The Sky Fox soars above the trees as I
struggle to keep the old beater pickup truck in sight as it speeds over the
weathered road below. The authorities
were less than concerned with my claim of a serial killer in training prowling
the woods—and they were even less interested in working with some overzealous
vigilante who, according to them, had presented little more than some evidence
of poaching.
As though that’s
not serious enough…poaching’s the reason the Sumatran rhino and Amur leopard
went extinct two years ago—not to mention the thousands of other species
humanity has wiped out with its greed.
It’s funny how man can butcher an entire species of animal and no one
blinks an eye.
Nobody cares.
But if an animal
kills one man the world is sent into
a panic—everything becomes, “oh his poor family”, or “the animal must be
destroyed now that it has a taste for blood…”
Mankind’s taste for blood drives us to do a lot more than just take the
life one thing that in all likelihood probably provoked us in the first place.
In fact, we’re
seldom satisfied with only one victim.
Our taste for
blood is insatiable, yet we are not the animals in our own minds and I can’t
help but wonder what the natural world must think of us: we, the spreaders of
disease, famine, greed poverty, rage, rape, hate, death and extinction—perhaps,
maybe one day our own. These thoughts
leave me as I realize I’ve lost track of the truck.
After the cops
gave me the cold shoulder, I disregarded their direct order not to get involved
and followed the drag marks the bear’s killer had left back to his initial kill
site. From there I located a path of crushed
undergrowth. It was too narrow to have
been the way the bears had come and since there was no other evidence of any
other witnesses I decided the path had been made by the killer himself and I
followed it to an old hunting cabin buried deep in the forest. The cabin was old and held no obvious clues
to the owners or the killer’s identity but a quick search of land records told
me whose family it belonged to. I
checked those names against legal and occupational records and came up with a
handful of suspects—the most promising of which I’m currently tracking—or at
least was tracking until I lost him. The
Sky Fox comes to a halt in mid-air
and I scan the roads for my suspect’s 1990 Chevy P.O.S. But the only movement below is the wind
rustling through the tops of the trees.
I check my scanners…
Nothing.
Radar…
Nothing.
And just like
that—the trail went cold.
From beneath the cover of a rock ledge
just off the wayside below, the man in the old red beater smiled as he watched
the clueless vigilante who’d been tailing him fire up the engines of his craft
and blaze off and continue his search.
The driver knew he had a few minutes before the vigilante made the
second and third passes he knew he’d make before giving up on finding him in
this area completely. Absently he pushed
in the vehicle’s cigarette lighter and waited for it to pop back up, his
patients cooled the air as he tapped his fingertips along the windowsill in
anticipation for the lighter’s coils to heat up. A thumping coming from the covered bed of his
truck broke the silence and the driver slide open a tiny, steel bar-enforced
partition that separated him and the cub he’d taken from the woods after
forcing him to watch his own mother’s murder.
“Hey, pipe down back there!”
The tinted
windows of the truck topper had blocked out most of the sunlight and it stung
his eyes now. The cub tried to squint—tried
to close his eyes but the driver’s mutilation of him prevented that.
And the wounds
were already becoming infected.
The cub’s
face-sized paw shot out of pitch black bed and he managed to claw the driver’s
cheek as he swiped aimlessly.
“Now, now…” The human said, reaching down to grab the
cigarette lighter then he ground the glowing coils of the lighter into the
bear’s swinging forearm. The scent of
burning hair, flesh and tobacco filled both of their nostrils as the human then
lit his self-rolled cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke back into the bed as
the bear whimpered and licked his arm. “That
flying freak up there is looking for you…you’d rather he find you alive, don’t
you? Keep this up my fat, furry friend,
and you won’t be found at all…”
The bear cub licked his wound as his
human captor started up the engine, which backfired with a loud BANG as it sped off, the force of the
sudden acceleration caused him to slide slid across the rusted metal floor of
the truck bed to the far back corner.
His mouth was dry and he wet his paw with his tongue to lubricate his
eyes. He would’ve flinched from the pain
but he’d gotten used to the stinging. What
he couldn’t get used to was the pain he felt inside him—but this wasn’t hunger. He’d watched his mother be butchered right
before his eyes and he hadn’t been able to do anything…not even close his eyes
the way he had when a hunter took his father the previous fall.
He hadn’t even
seen all of his death and it still stuck with him—the sounds of the unseen gun,
the THUMP as his father hit the
ground, his mother frantic to get them away from there, and his imagination
filled in the rest... He couldn’t
imagine carrying with him the full, unbridled images of what this human had
done to the little bit that had remained of his family until that light too had
been extinguished.
He’d never again
feel her warmth as she slept beside him.
He’d never learn how she fished or how she stalked her prey or even
which berries were safe to eat without making a few mistakes of his own. And he began to wonder what it was about
mankind that drove them to do what they do.
Creatures like him—the so-called “animals” of the world only killed when
hungry, as he understood it, humans had something called “grocery stores” where
endless supplies of food could loomed over you—creating pathways for you to
follow as you hunt for what you want to eat.
He’d also seem first-hand something humans called “farms” where their
food is raised to be eaten and he couldn’t figure out why if there was an
option that didn’t cause pain why humans always chose the option that did. He’d overheard hunters talking once about why
they liked to hunt. One of them said
they just liked to be outside—that it was “so quiet and beautiful” in the
woods.
Why then, he
wondered, did humans want to disrupt that silence with the sound of a gunshot?
Why do humans
see beauty and want to destroy it—why can’t mankind just look at something
pretty and appreciate it for being just that?
An image fought its way up from his memory—proof that nothing was or
could ever be beautiful when it was covered in its own gore.
Nothing.
Not even
mothers.
To Be Continued…
