Chapter 4

Alex stepped out of the truck rig and tossed up three MRE packages to the driver. The trucker nodded, and the rig jolted forward as the trucker shifted gears. A cloud of black smoke flew up into the air and disappeared down the road.

Topeka was just ahead of him, and surrounding the edges of the city were the steel death traps of farm camps. The sentries in charge of running them worked the people inside eighteen hours a day, and sometimes they went days without offering the workers food or water. The only amenity of civilization they offered was a latrine used by the workers for their unfortunate bodily functions.

Meeko was in one of those boxes, slowly wasting away, being whipped if he was working too slowly. The farm camps were full of kids like him. Orphans with no parents. They were easy pickings, and when they dropped dead from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration, they were easily disposed of.

Alex followed the road until it ran right past the city hall where the Soil Coalition headquarters resided. Alex remembered first hearing about the Coalition almost a year ago. It had an allure and a name the citizens of the country could rally behind. It was the perfect propaganda to give the government enough time to organize the remainder of their resources and recruit what bright minds and strong muscles remained of everyone else.

The Soil Coalition emitted a false sense of hope, one that people still clung to till this day. The early messages of returning to prosperity and bringing peace and rest to a torn country were words everyone wanted to hear. But as Alex looked at the sentries with assault rifles lining the steps of their headquarters, peace seemed to be the lowest objective on their totem pole.

Unlike the corrupt sentries at Junction City, the sentries that Alex would be searched by here shared the same mechanical efficiency of the sentries in his own community. Once his pack was handed over to them, he braced himself for when they found the seeds. The sentry who pulled them out flipped them over in his hand a few times.

“What are these?” the sentry asked.

The sentry had a wide face, almost as if someone pushed the front and back of his skull together, and that turned his head into more of an oval.

“Seeds,” Alex answered.

“What?”

“They’re seeds, dumbass.”

Alex wasn’t sure if it was his salty language or the fact that he was in possession of unregistered seeds that caused the bum rush of sentries slamming his face onto the hard city hall tile, but regardless of the reason it still hurt.

The bash to the side of his face didn’t help the still-present head pain from last night. He could feel the side of his face swelling, and the addition of his wrists being handcuffed only furthered his discomfort.

Once Gordon heard that someone had seeds and discovered exactly who it was, Alex knew he’d get the audience he desired. He just hoped his bargaining chips were worth the freedom of two farm workers.