When Hunger Stalks

The big green killing machine.

The afternoon wore on and more and more people drifted in, to take their place at the end of the line. Pretty soon, the tension started to build. Mac could see them doing the calculation as the line shuffled forward. Would there be any rice left for them by the time their turn came? As the numbers swelled, he knew the answer to that one and so did they.

He could hear the voices starting to be raised as the fights broke out in the distance and could see the back of the line starting to splinter and disintegrate, as people fought each other to get nearer to the front. The end of what used to be a line, became a growing black triangle moving inexorably in their direction. The wave of desperation was coming towards them like a burning fuse. People nearer the front turned to look back over their shoulder to see what was going on.

He watched it developing for a few moments before making up his mind. Mac casually unslung the weapon from around his shoulder and seemed to be idly fiddling with it but he was really just getting it into his hands, flicking the safety off and turning the fire selector over to fully automatic – putting it on crowd control. Rock and roll mode.

He leaned over and spoke quietly into her ear. ‘We’re out of here. Just stand up quietly and walk to the trucks. Don’t run.’ She didn’t understand, turning to look at him quizzically. He repeated it in German, a language he knew she was far more comfortable with than English. She didn’t appear to understand and went back to processing the next one.

He squeezed her shoulder just hard enough to hurt her, to feel her bones, to get her attention and hissed ‘We have to get out of here.’ She was a lovely kid but simply didn’t have the awareness to see what was happening right in front of her. He grabbed her upper arm firmly and dragged her forcibly to her feet.

Just get up girl. She finally saw the riot exploding towards them but reacted by going into shock, stiffening up and refusing to do anything. She fell over but he needed one hand on the gun, so he grabbed at whatever he could get at, which was her hair and dragged her along. Come on girl, help me fucking out here. Get up, kick your legs or at least get angry. Come on, come on. He shouted and pleaded at her as he tried to get her upright and moving.

And the girl winds up ripped to shreds and partially eaten by the hungry.

About the aid workers (and the girl):

It’s not that they’re stupid or ignorant, it’s just that they’re in that middle channel between both those faults, and won’t get out of it. They simply have no idea what desperation can do to people. As the one person in the room who didn’t have their thumb up their arse in terms of organizing a “rescue” mission, he started putting it together. He was tired, exhausted but he knew he’d do it. One more whack, once more into the breach, one more carry for the Gipper, but this is definitely the last hop with these people, with any people. It’s going to be Mac by himself from now on.

They got back there, and this time around, Mac got as many guns as he wanted, carried by as many bodies as they could scrape together and put out into the field. No swinging dicks carrying lots of firepower, no rescue mission. They arrived in force. Of course, by the time they got back there, everyone had run away. It’s natural, nobody wants to be punished, whether they did anything or not.

No Siree Bob, there are no survivors. They started humping what’s left of the bits of them up onto the trucks. There’s a man and he’s talking at Mac. At a guess, Mac thinks he’s Swedish from the cadence and speaks their usual excellent but stilted English. His mouth is going at a rate of knots but his eyes look at Mac desperately. He still wants to believe in his comfort blanket fantasy of some innate third world superior decency. You know, that usual bollocks about the ennobling effect of grinding poverty and the delusion of calmly accepting death by something as brutal as slow starvation, without ever kicking back. Oh to live in his lovely little world.

Most people do not go gladly into that good night; they fight tooth and nail every darn inch of the way. He’s learning what hunger and desperation can really do to ordinary human beings. Both of those things are probably outlawed in Sweden. It’s such a wonderfully civilised country.

I have been hungry like that. It turns the brain to murder. Casual murder. I resisted the impulse. But I learned something. Civilization depends on regular eats. And regular eats these days depends on energy.

God help us (no he won’t) if regular hunger comes to America.

I suggest reading the article from the beginning. Esp. about the Danish girl torn to bits by a hungry mob.

Link from the comments at Watts Up With That

Related: An interesting Ag Report