What Comes After | ✔️

Chapter 18

August 27

"Excuse me, everyone," the announcer at the food pantry made, the megaphone buzzy as he cleared his throat before stating, "I have an announcement to make."

"No duh," May muttered as everyone shuffled around, glancing at each other, whispers of hopes and anxieties filling the air: "Are there going to be more food cuts? Maybe we're going to get some gasoline. I think the power's coming back. There's no way that they're going to cut the water and natural gas supply. I think this might be the end. Maybe this is going to finally end."

There was some feedback, and everyone was silent, some waiting for good news, but most waiting for everything to go wrong. "First of all, I'd like to take some time to celebrate the beautiful sunshine that we have today. Maybe better times are coming ahead."

Everyone cheered, and even Dad let out a little whoop. The skies had fully cleared overnight and were tinged light blue as thin wispy clouds cling to it like cotton strands. When we were walking to the food drive, everyone was just staring at the burst of orange pouring from behind the mountains east of our city as a pale sunlight filtered through the branches, painting the white skeletons of the trees shades of golden, amber, and topaz.

"With that being said," the announcer continued. "We do need volunteers for some work."

The joyful attitude quickly crumbled, and Mom and Dad looked at each other.

"What work?" someone shouted.

"As many of you guys know, during this crisis of ours, the roads haven't been maintained well," he said. "And with the volcanic ash and our current drought, the trees and soil haven't exactly been the most stable and with the exodus of cars and chaos, the highways are clogged and—"

"Get to the point," a woman shouted.

"Are we going to become slaves?" a man shouted.

"My point is that the roads bringing us food are through the mountains," he replied, megaphone blaring loudly. "And we've already lost both of the main ones to landslides two weeks or so back. We need to preserve the last pass because we are going to be trapped here if we don't."

"That's BS," a man shouted. "There's a lot more roads that lead to the city."

"All of those take too long to get here," the announcer said. "And the government doesn't want to waste time, especially when gasoline is sparse, and many other towns are fighting for food shipments too. We've been very lucky to receive all the food that we have received, and I'm sure that you don't want to lose that."

"They can't just leave us," another person shouted.

"We don't want to find out," the announcer said. "So I'm asking for volunteers to help install rockfall netting around the slopes of the road and another group of volunteers to help sweep the streets to keep them ash free."

No one raised their hand, everyone looking at each other to see if another person was going to raise their hand. I saw that Mira was going to raise her hand before Mom whispered to her, "Don't."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Just wait," Mom said.

After a minute or so of no one raising their hand, the announcer said, "Please, we really need volunteers. We'll be giving double rations and two gallons of gasoline to everyone who helps for at least six hours today. Plus, it'll be the perfect way to spend all day in the sunshine on this lovely day."

There were more murmurs in this crowd of three hundred or so people. Dad looked at Mom. "We should do it."

"Too dangerous," she said. "You heard them. If we go there, we're going to be working on slopes that might collapse on us. I don't want to take that risk."