The light of summer tilted into fall. The crop, already brown and retreating south, filled the floodplain. Over the dike was the city, a skyline of silver shards.

The setting sun glinted off broken glass, filling the buildings with the remembrance of fire.

Deep in the floodplain, Joe moved through stalks of corn. Some stood nearly six feet high, but most were broken and trampled into a brown carpet of husks. Joe bent down and took an ear. He rose to his feet, straining against the bulk of his pendulous breasts. Cupping the ear in both hands, he devoured the milky sweet kernels.

The herd mulled around the floodplain, still numbering several dozen. Joe looked around him. His memories before were clear but confusing. Why did we live the way we did? To his left was a woman (Sarah? Maybe he never knew her name.) beforeshe was a jogger and frequent visitor to a neighborhood gym, and her body showed the effort, hammered hard and thin. Now, like the rest of the herd, she was marvelously rotund, a post-historic fertility goddess. The many miles they had traveled, slowly swaying and eating in silence as they followed the crop, had done nothing to stop the accumulation of calories and the layering of fat that might save her in winter.

Dan, a coworker of Joe's before, sat on his massive haunches next to a pile of collected ears. Dan was a hoarder, gathering no less than twenty ears before a leisurely meal. Joe stared at Dan as he munched, and Dan returned the stare.

Joe remembered boxes. Working inside a glass box, staring into a plastic box and carrying paper from one box to another. Joe remembered his thinness. Joe remembered Dan, and angry chatterings.

Joe felt a heat in his belly. In the past days the women were a distraction, dark and ripe. Joe felt a growing urge to fight.

Joe lumbered towards Dan. At any other time of the year, Joe wouldn't recognize confrontation or care to meet it, but he felt the same burning desire and growing anger as Joe. Dan rose slowly and heaved his massive girth forward to meet Joe's advance. Joe reached forward and when mass met mass the combatants hands tangled one to the other. Their bellies and massive chests prevented any sudden moves, so they stood locked. Joe brought a foot down heavily forward while Dan gave ground. They circled slowly until Dan summoned an explosion of energy channeled to his hips. With one massive belly push, Dan pushed Joe back. Joe lost his balance and fell backwards, cratering the carpet of husks.

Joe lay on his side, defeated and exhausted.

Dan turned to a woman nearby. A feeling of confusion and rage overcame Joe as he realized that the woman, her dark hair cascading over thick wrinkles all the way down to her mountainous buttocks, meant something to him. She lived with him before. Dan walked to the woman. She tore an ear from a stalk, ignoring Dan's flaccid attempt to couple against her, and removed the husk.

For a moment Dan's face contorted in rage.

Then it passed. The season was over. Once again, the herd would not grow.

Dan fell heavily to the ground and rested. Now he lifted one massive breast and scrutinized a suppurating infection on the underside. It was wet and angry, a worrisome volcanic bullseye of pinks and red. Maybe Dan would not survive the winter. Joe smiled.

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