Nathan Jones - Shortage

It was brutal work, especially with the specter of cold and exhaustion looming over him, and with every shovelful Matt thought of Ferris with more and more bitterness.

Terrible as it was to think of, if the administrator hadn’t fed the refugees with the town’s food far more of the people of Aspen Hill would’ve survived. The grim tradeoff would’ve been that almost all the refugees would certainly have died, but heartless as it sounded Matt would’ve preferred to be burying strangers rather than friends.

Which wasn’t to say the refugees weren’t doing their part. Under Ben and Catherine’s leadership they’d integrated well into the town, and aside from a few exceptions Matt had no complaints about the new citizens helping defend their borders. In truth he had almost as much trouble from the townspeople he worked with. But any trouble he had from the people reporting to him paled in comparison to what he was forced to deal with from the rest of the townspeople.

Following the Mayor’s strict crackdown on crime after the refugees were integrated into the town thefts had dropped to almost nothing, but as the cold and starvation took its toll crime gradually started to climb again. Many, in the last extreme faced with death or theft, did what they thought they had to. And since the refugees were the worst off a disproportionate amount of that desperate violence and stealing came from them.

Matt, Catherine, and Bert Peterson were faced with many difficult and sad choices as they held strict to the Mayor’s policy of exile for theft and other crimes. It was easy to assume it was a more lenient punishment when the weather was fair, but in the depths of winter exile was practically a death sentence and they all knew it.

Tormented by her determination to keep the promises she’d made Catherine had a harder and harder time insisting that the sentencing be enforced, although she stayed firm in her resolve. As for Matt, the only reason he was able to carry the punishments out on her behalf was because he wasn’t the one making the decisions. That helped, some.

The same couldn’t be said for Bert. The elderly retired lawyer had gravely upheld his duties judging the members of Razor’s gang after they attacked the town, but it had weighed on him. He was used to a system where those condemned to death often waited a decade or more through a lengthy process of appeals and other legal proceedings. He’d gone along with the hasty sentencing and carrying out the executions because of the dire situation and the clear guilt of the condemned men, but it had taken its toll.

The later sentences he had to hand out, especially exile, nearly broke him. He even tried arranging a meeting to discuss more lenient punishments for theft, but the town wouldn’t hear of it. Everyone else was just as desperate as those who were stealing, and the threat of exile was the only thing keeping the town from collapsing into chaos.

In the end Bert had pled to be excused from his position as town judge, and no one had begrudged him the decision. In his place a tribunal consisting of six members of the community, including Ben and Chauncey, was set up to pass judgment on crimes. It was a solution almost everyone was satisfied with, and it kept the town relatively peaceful.

Not that there weren’t a few exceptions. The worst came early in March, when the shelter itself came under attack by a dozen starving people.

Matt’s legs felt dead by the time he finished his patrol shift west of town.

He’d walked it dozens of times over the winter, and it wasn’t so great a distance, but any distance stretched on into infinity when all he’d had for the last ten meals was a cake the size of his palm. They were made of boiled wheat mashed into a paste, and for the breakfast cake included Henrietta’s daily egg mixed into enough batter for eight people, then fried in olive oil and drizzled in honey. They took turns licking the remaining oil off the pan when the meal was finished, and it was almost depressing how much of a treat that had become.

From the first Matt had tried to have his people patrol in pairs for their safety, and he’d managed it for a while, but now he walked alone. He had less than a quarter of the volunteers he’d once had defending the town. Some had died, which was heartbreaking, but more had abandoned what felt to them like a worthless chore when they’d had less than a dozen incidents all winter and the only real fight any of them faced was against starvation. They argued that their time could be better spent searching for food than for enemies that weren’t coming.

Matt couldn’t fault them for the decision, but it did worry him. The radios still worked, the guns were mostly in good repair, plans for defense of the town and calling up swift response defenders at the first sign of a threat were laid out, but none of it would do any good if they didn’t have people out there to give advance warning of a possible attack.

So he kept to the routes, taking more and more shifts as less and less people showed up to do them. Those who stayed with him at the task were mostly people who’d lost someone in Razor’s attack, or younger men whose families had survived the winter better like the Watson boys. But even they showed up lest often, and seemed more halfhearted at it.

Surprisingly Jane was out there almost as much as Matt himself, although he had the feeling she wasn’t motivated by loyalty to the town. The hunting parties had to split the meat among them, and give a portion to the town in exchange for use of the guns and ammunition. Meanwhile anyone on patrol who managed to bring down game also had to give the town its portion, but the rest was theirs.

Matt had seen her ranging far out beyond the patrol route, particularly in places where the terrain might encourage game to follow predictable paths down from the mountains. And truth be told her refugee group was faring better than most of the town under her care, fed by the consistent meat she brought in. In spite of the extended ranging she carried out her duties on patrol as expected, and Matt couldn’t begrudge her for her resourcefulness: attentive eyes had an equal chance of spotting humans as game, so she wouldn’t miss any potential threats.

In truth he had to admire what she managed, caring for the group practically all by herself with whatever help Tom and Alvin Harding, neither of whom were particularly good shots, managed to provide. Matt did his best to do the same for his family, but a lot of the time he felt like he wasn’t managing as well as he could. It physically pained him to see how much weight Sam had lost over the winter: she’d always been petite, but now she felt like just a wisp in his arms. Even worse, her cheery optimism had given way to the same sort of plodding dullness he saw in too many faces these days as she mustered the energy to do only what needed to be done.

It scared him.

He knew he wasn’t much better off. He’d always been skinny, but now the face that looked back at him in the mirror when he shaved every few days was practically skeletal. He had trouble finding the strength to do more than plod along at a walk, and his arms trembled if he held his rifle up for more than a few seconds to look through the scope. He’d tried to follow Jane’s example and find his own game on patrol, but she was either luckier than him or had a better idea of where and how to look. Probably the latter. All he’d managed were a few skinny rabbits and a single doe, which he still counted a blessing.

But his shift was over now, and that meant another cake that wasn’t enough but that he desperately needed. More importantly, that meant he could collapse on his cot and rest for a few minutes with Sam in his arms, enjoying being with her for as long as he could afford to before getting back to the business of staying alive. Even a week ago the prospect of that would’ve been enough to put a spring in his step in spite of his weariness, but now it only served to keep him on his feet long enough to get home.