Dystopian Tales

Airdrop

Strong Arm Daniel lay by the coals as night lay around him. He had run for a day. The embers glowed smokeless with orange heat. Soon he would blanket cold soil upon them and then sleep on the mound. Whilst the orange fire blossoms occasionally bloomed though, he let them take him backwards into his memories. He sought one in particular, but the recall was deep, a story of his father's father – just after the booms.

The orange peeled away the first layers of his immediate reality, flitted through the relationships of his group, and then went deeper into his feelings for them. He eased passed the constructs of his existence to a yet a deeper place, where the ones that had died lived. Then, childhood. Here the story of the Airdrop was told:

"Listen, this is a military drop, there's fucking assault rifles here, grenades. There's even a supply signal to call in another airdrop! There's vacuumed packed food GM Soldiers eat. We gotta hide it, bury this shit and quick."

Your grandfather watched on, holding his tongue. 'Bury this shit and quick' seemed half right to him. But other words came angry at the idea.

"You fucking coward fuck! Load up load up! If we go meek with this it will be taken from us, now's our chance to assert ourselves not shit our pants!"

"He who lives by the sword dies by the sword!"

"I'll sword you up your ass! Coward!  This drop has hidden long enough!"

The first battle of the Airdrop had begun, a drop that had fallen in a crevice. Your grandfather watched on as fisty cuffs strove to win the argument. Grandfather's words levelled the dispute, and they listened after their new found ritual of temperate violence could not resolve the issue:

"You fools, you fight over luck. We do both things; we bury exactly half and utilize the other! The supply signal is useless; there have been no planes for a year."

The coals were bleeding low, he had to bury them soon or endure a biting night. There was no more to the story; it was the creation of the half-half luck belief. Like Ju-Ju's blood at the God Camp. But where did the mothers and fathers hide the half? He raced back to the childhood story, but it fragmented and all he could see was the faces of his people, the living and the dead, and the dim idea of a crevice.

He had to run tomorrow, and the next. To the agreed place, oh to find the mythical half on the way. If he could just remember some instruction, some riddle he could find the answer to. He curled around the buried stones and coals, a mother's belly, humming an old lullaby. Daniel could mow down the road armour soldiers if he had an airdrop gun. He remembered every detail of how to use an assault rifle, even though he had never held one. Some memories did not need meditation.