The city howled with an icy wind. Two fig­ures hud­dled as they made their way along the cracked bitu­men. Being care­ful to step over the spots where green vibrant grass had pushed through.

The taller fig­ure, a man, walked with pur­pose. He knew where he was going. Sud­denly the smaller fig­ure, a young girl, broke off and ran to a vine cov­ered wall. She ran her hand over it and shot a con­fused look at the man.

“Why is the rock flat?”
The man laughed. “It’s con­crete.” The con­fused look remained. “Some­one made it.”
“Oh.”  She tugged at the green­ery, then went back to run­ning her hand over it.
“Come on.”

The man  picked her up and walked fur­ther along the street, they turned a cor­ner and it opened up on a court­yard. He dropped her on the ground and stared out over a thin, rusted rail­ing. He could see the grey ocean churn­ing in the dis­tance and he was lost in his head for a long time.

“Dad?” The lit­tle girl asked, ner­vously.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Where are all the peo­ple?”
“Long gone I think.”
“where’d they go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So we’re safe?”
“Yeah.”

He felt her small hand grip his tightly. She didn’t like being here at all.

“You want to go?”
She nod­ded yes.

They turned around and began head­ing back the way they came.

“Where are the ani­mals?”
“They’ve been gone even longer than the peo­ple.”
“So no cows?”
He laughed again. “No, honey. No cows.” He looked down at his daugh­ter. “You like cows, huh?”
“Yeah. Rory doesn’t like cows though. He’s says they’re dumb and they smell.”

They were pick­ing their way through the grassy patches near the edge of the city again. The girl lifted her arms up. The man grabbed them and threw her up onto his shoulders.

“I wouldn’t want to live in a place with­out cows.”
“Me nei­ther, kiddo. Me neither.”

The Gram­mar Cheat Sheet. I know a few peo­ple that should read this.

There was no time to waste.

As promised, Abdul had left the farm before dawn, but not before pass­ing on a warn­ing: They knew where he was and they were com­ing. “They” of course were the adults. Yakov called in the three old­est kids, plus Pietra. When he’d told them what Abdul had said they just stared at him. Then Pietra began to cry. Yakov hugged her tightly.

Why are they doing this?” She asked between snif­fles.
“They’re just hun­gry.”
“But so are we.”
“I know. Lis­ten to me. I want to you round up every­body around your age. Take them to the barn and lock it from the inside. Bar the door with any­thing you can find.
“But what about you? You can’t even walk!”
“No argu­ments, Pietra. Go!”

It looked like she was going to cry again, but she ran out of the house before Yakov could be sure. He turned to look at the other three.
“Help me.”
“We’re not fight­ers, Yakov,” said Evan.
“I know that, but we can’t let them take this away from us. We can’t go back.”
“Then what?” This was Sally.
“We’re going to have to learn how to fight. This place is too valu­able to lose.”

When he thought about it, it had been too easy. The escape from Kilda, the unevent­ful trip through the bad­lands, and then find­ing the farm laid out wait­ing for them. He wasn’t sur­prised karma had come to collect.

Yakov had clam­bered onto the roof of the farm­house for a bet­ter look. With his leg the way it was this was the best he could do for their group. Down below he made out pairs of kids hid­ing and wait­ing. Sun­light glinted off the pots and pans a few of them had scav­enged from the kitchen. Then some­thing else caught his eye. A black mass had begun to form at the top of the ridge. A lump caught in Yakov’s throat. There were too many of them.
Get ready!” He shouted. He heard a few sobs in response. The mass was get­ting closer now and sep­a­rat­ing into indi­vid­ual fig­ures. At the front of the group he recog­nised his father.

One of the adults threw a rock through the win­dow and then it was on. The adults swarmed over the farm tram­pling the newly sown crops. A group of kids ran out and tack­led those clos­est to them. Once the other adults saw the pot dan­gling from Sean’s hand they pounced like wild ani­mals, scream­ing “We’re hun­gry. You have to feed us.”

Other kids ran out from their hid­ing places swing­ing in wide arcs in an attempt to ward off the rav­en­ous horde. Yakov saw the car­nage below and braced him­self on the win­dow sill.
“Stop it! Stop it all of you!” Hans pulled a woman off the still body of Sean and stared at Yakov through sad eyes.
“Oh no,” she cried, “What have I done.”
The kids quickly formed a wall between the adults and Sean.
“Get out of here. Just go.”

They trekked for days through the burnt detri­tus that encir­cled their for­mer home. Rain poured down from the dark grey sky soak­ing each child through to the bone. Morale was low and more than once mem­bers of their lit­tle band had given up and turned back.

They fur­ther they went the less inclined they were to idle chat­ter. Yakov could sense a full scale mutiny approach­ing if they didn’t find Eden soon, but the con­stant rain was mak­ing it hard for him to get his bearings.

It was only through sheer luck that, early one evening, he found a path through the black­ened land­scape to the green-hilled utopia beyond. He grabbed Pietra and gave a loud whoop. The chil­dren rolled out onto the sod­den grass laugh­ing and cheer­ing. Pietra watched them for a moment then turned to Yakov.
“Where’s the farm, Yakov?” He scanned the unfa­mil­iar hori­zon, pointed in an arbi­trary direc­tion and replied, “Umm…that way.”

The group marched all night through the wet grass. With­out cover Yakov didn’t want to risk them stay­ing out in the open exposed to any­thing. And any­one. As morn­ing broke they crested a small rise and looked out on to acres of graded land and beyond that: a large farm­stead.
“Wow,” gasped Evan, the brother of Yakov’s pre­vi­ous trav­el­ling com­pan­ion.
“Race you!” shouted another as he took off down the slope. The other kids launched them­selves down the hill towards the farm­house. Yakov stood watch­ing them all until his sis­ter tugged at his arm and said “Come on, Yakov. You don’t want to be the rot­ten egg!”  He laughed and raced her down. Care­ful to let her pull ahead and win at just the right moment.

*****

Yakov and a few of the oth­ers spent the whole morn­ing doing an inven­tory of the farm. The pre­vi­ous own­ers had left the place in rel­a­tively good con­di­tion, but they’d taken almost all the food. In a crawl­space — so small that only the youngest boy could fit — they found a stash of alu­minium cans, the labels long since faded; a Tup­per­ware con­tainer filled with seeds and a dusty leather jour­nal. In the front of the jour­nal Yakov found a folded piece of paper, a check­list for get­ting the farm up and run­ning again. The seeds, the jour­nal told him, were wheat, or would be once they’d weeded the field and sown them. He looked up to see Pietra and two of the younger girls walk past munch­ing on hand­fuls of black­ber­ries.
“We found a bush,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Surely it couldn’t be this easy? He thought to himself.

He organ­ised a few of the older kids into groups to help him work through the check­list. There was a well some­where nearby that they would need and with the rain stopped and the sun out they could begin to clean up the field. Pietra, ever help­ful, put together her own group to help pick the rest of the blackberries.

How to Draw the Ven­ture Bros. Part 2 and Part 3. I can’t draw to save myself, but I might give this a go. See how well I can butcher the char­ac­ter designs.