The Bread that Kills - A Flash Fiction

The Bread that Kills

The rabble of the streets begins to shamble about in a cacophony of wretchedness as the sun ducks below the horizon, and you realize you've outstayed your welcome outside once again. You're on foot and not exactly close to home, but there is no way around the urchins now. Knowing the longer you wait the more likely getting home will be impossible, you make a run for it. Speeding past the unsuspecting dregs you manage to get a decent leg ahead of many of them before any catch wind that you're healthy. The surplus of sickly moans in the air creates a drone-like ambience to the night, just like every other night since the onset of the plague. 

The sailors were the first signs of what was to come when ships returned loaded with huge kegs of grain but missing half their crew. The greedy merchants contracting the import of grain threw caution to the wind and sold the product anyway. Those same merchants were quick to realize the error of their ways as it wasn't long before they too came down ill with what was responsible for killing off their sailors. The chain of supply, tainted with sickness, facilitated the rapid spread of disease and within a month the entire city was infected. Due to your trip to your parents' farm outside the city, you had the benefit of knowledge since word quickly spread that people in the city were dying from the very bread that gave them life.  

Thanks to your healthy legs you were able to outrun the decrepit denizens of your once booming city. However, it was a risky move to forage so late. You know the healthy won't stop to help you if you ever get caught, it's every person for themself out there in the open. Those who manage to stay healthy have the luxury of being able to go out and about in select neighbourhoods during the day, and even then they will keep their distance from you and everyone else, but at night no one is safe. The plague makes them sensitive to the sun.

At your home now, safe for the night, you look through your bag to inventory what you risked yourself for: a litre of kerosene, a matchbook, two candlesticks, and a bag of under ripened apples. The apples you picked yourself from a tree that grows in front of the Cityhall. Usually, the apples are city property and sold in an annual fundraising event, but it's not likely that those will be resuming anytime soon. You light one of the matches from the book you found today and put it to the wick of one of your new candles that you've nestled into a fairly drab holder. From the candle, you light the end of a stick and light the hearth in your bedchamber, quickly moving to shut and lock the door afterward. The dim firelight is enough to attract even the most sickly of plague sufferers with its promise of warmth in the late-October chill. There is no knowing if anyone around is willing or able to break into your home to have access to your heat. 

You won't get much sleep tonight knowing that tomorrow you go to the port, the infamous genesis site of the plague. It is the last place in the city you haven't checked for resources and it is imaginable that most healthy folk would prefer to not search there. It's been deemed an unofficial no-go-zone.