My hands ache as I dig into the shaft of my lance. Well-worn divots, sanded down from months of careful handling, cool down to the temperature of my body. I am crouched in wait - my eyes are on the harehole.
I am hunting today; I am hunting every day. We all are - able-bodied men who can make the sprint across the desert field. Our wives and children are home, cloistered within the echoes of a better time, seeking shelter in ruined buildings - even the insulation of a roof would bake you alive. They do what little they can - turning scraps of hide into cooling mats and thatching reeds for pathetic, fragile baskets. None of their prizes will survive beyond a month, and none of mine will, either - meat and bone and sinew greedily consumed and swallowed whole, just enough resources to last us the day. Empty calories.
The sun is burning. We have to move, every now and then, to keep the air striking our bodies and billowing within our cloaks. One of the others is laboring this point - he says we’ve waited too long for the prey to make an appearance. These hareholes are empty, and we need to go before the heat sears our feet into the dirt. The rest of us don’t want to risk losing what might yet come.
The youngest of us - the virile, the energetic - is causing the ruckus a few hundred feet down. Kicking sand, stomping rocks, hollering and screeching. He’s trying to scare the hares - those peachy-yellow things that disguise themselves among the dry grass and dust. A scared hare will run for the safety of their burrow, but we’ll be there to catch it.
Hareholes are specific constructions. Once you’ve located a burrow, you then need to meticulously trace out its inner canals: rapping the sand for the hollow spots beneath. You need a good ear for it - often the eldest of us. When you find the central chamber, that safe spot it calls home, you dig a great hole into it. An involuntary skylight through which our spears may enter, capitalizing on their instinct - fish in a barrel. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a fish.
A telltale scratching pushes through the youngest’s cacophony - a hare entering the trap. The seven of us tense up with fantastic synchronicity, like a single organism or some hivemind. The thing enters, withered and frail, and a half-dozen wooden sticks descend into its home. Two strike true. Five leave a terrifying impact on the ground around it.
Those two men are going to fight over who gets to carry the corpse. One of them grabs it, hoisting the two-pound thing by its neck as blood spills down from its open chest. His palm reaches out in impulse to catch the precious dripping. He’ll drink it, later, regardless of who keeps the body. One of the men waves for the youngest to stop his ritual.
This is the first harehole to produce a successful hunt today, and it will be the only one; the eldest bursts into a sprint. I can’t hear it, yet, but I know what it is. I follow suit, and so do the others, as the faint sound of the siren begins to ring in my ears.
We are all running without a second thought. This is the sprint - the mad dash back to safety as the black ships descend upon the tundra. I’m one of the few old enough to remember when they would carry people, but that time is long past. The blaring sound synchronizes with the opening of the bulkheads, dropping tiny metal pellets that rip up the soil with something hotter than the beating sun. I can hear them touch ground behind me, maybe a mile out into the nothingness - they will be much closer soon.
Somebody trips. I won’t know who for a long while, nor will I care. It’s an apathy that gives me guilt, but I don’t have time to feel it. My legs scream with lactic acid but I do not stop. Neither would he, if the roles reversed.
The bombs get closer, maybe a quarter-mile behind us, before I can make out the smaller details in the valley. Close enough to know I’m safe, this time - but I can tell I’m getting slower. I’ll try not to think about it.
We enter the heart of the valley, filtering among ruined alleyways and piles of rock. The ships arc up and out, curving back towards the endless sky from which they emerged - the mountains are too high for their engines. In their place will come the tiny machine-guns on rotors, dispensing their terrible streams of pain among the city. Hovering just above, they look for anything they can find among the bored-out rubble.
I get home in the spare moments before those machine-guns descend from the mountains around us, crawling through the entryway. Others are here, having made their way in long before I could. I join them in the corner, pressing my body against the hot wall, and stare into the open sky above.
I pray they do not see us in our harehole.