more hours. And then me, walking down the frozen snow slopes to reach the river well. The most dangerous thing in the world there was falling in and snapping my neck. Painless and quick.
The lights to the store disappeared behind me. I passed a few people I recognized on my way back down the stairs, but stayed quiet. It wasn’t necessary to ask some neighbors what their favorite book was at the time, or their favorite passage in The Humanity’s Bible. Nothing much to talk about. One of the neighbors I passed, Sandra Cushing, would probably just talk about the science behind our minds for half an hour--after leading us to her home above the bus station in the Frost Ring--and I was not interested in doing that. I just wanted to get to the well, and get back home.
--
The well is about ten minutes into the pitch black darkness, to the left of the pyre, and northeast of the World Clock.
I needed to hurry, so the people just became blurs while my feet quickly moved through the ice. The wind burned against my skin, so most of the time my view was at the ground, with only the occasional look up at my journey. Parkas and torn up winter hats showed up along that, until the ground was just dark. Chiming of the heavens made my head raise at the clock.
Every Christmas was simple. Board up your home, wait for the demons to attack, and hope no one was taken. We gave up grandma, so we felt the pain if nights never went that way. Rusting nails and rotten wood was always the main culprit. Screams would echo through the stretches of plowed snow, and then it would be pulled into the sky until silence. No gun shots, no broken homes, just screams. And then the chimes would fill the recently absent air, and give some light out.
Mythical elven clock chimes, that was what we heard following a night of death.
A trial of bricks moved up my sight, and ended at the golden ring frozen solid with snow collecting around it. I could smell the fire coming from inside. The door was slightly ajar, a mistake of the clock caretaker, letting flakes drift in quickly. The brick was old and cracked, held together by new age mortar that was used only to keep it steady and clean from the rest of the world. If you were to ask any of the older people, this clock was the source of our life. The younger generation, they didn’t believe it. I never choose a side. It was just a clock to me.
It had been a recent installment of creation before the storms hit.
And like everything, the book about it was inside.
--
Excerpt from The Humanity’s Bible by James Henry; pg 301.
Canandaigua was the original name of our city.
It was in upstate New York, one of the 50 states, residing in the area that anybody with a nature affiliation would love to live in. Children would run down the streets, through paths with infinite homes and cottages on both sides, until it entered a place that had stores and businesses on both sides.
The city had a population of 11,931 at the time of the storms appearance throughout the world. The town’s main export was unknown at the time. It was cozy, just a suburb of upstate. No one noticed it until it was all we had left in those final months.
In the center of town, behind city hall, there was a freshly built clock tower that, thanks to the architect Shanon Barley, became the new attraction of the town for a little while. It eventually became the home of all knowledge for the beginning until whenever the end is.
Clocks are simple. As talked about in chapter 1, the storms made electricity a difficult commodity to work with. It was funny then to think that the clock was one of the few clocks in that day in age that was completely analog. The town lacked resources to build something to the same scale as Big Ben, and instead built Small Betsy.
Stars faded, the clock did not. . .
It’s the only source of time in the city, and that’s what you need when you can’t see the sun. . .
--
I waded through the well, lifting the bucket up as soon as it was my turn. The line leading up to it was small but slow. Everyone’s hands were throbbing and raw from the cutting winds. My knuckles had been bleeding for about an hour, so it had slowed faster than theirs.
I could see the forest bank in the distance, merging with the fog. I never got how the trees had lasted this long out here. The area near the coast was completely barren, with just old stumps cut down for fuel and just let the fog shoot through it all making my view out of the ring just a clogged vision of what could’ve been.
The town had decided long ago--when P.J. Bash was still ‘mayor’--that the forest had to stay at least somewhat alive. When clearly asked, he gave two reasons:
The first reason was created on the basis of hope. Bash believed that the storms would one day stop. We all did, at one point or another. If it had begun out of sheer stupidity and tampering of the human race, then one day it would learn to accept the flaws and find ways to stop them. Evolution was going to save us, and he believed that. It made sense too. People started questioning that, wondering about how “the rest of the world is untouched with trees, how do we know that these are the only ones left. We should use the resources to our advantage.” And to that, he replied with the idea that we won’t know if anybody else is out there. For all we knew, the demons had immediately gone out and chomped down on everybody they could as soon as it hit. Once again, it made sense. Santa was out of the picture for the world, disappearing after his first biography, so why not just accept their place in the world. Some of the archival footage, correctly labeled Bashes Farewell Address--also known as the only “video” footage that exists of the previous city runners. The trees were his selling point, and they stayed because of it.
The second reason, was the demons themselves. Other members on the council, to convince the other concerned citizens in the blood splattered and hay covered slaughterhouse they had converted into a Town Hall, had brought up the problem with the daemons. We knew about them, we knew they would hide, so we needed to trick them with having the trees. It was the only place they could scout out while we did our daily deeds up until Christmas. No barn owl type maneuvers came out of their agenda, never perched atop a house staring into the dark searching with their echolocation. It sold them alright.
The man who had gone before me was clearly freezing from the ankles down, taking uneven steps while stumbling back up the cobblestone steps. His face was wooden and stiff from the winds. Red as blood. The container of water clutched to his breast.
I entered the small pool of water, feeling the same stabbing, and dipped my container in. We had been using an old wooden jug fashioned from an old canoe our grandparents would use. It filled up, and the line moved to the next person.
No one was talking. No one was acknowledging the next. Each pile of ratty winter clothes and dried out skin was just another gear in the chain that seemed to keep our society running. It kept them sane for just a little bit, even if it was just getting some water for Christmas day.
--
The walk back was hard that day.
Maybe it was the thought of Ricky, sitting in packed bus on their way to hunt down bags of coal. Oh, and the daemons that carried them.
Maybe it was me thinking that this was going to be the first year in many where I was the woman of the house. When my mother would begin doing everything inside, and I was responsible for taking care of the outdoor chores. The outdoor chores that required callused hands and fire for skin.
Ice rained fire harder that day, as soon as I finished up at the well.
It came down in waves. Liquid waves of white ice washing away buildings, breaking in and staying to linger. We liked to call them Premature Shocks. Something awful would always follow them (which made sense considering how mind numbingly painful the biting would cut into everyone) and these warnings would set off our collective alarms.
The cobblestone paths were completely fogged up, spears of snow shooting into my face, coming out of the great unknown. I couldn’t even see anyone trying to pass by and get back to their homes. They were blurs, getting blinded. Bleeding faces, heads down, and sacks over their shoulders. Snowflakes were always a peaceful sight when described in other books, falling from the sky. These jagged icicles just shot into us. Laser guided for anyone with a pulse. I know the daemons were up above, hovering about the clouds just waiting for a moment to get an appetizer before the big day. The big storms were a perfect time to go after fresh meat. My hear palpitated, and went back to being cold, when I looked up through the fog and just saw myself watching kids snatched from the ground, with no one to notice or bat an eye. It’s as normal as getting an extra cigarette and your carton. My grandmother loved saying that, but she never knew what cartons were.
--
“Harriet? Where have you been?”
“Premature Shock. It’s bad out there.”
“You get everything?”
I nodded. “There weren’t any sundries left, so I got extra noodles.”
“Good.”
“Are things at the house all done?”
“Your father and the twins finished not too long ago. Did Ricky get on the bus?”
Like the storm outside was still pushing me back, I stuttered out a nod and held back my choke. “Yeah--yeah he did.”
Mother did the same, looking back into the wall and covering up her mouth. We could both hear the rattling of boards against the winds. Snow was blowing in like a spore popping, and it just melted away in the heat like another soldier out on fuel duty. Disappearing with only a scream.
“Do you think they’ll come after us this year?”
“Yes Harriet. They always do.”
“But we’ve been kin--”
“Shut it. We don’t have time to bicker. Go get your things, we need to fill the cellar soon. We’re on the eighth chime.”
“Do you want me to grab Ricky’s things?”
Another stutter. Her gaze wasn’t on anything we could see. “Just grab his clothes. If he makes it back, he won’t need the rest.”
My mother was a stubborn woman. She was until the day she died. Lingering words can do a lot to make you realize that.
