The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

Author:Nick Clark Windo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

They sleep early, before they reach the town, and get up again before dawn. The earliest touch of sunlight hints at gold, but there is a haze to the air. They see the first person before the sun is up: a man partly hidden in the bushes, emaciated, his skin like a leather sheet shrink-wrapping his bones. He mutters and rants. They leave him. Later, when the sun has risen, they see two more people sitting by the road. “Stuff?” one of them spits, a woman as thin as wires. “Stuff? Stuff? Fuel?” She bares her rotten teeth. The man next to her chews something. Rags. He talks nonsense, mangled sounds. His spittle has dried into gray-flecked foam. He watches them. His eyes roll. They stagger on.

In the outskirts, they see the fountain, brown and dry. Soon the neighborhood Claire described becomes obvious: wider, tree-lined streets. Most houses were torched long ago and stand rotting, their ancient contents cascading out. Vines have overgrown the road like a knotted green blanket. The farther they go, the more people they pass. Vacant eyes. Tight skin, faces drawn. They moan. Reach out and shuffle. Some try to stand. They all seem to be going, slowly, the same way.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Keep moving,” Tom tells her, eyes wide, as they are surrounded by the slowly shuffling horde for a while. In the distance, at the end of a particular house’s railings that have been fortified with planks and razor wire, two men guard metal gates. “Any thoughts?” he asks her, taking her arm, glancing back at the brainless people behind them.

“To get drugs,” she says simply, and limps on.

The guards recline in two torn armchairs with long guns across their laps, wearing black T-shirts, scuffed trousers, and sunglasses with thick colored rims. They do not stand.

“We want to see the Pharmacist,” she tells them.

They move to look at her, these guards, like automatons, their eyes flicking like shadows behind their dark lenses.

“The Pharmacist,” she reiterates. “We’ve come a long way.”

One of the men, eventually, stands. He takes a heavy key from his pocket and unlocks the gate. He heaves against what used to be an automatic mechanism and goes through. Shoots them a flashing grin. Locks the gate and walks leisurely up the drive.

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