In Decay
best for the west and the greed
"We don't get a story. No one writes about us,"
She brings the knife down, sharp metal dragging across stiff wood. You found resin in your last raid - a whole factory full of green spray bottles. A woman in red, smiling away into nothing, plastered on every can. Her teeth are unnaturally white.
You can see them glint through the broken windows of the supply hut at night when the moonlight falls just so.
"Ian? Ian, oi!" wood clatters away from where it hit your chest, the hollow impact echoing dully in the sudden silence. Kate doesn't frown, doesn't smile, doesn't do anything. That's what gets to you the most sometimes - the nothing. The emptiness. People on the west coast, the one who have rickety warning signs facing them - they're not like you. Like Kate.
"Ian, we're going to die. We're going to die and no-ones ever going to even know we were here."
You want to hit something, to hack down a tree, pull the flesh from your skin. It itches, god it itches - but it's not real. Kate says it goes away, after a while, but the lines under her eyes tell you otherwise. You're a caged animal, your skin the electric fence. You can't help but brush against it, to escape it is to die, but there's nothing you want more than out.
"Stop being morbid," you tell her, and pick up the wood. She's staring at you with those blank commercial eyes - you can almost see her holding up that can, spraying it on the floors of her three-stories house while a child with the same blue eyes runs past, a small dog at its side. She smiles for the camera. One. Two. Three.
Cut.
She doesn't laugh.
You're all dead meat.
He's wearing a mask.
They always are.
"We're cutting back the supply lines."
You want to cry - but your tears are radioactive. The mans hand twitches next to his gun. You think of cold evenings and Clint Eastwood in all his white-man glory lowering his gun to a native american.
Freedom.
Reload.
"How the fuck are we supposed to survive? Everything in this fucking zone is infected! Everything for the next five zones is infected! This supply line was the only fucking source we had!" Zone two-hundred and fifty eight is currently the furthest zone from The Supply to still have contact with the rest of humanity. Zone two-hundred and fifty eight is your home.
You used to have friends in zone three-hundred and twelve, back when you could send messages down the line. And then the supply was cut; everyone knew it was going to happen. Every year its cuts cuts cuts, except now there's more at stake than a paycheck.
"For a population of nine thousand, we can provide fifty cows from the wilderness," another guard with what looks like a scanner steps forward, hands covered by thick, white gloves. "They are untested. Two hundred chickens. Untested. They will be released before our final departure in seven minutes."
Untested means strontium-90. Untested means unsuitable for supply. Flowers for the dead.
You holds Kate's hands behind her back when the guards walk away, you're scared the look she's giving a stone next to her would come to fruition. Rule number six; do not assault members of the supply line. Death is luxury zone two-hundred and fifty-eight cannot afford.
A population of 9,000 was last years report; this year you haven't seen anyone but Kate since the last winter. The last two idiots to depend on the supply. The last two idiots who didn't think the radiation could get them, didn't want to believe it had already got them.
Cancer is airborne now. You've breathed it in. There is an approximately zero percent chance you are not host to a cancer. Strontium-90 will sink into your bones via a cows teat, a chickens flesh.
Caesium-137 awaits you in the waters you bathe in, the waters you now must drink. Iodine-137, even, if the animals came from far enough in the wilderness. Another way to die. Another cancer.
Enough caesium-137 and you'll die in a month. Too much Iodine-137 and you might not even attain that glory.
Strontium-90 has been with you all your life. Just a bit more and your legs will fail you. Finally.
Maybe Kate will kill you after that. It would be a mercy.
Bone cancer is slow.
Slow as the animals that pull themselves across the ground, ushered by men in padded white. Pure. Uninfected. When it hit, it didn't hit the rich. It hit the poor. These things always do - you miss your job in the supermarket. You miss consumerism. You miss barely scraping by but buying alcohol, anyway, down at the pub and smoking because - because cancer wasn't the same then. Cancer was a maybe.
Now it's the only the stable thing left in your life. Stabler than isotopes.
Kate's hands are fists. The guard doesn't hesitate to leave. Cages of chicken rattle jarringly in the wake of a cars exhaust humming to a stop at the mesh fence. The people of zone two hundred and fifty-seven look thin and scared as they open the gate to allow the car through. The Supply drive through without a thanks.
Dark skin glints with sweat. Wide eyes through the mesh of a fence.
You're next, you think, you're next and we all know it.
The gate clangs shut.
Kate doesn't cry.
No one does anymore.
She brings the knife down, sharp metal dragging across stiff wood. You found resin in your last raid - a whole factory full of green spray bottles. A woman in red, smiling away into nothing, plastered on every can. Her teeth are unnaturally white.
You can see them glint through the broken windows of the supply hut at night when the moonlight falls just so.
"Ian? Ian, oi!" wood clatters away from where it hit your chest, the hollow impact echoing dully in the sudden silence. Kate doesn't frown, doesn't smile, doesn't do anything. That's what gets to you the most sometimes - the nothing. The emptiness. People on the west coast, the one who have rickety warning signs facing them - they're not like you. Like Kate.
"Ian, we're going to die. We're going to die and no-ones ever going to even know we were here."
You want to hit something, to hack down a tree, pull the flesh from your skin. It itches, god it itches - but it's not real. Kate says it goes away, after a while, but the lines under her eyes tell you otherwise. You're a caged animal, your skin the electric fence. You can't help but brush against it, to escape it is to die, but there's nothing you want more than out.
"Stop being morbid," you tell her, and pick up the wood. She's staring at you with those blank commercial eyes - you can almost see her holding up that can, spraying it on the floors of her three-stories house while a child with the same blue eyes runs past, a small dog at its side. She smiles for the camera. One. Two. Three.
Cut.
She doesn't laugh.
You're all dead meat.
++++++++++++++++++++
He's wearing a mask.
They always are.
"We're cutting back the supply lines."
You want to cry - but your tears are radioactive. The mans hand twitches next to his gun. You think of cold evenings and Clint Eastwood in all his white-man glory lowering his gun to a native american.
Freedom.
Reload.
"How the fuck are we supposed to survive? Everything in this fucking zone is infected! Everything for the next five zones is infected! This supply line was the only fucking source we had!" Zone two-hundred and fifty eight is currently the furthest zone from The Supply to still have contact with the rest of humanity. Zone two-hundred and fifty eight is your home.
You used to have friends in zone three-hundred and twelve, back when you could send messages down the line. And then the supply was cut; everyone knew it was going to happen. Every year its cuts cuts cuts, except now there's more at stake than a paycheck.
"For a population of nine thousand, we can provide fifty cows from the wilderness," another guard with what looks like a scanner steps forward, hands covered by thick, white gloves. "They are untested. Two hundred chickens. Untested. They will be released before our final departure in seven minutes."
Untested means strontium-90. Untested means unsuitable for supply. Flowers for the dead.
You holds Kate's hands behind her back when the guards walk away, you're scared the look she's giving a stone next to her would come to fruition. Rule number six; do not assault members of the supply line. Death is luxury zone two-hundred and fifty-eight cannot afford.
A population of 9,000 was last years report; this year you haven't seen anyone but Kate since the last winter. The last two idiots to depend on the supply. The last two idiots who didn't think the radiation could get them, didn't want to believe it had already got them.
Cancer is airborne now. You've breathed it in. There is an approximately zero percent chance you are not host to a cancer. Strontium-90 will sink into your bones via a cows teat, a chickens flesh.
Caesium-137 awaits you in the waters you bathe in, the waters you now must drink. Iodine-137, even, if the animals came from far enough in the wilderness. Another way to die. Another cancer.
Enough caesium-137 and you'll die in a month. Too much Iodine-137 and you might not even attain that glory.
Strontium-90 has been with you all your life. Just a bit more and your legs will fail you. Finally.
Maybe Kate will kill you after that. It would be a mercy.
Bone cancer is slow.
Slow as the animals that pull themselves across the ground, ushered by men in padded white. Pure. Uninfected. When it hit, it didn't hit the rich. It hit the poor. These things always do - you miss your job in the supermarket. You miss consumerism. You miss barely scraping by but buying alcohol, anyway, down at the pub and smoking because - because cancer wasn't the same then. Cancer was a maybe.
Now it's the only the stable thing left in your life. Stabler than isotopes.
Kate's hands are fists. The guard doesn't hesitate to leave. Cages of chicken rattle jarringly in the wake of a cars exhaust humming to a stop at the mesh fence. The people of zone two hundred and fifty-seven look thin and scared as they open the gate to allow the car through. The Supply drive through without a thanks.
Dark skin glints with sweat. Wide eyes through the mesh of a fence.
You're next, you think, you're next and we all know it.
The gate clangs shut.
Kate doesn't cry.
No one does anymore.
♠ ♠ ♠
jezebel