Chapter 27
Of Past, Through Present, to Future
Ronald didn't stand out in the crowd of people that began to stream from the apartment blocks into the several commercial plazas of the city. While the security of the city was fairly tight, it wasn't 1984 quite yet, it appeared. Though he still wore a hat and made sure to angle his face away from all obvious security cameras, having spent the entire morning bustling about, no military uniform approached him or even so much as took a second look at him.
It wasn't strange; Ronald, after all, did grow up in the city and looked the part, both in appearance and behaviour. He knew all the streets and alleyways and the pitfalls to avoid, and when told by an elderly couple where he could get daily rations, didn't wait for the crowd to follow but simply left ahead.
From what Tara had learned, though there was still the principle of 'daily rations' being distributed, the city had, in large part, begun self-regulating. Shops were starting to open up, salons, malls, and even corner kiosks–though the damage done was irreversible and it would never truly recover to its peak, any level of self-regulating was better than depending entirely on the government assistance, especially as the government was stretched thin across the entire country.
This was both good and bad news for the two–good because it meant they wouldn't necessarily have to sneak into a military-occupied building to steal supplies, but also bad because it meant there wasn't a centralised place where everything was held. Another issue was that the ordinary shops likely sold out of canned foods as soon as they offered them as an item which left only short-living foods on the offer, the kind that, while helpful, weren't exactly what the two of them were looking for.
Though Ethan didn't exactly provide a specific list of things to bring, for self-sufficient living in the woods within any capacity, bringing frozen meat was out of the question. Then again, if they could store whole freezers in the inventory… maybe not. In that case, though, they'd also have to steal an extra few generators, not to mention lumber required to build a wholly separate addition to the lodge to store everything. Logistically, it was a bit of a nightmare, living in the woods when it wasn't easy to have access to food elsewhere.
It wasn't as though they could plant food in the garden and grow it–the terrain was rough and roots of the trees were everywhere, and neither Tara nor Ronald (and undoubtedly Ethan, too) had an inkling of how to 'work the land', so to say. Additionally, all seeds were likely confiscated by the government as food scarcity was likely the number one fear and arable lands, in addition to seeds, were a must-have necessity at this point.
He and Tara met up at a local food court where they both got breakfast made up of a single slice of bread, two scrambled eggs per person, and half a glass of orange juice. They found a quiet, semi-isolated corner in the rear of the building, an almost private booth, and sat down, quietly discussing.
"What'd you find out?" Tara asked.
"Alright," Ronald said. "There are six wholesale shops within six blocks of your apartment building. Taking stock, they didn't have a lot to offer–some vegetables, fruit, basic snacks, and mostly bottled water. However, I noticed that one shop had an entire shelf of grains. What about you?"
"I have inquired about water purification since Ethan didn't bring any," Tara said. "And found that there's a shop that rents them out on a monthly basis. We can secure it there. I'm pretty sure it's a pump since it's for rent, so that'll work out perfectly. We can just steal a few canisters for collection."
"So, I'll focus on the foods and you focus on other things. I've also noticed a few shops selling honey, though in limited amounts, so I'm not sure how much will I luck out when I break in."
"Also look for species. We've started running out of them. Coffee and tea, too, if you can. Especially tea. That bitch has a long shelf life."
"Alright. I'll load up my inventory with food and water, so I probably won't have any room left for tools. I didn't see any place selling generators, though. I'm pretty sure they were all taken by the military."
"Undoubtedly," Tara shrugged. "I'll try to figure it out. The Jane girl seems pretty sympathetic to me. She might tell me."
"Also try to get a hold of a few more tools," he said. "We need more boots, especially with that kid aboard. Batteries, we also need a shovel, and some more winter clothes. If we stay there through the fall, temperatures will plummet. But since we have time, those can be at the backdrop."
"Did you realise that, if we had known about that part of the thing they call a wall, I wouldn't have had to walk through the front gates?"
"... maybe this has some advantages," Ronald said. "You can walk broadly through the city without worrying. You can ask questions without seeming too suspicious. And it's not a bad thing to have a clean backstory either."
"It'll all go up in flames once I leave, anyway," Tara shrugged. "My name and face will be fed directly into the database. That'll be it for me visiting the city for the foreseeable future."
"Just get lost in the system," Ronald said. "We still have a few days before our stats go down to dangerous levels."
"And how'd I get lost in the system in a few days, do tell?" Tara scoffed mockingly.
"Jenine," Ronald replied.
"... Jenine?" Tara arched her brows.
"If she's still alive," he added. "You can ask her to pretend to be you for a little while until things calm down."
"... you're joking, right?"
"The simple fact is that you'll soon be lost in the sea of masses," Ronald said. "So, for now, establish a basic routine: every morning you go to the food court, spend a few hours looking for a job, go back to the food court, roam about the city, and go back to the apartment. You can look for her this way. If you find her, just pay her."
"You want me to put my fate into the hands of fucking Jenine?"
"If she's still the same as I remember her being," Ronald said. "She'll do it for shits and giggles. You two look alike enough to pass off as one another in front of people who don't know you well. Especially with the excuse that your 'sickly' look is glowing up as you recover. If you want to get lost in the system, this is your best bet."
"... fuck. I hate that you're right," Tara sighed, shaking her head involuntarily. "But Jenine. I mean, my God."
"Hey, chances are she's either dead or lost somewhere. Who knows if you'll even find her? We're probably gonna boot from this city and your identity will be compromised. Then you can spend the rest of your life babysitting Layla while I go off on exciting city adventures."
"Ha ha. Bite me."
"That's still secondary, though," Ronald said. "For today, just look for the places where you can sneak in later tonight with the biggest bounties."
"Yeah, I know," she nodded. "You're really rolling along like a well-oiled post-apocalyptic redneck shitting out orders, huh?"
"I'm trying a new thing," he chuckled sheepishly.
"... I don't like it. It sounds wrong."
"Ha ha. Bite me."
"See? When I say it, it sounds right. When you say it… well, just don't say it."
"And to think I considered asking you out back in college," he sighed.
"Wait, really?" she looked at him oddly.
"... no?" he looked back at her equally oddly. "Remember: I saw you once a week for like thirty minutes."
"That's a shame. I had a huge crush on you, you know?"
"..."
"..."
"That's not cool."
"What?" she asked, smiling.
"It's one thing for a guy to fuck around with that," he said. "But for a girl, it's just cruel."
"Oh, wow. Talk about double standards."
"Yeah, yeah, it's double standards, it's sexist, it's wrong, I don't care. It's cruel. So, so, so fucking cruel," he mumbled, standing up. "Guys live for the words 'hey hot stuff, I got a crush on you'. And we never get them."
"Because no woman of right mind would ever string those words in that order in a sentence ever in the history of everything?"
"Yeah, maybe. But they should, dammit. They should."
"... just go away."
"Tomorrow, here, same time?" he asked.
"Yeah. Be careful."
"You too."
"Good luck, hot stuff."
"... so, so, so fucking cruel."
Tara laughed lightly as he walked away, finishing off her 'breakfast' and slowly leaving herself. Jenine, she had… mixed feelings about the girl in question. On one hand, there was envy–Jenine, after all, was the star of the show. Beautiful, fit, rich, and in want by all. Though Tara hardly envied that last part, it was the fit and the rich part that she always felt jealous over. On the other, though, there was pity. Jenine was a genuinely smart girl, one of the smartest in her year, but was almost never taken seriously. She was a wallpaper for the others, and wallpapers weren't supposed to speak.
The two interacted occasionally, though never to the extent of becoming more than just college acquaintances. But Ronald was right in that she would likely do it just for 'shits and giggles'. It was her motto, of sorts–reality is supposed to be better than fiction. It was… hard to explain Jenine, to condense her into a fitting description of a person. In some ways, she was like Ethan–one had to live and experience them to fully understand the scope of who they were as people. No description ever truly did them justice and gaps in what one 'heard about them' and what one experienced were often vast.
She sighed; a part of her didn't want to encounter Jenine, but a part of her did. She didn't want her identity stained and redmarked for the future, however obsolete it may become. It was her history, a part of her identity, her whole past self–the backdrop to the story that was present Tara. As it goes: life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.