Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  I pick and eat several before I figure out that the ones on the ground taste a million times better than the ones I pick from low branches. As long as I can find ones without too many ants on them, they seem like a pretty good food source.

  I should have asked for matches, or a lighter. I’m going to want fire eventually, and I’m not sure I can achieve that on my own.

  “You’re going to shit your brains out,” a woman’s voice says from behind me.

  I turn slowly, bracing myself for anything. It’s probably a bear or a strange monkey, with gangling arms. The chimp said I would be safe from bears, but I brace myself for anything.

  She’s wearing a rough dress that looks like it was chewed from an animal skin. Aside from that, she’s a perfectly normal-looking young woman.

  “I’m not supposed to…” I begin.

  “Talk to strangers,” she finishes for me. “I know. And it’s good advice, so I’ll leave you alone. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t be too scared when you start shitting your brains out. It will stop soon enough, and you’ll survive. That yellow fruit will keep you alive until you get sick of eating it. When you do get sick of it, learn to hunt, but don’t hunt anything bigger than your head. It’s too dangerous.”

  I want to ask her a thousand questions. How did she get here? Where does she live? What kind of animal did she take that pelt from, and why doesn’t she wear normal clothes? I don’t get a chance to ask any of those things because she turns and disappears into the woods. It’s almost like a beautiful illusion. One second she was there, and then she vanished. My stomach is already gurgling. I think she was right about the fruit.

  ---- * ----

  By the time the sun is overhead, I have a fire going. It was easier than I thought. Somehow I’m transported back to when I was a kid and we would camp out in the pits. More than once, we puzzled out how to make a fire with nothing but our hands. It takes persistence and time, but I have both. I don’t need a fire in the middle of the day. I have nothing to cook, and it’s not cold. And I’m afraid to walk away from it, for fear that I’ll burn down the entire forest.

  I kick sand over it until it’s just a handful of coals, and I hope they’ll keep.

  I decide to do some scouting.

  It’s amazing how lazy my mind has become. I’ve lost the ability to navigate without street names and numbered addresses. Every tree looks the same. I’m just kidding myself to think that I can find my way back to where the chimp said it was safe. I practice the route between my fire and the stream. Once I’m sure I have that down, I decide to trace the stream against the current to find the source.

  The character of the woods changes gradually as I move uphill. The woods thin out and the low, leafy trees give way to the really tall kind with needles instead of leaves. It always looks like I’m going to come to a clearing at the top of the hill. When I get to that spot, I find another rise with more trees. There’s never a view where I can see the lay of the land.

  The stream gets smaller and smaller as I go. When there’s a branch where two streams come together, I always stick to the right bank. No sense in getting lost.

  I stop to catch my breath and I realize my folly. It wouldn’t matter what branch I took—all the little tributaries would join into my stream eventually. There’s no danger in choosing whichever…

  I stop, mid-thought.

  From farther up the hill, and to the right, I hear what sounds like electric motors running. It’s a low hum, like a dozen or more electric fans. The pitch of each thing undulates, and the combination is a weird, atonal chorus. The sound gets louder by the second. I move closer to a big tree so I can duck behind it.

  With a swell, the things move out into the open and I catch a glimpse.

  My first thought is that I’m looking at a collection of remote-control toys. They’re about waist-high, shaped like arrowheads, and they’re bright red. They trundle over the forest floor like little windup toys. There’s about a dozen of them, swarmed into a tight pack.

  They’re coming my direction.

  My brain ticks through reactions. Should I be afraid of them? Intrigued? Are they predators? Prey?

  I hold my ground mostly because they seem like automatons. Maybe it’s the humming sound. They’re like little robots or something. It’s hard to be afraid of little robots.

  I’m curious to see what happens when they hit the little stream. Its small enough here that I could clear it with a big stride, but will the robots see it in time? Can they jump.

  There’s a branch above my head. If need be, I could jump up and grab it to get away from the things.

  They rumble closer.

  When they’re a few paces away, one hits a rock at an awkward angle. The thing does a quick roll. It flips over onto it’s red arrowhead back for a second before the flip carries it back upright. When it does, I spot something that makes me rethink my position. Instead of wheels, driven by a humming electric motor, I see a cluster of spiny legs, picking at the air.

  I jump up and grab the branch. Pulling with everything I’ve got, I kick at the trunk of the tree, trying to get some elevation.

  The branch snaps and I fall. For a blink, I’m silently descending. Then I crash to the carpet of needles. I grunt out the air in my lungs.

  The red arrowheads continue their procession right by me. They pass within an arm’s length, but pay me no mind.

  I push myself up and watch them as they continue towards the stream.

  The one in the rear turns back.

  It jerks towards me with bursts of movement followed by little jitters. I’m not completely sure that it senses me. It doesn’t move consistently right at me, just in my direction. Still, I do the best that I can to back up without making noise. I’m not going for the tree again. With these tall evergreens, it looks like the lower branches can’t support weight. They’re just dry and lifeless.

  The thing seems to make up its mind finally. It points the tip of its arrowhead-shaped body right at me and starts moving fast. I forget how much noise I’m making. I pound the dirt with my feet and run. Just like the red thing earlier, I trip on a rock. I fly through the air and hit the forest floor in a heap. I have time to roll over before the thing is on top of me.

  Once I see those clawing feet up close, the thing looks like a giant bug. The legs move in a coordinated roll, and produce the humming sound. I have time to get my hands up before it lands on me, so I grip either side of it’s hard shell, just back from the point of the arrowhead. With the ass of the thing on the ground, and me holding up its point, the legs claw fruitlessly at the air as it tries to get to me. The undercarriage of the bug is black and shiny. It looks like it’s made of volcanic glass. A sharp, vinegar smell fills the air and makes me squint. It must be a defense mechanism.

  I see a slit in the underside open.

  I want to toss the thing onto its back and run, but that slit is mesmerizing. A long extended jaw thrusts out—something from a horror movie. The teeth click as it tries to bite my arm.

  I can’t help it, a scream escapes my lips.

  I don’t know if it’s the sound of my scream or the vinegar smell that the thing emitted, but the other bugs turn at once.

  The thing bites at me again—just by luck, it misses—as the others conclude their brief deliberation and then start trundling in our direction.

  I don’t have a choice. They’re closing the gap fast.

  I push the thing as hard as I can, flipping it onto its back.

  I’m up and running. If I fall now, it’s curtains. I’m sure of it. The humming increases in volume and pitch as they chase. With a quick glance, I see that they’re not sticking to a tight group anymore. They’re fanning out. Some of the faster ones look like they’re going to try to flank me. Even the slower ones don’t seem to have any problem keeping pace.

  I veer towards the stream.

  Back when I thought they were electric toys, I figured the water would confound them. The thought is s
tuck in my head, I suppose, because the stream feels like my only chance at salvation.

  The main gang of bugs is gaining on me. The flanking bugs are dangerously close to swooping around and cutting me off. Despite my screaming hip, I pick up my pace and reach the stream before they can close the distance. I leap over the stream and continue perpendicular to it, hoping it will slow or even stop them. With a quick glance, I see that the stream has no effect. The bugs leap the stream and seem to accelerate as the ground slopes up.

  I remember something the chimp said.

  At the time, I thought he was talking about the bears, but it’s worth a shot. I turn and run downhill. My new path is actually going to take me closer to the flanking bugs. They were going to catch me quickly anyway. My speed increases as the ground falls away. The bugs begin to tumble.

  The flash of black draws my eye and I turn my head and see. When they try to run directly downhill, the bugs nose under and roll. Once on their backs, they’re quick to right themselves, but their forward momentum is gone. By running directly alongside the stream, I’m able to lose them pretty quickly.

  ---- * ----

  My breath burns in my throat as I wait.

  I can see my mark—I’ve marked where my trail leads up to my fire. I’m not going to go that direction until I’ve decided that the bugs are definitely not following.

  After ten minutes, I’m sure.

  I take a drink from the stream and then trudge back to my campsite.

  My embers are out. There are no other kids to help me this time, so I walk around alone, collecting rocks to make a proper fire pit. If I’m going to spend time making another fire, I want to be sure I have a proper place to contain it. And I don’t want to try to sleep all night without a fire now that I know what kind of things lurk in these woods. To be fair, I wasn’t hurt by the bug. Those teeth, though. Teeth like that don’t belong to an herbivore. They’re meant to bite and tear at flesh. I would rather that the flesh not be mine.

  I collect rocks and firewood. I go back to the fruit tree and eat more fruit.

  My visitor was right—the fruit did make me shit my brains out. Still, it’s all I have.

  By the time darkness falls, I have the knife in my hands at all times. I jump at every sound. It’s impossible to believe that we used to love sleeping outside as kids. It’s an impossibly lonely and unprotected feeling.

  There’s a hole in the trunk of one of the trees. It’s deep enough to appear black inside. I keep thinking that it would be a good place for an owl to live. The idea must be leftover from some cartoon I saw as a kid. I didn’t think much of the hole until the sun went down. Now, lit by my fire, the hole seems to dance at its edges. Something is going to come out of that hole, I’m sure of it.

  I imagine Adam’s voice.

  “How are you going to get out of this place?” Adam asks. Coming from the hole, his voice has more of an echo.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I put another piece of rotting wood onto my fire. Having a big fire seemed like a good idea at sunset. It would ward off animals. Now, I’m starting to think that it might just draw in animals. It’s like a big sign that points to my location. But if fire were such a terrible idea, the chimp probably would have warned me. Probably.

  “The bears got you here, right? Don’t you think you might need a bear to get away?” Adam asks.

  “They want to lock me up. Or worse. I can’t let the bears get ahold of me again.”

  “You can’t learn their technology if you’re hiding out here in the woods.”

  “The bears around here don’t seem to have much technology. I haven’t seen an airplane or a helicopter. The cars and trucks all look like they’re from the fifties. Back in town I didn’t see a TV, a computer, or even a cell phone. Everything seemed ancient. It wouldn’t surprise me if everything here was recycled from Earth decades ago.”

  “Someone got you here,” Adam says.

  “Maybe it’s the chimps or the gorillas. Maybe they’re the smart ones.”

  “Did they seem that smart?”

  No.

  I don’t bother to answer Adam. It’s probably best that I don’t engage with an imaginary voice. That path might lead to madness. The thought tickles me and I start to giggle. Madness. I’m worried about madness overtaking me when I’m in a land of talking apes and bears, stuck in the woods with giant red bugs. What possible consequence could madness have?

  “What’s so funny?” a woman’s voice asks from the woods.

  If I had heard her first, I would have assumed she was real. But I didn’t. I was talking to Adam first, and he’s clearly not real, so I can’t be sure about this woman.

  I decide to keep quiet. Maybe she’ll go away.

  I have enough of the yellow fruit piled next to me that I’m basically only eating the skin. If I peel it carefully, it comes away without pulling much of the sour interior. Just for fun, I take one of the pulpy cores and jam a stick through it. I roast the thing over the coals of my fire and then sniff at the cooked fruit. I’m hoping that the bitter and sour taste has been cooked away, but I’m a little afraid to try it. Water is off in the darkness and I don’t want to get that flavor stuck in my mouth. Maybe tomorrow I can find a way to transport and store water. I’m not sure I could fashion a cup or a bowl even if I had tools.

  “You’re not talking?” the woman asks. She moves and I see her. She’s closer than I thought. Somehow, she has snuck up to the edge of the firelight without me noticing.

  “I’m not supposed to,” I say. She knows that.

  “You made it through your first encounter with the nut beetles. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”

  “Were you watching me?”

  “You crashed through the forest like a rhino. Everyone saw you.”

  “Oh,” I say. I’m not sure that I believe her. I can’t think of another explanation of how she knows. Maybe she just guessed. Maybe everyone is chased by the nut beetles.

  “I know he told you to not join up with any group before you learned how to live on your own,” she says. “It’s solid advice. If you simply join up when you’re helpless, you become completely dependent on the group. You have nothing to offer. But it’s no coincidence that he dropped you off in my territory.”

  “You’re not part of a group?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I didn’t say it. I asked it.”

  “Of course I’m a part of a group. You don’t survive long out here if you’re not.”

  “That makes a lot of sense then,” I say. “They tell me to not join up and to learn how to survive. Then, you reveal that survival is not possible without joining up. Sounds like a recipe for death.”

  “You misunderstand,” she says. “I said you don’t survive for long. The trick is, first you survive. Then, if you don’t join up, one of the groups will hunt you down. That’s why you don’t survive for long.”

  “Sure—makes perfect sense.”

  “Nobody said the world makes sense.”

  “That’s true,” I say. “So where’s your group?”

  “We’re around. Once you get better at observation, you’ll see us around.”

  “And I take it that you didn’t grow up here? Like me, you came from somewhere else?”

  “Yes,” she says. “We’re all from somewhere else. This place is a colony. You wouldn’t like the natives.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ve seen the size of the insects. Want to know how big a predator around here is?”

  I consider the waist-high beetles and mentally scale up how big a rat would be. Maybe the size of a sedan? But she didn’t suggest that I think about the size of a rodent. She said a predator. I don’t even want to think about what that would mean. I can’t imagine how anyone survives around here if any of those thoughts are true.

  “I don’t understand why the trees and plants would seem perfectly normal, but the insects would be so big. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
/>   “This place is an odd combination of imported and domestic species. This,” she says, slapping the trunk of a nearby tree, “is a perfectly normal oak tree. The fruit you’re eating are like berries to the Higg squirrels. They stuff about a hundred of them in their cheeks.”

  “What’s a Higg squirrel?”

  “Imagine a horse that can climb trees,” she says. “This pelt is from a Higg squirrel. Well, part of one.”

  “So you’re basically telling me that I have to get out of here and back to Earth,” I say. “I refuse to live in this nightmare.”

  “If you figure out how to do that, you’ll be the first in a long time,” she says.

  “So it’s possible?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “A first in a long time—who was the last?”

  “He was before my time. A lot of people say that he was never really all here. They say he lived in the in-between.”

  “Hold on—what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just something that people say.”

  “And how did he get out of here?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably a rumor that people made up just to keep us from going insane. You need something to believe in until you get used to living here. Then, once you do, you realize that it doesn’t matter. You have to learn to be happy where you are.”

  “Sure, sure. Who does know about this guy? Who can I talk to?”

  “Nobody will talk to you. You’re not self-sufficient yet. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you, but I don’t do well with rules.”

  “What do I have to do to prove myself self-sufficient? Do I have to survive for a week? Two?”

  “There’s no time limit. There’s a series of accomplishments we look for before any of the respectable groups will even hear a petition. You have to become independent on water, food, tools, shelter, and clothes. Once you conquer those things, you could legitimately petition. You might not be accepted, but you could petition.”