R a t i on Day L a i W e i S h i
First it was the perishables. Then people got smart. Shelves were emptied of canned foods, dried biscuits. They knew it was going to be the long haul. You could travel to the farthest mini mart — not even a supermarket — as far as you could get past the 1-mile radius, and still nothing. In the end, when riots and looting broke out — people who were simply trying to feed their hunger — they had to bring in the military. I imagine the outskirts are doing better. They have land, and land means food. When factories started shutting down across the country, they still had their backyards and empty, open fields. What little production makes it to the finish line is first given to the military and police, those working hard to maintain order in the chaos, then sold to the highest bidders. The leftovers are rationed to every household, by district then by neighbourhood. That was when the riots quickly died down. People stayed indoors, as they were told, in exchange for that little bit of food. It wasn’t the virus that divided and conquered, in the end. It was the food. Today is ration day.
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