I crumbled the soil in my hand and sniffed, hoping for the impossible. But the fine, dry mineral grit sifted through my fingers without giving off so much as a teasing breath of organic life.

There was nothing there. No loamy richness. No decay. No sour-sweet hints of bacteria belching their way through an evening meal. Nothing but the silica matrix of what had been some of the richest bottom land in the region. And if it was this bad here, it would be worse elsewhere.

I had hoped…

I looked around at the deceptively peaceful field, trying to convince myself that the knot in my gut was a lack of breakfast and not fear. You wouldn’t see the beginnings of death gnawing at the margins if you didn’t know what to look for. Not yet, anyway.

I could see it.

Without the living cycle of biotic decay, the soil was little better than ground rock. A useless, sterile medium from which nothing would grow but despair and starvation.

In a way, I thought, the soil was lucky. It got to die first.