A Flash Fiction by Brindley Hallam Dennis
Bulldozers arrived on the Friday shortly before first light.
Dogs heard them coming, felt vibrations. There had been whining in the early hours, and pawing at the shutters, pulling at chains. There had been barking. There had been shouting for quiet, and banging on the pens, regretted with hindsight. It made no difference, of course.
When they rolled over the false horizon, the unsilenced humming of the motors and the squeal of caterpillar tracks woke those still sleeping. The roar of falling trees along the hedge-line as they smashed through to the allotments was heard by everyone.
There was nothing they could do, but watch, gather up their belongings, and run for their lives.
I spoke to survivors weeks later. They’d moved further up the valley. Where else could they go? They’d begun to carve new allotments out of the unpromising slopes: narrow terraces, following the contours. They were eking out what food they had managed to carry away.
The bulldozers had flattened the whole area by mid-day. By dusk the new buildings had been marked out. Drones were bringing in materials and construction equipment all through the night. By morning you could see the outlines of buildings.
The irony, they told me, was that they were new food stores. The algorithms have no sense of what food is for, only the target of increasing harvest. When the stores are full more must be built, vermin detected nearby, always destroyed.
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Brindley Hallam Dennis lives on the edge of England where he writes occasional plays, poetry, and essays. His writing has been published and performed. He blogs at www.Bhdandme.wordpress.com
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