Concrete and Broken Glass

I scrambled up the hill. They weren't far behind me, I could hear them shouting to one another. The voices were hungry.

I had to hang on. This was my country too. Or so I used to believe.

So I kept going. Up and up and up. We were all tired, hunters and prey; nights slept in the cold of autumn under the stars. No direction or goals, not that we ever did have them. And without the usual bounty of civilization, we were malnourished. Enough to get by, but just. So this rush up the escarpment couldn't last for one of us. Who would run out of energy first?

They had caught me scavenging in the lower city. I didn't like to come to the city much but for centuries, cities were where elaborate, globalized food systems ended. You could still find a few things there. If you were lucky. And that day I was.

I pulled myself up a large outcropping of rock, helped by drooping branches. It was an amazing effort and I felt it in my muscles. I shook it off; there were more of them--keep moving. And if they caught me they would tear me apart, not for what I carried but for who I was. Foreign. Unwelcome anymore. The reason that it all fell apart. It has always been so easy to blame someone who looks different from you. It rarely matters how he speaks or how he acts. Just different, physical, base.

Little did they know what I had found down in the city. Even if they did know, they wouldn't care. They would just toss them aside and lose them forever in the cold winter to come. But for me, they were a kind of birthright. Reminding me of burning pickles and my father's food. The essence of who I was, in a way.

Well if the mob close on my heels was going to reject me, then I needed something to hold on to. With that I surged ahead. I could tell they were tiring by the way the voices fell back. While I was climbing, scrambling for my life, they were only in this for a little sport. It wasn't a religious duty to destroy all minorities, yet.

I had found the seeds in an unlikely place: a parking kiosk. They were in a little plastic bag on the floor. The plastic had become a bit soggy but thankfully it had protected the small package inside from the ravages of dampness. The bag was full of seed pouches, like the kind that people used to pay for. The parking attendant must have bought them to take home and grow in his or her garden; or perhaps it was a balcony. But when the lights went out forever, he or she must have left them behind in a mixture of bewilderment and terror, as he or she commuted for the last time.

Imagine paying for the ability to grow your own food. What a strange concept? But that was the way things were done. You just accepted that you had no right to control how you were fed and handed away your power to organizations that really only wanted two things: obedience and your money.

I remembered reading something about not being able to eat money as I reached the top. I hunched behind a bush and watched them down the hill. They had gathered and were yelling at one another. I assumed the fittest demanded they keep going but were scared to continue the pursuit with depleted numbers. If they saw me now they might continue on. So I ducked my head and listened. The voices started to move down the hill, back to their hunting grounds amidst the concrete and broken glass.

Fuck them. I wasn't going back anyway; they'd never catch me. I handled the pouches and thought of the open lands to the south. I had to find a place to last the winter before the promise of spring. I knew nothing about farming beyond keeping the harvest well watered and weeded. Perhaps that was enough and besides no one was around to judge you.

I put them all down and picked up the prize: hot chillies in a rainbow of colours. A little taste of the world that I had known. I would watch over you above all the other crops. Keep you safe and save your spicy seeds to plant again and again.

I just wish I wasn't alone.