The Luxury Of Grass

I crouched on the top corner of the roof to look out over the city. This wasn't the tallest building, but it was my favourite spot because the stairs leading from the third floor to the sixth floor had been blasted away way about five years ago. Mel, Barney and I had made some artificial handholds on the outside of the building by gouging out holes that looked like shrapnel holes so no one but us ever went up.

Looking east I saw the government highrise where Mel and Barney had been taken last week on some trumped up charges.

Out beyond the smoke from the latest fires from the fighting between the government forces and the Distenders, that's what we called the people who had been cast out because they often had distended bellies from lack of food.

Considering we were all suffering severe food shortages it was amazing the Distenders could survive at all. Even streets had been ripped up to make more growing space in the city, but whether the cause was seeds or soil, the crop yields were decreasing every year. Government rations were getting smaller and smaller.

Dread weighed me down as I raised my prize possession, a telescope, and looked west where my friends had been forced beyond the car-wall. I'd traded a t-shirt and all my breakfast and lunch rations for a week to find out what happened to them.

Like the last time, a bazillion eyes stared back at me from the huge insects that had mutated during the nuclear war. Insects that had become strictly carnivorous, eating each other, but wanting us. Only the electricity that ran through the car-wall kept them away.

Even through the twilight, though, I could see the lush green fields in the distance that made me salivate imagining fruit hanging from trees and ears of corn. Heck, just being able to roll in grass would be luxury.

I angled the telescope closer to the wall in the hope that maybe I'd catch a glimpse of my friends. No one knew exactly what happened to the people forced outside because if you climbed to the top of the car-wall one of the insects would shoot boiling hot water at you. Late at night you could hear people's screams, which meant they weren't eaten immediately.

Sighing, I closed the telescope and stored it away inside a top floor room.

Not wanting to abandon Mel and Barney, I pressed my forehead against the glass to catch a glimpse of the wall. In the building kitty-corner, something white caught my eye. The word "insect"?

Running for the telescope, I opened the window and stuck out the lens. I whooped when I saw boxes upon boxes with the words "insecticide" written in bold, black letters. How they'd been missed I didn't know.

It might be too late to save my friends, but at least now there was hope.

WORD COUNT: 500