Before they all knew

I have written a few flash pieces and feel I need to get some feedback to improve. I want to know if they tell a story and if it is engaging enough to want to read it.

No one could take offence in orange groves. Their faces peered out from under green camouflage letting you know they are there. They are smug with succulence, full of a flavour savoured as it passed through lips and over tongues down the back of throats, absorbed without judgement from a higher power. That this was beautiful, in both directions, following lines the farmer had insisted on, was clear. And I was, right now, out of place.

As for Andy, he had one leg for God’s sake, and had never made the effort to move fast. He would not remember me for days on end, more in love with the dog. That I could not find him never mattered before, but then the outbreak happened. That he had picked this place for a fight, then fled without allowing me to answer, the name calling, did not offend me, not know. Not here.

And there had been work. Not work that we had wanted, but work none the less, me out here, him in the sorting house, resting on a stool. We had managed to get this far still alive and fancied time out in the sun, even working a bit to pay our way. It might be something to remember, the journey being as important as the destination, and all that. It would get this far, we knew, and then they’d know we were telling the truth. But we could enjoy this for now.

The smell her seemed to subdue him, leave him less on edge. That edge had been there since the others died, and I had always tried to help him. Taking money that wasn’t ours, finding the drugs he needed, creating cover stories that people would believe. And he got upset again like he always does, and I’m to blame and have never done enough to help him. I’m not your Mum, I say, and still help you with your laces.

Right now, the sun flooded the sky with a yellow so bright I doubt he could look beyond the floor. With all of that yellow came so much heat that I didn’t want to move at all, let alone look for that bastard. But these are oranges and no place for this stuff. If we die here, they will still have the fruit.