Black laughed, and it hurt his lungs to do so.
“I’m afraid, my friend,” he said, “that I’m a creature of ash and dust.”
The man lay his head down in the dirt. Black actually felt some measure of pity for the man. Black held back the gorge in his throat. Was this sympathy? Unable to steady his nerve, his hands trembled just a little as he placed them on the man’s forehead. Confronting this poor waste had given him a flicker of a memory of what it was like to be alive. The man crumbled to ash and sank into the cracks of the earth.
As Black continued his sterilization of the empty earth, he couldn’t help but notice changes—a rock shifting out of place, a cliff slumping lower, or a mountain gradually swaying back and forth. In time he also noticed that the ground was no longer cracked, though water had long ceased to exist. “It seems I’m not needed here anymore,” he thought as his robes and hair slowly softened from black to gray to white.
Adaptive Behavior
T. M. Starnes
Editor: A true leader thinks beyond the needs of the moment.
Overhead lights clicked on. The new testing day began.
Brownie always woke before the rest of the breed. He would listen to their snores, their breathing, and consider tactics for the daily testers’ activities with his kind.
The Old One kept everyone up late last night telling the old stories of when the breed once roamed beyond the walls, living in tall homes, going wherever they wished, doing what they wished, some even living far from any other breed, crossing great holes of water where the breed could not see the other side. But that was before the coming of the testers. The stories were old. Passed down from old one to old one. When tens upon tens upon tens of breed fought the testers on the first day. Some of the stories made no sense. Breed flying? Breed standing on metal on the great water holes fighting testers? Fires as large as the sun? The Old One sometimes made his tales bigger with the telling. The breed knew the testers were all powerful. Easily bending the will of the tens of tens of the early breed to serve them in their works for all the breeds’ days to this day. The days of roaming breed were long gone. This is their life now.
Brownie checked his right forelimb. It remained swollen from the injection yesterday. His right paw ached as he stretched out his claws. One claw had been broken off in a fight with One Eye. He methodically sharpened all four sets of claws against the concrete floor.
Red Beauty wandered over to him from her side of his see-through home.
She walked with a limp. The testers had done something wrong to her reproductive organs after her fifth birth. The rapid births aged her quicker than any of the strange tests could. One Eye and Brownie’s most recent fight had been over Red Beauty when One Eye decided he wanted to mate against her wishes. The testers had not paired Red Beauty and One Eye. One Eye didn’t care, even if it was still too soon after her most recent birthing.
Red Beauty was sick. Brownie could tell. She wasn’t eating. Her body odor wafted in from the breathing holes between the clear barrier between them. She smelled of weakness.
She rested her forehead against the enclosure’s barrier.
Brownie stood and approached, leaning his head against hers from his side.
“I’m broken,” she said, caressing her belly.
He placed his paw on the barrier. “The testers will fix. Eat.”
She looked at his swollen forelimb. “You are broken?”
He bared his teeth in reassurance and shook his head, “No. I am strong. Eat. Be strong.”
One Eye snorted across from them, “She is food.”
Brownie snarled at his short-haired, muscled antagonist and clenched his left front claw. “Be quiet.”
One Eye bared his teeth. “She is food. I smell her stink. They won’t fix.”
Brownie faced One Eye’s side of the barrier across the passageway and raked downward against the barrier with his claws. “Be . . . quiet.”
One Eye snorted again and displayed his buttocks, a grave insult.
Brownie growled low and deep in his chest as One Eye slowly rubbed his rump across the barrier, baring his teeth over his right shoulder. If they had not been separated by the barriers and the passage between them, Brownie would have attacked One Eye as he had yesterday.
“No fight,” the Old One said from his home.
Brownie turned to his left at the elder. “He is wrong.”
The Old One shook his body as he stood, his long, lanky, dirty hair whipping about him, the hairless parts of his body showing old scars, experiment marks, and healed damage from the preceding days and years.
The Old One settled and sharpened his misshapen rear claws on the floor. “Yes, he is wrong. You are strong. No fighting. They want us fighting. Want us not right in the head. Make us mad to each other. You are strong. It is no good for them if we not fight.”
One Eye snorted again and released a loud fart before moving back into the rear of his square home.
“You are food one day, Old One,” One Eye mumbled.
The Old One bared his teeth in aggression. “Yes. We all are food one day. I have not been food for many days. More than your days. I am old and not food because I am strong. Know that.”
One Eye glared at the Old One. They kept eye contact until One Eye looked away.
The Old One bared his teeth in triumph at Brownie. Brownie joined in the Old One’s strength.
The passageway door opened to the left of their homes.
The testers filed in. They stood twice the height of the tallest breed. For all the breed’s memories, the testers had worn their all-over, all-covering, body protection. White, like the floor. Crackling as they moved. Their heads and expressions were forever unseen. They did have two sets of paws like the breed, stood tall on their hind paws like the breed, but their rear paws looked strange to the breed. Round, squeaky, smooth, leaving odd paw prints along the passageway when the breed bled for them and they walked through the puddled blood.
Males began hooting and howling; Brownie assumed a new female must be joining their pack.
Several testers pushed a female along the passage, and Brownie got a good look at her.
Compared to Red Beauty, this new female was as beautiful as Red Beauty had been in her prime, and she had no marks of birth. Her trimmed short hair was shiny, her body firm. She wore no fighting marks. No damage.
She shied away from the males calling out to her. Brownie knew they meant no harm. Most of them, that is. One Eye presented his genitals against the barrier and made the birth making motions. She moved away from his barrier and bumped against Brownie’s.
She spun and looked up into Brownie’s eyes.
“Be strong,” he said, lowering his head and stepping back, a display of nonaggression.
Her head tilted slightly in confusion in response before the testers pushed her forward.
As she passed by Red Beauty’s barrier she wrinkled her nose and recoiled at Red’s scent.
The testers pushed the newcomer to the opposite side of the barriers from Brownie’s side, adjacent to One Eye’s enclosure. The tester opened the barrier and pushed her forward. They made another motion and the barrier returned.
One Eye took advantage of the situation and continued his sexual assault on the barrier between him and the female.
A tester smacked One Eye’s barrier and he backed off. Two testers turned to Red Beauty’s cage and began monitoring her. She settled slowly to the floor as far from them as she could.
A tester stopped in front of Brownie’s enclosure.
“Shake,” it said in Brownie’s words.
Brownie stepped forward and extended his right forelimb. The tester made a motion and the barrier opened just enough for Brownie to extend his forelimb outside. The tester gripped his forelimb hard enough that Brownie hissed and bared his teeth in response but relaxed in nonaggression.
The tester examined Brownie’s forelimb, squeezing the injection point for required fixing. Once satisf
ied, the tester released him and shoved his forelimb back inside the enclosure before sealing it.
The testers performed similar inspections on others along the passageway. Some howls, some screams of sheer terror, some moans of pleasure, echoed through the home hallway. It was nothing new, repeated daily. For all their lives it had been this way, and even before the Old One was young.
Brownie alternated looking between the frightened newcomer and Red Beauty. The testers were spending too long communicating in their own words with each other outside Red Beauty’s enclosure.
“Brownie?” the Old One called.
Brownie glanced over his shoulder.
“Be ready. Be strong. She will go,” the Old One said, scratching an old sore behind his ear.
“No. She is strong,” Brownie whined, “she will not go.”
The Old One sighed. “She will go. They stay too long. I have seen this.”
“No,” Brownie disagreed.
The testers motioned and Red Beauty’s enclosure opened as Red slowly retreated into a corner.
Brownie charged the barrier separating them.
He clawed, howled, beat, rammed, snarled, spit, and leaped against the barrier multiple times, which encouraged the other breed along the passageway to join in with angry shouts and displeasure.
A tester returned to Brownie’s home and banged against the barrier.
“Brownie, no, be strong! Be strong!” the Old One warned.
The two testers approached Red Beauty and she tried to get away. “Brownie! Brownie!” she screamed in horror.
Brownie rubbed the points from his claws attacking the barrier, leaving bloody streaks, compelling the tester to bang again.
The two testers touched Red Beauty and she collapsed, they prodded and examined her genitals, talking in the testers’ words. Eventually, they each took a set of her limbs and lifted her from the floor.
“No!” Brownie demanded, clawing in an even greater frenzy.
“Down,” the tester commanded outside his enclosure.
Brownie ignored it.
The Old One banged the barrier too. “Down,” the Old One begged, “Down, Brownie, down.”
Red Beauty’s unmoving body, her long hair dragging the passageway floor, swung between the testers as they exited her enclosure.
“Down,” the tester repeated in the breed’s words.
Insane with grief, Brownie launched himself at the tester.
Pain wracked Brownie’s body and he endured the dance of pain across the cold floor.
The Old One turned his head away. One Eye bared his teeth in pleasure. The newcomer covered her nose and eyes, pressing herself to the floor.
The dance of pain continued much longer than it should have until Brownie could no longer contain his body’s waste. Only then did the tester stop the dance.
Brownie gasped for breath and lifted his face from his wetness and solid stink to look at the tester’s all-concealed head.
“Down.” The tester sounded amused, then it turned and followed Red Beauty and the others back the way they entered.
One Eye crouched low until Brownie looked at him.
He bared his teeth. “I said she was food.”
Brownie faded into blackness.
* * *
“Brownie?” Old One whispered, “Brownie?”
The floor was cold and damp but didn’t stink.
“Brownie? Are you strong?” Old One repeated.
Brownie lifted his head slowly and looked toward Old One.
“Good.” The Old One huffed, “You did not move when they cleaned your home. I was not sure if you were food.”
Brownie glanced back toward Red Beauty’s empty home. It was empty and cleaned. He breathed deeply. Nothing of Red Beauty’s scent remained.
“She is gone,” the Old One informed him. “Her breaking took her.”
Brownie tried to rise on all fours but the dance of pain cramped his muscles. A dull ache spread throughout his body.
The enclosure floor and his body were spotless. Neither he nor his home smelled except for the way the waste corner normally did.
One Eye watched the new female with a predatory look.
The newcomer was curled into a ball on the opposite side of her home. She kept showing weakness against One Eye’s stare. A bad thing.
She was short, slim, healthy, smelled of youth. Brownie knew how much One Eye liked that.
“You dance strong.” One Eye bared his teeth in pleasure. “It was good.”
Brownie bared his teeth back in the challenge way. “One day we will dance together and you will finish the dance for the last time.”
One Eye snorted and looked back at the female.
Brownie pulled himself up. He examined his claws, the sharps worn to nubs on both front and back paws. He stretched. The eyes of the female looked toward him.
Brownie moved to the corner of his enclosure nearest her.
“What are you called?” Brownie asked.
“Mine,” One Eye warned.
Brownie ignored him.
She looked at One Eye with trepidation.
“Look here. Be strong,” Brownie encouraged. “What are you called?”
One Eye bared his teeth and dragged his claw slowly across the barrier at Brownie. “Mine,” he repeated.
“I am Brownie. Behind me is the Old One. That is One Eye. Tell us so we know you.”
She raised her head looking quickly between One Eye and Brownie, then settling her eyes on Brownie. “I am Fierce Biter.”
Brownie and the Old One bared their teeth in appreciation. “A strong name,” Brownie said.
“I am new here. What are the tests?” she whispered. “What do they look for in us?”
The Old One stood. “We fight. We are fighting breed.”
Brownie nodded. “We are fighting breed.”
She glanced at One Eye, and he crept closer to the barrier displaying his excited genitals. She quickly looked away.
One Eye licked the barrier. “We will make the fighting breed strong with our mating.”
Fierce Biter shivered.
“Be strong,” Brownie commanded her in a deep tone.
Fierce Biter’s head popped up and looked at him. “You . . . sound like a tester.”
Brownie bared his teeth in displeasure.
Fierce dipped her eyes. “Not the bad way. Strong. I mean strong.”
Brownie closed his mouth. “We are all strong here. If you are here? You are strong. Be strong.”
Fierce looked at Brownie for a moment, then slowly rose in a defensive crouch.
She ignored One Eye’s noises and actions as she stretched and rose to her full height.
“You are strong,” Brownie said, baring his teeth in appreciation.
Fierce Biter, her demeanor still somewhat timid, tried to make eye contact with One Eye.
One Eye reveled in her discomfort, baring his teeth in pleasure.
Suddenly Fierce charged the barrier. If the barrier had not been there, all four of her claws would have severely damaged or removed One Eye’s unsuspecting male parts. One Eye instinctively retreated.
Fierce Biter glared at One Eye, displaying her teeth and raking her claws across the floor as a threat.
“I am Fierce Biter,” she growled. “I mate with who I want. Not who thinks I am weak.”
One Eye launched himself at his side of the barrier and she attacked her side.
They displayed strength. Fierce Biter’s youth outlasted One Eye’s and he settled down.
“I will have you,” One Eye warned between gulps of breath. “You will mate with who the testers match you. I am strongest. You will mate with me.”
Brownie and the Old One huffed at his boast.
Fierce came closer to the barrier and said, “Then we shall mate.” She flexed her claw, “But it will be once and you will be broken when I am done.”
The Old One spoke through the barrier air holes to Brownie, “I like her.”
Brownie bared his teeth. “I do, too. She is strong.”
Fierce returned to the other side of her home and curled into a ball to rest, ignoring One Eye completely.
* * *
The testers returned with the daily injections.
Each of the breed extended their paw and forelimb past the barrier for their injections.
Breed howled and screamed, interspacing those sounds with moans of pleasure.
One Eye liked the injections, they always gave him strength.
The Old One never seemed to mind his. The Old One guessed his injections were for healing and living strong. His teeth were never bad and his claws were always strong and sharp.
Brownie didn’t know what his injections did but he often thought long and hard about it. He knew he thought more than the other breed. About everything. The Old One said Brownie grew smarter over time and that was why he was chosen as the pack Alpha. Brownie healed quicker than other breed, except for the Old One, but Brownie couldn’t tell any difference after they made him leader. He fought less, planned more.
When Fierce Biter took her injection, she vomited and scratched furiously at herself. The testers were forced to enter her enclosure to subdue her before she permanently damaged herself and gave her two more injections until she calmed down and became strong again.
All the breed knew sometimes the injections went wrong. They had seen at one time or another when one of the others on their passageway became food from the tests. It wasn’t a good thing to see.
The Old One tapped the barrier. “Scratcher is back.” He indicated the testers escorting a female.
Scratcher was a barren female with a deep scar across her neck and a missing teat. She was tall for a female. Quick with an open and approachable way. Her dark mane was shaved on the same side as the scar so it would not be obscured so the testers could monitor its healing. The testers had taken her two days ago to heal the wound given by one of Fat Belly’s pack. The scar looked fixed strong to Brownie.
Enter the Rebirth (Enter the... Book 3) Page 23