And it all seemed like such a good idea at the time... It really should be raining. Either a cold grey drizzle to emphasize my mood, or one of those sudden monsoons I remember from my youth, that sweep across the landscape and leave everything changed and refreshed. But this is Australia, where the rivers run dry and the sun stretches on unchanging, until the future vanishes into a haze of misty heat.

I can't describe how great it felt at the start. To finally leave them all behind me and take my life in my hands. To run away, every sensation enhanced by the terror that swept through me, away from their comments and their glances, the fear of not being human, and on, on to a future, to finally understanding things, on to somewhere that might accept me for who I was. Knowing I was putting my life on the line in doing so, and supremely confident that it was worth the risk, and that I would survive.

The adrenaline carried my courage through the day, allowing me to weave unnoticed between the strangers, gleaning every nuance of meaning out of their talk as they ran back to their camp. It wasn't hard to work out the hierarchy of the tribe, and my heart was gladdened as we turned the corner on the final stretch for home. For there lay an enclave of thatched cottages, warm in the firelight, and a group of children running to welcome us home from the hunt. The unexpected civilization filled me with hope and confidence, and joy at my lucky chance, for I had dreaded ending up with a group of mind deadened hunters. Here surely was something worth living for.

I would have spent the next day or two hiding in the masses, learning all I could, but I grew too unwary and crept too close to the tribe's leaders. Obviously my tabby was a little more incongruent than I had hoped it was, for they were swift in calling me to questioning. Still, the moment was here, and it was mine for the taking. I had the brains, the fire power and the cheek to pull this one off... hopefully... And it couldn't be hard, with all this behind me, to gain rank in a motley village in the wilderness. It was practically scripted - challenge the biggest one I could find, amaze them with my fire power, and promise them information beyond their wildest dreams...

At this point, it all went wrong. Somehow my basic assumption that at the heart of every life was a burning flame to know and be more had fallen flat with this bunch. There was one horrifying, heart tearing moment when they challenged my loyalties, told me that to stay amongst them I must slay one of my old comrades and return, that froze me to the ground with terror and uncertainty. Plans leapt and died in my head, the possibility of substituting another corpse dressed in armor (there were no shortage of bodies after the tiger attack) but at the central core was the question "Would I?" Whose side was I on? If it was that of the team, why was I here? And if I'd thrown in my lot with these, then what should hold me back? I'd made my choice really in deciding my own survival would come first. And what would my friends have done, if we'd found a human Haven where acceptance had depended on slaying me?

Even as these horrors rose and died in my mind, the tigers had forgotten the question that had placed them there. For the terrifying truth about the civilization I had found was its complete randomness, where so long as there was food and company, idle discussion and the thrill of the hunt, ones own safety secured, nothing else would find a way of stirring them. I could not promise wonders, for wonders did not excite, and even when I caught their minds for a second they would snag on trivialities, and tangle my words until they meant nothing. Their religion was random disrespected garbage. Their children (and I can only speculate on how the children came to be there. Whether they were sustaining their own population or whether the little ones had once been human too was a thought too bleak to dwell on) were even more beast-like than them. Few were gifted with speech, none with logic, and not a soul with love or learning. There was no future here, no education, no knowledge, no longings and no way out, just a steady sinking to the level of the beasts.

And I was being pulled down too. The thrill of the hunt! To run and rip and tear and slaughter, every arrow sharp mind working together intent on the prey, and then to sit and gorge until full on soft still warm flesh... Nothing but yourself, no guns or knives or plans or safety nets, just balancing on the thin edge of death alone yet together, plunging your flesh into another's to take life and kill, far closer than I ever had before. It scared me, the pleasure I took from that. And when I stopped thinking, gnawing meat round the fire, and another cat nabbed off with it, I was on them before I knew what I was doing. None of my usual cold calculation, did I want to assert superiority, should I attack them, how were they holding it, where were they weak, but just a sudden pounce from behind and a catfight. A catfight. A lost catfight.

I had to leave. I had to leave or I would have spent the rest of my life dozing in the sun and not knowing what I had wasted and lost. So I headed back to camp, where I knew they would be waiting to welcome me...

Except they weren't there. I was suspicious from the start - when had that bunch ever come to a decision about what to do in under three days? - but when I saw the bodies things started to fall into place. Horrendously mutilated, hacked and stinking in the hot sun, the heads nowhere to be seen. And we just wouldn't do that. I know. It's the first thing they taught us, that to kill well you stay removed from death. No ransacking corpses, no gratuitous target practice, just calm professionalism. It's the only way you can stay sane - the sights you have to see are bad enough without creating your own. But this...? I thought I knew who was behind it... and I dreaded to think what would happen to them now, traveling with someone who the second they fell in battle would ensure they could never get up again.

I walked on, following them. They were heading to the coast, a plan I had never even heard them mention before. There was only one person who could have changed their minds, persuaded them I wouldn't come back, destroyed the trust of the year together. I should never have brought a stranger back to the group. It was a long walk, and random thoughts flitted through my mind, brought on by the heat and exhaustion. The one I couldn't help but dwell on was what would happen if they all died? Then they'd be like me, and I wouldn't be so alone. And they'd still be intelligent, and so much stronger and more adapted to the world... In fact maybe it would be a help and a mercy if I crept up on them and just... Then it hit me how insane I was sounding, and that I'd been speaking aloud for the last two miles. And then I spotted them on the crest of the hill.

She was there, with them, pretty and prim, and the second she saw me she bristled with hatred and reached for a shovel. And her stance and the burning in her eyes screamed out to me of mobs and pitchforks, burnings at the stake and death in the night. She looked at me with a steadfast resolve, and the burning anger that me and all like me should never be allowed on the surface of the earth. And not a single one of my friends stood in her way. And I snapped, and charged her, and wrestled the shovel to the floor while my brain cried out at me to hurt her and hurt her until she could never look at me like that again, and I so nearly didn't stop.

Things calmed down, and we struck camp, and life happened. I was filled in on how they'd come to be hiding on a hill, and the story didn't surprise me. Works, dangerous, despicable, loathed and despised works, miles away on the other side of the valley. Organized works though, thinking works, with packs and a plan and a will to be moving somewhere, who must know somewhere worth going to or something worth doing. Surprising, isn't it, we'll stop peasants for help, and happily drag then halfway across the country with us, but works...

And Edith found out about the jeep. And I've never seen anyone look so hurt and yet so hard, doing the intelligent safe thing, not running off in tears but staying near us, but the pain on her face was so raw... loss, and years of trying, and learning, and then having her whole life destroyed by a gang (for we are no better than the gangs) of infantile fools running round the country. She looked so human. So fragile yet strong. Which is more than anyone could ever have said about me, even before all this. And I hate her all the more for it.

Index ; What the F*ck ; Body Count ; Who's playing Who ; What's been happening