White and Other Tales of Ruin

He backed against the tree and tried to force himself up towards the branches, but then he shook his head and laughed to quell his racing heart. “Birds,” he said. “Don’t panic.”

The others had reacted in their own instinctive ways. Max was kicking out left and right, Butch jumping up and down on the spot, Norris scrabbling around on his hand and knees, trying to regain his lost footing. As Roddy’s words registered and the small, gawky birds jumped and fluttered away from the men, the panic eased.

“Scared the living shit out of me!” Butch shouted, laughing with nervousness and relief. Max closed his eyes and shook his head. He looked around, catching Roddy’s eye and smirking. Norris stood and brushed at his filthy clothes. He stretched his neck in unconscious mimicry of the fleeing birds. He did not speak, and when he caught Roddy’s eye he turned away in embarrassment. His knees and elbows were dirty and damp from his frantic squirming on the ground. His face was red from the same. Roddy almost felt sorry for him.

“At least we know we’re not alone,” Butch said, “though I didn’t think much of yours, Max.”

“Scared the hell out of me,” Max said. He was rubbing beaded sweat from his head, flicking it at the ground. “I didn’t realise I was so on edge.”

Roddy thought he was lying. He thought Max was more than aware of the tension squeezing the four men. An anxiousness built up from outside, as well as in, and threatening to snap at any moment. Perhaps the birds startling them had been a good thing, a release valve for the growing pressures of their unforeseen situation.

“Never seen birds like that before,” Butch said. “Like fat chickens.”

“Quails,” Max said. “At least, I think so. Flightless.”

“Why the fuck be a bird and not be able to fly?” Butch asked. His fringe, greasy and lank, annoyed his eyes, so that he had to keep blinking. “Like a fish that can’t swim.” He glanced at Norris, obviously about to come out with some cutting witticism.

Max barged in before Butch could get himself into trouble. “No need to fly, because there are no predators here.”

Butch frowned, causing his eyes more aggravation. “That tortoise was a shit of a predator, if you ask me. It was eating Ernie.”

“A scavenger,” Max explained. He slapped his neck to dislodge a tickling fly, forgetting his sunburn. “Bollocks!”

Flightless birds, Roddy thought. Mutations. The fittest surviving, a mutation in their species eventually eschewing flight. It all added to the strangeness of the place. “More mutants.” Max nodded at him.

“Dinner, all the same,” Norris said. For a few brief seconds, the others had not been paying him any attention. Now they all turned to look, just in time to see him fall back to his hands and knees. He scrabbled in the shallow undergrowth, leaves and dirt spinning around him. For a moment Roddy thought he’d lost it, and a terribly bitter thought passed through his mind. He wondered whether the others would have any qualms about leaving a madman behind, if it came to that. He hated the thought, despised himself for thinking it, but an idea could not be un-made.

Then Norris stood again, cursing some more, and kicked out at a fleeing bird. Luck, or fate, or something more sinister intervened. Norris’s boot connected squarely with the creature’s rear end and launched it on its maiden flight. Straight into a tree.

They all heard the subtle sigh of tiny bones breaking.

“Yeah!” Norris shouted. “Got you! Yeah!” He raised bloody fists above his head.

But the creature was not quite dead. It squirmed at the base of the tree, fluttering useless wings in an attempt to reverse millennia of evolution and regain its flight, lift off and take itself away from its inevitable end. Nature held its secret tightly to its chest, however, and Norris’s heavy boot finished the bird’s struggles. Roddy was sure he saw a hint of something dark in Norris’s eyes as he ground his foot down.

“I’m not eating that,” Butch said. “Roddy said it’s a mutant. Could catch anything.”

Max opened his mouth to explain, but thought better of it. Instead he headed off between the trees, aiming for the sound of running water. In the distance, calls and rustles marked the route of the fleeing birds. They had still not stopped, as though pursued by something inescapable.

“I mean it,” Butch said.

Norris did not know what to do. Roddy stepped past him, frowning, looking down at the dead thing spilling its insides onto the damp forest floor.

“Roddy?” Norris said, and it was the first time Roddy had ever heard the man use his first name. It sounded bitter coming from the cook’s mouth.

They left the bird. Norris stepped away hesitantly, perhaps waiting for the others to turn around and change their minds. But Roddy eventually heard footsteps following them, and the dead bird remained where it had fallen.

Bleeding. Steaming. Taking to the air at last.

Roddy caught up with Max and matched his pace. Butch and Norris followed on, muttering profanities at each other.