The Secret Life of Zebras

I'm running with my family, black hair flying behind me. It's the future, and we are all being hunted by monsters. Monsters. They didn't always live with us, but they've found us, and they rarely let us escape their dirty clutches. Ever since that time, they've been hunting us. There have always been enemies of ours in the world, and they are still hard to defeat, but these new monsters, these evil, evil things, they have this cost, this pelt, that hides them in our environment. This makes them especially hard to escape. Lucky for us, the number of killings is down, but they haven't stopped, and one is hunting us at this very moment.

I look to my side while running, and gasp. My brother's leg is twisted in an unnatural way. Directly in front of us are my parents and two older sisters. Behind us are our neighbors, whom we have teamed up with during these harsh times of survival. In the very back, my grandmother runs with a limp. There is little chance she will survive through the winter, and even though it doesn't get much colder here during the winter than during the summer, the weather can still take a toll on us as it changes like an ocean, calm at times and a death trap at other times. As I think about this, the future that seems to lead to death, my heart begins to form the cracks that will one day shatter, making a million pieces of broken heart in the cage of ribs. Until then, my heart beats steadily against the bone cage, wanting to get out, but can't, even in the rush of adrenaline that is coursing through my veins, fueling the caged animal.

We come up to a river, and we see nothing that could harm us, at least within eyesight. That does little to settle my nerves. My mother and grandmother take a break and drink the river water, and my mother helps wash my grandmother's pure white hair, as to calm her down, and maybe increase her chances of survival. At least this is what she is telling grandmother, and maybe calming my grandmother down will increase her chances of survival. God, please let her live. But in this world, it's survival of the fittest, unfortunately, and my grandmother isn't in the condition she used to be.

It's not until it gets dark and I begin to settle down that my sharp ears pick up the little noises in the grasslands we are resting in, the noises that are the trickling river running north and the cicadas chirping their melodic harmony; the snakes and other creatures rustling the grass. Besides these sounds, I hear another noise, this one startling me. It is an almost mechanical movement, unnatural to our natural world. It's the monsters. They've found us again.

I warn the others, and we set off on another journey as silently as possible. I feel weariness falling over me, and considering I am the one with the most energy in our group, I can't even begin to imagine how the others feel, being practically sleep-deprived.

After about an hour or so, we find a place upstream that we think is safe. We settle down, and get as comfortable as possible, being out in the open. I close my eyes for a moment, and next thing I know I hear a loud crack! To me, it sounded like an amplified sound that a tree branch makes when it is broken. But I know better, and that's not what I hoped for. It was the monster, shooting it's projectile at us through the monster's extension of sorts. I see him in the predawn light, and I also see the body he drags behind him, probably to go eat as his next meal. It was my brother. My brother was the one who was killed.

Only moments had passed since the loud crack, even though it felt like hours because of my realization that it was my brother that was killed. I am shaken into reality by my father, strong and sturdy, and he begins to lead our group away from the danger. In my lifetime, the danger may never be over.

There will always be our enemies out there, and they have to eat. They like to eat us. They are the lions.

There are those monsters out there, with their projectile extensions. They like to wear us. They are the humans with there metal and wood rifles.

There are always dangers in our lives, and it is hard to live on the savanna. This is Africa.

There is the constant threat of death knocking on our own doors. We can die in so many ways; we are not the predators. We are the prey.
We are the zebras.