Jews vs Aliens by Naomi Alderman & Rosanne Rabinowitz & Eric Kaplan & Rachel Swirsky & Elana Gomel & Lois H. Gresh & Gon Ben Ari

Author:Naomi Alderman & Rosanne Rabinowitz & Eric Kaplan & Rachel Swirsky & Elana Gomel & Lois H. Gresh & Gon Ben Ari [Alderman, Naomi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jurassic London
Published: 2015-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

THE FARM

ELANA GOMEL

When he saw the cherry blossoms, he reached for his gun.

The wind threw a handful of pink petals into his face. He rubbed then away but they stuck to his kinky hair. His leather jacket was so worn that some patches became fuzzy and these, too, accumulated pink ornaments. It looked as if his red-star badge was spawning.

The farm lay below him, in the hollow between the hills. Everything about it was tidy: the whitewashed main house with the tiled roof, the sturdy barns, and the clean-swept yard, empty in the predawn light. Beyond it, the fields were shadowy with a heavy harvest. And the cherry trees cradling the hollow, the treacherous trees with their unseasonable blossoms.

His horse shied and trembled, and he struggled to keep it calm. He was not good with animals. The milky smell of cattle wafting from the barn doors made him want to puke. He was a town boy, wary and contemptuous of the countryside. It was in cities that the new world would be born. But now he had learned the hard lesson of hunger: if the battle for food is lost, all the other battles don’t count. The Eaters had taught him the value of the land.

His stomach rumbled. He thought of tightening his belt but there was no time to drill an additional hole, even though his khaki trousers threatened to slide down to his skinny hips.

An indistinct figure separated itself from the shadows at the main house’s porch and ran up the dandelion-fringed path toward him. He waited, trying to calm the horse, to calm himself, and failing at both.

The figure was small and slight, nimbly scurrying up the slope.

His finger caressed the trigger of his Mauser.

It looked like a girl.

He fired.

The heavy bullet slummed into the girl and made her stumble backwards, almost lifting her off the path. The second shot span her like a dreidel. And then she flopped down and was still, a rivulet of blood snaking away from the crumpled heap of embroidered clothes and tangled braids.

Yakov cursed himself in the coarse words he had learned from his peasant comrades-in-arms and tried to use frequently. His fear got the better of him. He did not come here to shoot Eaters: they bred faster that bullets could fly. He came for victory.

The horse neighed and pranced, foam dropping from its nostrils. It was not a trained cavalry steed – most of those had been eaten. It was a scraggy yearling, unused to the sight of blood.

Blood?

Yakov’s frown deepened as he looked down at the prostrate body. The girl’s embroidered shirt was stained the colour of his badge. This was unexpected. In his previous encounters with the Enemy he had seen all kinds of unclean ichor, but never this bright, honest red.

He dismounted and the horse bolted. It did not matter; whether successful or not, he would not need it to retreat. Retreat was not an option.

He bent over the girl, who seemed to challenge him with her glazed eyes and slackened features.

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