We only went where the roads could take us, forgetting the great swathes of countryside and the isolated villages in the mountains in favour of familiarity. We paid the price for our ignorance, our narrow view of the land and the creatures that lived alongside us in the shadows that we pretended didn't exist.
Five days. That's how long it took for us to be forced from our roads and the safety of the mundane out into the unknown lands. The sheer ease of their invasion let us know that they'd been planning this for quite some time, possibly for longer than we'd been alive.
It wouldn't be too hard to imagine. They don't really age, they're like lobsters in that way... or jellyfish or some other kind of creature whose life only ends when it is killed. Unfortunately for us they're damned hard to kill and a lot better at hiding than we are.
The only thing that remains on our side is our endurance. We walk until we collapse, we rest for a few hours and then we walk until we collapse and so on and so on until we find something resembling a decent shelter or at least sheltered enough for the night.
Right now we're out in what can only be described as a forest of telephone poles, thousands of them. They stretch out over the horizon, their wires criss-crossed and littered with the broken and burnt bodies of birds. The ground beneath them is bare and dotted with dried blood from their prey.
We're fortunate enough to be unpalatable to them and unfortunate enough that we call this our new home.
Five days. That's how long it took for us to be forced from our roads and the safety of the mundane out into the unknown lands. The sheer ease of their invasion let us know that they'd been planning this for quite some time, possibly for longer than we'd been alive.
It wouldn't be too hard to imagine. They don't really age, they're like lobsters in that way... or jellyfish or some other kind of creature whose life only ends when it is killed. Unfortunately for us they're damned hard to kill and a lot better at hiding than we are.
The only thing that remains on our side is our endurance. We walk until we collapse, we rest for a few hours and then we walk until we collapse and so on and so on until we find something resembling a decent shelter or at least sheltered enough for the night.
Right now we're out in what can only be described as a forest of telephone poles, thousands of them. They stretch out over the horizon, their wires criss-crossed and littered with the broken and burnt bodies of birds. The ground beneath them is bare and dotted with dried blood from their prey.
We're fortunate enough to be unpalatable to them and unfortunate enough that we call this our new home.
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