The Seeds of Time by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page B

time of year when the fledgling locusts could dine gourmet on the new sprouts of alfalfa, lettuce, and the remaining maple trees.
    “Piranhas,” Clio said to Hillis. She pointed up as he craned his neck to view them through the car window.
    “A small swarm,” he reported. And went back to doodling.
    Not so small
, Clio thought.
    Though this was merely spring, already dust lay thick, chalk-like, clouding behind their car and settling on the few remaining roadside grasses and stumpy trees. Once there had been great stands of spruce and Douglas fir along this highway, in cooler times, former times. Their wood had been salvaged long ago, despite all the protests, the outrage at the cutting down of trees. They had conservation and what they called recycling, and people rallied around causes, such as trees. Now people had other things on their minds. They wanted to survive, never mind the old green that could not hang on. They wanted to live. And let the Recon missions find other trees, better trees.
    It was a matter of surviving.
    To her left, Clio saw a small dog trotting across a field, and she thought,
Target
, and then in the next instant, the swarm descended on the animal so that his yellow fur turned black with piranha nymphs. He raced madly for the cover of trees a hundred meters beyond, but lasted only a fraction of that before crumpling to the ground. The car sped on, out of sight of the kicking animal, but Clio didn’t need to stick around to know the outcome.
    Hillis had been watching too. “Birds, especially sparrows, were their natural predators. Ask yourself where all the birds have gone.”
    Clio sighed. “Tell me, Hill, where have all the birds gone?”
    He had put down his pencil, and was staring out the window. Softly, he answered: “Gone to graveyards, every one.”
    They had been running across the field, so hard their lungs seared with pain, and they stopped, bent over, and gasped for breath. Petya was crying, in great quiet sobs. He knew enough not to cry out loud. Clio stood up and looked back. She should never have looked back. The farmhouse was blazing with light, the only light for miles, making it look like the last place left on Earth. Where Mom and Elsie were. And she started walking back, and Petya followed, though he was scared, for they always stayed together
.
    When they got close enough to hear the screams from the house, they stopped and lay in the grass, holding each other. And Petya covered his ears when he heard it, but Clio just lay frozen in place and stared at the kitchen windows, where shadows passed now and then
.
    Clio told Petya to stay still, and she made her way to the front of the house, where the DSDE van was parked, to see how many there were. Only one van. And no one outside at all. But then she heard the noise behind her and it was too late, a man stood there, and he had a gun, a strange-looking gun with a thick barrel and loops of wires, with light glinting off it from the front porch light. But the man himself was all darkness, a shadow against the darker
night, and he said, “Now what you want to be lying out here in the dirt for, girl?” And he told her to get up, but her legs were so weak with fear that she couldn’t move, and so he reached down and yanked her up. Then something crashed down on his head, in a bone-bruising slap, and he toppled. He was a heavy man, and his falling registered loudly. He was groaning, and there stood Petya with a shovel raised up to strike him again
.
    But the man lunged at Petya’s ankles, and they both fell backward, leaving the gun lying next to Clio. She picked it up and walked over to where he was holding Petya down and aimed it at his head. She pressed the trigger button, and though there was no sound, his head was gone, flying off into fragments of bone and blood
.
    On the outskirts of the transition farm, they came upon a small town announced by a sign reading, NEW HOBART, “CLEAN AND GREEN,” POP 3388.
    Zee said,