Note: in honor of Leap Day, a story from my old Wordpress days, tidied up a bit and presented now to you.
Carter Leckwith heard the explosion a mile away. He had been standing guard over the daily food ration line in District 7-B. Some people occasionally tried to sneak back in, with duplicate ration cards. Carter’s mates usually shot without warning. Carter, being sensible, preferred not to waste ammunition on ration-line cheaters. It was easier just to confiscate their card. They’d come back next day hungrier and wiser, and the system rumbled on.
“Did you hear that?” Carter asked Becky, standing next to him. It was Becky’s task to dispense the ration once Carter had marked off the card. “Sounded big.”
Becky shrugged. “If it’s important, Command will let us know.”
Carter looked in the direction of the explosion. A towering black cloud mushroomed lazily up towards the sky. “Looks bad.”
“Yep.”
“Wonder if we should check in?”
“They’ll let us know,” Becky repeated. She smacked a protein bar into the outstretched palm of a waiting civilian. They mumbled a word of thanks and staggered off.
“You’re probably right,” Carter said nervously.
His communicator remained obstinately silent. Carter checked off another card, and the civilian filed on past for the protein bar from Becky. The process was orderly as ever. Carter could do his job practically without thinking. He often used the time to think about other things.
“Say, Becky…” he ventured, after a long moment. The cloud in the distance kept billowing on upwards. It flickered with different colors now, from inky black to flecks of angry red. “Do you have any plans for later?”
“Parade, of course,” Becky said laconically. “Afterwards, I don’t know. Why?”
Carter paused to scrutinize a ration card. It looked a little too shiny, he thought. But there, in the corner, was the proper ID mark. The duplicate-makers always forgot that. He waved the card-holder on, and then turned to Becky. She was reaching out with the next protein bar. “Well, they’ve just opened the new canteen, near the outskirts. I hear this one has a cache of real alcohol from the old days. I thought maybe… we could….see it.”
He could’ve kicked himself. The words had sounded better in his head, but the explosion and the ominous cloud had distracted him.
“Sure,” said Becky, plopping a protein bar into yet another hand. “Sounds fun. After Parade, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Carter said. He was so encouraged he almost forgot to check the next card for the ID mark. When he did, it took him a moment to fully register that it wasn’t there. By the time he had, the civilian had already moved on to Becky. He raised his hand to sound the alarm.
Then he thought. If he did that, he might have to fire his rifle, and there’d be disruption, and things would need to be sorted out, and there was bound to be an inquiry especially given whatever was going on under that cloud in the distance. An inquiry could take hours, if not days. And that meant…
Carter Leckwith said nothing. The civilian didn’t either. The protein bar count for that day would be off by one, but the officer in charge decided not to report it; he didn’t want an inquiry either. And the system rumbled on, albeit a fraction happier.