Survival in Pleasantville by Seger Kate

Author:Seger, Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

PLEASANTVILLE - DAY 10

My first instinct is to shout Katrina's name. Then the wind carries the sound of moaning to me. The creeps are far away—most likely still in the front quad at the other end of the school unless some have managed to breach the door and get inside. But that's still too close for comfort. If I call out, there's a good chance they'll hear me. And if they do, and there's nothing else to distract them, they'll come running. The whole damn horde.

Which is not a risk I'm willing to take.

It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust after emerging from the bright fluorescent lights of the gymnasium. Dusk has given way to night, darkness settling over this surreal landscape—and proving my concept of time truly is fucked.

Looking around, I assume I'm standing in what was once a sports field, but it's so overgrown I can't be sure until my eye snags on a faint grayish-yellow patch I'm pretty sure is part of a baseball diamond. Calf-high grass drifts listlessly in a cool breeze, and dry leaves, turning yellow and brown since we left NYC, crackle faintly as they shudder on the trees that ring the field.

When I swivel my head to the left, a sun-bleached plastic jungle gym hulks about a hundred feet away, its bright colors bizarrely out of place. It's somehow deeply disturbing to see something as universally familiar as a schoolyard neglected and reclaimed by the earth like this. Worse even than the bleak ruination of New York City.

I shake the melancholic thoughts from my head and force myself to focus. There's no sign of Katrina over there, just the play equipment and a swingset, creaking mournfully as the wind rattles the metal chains.

So, I pivot and look to my right, but if I thought the playground was depressing, what I find there is even worse.

It's downright harrowing.

I don't know what I expected Gregory's "farm" to look like, but certainly not this horror. A barbed wire fence skirts the side of the building, sectioning off an area of the field. Within it, rusted metal bleachers and a handful of shipping containers jammed tightly together, with a little yard around them.

It's almost like a makeshift shanty town. Or one of those miserable, low-budget zoos in some little yokel town where they keep big animals in tiny cages.

Within the confines of the "farm," dozens of figures mill around, huddling together outside in the cramped space, some naked, others wearing rags, warming their hands over a handful of fires burning in metal trash cans around the enclosure. I notice several women with rounded, protruding bellies—obviously the breeders.

But I guess they are the lucky ones since they serve a purpose. They won't be butchered and eaten in a stew. I shudder at that thought, recalling the 'mystery meat' we've been eating.

I can't help but wonder who these people were before…and how they wound up with this miserable lot in life. Is it some kind of crazy

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