Larry checked the clock on the wall of his office. 12:17 PM. He lowered his head to his clasped hands on his desk. He could feel the vibrations the desk was having due to his bouncing leg, and his lip was burning from how much he’s been chewing on it.
The train was over 4 hours late.
This was something that hadn’t happened before. Sure, sometimes it was 2 hours late, and twice it was 3 hours late, but 4?! That has never happened in his 18-year-long career of managing this station.
He tried an hour ago to call up headquarters in East City, but he just got a dead tone. The phone lines followed the train tracks because of the dangers that lurked in the wilderness. Giant lizards, bandits, and who-knows-what existed there. The tracks were built tough and could handle being run on for 20 years before anyone needed to replace or repair it. In fact, the company that owned this particular rail line replaced the entire thing 2 years ago!
Anyways, if the phone line is down straight to East City, that means something happened to the tracks. He didn’t know what happened, or if anyone was hurt. He probably wouldn’t know until reporters put it into the daily newspaper.
So, with all of that explained, why was Larry here and just waiting? Simple, really. Larry had no idea what to do in this situation.
Company policy had him call the stations that led to the nearest train hub, which was East City, to understand what had happened and report it to all other stations that he could call. However, Maya Village was one of the farthest places away from any major city. It was also close to a dead end on the line, so he only had to call three stations to tell them what he knew.
“The train hasn’t come. The phone line to East City has been cut. The closest station to me, Smoothie station in Smoothie village near Mount Chill, has also been cut. I can only assume that I am the closest to the cut line. No, I don’t know what happened. No, I didn’t leave to go check where the line was cut. Yes, we have to assume that there won’t be a train coming until we hear news.”
That was all he could tell them. Something happened, he didn’t know what, and they could no longer get any food from the train. Larry told the same thing to the Mayor of Maya Village, and the mayor promptly freaked out. His freak-out led to Larry’s freak-out, and they yelled at each other for over 15 minutes until Larry just hung up on him.
Now, he is here. Sitting at his desk and wondering what he needs to do now. He had already completed the paperwork for the day, and he had nothing else left to do. As such, he just did what he always did when he was waiting for the train to arrive. He sat and tried to play solitaire with a real deck. Unfortunately, his nerves caused him to not focus on that.
So, here Larry sat worrying. He worried about what happened to the train and the line. He worried about what he was supposed to do with his job. He worried about how the town was supposed to get new food when the next harvest was over a month away.
He worried about what he was going to tell his family. About how they would take it. Would they panic? Would they despair? Would they hate him for the news he’ll have to tell them?
Would he have to ration food in his house?
The train is what brought in almost all of the food variety. The nearby farms cultivated only cattle and rice. This meant meat, milk, and rice for the next who-knows-how-long. Plus, they only harvested their crops in a month from today. That meant the food in the pantry and the general store were the only food they’ll have for a while.
Larry sighed out a panicking groan. Yes, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed right. He’ll have to ration the entire family of food. They’ll have to go and get as much canned food from the general store as their emergency funds could provide. Rice was also insanely cheap here due to the nearby rice farms. They could outlast this new disaster.
As Larry picked up his phone from the rack it rested on his desk and pushed in the number for his family home, he paused. A quick thought passed his mind as he thought up how much each person will need to eat each day.
This thought made him feel scummy, and guilty of how ungrateful he was to the young man who was helping the family. He pushed the thought away and focused on telling his wife what happened and what to do now.
However, as he was talking to Disi, the thought he believed he got rid of just settled in the back of his mind. It nestled there, and waited for the day he would pick it back up again.
‘What if I kicked out Jack? Then there would be one less person to ration food with. My family could live without worrying about how long the food will last.’
Line Break Here
Disi hung up the phone onto the wall. She looked at the kitchen around her and began to think about what her husband told her.
“The train isn’t coming. Maybe not for a long time. Please, go and get as much canned food as you can get. We need to start rationing.”
It wasn’t that short of a conversation, but it was the gist of what he told her to do. Disi began to look through the pantry and cupboards. She categorized and counted what they had. After she did this, she went to her jewelry box and opened it up. She took out all of her jewelry and pressed a specific part inside. After feeling the area give a little, she turned it upside down and shook it until the bottom fell out, alongside a card.
She picked it up and looked at the note labeled on it. It wasn’t very flattering.
“This is for emergencies only! That means no using this, kids. If you do, I’ll send you to the military boarding school! That includes you, Merci. - Mom”
She took the note off and made sure that it wasn’t expired. It was three months away from expiring. That was good. Hopefully she didn’t have to use this at the store, but you never know.
Her hands put the credit card that she got into her purse and began to pull out her drawers full of her underwear. After dumping the underwear on the bed and cursing the fact that she’ll need to make them again when she comes back from her shopping, she fully took out the drawers and flipped it to get to what she was looking for.
Their emergency funds of 500,000 Zeni. This was enough to buy an entire car, or even a plot of land that was 10 acres big. It took Larry 5 years to build up this fund, and now it was almost certainly going to be destroyed in an afternoon. Either way, she picked them up, stuffed them into her purse, and went outside in the backyard to get the last thing she’ll need for her shopping.
She headed straight for the shed, opened it, and rolled out the wheelbarrow from inside. She checked the wristwatch that Larry gave her as a present on their honey-moon. 12:38 PM. She quickened her gait as she headed to the general store just ten minutes down the street by foot.
While the husband and wife did have a car, Larry used it to get to his work at the station on the other side of the village. The general store, though, was situated as close to the densest residential areas it could get to, including the very small suburbs that the Munchkins family lived in. This made it so families could just walk there in ten minutes or less.
Disi didn’t walk, she moved as fast as she could to get to the general store. With the wheelbarrow slowing her down, she managed to get there in 7 minutes compared to the 10 minute walk it usually was.
The front door was wide enough that she could wheel in her obvious gardening equipment. The owner, old Mrs. Dime, was quite surprised to see this.
“My! Why are you bringing that thing in? I may be a general store, but I still don’t deal with gardening-” Mrs. Dime stopped short when she saw how panicked Disi was. “What’s wrong Disi? You look like that one time when your husband broke his arm.” She gasped and held her hand over her mouth. “Wait, don’t tell me something happened to him? I-” Disi interrupted her.
“No, ma’am, but you haven’t heard?” Mrs. Dime had a questioning look on her face as she shook her head. Disi continued, “My husband told me that something happened to the rail line. He thinks something happened that caused the train to be unable to reach us. Phone lines are down as well from here to East City.”
Mrs. Dime held her hands up to her chest in shock. “The train’s not coming?” Disi nodded her head and said, “That’s right, which is why I need as many cans of food as I can get. Preferably fruit and vegetables, if you have them.” Disi gestured to the wheelbarrow. “That’s why I brought this. If you can, please put them in here. I’ll come help.” Mrs. Dime just gently nodded and raised the bar that allows her to come to the back.
Ah, perhaps I, the author, haven’t told you what the general store is like. You see, this general store is very old. Mrs. Dime made it over 40 years ago, and mans it to this very day. This is a very old-school store where the customer comes up and asks for food, and the cashier either picks it up from the display around them, or they go into the back of the store to get it for you. This allowed the store to be very small up front with a large storage area out back.
Anyways, back to the story. Disi and Mrs. Dime headed into the back, where Mrs. Dime started to worry and ask Disi questions. Unfortunately for Mrs. Dime, Disi didn’t have the answers she wished for. Disi knew just as much about what happened as her husband, which is little. In the end, though, she got 50 cans of various types of food, some bags of flour, and three cases of 24 bottles of water. She would’ve gotten more, but Mrs. Dime forbids that since other families will also need food.
As they returned to the front where Mrs. Dime was counting up the total, Disi looked down at her emergency funds that she brought. 500,000 Zeni in cash, yet she would be paying a lot less today than she thought. “That’ll be 123,456 Zeni, Disi.” She snapped out of her introspection and looked up at Mrs. Dime.
“Do you have change?” She asked the old lady, handing over 13 10,000 Zeni bills. Mrs. Dime almost responded to the question before stopping herself. She then tilted her head in thought before taking only 10 of the bills and giving back the other 3. “Keep them,” Mrs. Dime told Disi. She then shooed away Disi’s attempts to talk and give the three bills. “Oh, pish posh,” she casually said to her. “If you hadn’t told me about the train thing, I wouldn’t’ve stopped you from taking a lot of my stock.”
Disi reluctantly put the money away back into her purse. She felt very touched by this generosity. Mrs. Dime smiled at her and said, “Now, why don’t you go on back home and give your family a nice meal? This may be their last good one for a while.”
Disi returned the smile with one of her own and a nod. “Thank you, Mrs. Dime. If you ever need anything, call us. I know my husband won’t have any work to do until the next train. Maybe our new tenant, too. He’s very strong.” Mrs. Dime’s face then showed adoration as she clasped her hands together. Her eyes looking off into the distance, heartstruck. “I know.” She said in a wispy voice.
Disi rolled her eyes at the show. The old lady continued. “He’s very handsome. Did you know that he takes his shirt off whenever he sweats too much in the yard?” She cupped her face and closed her eyes. “Ooooh, if my hubby kept his body like that young man does, we would be doing the hanky panky every night!” Disi just shuffled in place with both unease and disgust.
Disgust because Mrs. Dime was acting all pervy, and she hated perverts. Probably why she put glue in Jack’s little ‘magazine’ he had stashed under the nightstand so long ago. She had to say, it definitely worked wonders in stopping him from getting more.
She felt unease because Mrs. Dime was her elder, and she was taught while growing up to respect your elders. She didn’t know if she should admonish her or just ignore her.
In the end, she ignored what the pervy old woman said and just thanked her once more before leaving her to her… ‘fantasies.’
Once she brought the groceries home, she stashed it all in their pantry and some cupboards.
Then, something she hasn’t seen or heard before happened. An alarm sounding somewhere out on the street. With it came an announcement. “All residents of Maya Village, please head to the town square. All residents of Maya Village, please head to the town square. An important announcement is being made. An important announcement is being made. Participation is mandatory, except for school children. Participation is mandatory, except for school children.”
Those lines then repeated as the alarm sounded like it was leaving. She looked outside to see the only sheriff car in the village passing by with its lights on. Disi looked at the clock, and saw that it was 2:30 PM. She hurried up and made herself look as nice as possible before running out and towards the town square.
It looks like the news was about to be spread.
Line Break Here
Irah peered toward the town square from the school’s rooftop. The two places weren’t far from each other, maybe a few hundred meters apart, with buildings in between. Unfortunately for him, one building was juuuuust high enough that it blocked what was happening on the ground of the town square from his perspective.
Only his perspective.
“What’s happening?” Irah asked his buddy beside him. Smoak was a pretty cool Senior. He only ever saw Smoak when they were on the roof together, skipping class. Irah didn’t see his other pals Emba and Heet up here, so they probably couldn’t get away in time. Also, all three of them were taller than Irah, which made him mad as Heet was the same age as him. ‘Why’d I have to get the family’s genes for being short!’
Smoak took a long drag from his illegally begotten cigarette (man, he’s so cool!) before saying, “It looks like a lot of people are standing in front of town hall.” Irah waited for him to continue, before realizing that Smoak wasn’t gonna say anything else. He bumped Smoak with his elbow, who took it with a grunt, and tsked. “Come on! Quit being an ass and tell me. I can’t see anything.”
Smoak was rubbing his hip from where Irah hit him. He responded with aggravation in his voice. “Fuck sakes, man. Don’t do that. Mmmm… I don’t know what’s going on, shortie, but I think I see the mayor in front of everyone. I don’t know.” He used Irah’s head as a leaning post and took a long drag. “I just can’t tell what’s happening. They all look like ants from up here.”
Irah, now getting very annoyed, swung his arms above him and jumped, causing Smoak to back off. He yelled in indignation, “Would you quit it with the whole leaning thing!? I get it, I’m short. Doesn’t mean you gotta be an asshole.” Smoak backed off with a satisfied smirk. “I didn’t do it because you were short.” He took another drag. “I did it cause you were a freshie.”
Irah turned away and crossed his arms, “Fuck off, Smoak. One day, you’re gonna be shorter than someone, and you’ll be the post.” Maybe he could get Jack to come and do it, he’s a little bit taller than Smoak. Maybe even tall enough to do it casually.
Smoak chuckled. “Whatever you say, freshie. Gotta say though, your fight with Nickel was pretty sweet. Where’d you learn to do something like that?” Irah looked back, smirked and thumbed his face. “I fight someone way stronger than Nickel, that’s how. I beat him, too.”
Irah was referring to his ‘playfights’ with Jack. After that whole ‘someone stole my money’ bit with him, they were a lot better with each other. Sometimes Jack would do a chore or two for Irah, and Irah would use his allowance to buy good food for Jack. They would even hang out from time-to-time. However, there was an incident that led to the playfights.
Irah was just coming back from his first day of High School, and he didn’t have a very good day there. Everyone made fun of his height, called his name stupid, and he got pushed around a lot. He couldn’t make any friends at all, and it just all built up all day.
Then, as he passed by Jack on the way into the house, he heard Jack say something to him. He didn’t know what because he was stuck in his head fuming, but he did think he heard Jack say “shortie”, and he had enough.
Irah, with all of his rage, spun around and lashed out at Jack’s abdomen with as strong a punch as he could. Irah’s fingers throbbed as he hit what felt like a wall of hard rubber. The pain snapped him out of his anger spiral as he held his hand before shaking off the pain.
“Geez, man. You had a bad day, huh?” He heard Jack say. He looked up at Jack’s sympathetic face. He grit his teeth. “Shut up!” Irah yelled and turned around, heading to his and his brother’s shared room. “Wow, must’ve been a really bad day.” Irah felt a hand on his shoulder. “But,” Jack continued as Irah felt that same hand spin him around. The next thing he knew, a fist was in his stomach. “If you’re gonna punch someone, don’t turn your back because they won’t hit you.” Jack finished.
Irah crumbled to the ground, breathing heavily. He whimpered, and Jack started to panic. “W-Wait. Come on Irah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would’ve hit you that hard. B-But, really, you shouldn’t be trying to hit people in the first place.” Jack seemed to mumble the next part to himself. “Ooh, I hope Disi doesn’t get mad at me.”
Irah couldn’t take it anymore. All the grief he caught today, and he went down in one punch. He was truly pathetic. Especially as the dam burst within him and tears of frustration ran down his face. He sobbed, and tried hard not to sob further. A man shouldn’t be crying like this.
Jack, meanwhile, was panicking even harder at what he saw. “Oh, no. Oh, crap. Oh, fiddlesticks. Oooooh…” He picked up the kid and held him like Irah was standing on his own, even though his legs were limp. “Come on. Don’t cry. If you do, your Mom might just kick me out.” Irah then saw blackness as he felt his face, and the rest of his torso, get squished as Jack hugged him tight to his body.
“M-Maybe if it looks like both of us are crying, she won’t get mad at me.” Irah felt Jack’s leg shuffle as it was trying to step on his other foot. “Ow, ow. Come on, cry, crrrryyy.” Jack stopped. “This isn’t working.” Irah was held out again. His cries and sobs were already fading as Jack did his impromptu comedy routine. Now that he was held back out, they were almost gone.
“At least that seemed to work.” Jack gave a sheepish smile. “Look, Irah, I’m sorry for doing this to you. Please don’t tell your mother.” Irah sniffed hard as he felt snot about to run out. Jack’s face lost its sheepishness as he went back to concern. “Anyways, what’s up, champ? I know you’re tough, but today must’ve been especially awful. Come on, tell me what happened.”
Irah, for some reason, spilled his guts out on how that day went. He even talked about how one kid, Nickel, tried to goad him into a fight. Irah resisted, but he felt like Nickel wasn’t going to let him get away so easily next time.
Jack listened to all of this. Asking questions every time Irah caught his breath. Then, after all of that, Jack made a suggestion. “How about you fight with me? If that Nickel isn’t gonna let you go, then it would be best to prepare, right?”
Irah agreed, and every day he and Jack fought each other. It’s been almost a month since then, and today showed how far those lessons went. Jack wasn’t really a professional boxer, or even had any training in any martial art, but he knew how to punch, how to kick, and how to stay on his feet.
Irah and Jack actually had pretty even win rates for the early part, but Jack seems to be getting better since Irah couldn’t hit him now. At least, not a good hit.
Today, Nickel fought him outside during lunch. While it wasn’t easy, Irah managed to beat him via knockout uppercut. A lot of students managed to see this happening and slowed the teachers enough that Irah could win his fight and slip out unnoticed. After he went to history class, he saw the principal trying to find him with Nickel by his side. At least, that’s what he assumed since they were talking to a kid that Irah vaguely remembers seeing near the fight.
After seeing this, Irah turned and ran to the rooftops. There he sat until he heard the alarm and announcement. Which led to Smoak coming up, and ended up here.
Smoak scoffed at what Irah said. “Please, a pipsqueak like you managing to beat someone stronger than Nickel? I’ve heard better lies from cheaters caught in the act.” Irah felt his blood pressure rise in anger. Yet, he kept his lid shut. You see, Nickel was one of the biggest kids in school. So big, that he looked like he was 26 rather than the 16 year old he is.
Yet, when Irah punched Nickel’s abs, they felt more like tense gelatin than the hard rubber that Jack was. It really made Irah wonder how Jack managed to do it.
Steroids, perhaps? He couldn’t find any in Jack’s room when he was trying to find something to mess with him. Yet, how can someone be so strong without it?
Irah was snapped out of his thoughts as Smoak snorted. “Yeah, I thought not.” Smoak was about to say more, but then they both heard the bell for school ring. “Looks like you got saved by the bell. Anyways, you can show me your ‘stronger’ friend later. I gotta get some more smokes from my friend.” He turned to the stairwell and walked down it, one hand held up to signal his goodbye. “Later, shortie.”
Irah fumed once more at the name, but calmed down quickly and started to run past Smoak. A “woah!” was heard as he ran past Smoak and continued to run as fast as he could. He flew past classmates, seniors, and teachers as he ran straight for the front doors. He dodged and weaved past a small group of kids and made it outside after running past the principal, who shouted at him to slow down, not getting a good look at him.
As Irah made it outside, he headed towards the middle and elementary schools nearby that were also pouring out with students. He stood still and looked around for his siblings before finding them together on an open field. He ran over to them and guided them home. All the while, he told them the tale of how he beat one of the biggest kids in Highschool all by himself.
The three siblings had a nice walk back home, filled with hope for the future. Unfortunately, the sight that they found at home caused them to worry.
Dad was home very early, something he’s never done before. His head in his hands from despair and anguish.
“Kids,” He said as he straightened his back, “I’m afraid some things need to change around here.”