The battle lasted for three days, but the outcome was never in any real doubt. The giant mutant salamanders, driven by instinct and lowering water levels, had no place left to go.
It was a bloodbath. The others, good to eat as they were, were everywhere. They had sticks that made loud noises, dispensing pain and death from a distance. The elders, the big ones; soon knew that they could not win. The tragedy, the heartbreak of seeing the little ones die, calling for their mothers, was more than they could stand. It was more than a battle of survival. It was more than self-defense. It was more than a newly-learned hatred, or a war of extermination. In the end, knowing they could not win; it was a kind of vengeance.
Those who know that they will soon die, must try to take as many of their enemies as they possibly can. Acting together and thinking as one, each individual knew the true meaning of loneliness and despair at this moment. This was a moment each would face alone, in his or her own way. They huddled together and comforted their children in this time of troubles, the genocide they saw all around them. The massacre of innocents continued, even as they gathered themselves for one last push.
No one among them could have spoken what they all felt, for proper words did not exist for that.
It was the hollowest feeling inside.
A kind of disbelief. A kind of bereavement.
A sense of emptiness.
There was a coldness, an unspeakable bleakness of the soul.
Their hearts beat as one, as they slowly backed into the only space left open to them.
The path they followed was wet and slick with their own blood, and the blood of the enemy.
Finally herded into a place they could not retreat from, only a short distance from the protecting water, they made one final attack, a suicidal attack which they knew had no hope of success.
The only hope for the future was if some of them survived.
Some of their children, some of the young pregnant females must survive.
Keeping the little ones in the centre, hiding and sheltering them from the scourging fire and thunder, the pain that killed from the inside, they huddled briefly together one last time.
Communicating their thoughts to each other, drawing pictures and symbols in their minds to share, they made their plan and carried it out. Finally the small phalanx of attacking amphibians made it to the river’s edge.
They got no further.
Before the last one died, she had the satisfaction of seeing her son make it into the water, and there were several others. Seeing there was no further point to the struggle, exhausted physically, knowing it was her time to die, she turned to face the pursuers.
She waited patiently, knowing that she was going to a better place.
She had done no wrong. She had carried out her biological function to perfection. She prayed to the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens to take her away. Her sides heaved with the simple exertion of breathing.
She was a spent thing, passively expecting her fate.
She prayed for her child to grow up big and strong and that he might live in a better world. She prayed for it to be over, and she wept in her own fashion. One of the others approached her.
It would not be long now.
She had one more thing to say.
“Brubaker…”
“I’m sorry,” he said, with water, the precious water, streaming out of his eyes; the very windows of the soul.
She saw the torment inside of him.
“I forgive you, Brubaker,” she whispered.
She heard a loud noise and felt the things enter her body. The last thing she saw was Brubaker standing beside her, making a strange song. Somehow she knew that he prayed to the sun and the moon, perhaps even The Eternal One, just like she did.
The blackness closed in.
The horrendous pain stopped and it was all over.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Mayor Hope Pedlar…
Core Values Page 55
