Old Hunters on the New Wild

by Brian S. Wheeler

  * * * * *

  The twinkling advertisements for the savanna never warned how tired a new hunter feels after following Wyatt Holmes across so many miles. The mudders established their tent well before nightfall, and as the clones started to sing, the expedition started to feel more like the vacation those hunters hoped to find after paying such treasure to secure a place upon the journey.

  Wyatt sat quietly before the camp’s central fire, where the favorite of mudder guides gathered with the women and men of the hunt. It pleased the old hunter to recognize how the mudders’ songs bent smiles onto the tired faces of his colleagues. None in that group, including his boy Cayden, yet showed the courage to fire their weapons, but Wyatt hoped they might as he saw those hunters tap their feet in cadence to the mudders’ songs. If those songs planted themselves deeply enough into those hunters’ memory, then those hungers might recall those singing mudders when they struggled to find the willpower to kill one of the resplendent beasts of the savanna. The song might remind Wyatt’s peers that it was their duty to kill so that the mudders could continue to sing. Nothing on the savanna was free, and Wyatt’s experiences when surrounded by those swaying grasses taught him how one could not have beauty without also having the blood.

  “Mind if I sit beside you at the fire? I’d hate to disturb the great hunter when he’s brooding.”

  Wyatt winked at Cayden and accepting the bowl of stew his son handed to him.

  “I’d like the company. Believe it or not, it wasn’t my intention to sit alone.”

  “You intimidate the other hunters. I think they’re afraid you might whistle and send the mudders packing up the camp again.”

  “They’ll be happy the mudders carried them so far after they see the game that’s waiting in the grass for them tomorrow.”

  “They seem happy enough now as they listen to the mudders sing,” Cadyen smirked. “The clones know how to entertain.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Oh, they do more than entertain tourists with their song. Those mudders sing the way they do to keep the animals away from the fires and food. They sing to warn the predators that might be lurking beyond our perimeter that the camp belongs to the clones.”

  “A song can do that?”

  The hunter nodded. “Those geneticists who work to repopulate the new wild weave very intricate designs with all their nucleotides and chromosomes. They want to make a new world where the ecology’s equilibrium will have better chances of being maintained than did the balance of the first world. They want to make something that lasts, so they work so hard to make sure each piece is connected just so. It’s so detailed that even songs play an important part.”

  “Do you think those geneticists have planned a place for us?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s in their power to save us, or if we deserve to be saved in the first place.”

  Wyatt shifted his thoughts and concentrated on the steaming bowl of stew Cayden brought to him. His nose still wrinkled at the smell of the concoction. Like everyone else born to woman instead of the laboratory, Wyatt had eaten that sole source of nutrition for many years. Yet he was still in the habit of scowling each time he hefted the first spoonful of the lumpy substance to his mouth.

  Cayden giggled at his father’s apprehension. “Oh, it’s not so bad.”

  “I can remember when a meal gave a person more than just nutrition,” Wyatt mumbled. “I remember when meals were special, when a man could find pleasure in his food.”

  “Well, the mudder stew is the only thing I’ve known,” and Cayden proceeded to shovel the substance into his mouth.

  Wyatt’s heart ached to think his son wouldn’t know the pleasure of tasting Buffalo wings drenched in spicy sauce, or deep-dish pizza thick with melted cheese. Wyatt was an old man, with enough years clinging to his weakening skeleton to let him remember the mornings so long ago when his grandfather took Wyatt on his first hunts. They would hunt deer with antique, bolt-action rifles. Wyatt remembered all the steps his grandfather showed him to dress the animal in the field, but he wept when his mind failed to recall the taste venison. Wyatt’s grandfather cooked squirrels, frog legs and turtle soup. He butchered cattle for hamburger and sausage. Wyatt failed to remember the taste of any of it. Yet he knew it all tasted like something, which was more than he could say of that steaming mush he was forced to eat for his breakfast, lunch and dinner. The stew industry incessantly reminded humanity of the easy, healthy nutrition and protein their recipe offered. That industry never tired to argue that the mudder stew provided a healthy diet, of how the gravy wouldn’t spike a person’s bad cholesterol or turn the consumer diabetic. Obesity was no longer a problem. The nutrition found in that steaming bowl required a fraction of the water and energy once devoted to the harvest. The science responsible for the mudder stew was sophisticated and logical, and Wyatt Holmes realized that many considered it great. Perhaps he should’ve seen the stew as the miracle the nutrition industry swore it was. Only Wyatt’s memory of cheesecakes and cheeseburgers choked his gratitude.

  Wyatt participated on so many expeditions. No one, not even the mudder guides, could better track the Nuevo lioness, and no man, woman or clone could better spot the markings the marching trout left behind as they migrated through the savanna grasses to reach their seasonal, breeding ponds. Though it was his duty to hunt to soothe the mudders’ hunger, Wyatt could eat nothing his weapons claimed. That irony was never lost to him as he watched the mudders dine from their plates of seared genolope and shredded water bison. Humankind had its time to test what the old world offered, but the old world was gone, and humanity couldn’t stomach what grew in the new wild. Wyatt’s lifetime witnessed man and woman squander it all, watched man and woman drive the old wild into extinction, until genetic scientists raced to repopulate the planet with clones and creatures not shaped by some ancient god-creator.

  “Did I tell you, Cayden, about the pecan pies your great-grandmother used to set on the table in the autumn?”

  Cayden paused a moment from his meal. “There’s no reason to let you mind drift to those memories, old man. Thinking about pecan pie isn’t going to help you appreciate the meal you have. You’re only tormenting yourself by trying to remember how all that old food tasted.”

  Wyatt forced himself to the first bite and grimaced. “What do you think mudder spices taste like? Don’t you wonder sometimes?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Eating that mudder food will only make you vomit.”

  Wyatt frowned and watched his son return to that bowl of steaming stew. Did he have any right to fault Cayden? How many times had he lamented to that boy about how the world passed him by? The mudder stew held in Wyatt’s bowl was the clone kind’s original nutrition, protein hatched from a petri dish to give clone kind a cheap, if tasteless, source of energy. Humanity once wrinkled its nose at the smell of that stew as its steam covered the industrial districts that first housed the mudder barracks. Humanity then never dreamed that the day would come when man and woman would depend upon that foul food. But as the old world faded, and as the geneticists raced to replace it, that mudder stew seeped onto more and more of the dinner tables housed in the homes of woman and man.

  Industry faltered, and then industry closed its door to humankind. Many in the swelling ranks of humanity’s poor accepted counterfeit tattoos of ones and zeroes around their eyes so that they might emulate the clones and receive free portions of the mudder stew, hunger making such people ready to trade their humanity for a meal. And then the blights, diseases and droughts fell upon a planet made sick from abuse, killing the livestock once so easily bred to feed the masses. The oceans emptied of oxygen, and fishermen raised only empty nets no matter where their boats trawled. Humanity turned hungrier. Fate twisted a crueler knife when the ground dried, overworked by the plow, made too light to resist the wind. Crops withered. A farmer’s chances for harvest didn’t improve after he planted a seed instead of a stone.

  A few seasons passed, and the
n the stomachs of the wealthy growled as loudly as the stomachs of the poor. The nutrition factories bellowed steam as they burned to produce vat after vat of that concoction first intended only for the clone, a stew that humanity suddenly needed to avoid starvation. The supermarkets emptied of asparagus and arugula, bananas and peaches, orange juice and milk. Then, a day arrived when woman and man needed no counterfeit brand of the clone tattooed upon their face to receive a free helping of the mudder stew. A day arrived when man and woman chose to starve their pride instead of their bodies.

  The geneticists raced to find new variants of animal and plant to save humanity from the mudder stew. They labored through mazes of nucleotide pairings, and for a time the world held an excited breath whenever those scientists introduced new life. The Lazarus bovine awed ranchers for the size that creature gained on such little food and water, and their mouths couldn’t help but water while dreaming of the steaks that might be carved from that creature’s flank. But such meat soured the moment it was swallowed by a human diner, tossing the eater into convulsions as the body screamed to expel what it couldn’t hold. The geneticists planted fields of blooming beans, whose stalks flowered through the driest and hottest summers with blazing orange pedals that brought color back into the barren acres. Yet humanity could digest no form of that bean, no matter how the hybrid crop might be roasted, steamed or boiled. The geneticists introduced new pigs, pheasants, chickens and turkeys, and the stomachs of humanity could hold none of it down. The new apple orchards and tomato gardens all looked lovely, and still none of it gave any protein to the human body. The modified potato grew larger than its predecessor, but humanity hungered all the same.

  The clone stomach thrived on what the human stomach couldn’t keep. All the plants and animals born in the geneticists’ test tubes provided the mudders with energy. The geneticists unintentionally provided a cornucopia to the clones. The factories that trembled to produce enough mudder stew for clone and man were relieved when all those mudder mouths turned to the fields that made humanity sick. Humanity might’ve hated the clone all the further after watching the mudder enjoy the food man and woman could not, but the clones’ new diet insured that ample mudder stew remained to keep woman and man from starvation.

  Wyatt chewed his meal as little as possible before wincing and swallowing his food. If he ate quickly, he didn’t need to suffer the taste. The way Cayden could eat the stew without grimacing amazed Wyatt, but then the old hunter remembered that the mudder stew was all his son had ever known. Wyatt couldn’t decide if he should consider it a blessing or a curse that Cayden never tasted chocolate ice cream, or the pleasure of morning cups of coffee.

  A tall, male clone timidly approached Wyatt as he worked towards the bottom of his bowl. “Parden me, Mother-son, but would you tell us again about your first hunting expedition? We love hearing about the times you hunted before we arrived on the savanna.”

  Cayden turned towards his father. “You hunted the old world’s creatures? You never told me any story about old world hunts.”

  The mudders seated around the fire failed to see Wyatt’s shoulders slump. They didn’t notice how the old man’s eyes failed to lift from his bowl.

  “Please, Mother-son,” encourage another clone. “Tell us again what it was like to stalk the old world’s game.”

  “Do all of you never tire of hearing the same story?” Wyatt asked. “You’ve heard it so many times now.”

  A third clone cleared his throat. “We marvel at it, Mother-son. It always amazes us to hear how the hunt was once so easy.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Aye, it was easy, but I wouldn’t call it a hunt.”

  He knew it was a foolish wish, but Wyatt had hoped that those mudders wouldn’t ask him to tell his story of his first trip to the savanna. Sometimes, if the mudders were too occupied in their chores, or if they were too hungry to care, the clones wouldn’t ask him to tell that history. But the previous day’s killing of genolope must’ve sat well within their stomachs, for all the mudder guides gathered at the fire turned their branded faces at Wyatt Holmes. Wyatt never refused them the tale. Though all the other men and women on the expedition always hated him after he told it, Wyatt never balked to share the story of his original hunt with those clones. The telling came to be a kind of confessional. Perhaps the opportunity to relate his story to the mudders was what really pulled him again and again to the savanna grass, no matter how the Spiderstrand hallowed his bones and crowded his lungs. Did the telling not lift a little of the guilt off his shoulders? Didn’t his soul hunger for the chance to share the story of his shame?

  But would telling that story give Wyatt that catharsis now that Cayden accompanied him on the hunt? What would his son think of him after Wyatt reached the tale’s conclusion? Would Wyatt ever again share his story with clone kind and receive that balm his old heart required if his boy hated him after learning of his father’s old sin?

  “I’ll tell it.” Wyatt set his bowl of stew upon the ground. “I’ve no right to deny the story to any clone. In the morning, you mudders will shepherd new fires to flush game into the sights of my gun, so I have no right to deny you that story now.”

  The savanna was quiet. The only sound was that of the high grasses swaying in the night’s breeze. Wyatt’s words would carry very easily on that wind, and none gathered around the fire would strain to hear. Wyatt wouldn’t need to lift his gaze and measure what interest his story held to his audience.

  He knew he had everyone’s attention.