Both Martha and Tom had carried rope on their backs and they tied a long length of it securely to what looked like a fairly sturdy part of the metal framework of the skylight. Slowly the four of them lowered themselves to the floor of the warehouse. The building looked deserted.
They were surrounded by sky high shelves and shelves of canned and dry goods.
“I think they keep the produce and refrigerated stuff in the back,” Martha said.
Harry looked around. “Let’s see if we can find our way out of this maze.”
“Yeah,” said Tom. “Let’s liberate some vegetables!”
They had gotten two aisles down when they heard a noise behind them.
“Stop,” said the cop.
The new police chief was standing there flanked by two younger cops. They all had their weapons drawn.
The new top cop had been hired from out of town because of his reputation for order and efficiency. It turned out he was a grim martinet, not particularly liked by the population at large or even the other officers.
Martha recognized the two cops beside him, Tim and Rick. While she didn’t know them well, they had grown up in the neighborhood and had probably gotten jobs with the police because they were some of the few jobs left. She figured they probably weren’t very happy as cops.
“Well,” Tom said. “It was worth a try.”
Harry grimaced. “We knew that there might be informers.”
“Alright,” the police chief said. “Quiet down and march to the door. And don’t try anything foolish. When we get to the entrance I’m going to call for a transport van to bring you in.”
“Chief,” Tim said, a bit nervously.
“What?” he replied, irritably.
“You should pay attention to where our guns are pointed.”
He spun around only to see that their weapons were trained on him.
Before he could do anything else, Jake and Harry had grabbed him and Martha was tying his hands behind his back.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Tim said.
Rick let out a short laugh. “I’ve been wanting to do this since he arrived.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” he screamed. “I’ll have you all arrested.”
“I think you’ll have a lot of people to arrest,” Martha said.
“I don’t think he’s going to get a lot of support with any of that,” Rick said. “I was listening to the radio just before I was called in and it sounded like there were break ins at food warehouses in both Portlands.”
“Both Portlands?” Harry said, sounding puzzled.
“Oregon and Maine,” Rick replied. “And they were also reporting food riots in dozens of cities. I think the government is going to have their hands full.”
“Alright,” Martha said. “Let’s get these people some food.”
In the following months the government slowly collapsed, but the city endured with the help of a lot of neighborhood organizing and many mutual aid networks. Intensive soil remediation and regenerative farming techniques had food growing by spring. The rationing center was turned into a food co-op and, although the former food warehouse was now lying empty, there was talk of using it to create a year round farmer’s market. Many of the parks had also been turned into community gardens.
And the New New Harmony Commune was in the midst of yet another meeting.
“Okay,” Tara said. “I think finally we’ve agreed to build a greenhouse in the back of the backyard.”
“But we’ll only grow vegetables there in the winter when they won’t grow outside,” Ginkgo declared, leaning forward like she was prepared to stand at any moment
Tara sighed. “You’ve already said that, twice, and it’s now part of the proposal we just agreed to. Can we move on?”
Before anything else could be said, most of the group were distracted by a commotion in the corner of the room. Gosling seemed to be attacking the five story structure that Dawn was building.
“Stop it!” Dawn yelled. “Gosling is wrecking the new food warehouse that I’m building.”
“No more food warehouses!” Pooka yelled. “Build something else.”
“Look at Gosling go,” Rabbit cried. “They’re a one baby demolition squad!”
“Maybe they’ve taken their role in helping liberate the vegetables seriously,” Plum said. “This could turn out to be a career for them.”
Of course it wasn’t. Instead, in twenty years, Gosling would be tracking and managing produce for a collective agricultural operation called, ironically, the Liberation Vegetable Farm.