Page 35 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
After church, where Grandma Richter had prayed fervently for all our souls, I headed into town. Trudging through the snow had quickly become one of my least favorite activities. I despised it almost as much as the now empty shelves of Colina Verde Community Food Bank. Only made worse by the strange footprints I sometimes found when I left my small cabin in the woods. Footprints I’d never seen before and were far different from what any creature in our “realm” had evermade. Even Donnie, hunter extraordinaire, couldn’t place the prints.
Still, I walked or sludged my way through the freshly mounting snow to the food bank, hoping some foolishly generous person donated much-needed food for the families who would soon starve.
The fae commander could rattle on all he wanted about our survival, but without food, none of it mattered. With all his constant talking and barked orders through the screens, he never once spoke about how we’d eat. Even my woods—that had once been filled with deer, wild boar, and other wildlife—were eerily quiet. It had been over a week since I last saw a bird, squirrel, or jackrabbit eating from the feeders I put out in my yard. Over a week since the same people who had donated their food to the food bank had returned to reclaim their supplies.
Understandably, people were scared. I was scared. But rather than helping each other through this drastic weather change, my neighbors had turned on one another.
I didn’t need the news to tell me how crime rates had escalated. I saw it in my own town, with the store’s windows and doors broken down and the inside torn apart and empty of anything valuable. People sat on their front porches with a rifle in their hands and hardened looks on their faces. It wasn’t just the teenagers wreaking havoc on abandoned cars, but adults stealing from the same people they sat next to at church just this morning.
A little over a week—that was how long it’d taken for society to break down. Eleven days for the lawless mob mentality to rule over human decency. The footage the commander now showed us was filled with scared people hurting and even killing each other. While the cold hadclaimed thousands of lives, we as humans claimed the others. Yet we considered ourselves the superior breed when we were far worse, far less humane than the four-legged animals. At least their drive was instinctual, while our motivations were based on greed.
At this point, I wasn’t sure I’d be surprised to find my pastor holding me at gunpoint in my own home for the meager food I had left. If only I’d had time to do some grocery shopping before all this happened, then I’d have something worth stealing.
I was grateful some things hadn’t changed, though. Even through the destruction of several electrical grids, many homes still had electricity. Oddly enough, our internet and phone lines still worked. Whether it was through the fae’s magic or something else, at least it allowed us to stay informed and in contact with each other.
By the time I reached the food bank, three police officers were already standing by the perimeter they’d set up the morning after the snow had started to fall to keep people from breaking into the store. The same morning they found the body of a dead man inside the store with the door unlocked and the troublesome refrigerator fallen on the floor.
A memory niggled at my brain, but if I was being honest, I was too scared to chase it down and find out the truth. Instead, I leaned on the lie Donnie so easily told and others believed.
I waved at Donnie, who, from a distance, waved back.
Collette stood by the barrier with a vacant look in her eyes. Victoria, her tiny daughter, tucked closely to her side, lifted a hand in greeting. I waved back at her but kept my attention on her mom.
“How are you doing, Ms. Morris?” I asked Collette.
She blinked back at me without replying, but Victoria peered up at me with her big green eyes filled with the same joy she had whenever she saw me. Her grin was sleepy as she held on to her mom’s leg.
I nodded a greeting to the others who waited for some miracle I wasn’t sure would arrive. They were the reason I showed up at the food bank even though Rita had told me to leave it alone. But I couldn’t desert the store and the people who needed it when today might be the day food came barreling in. Although unlikely, it was a possibility I couldn’t turn away from.
“You should go home,” Donnie said when I reached him. “No one has extra food, and if they did, do you really think they’d donate it?”
I quirked up a single brow. “Don’t you get all doomsday on me too. I had enough of that with your grandma at church this morning.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why do you think I demanded to be on shift today?”
I pursed my lips together in thought. “So you could come up with a solution for the pending doom of all creation?”
His lips didn’t bother twitching at my lame joke.
“Has Chief Fort said anything about the government sending someone to help?”
Although I asked the same question every few days, Donnie took his time to consider before he answered.
He inched his face closer to mine. “The commander’s taken over New York,” he whispered. “The government sent out a couple of thousand SWAT members to regain control.” He peered around to make sure no one could hear him. “From what I heard, it wasn’t much of a fight. Betweenhis dragon and fae warriors, they killed all the SWAT members within minutes.”
I hissed in a harsh breath that hurt my throat. “They killed over a thousand SWAT members?” I asked.
Donnie pinched his lips together and nodded.
“Are they going to send more?” I asked. “I mean, we have to fight, right? This is our home, not theirs.”
He straightened when a young couple, bundled up in several layers of clothes, walked past us. I smiled at them, watching them line up with the rest of the desperate crowd waiting by the food bank.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do,” Donnie whispered.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, hoping for some sort of rescue.
“Did you keep your fireplace running?” he asked, not so subtly changing the subject.
