Nathan Jones - Shortage

Lewis stiffened and turned to glare at Trev. “You told him?”

“I swear I didn’t!” Trev replied, waving his hands frantically.

“He didn’t,” Matt hurriedly cut in before Lewis could really start to rage. “I just saw Trev looking all dirty and sweaty and even more exhausted than when I’d left him, earlier that day when we got back from our trip to get April’s family. And then even though you guys had just lost everything he gave my family all the food from the cache up by his car. I figured you guys had started caching stuff the moment you heard about FETF and managed to squirrel a lot of your supplies away before Ferris got to you.”

“Good to know our friends are thinking that much about our private business,” Lewis grumbled.

Matt did his best to squash his annoyance, as well as the guilt that came along with it. “We spent this winter starving… food was the number one thing on our minds.” He waved at their waistlines, even though they were all bundled up. “On the other hand you seem to have weathered the winter well by the looks of it, meaning you managed to haul some supplies up here. But we were sort of wondering if you didn’t manage to cache more food than you two could carry up into the mountains, so maybe there’s a stash still down there that could save lives.”

“We could be planning to go down and get it ourselves,” Lewis said flatly. “Our food. Our lives.” He paused. “Assuming we had any extra.”

“You do though, right?” Matt demanded. “We’ve got children down there, women, men who can’t lift a shovel to plant a field or a gun to defend the town. Whatever you have could mean the difference between life and death for dozens, maybe hundreds of people.”

Lewis waved at the mountains around them. “See where we are? It’s a bit hard to be sympathetic when almost everything we owned was stolen from us, to the point where we decided we’d rather spend the winter freezing in ten foot drifts than stay in Aspen Hill.”

Matt sighed. He hadn’t expected this to be easy, and he’d had a feeling the cousins would feel this way. “We know you guys got the short end of the stick, but you can’t really blame the town for that. Ferris is the one who took all your stuff.”

“You went along with it,” Lewis shot back.

Matt took personal offense to that, until he realized his friend meant the town in general. Still… “He took our weapons!”

“You went along with that, too. Actually most of you willingly gave them up for some food and the threat of being put on a naughty boy list. Besides, Ferris didn’t loot our shelter all by himself.

“Nobody in my family helped with that,” Matt protested, although it irked him that he was being put on trial. He supposed he should’ve expected it while representing the town. “Plenty of other families didn’t help either, like the Watsons and Tillmans and a dozen others I could name. Besides, Anderson’s the one who organized that and he’s not in charge anymore.”

Trev shook his head, looking more tired than anything. “We were watching the people with Anderson empty the place out, you know. They weren’t really too quiet about celebrating as they robbed their neighbors blind.”

Matt fidgeted helplessly. “Come on, that’s not quite fair. Nobody felt good about what happened to you. But at the same time it was a lot of food, and if Ferris was confiscating it anyway that meant the town was in that much better a position to survive the winter. You can’t really blame them for being happy about that.”

“Why not?” Lewis demanded. “They got enough to feed the town and all the refugees for what, a single day? And how many of those people ended up dying anyway? I had enough in there to survive for about 4 years, and Trev had about a third of that of his own! Let’s say we go back down there and give you what we cached because you said “pretty please”. If we work ourselves half to death and manage to scrape together more food storage will you come running to rob us blind the moment things look bad for the town again?”

He was doing this all wrong. Matt rubbed at his eyebrows. “Look, I told you Catherine’s in charge. She’s got one major rule the town lives by now: a person’s property is their own. No one, not even the government, has the right to take anything from anyone. We’ve exiled people, sent them out into the cold in the heart of winter, for theft.

“As for saying “pretty please” or expecting you to just give away anything you have, you should know me and Catherine better than that. I’m here to buy the food on behalf of the town. I probably should’ve mentioned that in the first place.”

Trev gave him a doubtful look. “Buy with what? Nothing’s more valuable than food these days.”

Matt waved at them again. “You look like you guys can feed yourselves if need be. There’s other things you can’t get for yourselves that the town can offer you. Ammunition for one.”

Lewis’s patience had been thin enough as it was, but at this it seemed to snap. “Does everyone in town think we’re an endless wellspring of food? As soon as there’s any trouble it’s off to Halsson and Smith for help, and we always get the short end of the stick. Do you realize how cheap wheat was, even after the Middle East Crisis? You could’ve each spent a couple hundred bucks and everyone in town would still be alive and still with a bit to spare. But no, you always look to us to bail y—”

Trev cut in. “Look, this arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere. You’ve made your request, Matt, and we’ve shared our objections. Why don’t you head inside and get some food. We’ll take some more food down to your friends and show them a good camping spot, and that’ll give us a chance to talk it over.”

Matt wanted to press the issue, but he knew his friend was right. He hadn’t done the best job representing the town’s interests or arguing their case, but for now better to let them think things through. They were both decent people, and if they thought they could manage without the food he had a feeling they’d sell it.

So he allowed himself to be led up to their hideout, which looked much different from when he’d last seen it. Although it was still tiny and didn’t seem adequate for two people cooped up there month after month. He’d thought the shelter felt crowded! It smelled a bit rank inside which was no surprise, but was surprisingly clean and, more importantly, blessedly warm.

Matt settled down in a chair with a grateful groan as Lewis dished him up a plate of food. When Trev had mentioned boiled wheat he hadn’t expected much, but from the smell of it that boiling had included a nice blend of savory spices, and the rabbit strips were tender and juicy. He wolfed it down as Lewis gathered up the rest to take down to Jane and Tom, while Trev disappeared for a while and came back with some sort of stick frame loaded with firewood strapped to his back.

He was nearly finished by the time his friends were ready to head down, but they insisted he stay there and rest while they went. Remembering that half their reason for going was so they could talk things over, Matt nodded and gave them his companions’ names along with brief descriptions. Then he settled back in his chair and put his hands over the fire as the door shut behind him, leaving him with just the dim light of the stove. It wasn’t so bad, though.

What would it be like to live here with Sam, hunting and trapping food and not having to worry about patrols or helping an endless stream of sick people or anything else? Aside from the smell he was surprisingly tempted by the idea.

“Were you really surprised?” Trev asked as he followed his cousin towards the cliffs.