They Sold Me For Rice

Chapter 1: Sold for a Sack of Rice

The rain had been falling for nine days, and it was not the kind of rain that washed anything clean.

Lucas Grey crouched at the mouth of the drainage tunnel with his back against cold concrete, counting what was left in his bag. Two cans of beans. A packet of crackers crushed to powder. Half a bottle of water he had been saving since morning.

It was not enough. It was never enough anymore.

He pulled his scarf over his nose and crawled out into the grey light. The city had stopped being a city a long time ago. Cars sat where their drivers had abandoned them, doors hanging open. Somewhere far off, something screamed, a long wet sound no animal should have been able to make. He did not look toward it. He had learned not to.

Three hours later he limped back to the Fords' basement shelter with his shoulder bleeding through his sleeve. He knocked the way he always knocked. Two slow, one quick.

The steel door opened a hand's width. Derek's face appeared in the gap, round and well fed, which was strange in a world where everyone else had gone hollow.

"You're late," Derek said.

"There were infected on Maple Street. I had to go around."

Derek took the bag out of his hands before he could step inside, peered into it, and frowned. "That's all?"

"That's everything."

"Hm." Derek tossed the bag to someone behind him and finally stepped aside. "Wipe your feet. Mom hates mud."

Lucas wiped his feet.

The shelter was warm. That was the first thing that always hit him, the warmth, the yellow lantern light, the smell of something cooking. Richard Ford sat at the head of the table like a king in a small, cluttered kingdom. Diane stood at the stove. And on the old couch, with a blanket over her knees, sat his wife.

Vanessa did not look up when he came in.

Five years they had been married. Lucas could still remember the day he proposed, how nervous he had been, how she had laughed and cried at the same time and said yes before he finished the question. He remembered the other things too. Selling his late father's house to cover Richard's gambling debts. Working two jobs while Derek "figured out his life." Every holiday, every bill, every crisis, he had been the one to step forward, because that was what a husband did. That was what family did.

When the sky broke open six months ago and the world began to die, he was the one who found this shelter. He was the one who carried them food every single day since.

"Sit down, Lucas," Diane said, and her voice was so gentle that he almost looked around to see who she was talking to. "You look half dead. Sit. I made stew."

A bowl appeared in front of him. Real stew, with real chunks of meat floating in it. He stared at it.

"Go on," Richard said, smiling. "You've earned it."

Lucas felt something ache in his chest, something stupid and hopeful. Six months he had been waiting for even a small kindness from these people. He picked up the spoon with a hand that was not quite steady.

The stew was salty and thick and tasted like a memory. He ate slowly, because he did not want it to end.

"Lucas." Vanessa had finally moved. She was sitting beside him now, her fingers resting lightly on his wrist. Her eyes were wet. "I want you to know I never wanted any of this."

"Any of what?" he asked, mouth still full.

She did not answer. Her hand tightened on his wrist, and in that moment the lantern flame shivered, because someone was knocking at the steel door.

Two slow, one quick.

Lucas froze. That was his knock. Nobody else knew it.

Derek was already on his feet. He opened the door, and cold air rolled across the floor, and then four men in dirty armor stepped into the shelter as if they owned it. The one in front had a scar that ran from his ear to his chin and a rifle slung across his chest. His eyes moved around the room like a man pricing furniture, and they stopped on Lucas.

"That's him?"

"That's him," Richard said.

Lucas stood up so fast the chair fell over behind him. "What is this?"

Nobody answered. Derek dragged a heavy canvas sack through the door and dropped it at Richard's feet. The top gaped open, and white grains spilled across the concrete. Rice. Forty pounds of it, maybe more.

"Forty pounds," the scarred man said. "Like we agreed. And the man comes with us."

"Agreed," Richard said. He did not even glance at Lucas. He was looking at the rice the way a starving man looks at a door.

Lucas heard his own voice come out small. "Richard. What did you agree to?"

It was Diane who answered, still wearing that gentle smile. "Sweetheart, you have to understand. There are four of us down here. One bag of rice feeds us for a month. And you?" She tilted her head. "You only feed yourself."

"I feed all of you." The words scraped out of his throat. "I have fed all of you for six months."

"And you'll do it one last time," Derek said, grinning.

Lucas turned to his wife. "Vanessa."

She was standing now, arms wrapped around herself, tears sliding down her face. She looked beautiful and miserable and she did not step toward him.

"Please don't make this harder," she whispered.

That was when he understood. The stew. The kind voice. The hand on his wrist. They had not been kindness. They had been a last meal.

He ran for the door. He made it three steps before something struck the back of his skull and the floor rushed up to meet him. Rough hands dragged him upright. Rope bit into his wrists. The scarred man's breath smelled like rot as he leaned close.

"Don't take it personally," the man said. "The horde's been following our convoy for two days. Need something to keep it busy while we slip away. Something that screams."

They carried him up the stairs and out into the rain. He saw the sky, low and bruised and endless. He saw the shape of the street, the dark shapes standing at its far end, swaying, hundreds of them, turning their heads one by one toward the noise.

They threw him down in the middle of the road and cut his ropes only so he could run, and he did not run. He lay in the mud and looked back at the basement door.

Vanessa stood in the doorway with a sack of rice in her arms. She was not crying anymore.

She was watching him the way you watch something you have already finished with.

The first of them reached him, and Lucas Grey, twenty eight years old, who had given everything to a family that never once loved him, closed his eyes and thought only one thing.

If I could live again, I would never open that door.

Darkness folded over him, quiet and total.

Then, from very far away, a warm voice said, "Lucas? Wake up. Dinner's ready."