D - Dystopian - #AtoZChallenge

Allen and Michael had finally finished securing the glass entryway on the front of the store when Lora showed up with lunch. 

"Baked beans or ravioli?" she held up a can of each.

Michael unsheathed the knife on his belt and worked to open the beans. "These are going to get old pretty fast. We've got to get more food." 

Allen shook his head at his son. "I know these won't last forever, but we have enough for a few weeks. Things need to settle down a little out there before we go out again."

With cold ravioli sauce still on her lips, Lora spoke up, "Dad, I agree with Mikey. There's a grocery store less than a block from here. Let's go stock up."

Allen knew the store was a magnet for everyone in town in the same situation. There were just too many desperate people willing to do whatever they had to do to feed themselves and their families. "No. It's too dangerous. People are still panicking and being irrational. It's safe in here."

Lora retreated back to the comfort of her can of cold pasta, but Michael had always been willing to stand up to his father. "Dad, every minute that goes by, the less food and things will be there. It may be empty already. We have to move now."

Allen was unwilling to risk the safety of his children. When they had to flee their home due to the unruly mobs that had grown more and more unpredictable in the last few days, Allen intentionally chose this hardware store as their target. It didn't have much food, but there were lots of supplies that may come in handy later and it was a very secure building. The small gun counter in the back meant they had the means to protect themselves. Food was definitely going to be important, but that seemed to be the whole town's focus at the moment. The nearer anyone got to potential food sources, the more dangerous it was as people fought to be the person to take their discoveries for themselves.

Allen was actually surprised at how well his children were handling things. They were scared and had their panicked moments, but the atrocities they saw on their grisly adventure to get to this store still bounced around in Allen's head. No one had mentioned anything they witnessed out there in the chaos.

Allen scooped out the last of his beans and declared that he was going to take a nap. He hadn't really slept since he saw the mushroom cloud in the distance and could not go on like this forever. No power, no radio or TV, and no phone service meant no news of what was going on. He knew he had to be alert, but it was time to try to sleep so they could come up with a plan for tomorrow.

As soon as he stepped to the back of the store, Michael whispered to Lora, "Let's give him 30 minutes and we'll sneak out the service entrance. We'll be loaded up and back before he knows we're gone."

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All this month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. A new post will go up every day (except Sundays) using a letter of the alphabet as the starting off point. My theme for the month is literary genres. I am writing in a different genre of flash fiction each day. Today's letter is D for Dystopian.

"F" is for Fishing

Anyone meeting me today would never know it, but I grew up as a country boy. We rode horses, played in the creek, went muddin', had pigs, rode four-wheelers, and had high school keg parties in fields. I was proud to identify myself as a redneck. However, I don't know that I was always sold on all the stuff that goes with it.

Today, and even as a child, I hate camping. I know a lot of people that just can't wait to pull their camper or tent out to the woods, cook over a fire, and fall asleep under the stars. WHY? Centuries of technological research and advancement have gone into making our lives more comfortable. Why would anyone choose to go backwards. We now have air conditioning, sealed homes to keep the bugs out, cable television, microwave ovens, protection from wild animals, and overhead lights. Sleeping under the stars is something homeless people do…and they don't even want to do it. I worked hard and paid a lot of money for my house and the things that are in it. I am not going to drop even more money to go sleep in the woods as though I didn't have a better place to stay.

Like most other country boys, I am an avid supporter of the 2^nd Amendment. I am against excessive gun control legislation and enjoy my guns. However, unlike the stereotypical country boy, I do not enjoy hunting. I never really have. I remember doing it a few times when younger, but never really got into it. It's not because I am worried about the animals. I support hunting. I just don't want to do it myself. I have friends who love to go and have invited me hundreds of times, but I have and always will turn them down.Take duck hunting, for example. I can't think of any reason a man would want to get up at 4 o' clock in the morning to load up a boat, drag themselves out onto a lake, put on waders to stand in 40 degree water and wait for the sun to come up unless he was doing it to get away from his wife. It's a similar situation with deer hunting. It sounds miserable.

Lastly, is the ultimate redneck/country boy pastime that I want nothing to do with. FISHING! This is an activity that I have participated in many, many times. I just don't understand it. Fishing is boring!!! Every time I bring up this argument, I am told that fishing is relaxing.

How?

After all the preparation involved with going, I am already missing the relaxing part. Even sitting on the side of a pond on even in a boat, I get bored very quickly. Staring at a bobber, waiting for it to sink is not relaxing. I can sit in my air conditioned house and stare at the wall with the advantage of being able to open a book or turn on the tv when it gets tedious. Which, it will.

Plus, if I happen to catch a fish it means even more work. Now, it has to be cleaned and cooked. I have stores and restaurants within blocks of me on all sides that will easily allow me to skip those steps and go right to the eating, which is the only part I actually enjoy.

Once I grew up, I moved into town. I wasn't trying to get away from the country life. It is just the way things worked out, but looking back, maybe I'm not as country as I thought I was.

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Happily participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For the entire month of April, 1,968 bloggers are working their way through the alphabet. One letter every day but Sundays for a total of 26 days.

Click here to visit the website and get more information to see if you might want to join in next year. It's a lot of fun, introduces you to hundreds of new blogs and gives your writing some fantastic exposure.

Real Life Angry Birds

My brother Trevor is a great story teller. Not only does he always have a story to tell, but he tells it really well. At every family gathering, he will share with us one of his latest adventures. I've shared one of his stories before. Click the link to read about the time one of his buddies got stabbed in a bar. I know it doesn't sound like it, but it's a very funny story.

With Friends Like These...

This is one of Trevor's stories. Just like the one in the bar, I was not present for the events. I only got to hear about them after the fact. I will do my best to recall the story as I heard it.

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A few years ago, an acquaintance of Trevor's invited him and some of his buddies to a Sunday afternoon barbecue. While they were trying to decide if they had anything better going on that day, the host drops another detail about the party.  

"We will be having ostrich!"

"An ostrich barbecue? Count us in!"

It's not every day you get to eat ostrich and normally, if you do get the opportunity, it is just a taste. This is one of those opportunities you don't want to pass up. The chance to go to an ostrich barbecue doesn't come along very often.

The following weekend, Trevor and his buddies left early to make sure they could find the place since they had never been there before. They arrived about an hour early and the host was happy to see them. He said he needed help getting ready and he didn't have the ostrich yet. They all piled in the back of his truck and took off.

The host drove them to a barn in the middle of nowhere. Trevor asked, "What are we doing here?" He was told, "This is where the ostrich is." Trevor then realized that the meal for the day was still alive. This day just kept getting more interesting.

They opened up a gate to the pasture and drove the truck in. After driving around several acres, they finally saw the large bird off in the distance. Their host handed a .22 rifle to the guys in back of the truck and told them to shoot it when they drove close enough. He also told them that it had to be shot in the head. A body shot would not kill it. One of the guys happily grabbed the rifle to be the one to get the shot, but soon realized this was not an easy feat.

As the truck got closer, the ostrich ran off and the driver accelerated. The truck gave chase as the driver yelled for him to shoot as he pulled up along side the ostrich. Unfortunately, the ostrich didn't allow for that. As the truck would catch up and start to pull to one side, the ostrich would turn away from it as the driver screamed, "SHOOT!"

The shooter was having some problems. Ostriches can run up to about 40 MPH. They were standing in the back of a fast-moving truck driving on unpaved ground, chasing a bird that is darting back and forth, while having to aim at a part of it's body that isn't much bigger than a tennis ball. The rifle got passed around as they all took their shots.

Eventually, one of them got lucky and the bird went down. The driver stopped quickly, jumped out and cut off the head with a machete. Ostriches react much in the same way as chickens when their heads are removed, except in this case, the flopping bird could kill you if you got too close.

Once it settled down, they all grabbed on to throw it into the back of the truck. However, this was 300 pounds of dead weight. They couldn't get a decent grip on it. Every time they tried to pick it up, they were only successful on the sides. They couldn't get the bulk of it off the ground. They couldn't even roll it in.

By this time, they had been out for over an hour. People would be showing up at the BBQ by now expecting to eat. The host was getting anxious to get moving. He dug some chains out from behind the seat and secured them to the bird's feet and the other end to the bumper of his truck. He said if they could get it to the barn, they could come up with something to get it in the truck. They were over a half mile out in the pasture, but they drug that ostrich all the way.

Once they got to barn, they tried setting up boards on the tailgate to roll it in and several other methods. Nothing seemed to work. Eventually, they threw a rope over one of the rafters in the barn and used the truck to lift the bird into the air. They secured the rope and then drove the truck underneath and lowered it back down.

With the ostrich finally in the truck, they triumphantly made their way back to the party. They discovered that many people had arrived and started the celebration without them. The scheduled time had passed over two hours before then and they hadn't even cleaned and butchered the bird yet. Several people jumped in to help to get the meat started, but it was a slow process. Most of the people left before the first pieces came off.

Trevor and his friends stuck around. After all the work they had put into getting it here, they weren't about to miss out. Plus, they were covered in ostrich blood and figured this might be the only place where that look would be acceptable.

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After Trevor finished his story, I asked him what he thought of ostrich meat. His reply was simple.

"It tastes like chicken."