Colony Three (PAUSED)

Flashback: One

"Shhh..." the guide held up his hand, signaling us. "They can hear you very well. No talking."

I swallowed the words stuck in my throat and nodded. The guide dropped his arm, more bone than flesh. He breathed in, his ribs sticking out just like mine, his eyes brushing closed. "There's one nearby."

Papa drew in a quick breath of excitement. I only had to half imagine the bloodstained smile that went with it. He tapped his shoulder, making sure the backpack was still strapped on, with one hand. The other hand held his pistol.

The gun had fascinated me for as long as I could remember. The handle and the stock were mostly narrow, fine pieces of metal. The barrel flared out at the end though, covered by a skein of wire mesh. I pictured it firing and my mouth watered. We would be eating soon.

Little birds and insects twirled around overhead, thir routes to the sky blocked by lillyvine. I reached up and grabbed one, a glassy eyed robin. It was so frail. I squeezed, and it immeadiately started to go limp. So hungry. The beak snapped at my finger. Fresh food. I flung it away and jogged up to Papa and the guide.

Papa brought his gun up, the smell of grease and gunpowder slithering out into the forest as he did. His eyepiece glinted, a red tinted piece of glass that impaired daytime vision, but made nightime look as if it it was lit by the sun.

The guide frowned at the gun, which was pointed and probably armed, but didn't say anything. He continued, his tiny hands a blur of motion on the path in front of him. The two tiny silver knives clenched in his fists cut a silent passage though the dense mats of vegitation. Yellowish vine sap dripped from the sliced vine ends like open veins.

I tried not to cringe when I saw the caustic sap sting his skin; even though he wore thick gloves and arm guards it ate through eventually.

I shrugged off one length of vine that wrapped around my ankle as I passed. The plant grew so fast you could watch it grow, inch by foot by yard by acre. The whole forest seemed to crawl with movement. I shuddered. A boulder, overtaken by the dark green tendrils, pulsed and writhed like a heart.

The guide sheathed his knives and nodded at Papa. The wide ended gun swung up gracefully, the only thing Papa was really used to doing now, after the Fall.

I squinted into the black ahead. Something, a faint shade lighter than the shadows, snuffled along the ground. A bone snapped as it fed on whatever was lying on the ground in front of it.

The guard made a quick snipping, chirping sound. The thing, a...bear...raised its head and looked at us. Blood was smeared around its muzzle and under its hollow eye sockets.

Papa's gun went off with a whine and a crackle. The bears fur singed in the heat. It remained upright, staring for a minute. The faint smell of cooked meat sliced through the lighter forest smells of lillyvine and mint. It rocked over and fell onto the leaf and vine covered floor, smelling like real meat for the first time in weeks.

It's fur was melted in a small circle directly above its heart, where Papa had shot it.

The guide smiled sadly, staring at the bear. "Well, it was part of the foodchain. I didn't kill it for survival, but I let others..." he rambled to himself.

"My payment, Mr. Blake?" He broke his gaze from the bear extended his hand to Papa, holding out a ticket-book that was mostly empty.

Papa looked up from the bear, from the slice of browned meat he had cut from it. It was his turn to smile, but it wasn't a sad smile.

The gun whirred, whipped up from Papa's knee in the blink of an eye.

My mouth watered. The guide didn't smell any different from the bear.