Can you Smell the Bacon?

Winter falling down like a cloud and the days keep slipping past.  Down way back in memory there was a summer when breathing didn't mean death and the flowers stood at knee height in the fields.  Now it's masks and sealed doors and giant forests of funky colored flora.  Not as much for fauna though.  Just the giant tortoise-bugs.  The name is a bit misleading though; they aren't slow.  Armored to the teeth, got a ferocious bite, and just keep on growing, yes, but not slow.  'S why people go out in groups with their masks and their spears and their fears just to survive.  The water is all running down in the valley, and a'int nobody a smart enough hand to build anything that stays built deep down in the valley.  It rains though, so only in droughts does it become absolutely necessary.  We here have ourselves a grand purifier and roof-space that funnels a whole load of the stuff into holding tanks before we can steam it good enough to drink.  No need to go far for the wood, though.  Stuff grows fast enough in the rain that most days it grows back what we done chopped the last.  Yep, 's a life of dis-ease.  Each day they go out, not too far at all, and some days a few people don't return.  Not often, least not after the first few years.  The ones who survived that were the cautious ones, and the lucky ones of those.  Caution only gets you so far.  Winter here don't mean snow, though.  Just more rain to wash down on the village.  More water to put in the tanks. More water to keep the gardens and pigs alive.  Never thought I'd see a pig in a gas-mask though.  All kinds of weird.  Like some sort of muzzle that makes 'em look like some Darth Vader spoof.  Beady little pig eyes watchin' you outa the plastic visor.  Glad the boys have those indoors pens for most of the time.  More normal that way.  Still, inch by inch that forest keeps growing closer, keeps creepin' up at my here village.  Shame that torching the thing didn't work, God bless their souls.