Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 132491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
We get a lot of boars, birds and reptiles. Snakes are the easiest to identify. Some days we get a lot of fish, and other days, hardly any. I don’t think too hard about what some of the meat is, but Rona seems to enjoy pointing out the things she knows will make me cringe.
“Mmm, rat.” She holds it up and waggles her brows.
The carcass still has its tail attached, wiry hairs sprouting between the scaly rings. Eating rats is bad enough, but what’s worse is that Rona won’t discard the tail. Everything gets eaten here—even fish skin and eggs. And still, it’s not enough.
I hated training at first, but it’s become my favorite part of life at Rising Tide. When I’m running, rolling massive logs, swimming or sparring, it takes everything I’ve got just to get it done. I’m always exhausted, sore and hungry, but I can’t think about that during training.
Instead, I pretend my dad is beside me. I imagine what he would tell me to do and how he’d encourage me.
You don’t have to be the fastest or the strongest, Briar. If you want to be the best, it only takes one thing—never, ever quit.
He didn’t talk a lot about what he did in his Special Operations Marine Corps unit, but he did say he survived things he shouldn’t have many times.
Maven and I complained about him forcing us to read Jack London books in our early teen years, but when the virus came, I clung to those stories of survival and the human spirit. I still do.
“What we really need is some canned fish,” I say as I chop unidentified meat into small pieces.
Rona snort laughs. “Canned fish? If I could make any food appear before me, it would be a giant, juicy burger and fries.”
“I wouldn’t turn that down.”
She slices the tail from the rat carcass and deftly chops it. “Why canned fish? Aren’t fresh fish healthier?”
“Yes, but we need the sodium canned fish have.”
“I thought sodium was bad.”
I scoop up the pile of chopped meat in front of me and dump it into the big stainless pot. “Too much is bad, but humans need some sodium to survive.”
Billy makes it clear that if he catches the kitchen workers complaining about the food or our work, he’ll have us reassigned to laundry. I’ve seen the hands of the people who do laundry—they’re so raw from scrubbing that they bleed.
Telling Rona the diet here is nutrient deficient might be seen as complaining, so I don’t say anything else. And really, there’s no point mentioning it. I figured out a few days in that there’s not enough food to feed everyone here.
It’s a cruel paradox, being around food for eight hours a day, but preparing it for others. When Rona and I get a five-minute break to eat our first meal of the day, it’s two bite-sized chunks of smoked meat and a small sliver of hard, unripe papaya. At least it quells the dull ache in my stomach.
My limbs are heavy as we return to work, fatigue blanketing every inch of me. I don’t know how everyone else makes it look so easy to get by on maybe five hundred calories a day.
There are no walls in the food prep area we’re working in behind the kitchen, and I get a quick glimpse of a training group racing past us on the dirt path that runs through camp. It’s a group of fours, and I swear they’re running at a four-minute mile pace.
Not only are the fours surviving on very little food and not enough of a single nutrient, they’re thriving.
I finish my meal in about a minute, and instead of sitting with Rona, I take my bowl back into the kitchen and find Billy.
“What?” He glares at me, his brow furrowed with annoyance.
“I, uh...” I clear my throat and straighten my spine. “I was a botany major when the virus came. I’ve loved learning about plants and biology my whole life. I could help identify edible plants if...that would ever help.”
I’m waiting for him to bark out how stupid I am. That’s what he does to everyone. But I had to say something. I don’t think it’s a matter of ones getting shafted on meals. Everyone—even the fours—is too lean, muscles out of place on bodies with visible hip and collar bones. Pregnant women get double rations, but even that isn’t enough for them.
Billy sighs, his expression drooping with resignation. “We’ve been burned before. Had people die from some of the plants. The commanders don’t want to risk it. Get back to meat prep.”
I consider pressing it. Telling him I know how to identify plants and test them to see if they’re safe to eat. But it’s not his decision, so I drop it.
When I return to the meat prep area, Rona is already there, dumping a bucket of water into the cooking pot we filled about a third of the way full of meat. We’ll cook it in water to make a stew of sorts. The next kitchen shift will do the same with the pile of bones, organs and fish skin we left.