Remnant Population

Now what? Ofelia noticed that the sheep were ignoring the din, nibbling placidly at the meadowgrass nearby. The shrieks and yelps came nearer. She could see nothing, but whatever it was must be in the lower brush now. Then it came nearer — a troop of the treeclimbers, tails high, loping toward the village and screaming. The sheep lifted their heads, ears stiff. Behind the treeclimbers — on either side — were the aliens, their high-stepping gait now lengthened into an easy, efficient run. They were herding the treeclimbers… herding them to the village. The sheep bolted, scattering with frightened noises of their own. As she watched, one of the creatures lengthened its stride, caught up with a treeclimber, and caught it by the neck. At once, it slung the treeclimber around, like a child swinging a doll by the arm, and at the same time drew its long knife with its other forelimb. No, Ofelia wanted to cry. No. But it was far too late; the knife finished what the snap of the neck had begun, and the dead treeclimber twitched, its blood draining out into the grass. Two more had been killed; the surviving treeclimbers made it to the village, where they raced up to the rooftops and chittered wildly.

Ofelia unclenched her fingers from the fence. So the creatures hunted. She had known they could not eat human food. They would have been hungry after the days of storm. And those were only treeclimbers. Yet… it was hard for her to reconcile her memory of the night before, making music with the creatures, with this: with the creatures lapping the blood as it flowed from the necks of their prey, with the quick, efficient gutting of the carcasses. Would they eat them raw? She couldn’t stand to see it if they did, yet she could not look away. The little troop had formed again, the dead treeclimbers slung by their tails from the belts of those who had caught them (she thought — she was just beginning to know the differences between them).

They saw her. One of them waved a bloody knife, as if in greeting. Or threat. Ofelia swallowed. Behind them, the pile of innards had already attracted a swarm of black buzzing things that Ofelia knew were not really flies. She turned away and went inside her house, but did not shut the door. She hoped they would leave her alone (that bloody knife) but if they didn’t, she did not want to be surprised by a knock on the door. She looked at the orange-red tomatoes, the green beans, the green husks of corn over the yellow kernels. She wasn’t hungry.

Through the window, she saw them pass, high-stepping over her garden fence, walking through as if they owned it. Most went on over the lane fence, but one looked in the kitchen door and squawked. “I saw you,” Ofelia said. “Go away.” As if it understood, it turned away. Then it swung back, and pointed at the vegetables on her table. “You can’t eat that,” Ofelia said. “That’s my food.” A grunt. A complicated movement of the upper limbs that she thought might be like a shrug in meaning, and it left, hopping nimbly over the lane fence. She could hear its feet squelch in the mud. Where were they going, muddy-footed, with bloody prey slung from their belts? Not to center — ! Ofelia looked out to see. They were strolling along the lane, pointing at one of the treeclimbers that squatted on a roof-edge. They were strolling east, toward the shuttle field. Her stomach turned, remembering the bloated corpses the Company reps had left.

All day she told herself it was only natural. Of course they had to eat, and of course nothing in the village could feed them, any more than she could eat the fruit of the great forest trees. Why shouldn’t they hunt? Humans hunted, if they lived on worlds with game they could eat, and they ate farm animals elsewhere. She herself liked meat. She didn’t like killing, but then she hadn’t learned how early enough. These things had been hunting from childhood, she supposed. It didn’t mean they were killers, really. Killing things to eat was not the same thing as killing them just to kill.