Rat

Fight

We are trapped in a land that is not our own. I am lost. I am hungry. I am scared... But I am not alone.

I have my tribe, small that it is. We are united--and our hunger unites us more than ever. We search high and low for food, but we never find enough. I feel that it is a constant complaint: I cannot remember the last time I had a full belly.

And yet, there is food here. We know it, and we see the signs everywhere. The only problem is the food has already been taken--by creatures like ourselves.

It has been taken by the other tribe of rats.

There is distress amongst our ranks. We do not want to fight, but we must eat. We do not want to battle our fellow creatures, but they are leaving us no choice. If there is no food, then there is death. It is that simple.

And there is no food.

And so we have headed off on the march, and our mission is simple: find the other tribe of rats and force them to stop. I am not a fool, I know how this conversation will go. They will say no and then we will be forced into violence. I do not like our chances: they are a bigger tribe than us. They will devastate us. But the tribe will not listen to me. They are after blood, and once a pack has set off on a march towards war, nothing will satisfy them except war.

I just want food, but I will join the war because I am part of a tribe. Peace may come tomorrow, but there will be violence today.

Our advance scouts returned near dusk. They are excited, and even though I have not heard what the scouts have to say, I grow excited, too. It is obvious what they have found: the other tribe.

As one, we head out. We are a heaving mass of fur on a sea of artificial rock. We make hardly any noise, even though there is so many of us. I see the vicious beasts that built this place hurry away from us, but I have been desensitized by their response--how many times can you be surprised by them running away in horror? We are monsters to them, small that we are. They are monsters to us. We are even.

And then we see them: the other tribe.

They were below us. The ground wasn't quite made up of hills and valleys, but they were in a valley, and we were atop a hill, such that it was. They hadn't notice us, and with elevation and surprise we were confident of a successful assault. And so we charged down.

Surprise counts for a lot, but it does not count for everything. Elevation counts for a lot, too. I do not know much about war, but I am a quick learner. We crashed into the other tribe with a ferocity that astounded me. Soon there was blood spilled on the ground. Chunks of fur lay about in little tufts. Creatures were maimed, others dead. I do not know which side suffered most, at least at first.

But, again, surprise only counts for so much. The other tribe was bigger and once we had descended to their level, there was little in the way of advantage for us. They circled us, didn't let out any option of a retreat.

And then they went to work.

Our numbers quickly dropped as they attacked from all sides. We were penned in. I was bitten and scratched. I tasted my own blood. I lost sight of the cause--I forgot why we were even here. The search for food. It meant nothing. It was all I could do to survive.

But there was no surviving this.

No, I was wrong: there was an opening. I don't know where it came from, or how. It was just something that happened when individuals stopped being individuals and formed a group. Patterns of behaviour emerge out of nowhere, and one side went left and the other side went right and, right down the middle, a corridor opened up.

An escape.

And so I ran. There were others with me, and not all of them friendly. We all ran--right through the gap. Towards survival, even if that meant no food and no chance. I took it with all four paws.

I ran and burst out of the seething, warring mass and emerged on wet grass, even though it hadn't been raining. The grass was wet with blood. My blood. I was injured. I was slow.

I turned to see who chased us, but I was safe. The war had been settled; my side had lost. There were only a few of us left. Those that had been foes were now friends--they had been cut off from the tribe, too, and they had nowhere else to go. There was no way to differentiate between us, there were just those that were inside the tribe and those that were not. Survival, like so many things, meant sticking together.

And so this small band of survivors fled the scene. We were lost. We were ashamed.