***

Jake watched Sydney peel his fingers off the armrests after they landed. He’d thought the brainiac would go into shock and die before they even took off. Jake stepped out and took in the open land that stretched for miles. It was a far cry from the skyline of Philadelphia. He hadn’t seen a major city for almost nine months, but he didn’t miss it.

When everything first went to shit, the cities took the brunt of the blow. The supplies of food trucks shrank every day. First the daily deliveries stopped, then the trucks only showed up once a week, then every other week, and it wasn’t long after that the trucks were hijacked before they even made it into the city, and then the food trucks of relief supplies were replaced by men with guns.

Screams and gunshots seemed to be the only sounds the city offered after that. He remembered walking to a friend’s house three months after the first failed harvest when he heard a gunshot the next street over.

Once Jake made it to the connecting street, he saw a group of people crouched over something on the asphalt. They yanked and pulled at the object, taking greedy bloody handfuls of whatever they surrounded. A few of them turned to look at him when he passed by, but he kept his eyes forward. In his peripheral vision, he could see the limp hand of the person who had been shot.

When Jake showed up at his friend’s house, no one answered. He walked around back and let himself in. The power had been out for almost a week, so the heat blast that greeted him upon entering wasn’t surprising, but the smell of rotten meat that stung his nostrils was.

The living room wall was decorated with his friend’s brain matter. Flies swarmed around the bullet hole in his head. The used pistol rested in his lap. Jake didn’t even bother burying him. He grabbed the pistol, the holster he knew was kept in the closet, ammo, whatever food and water was left in the house, and then sprinted out of the city that festered with death.

The tech that Jake had flown with finally stepped out of the cabin, leaning to one side with his luggage weighing him down. Sydney waved his hand sheepishly.

“Um, Jake? Right?” Sydney asked.

“You plan on staying here?” Jake asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“The bags, Einstein. Why’d you bring so much baggage?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure how long we’d be staying.”

“Not long.”

“Oh, well, I was hoping you could help me with some of my equipment?”

Sydney gestured behind him to the other cases of luggage heaped in a pile by the plane’s belly. Jake turned his back to him and pinched his index and thumb together in his mouth and belted out a loud, sharp whistle. Two sentries immediately started their way.

“They’ll grab your shit. You really need all of that?” Jake asked.

“Well, to test any other soil samples we may find or specimens found, I want to make sure we have the necessary equi—”

Jake waved his hand, stopping Sydney from continuing. “Yeah, all that science shit. Right.”

If Sydney needed all of that equipment for just testing samples, then Jake couldn’t imagine the amount of equipment needed to turn the dead earth underneath the sole of his boots to a fertile substance. Whoever did it would need a large lab, one that couldn’t be mobile, so he made the assumption that whoever put that dirt on the ground in the middle of nowhere was still here. Now, all Jake had to do was find the prick.