//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 // Story: Don't Bug Me // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Mr. Albrecht’s plan to keep the camp together worked for the next two weeks, more or less. Amie soon found herself part of a hunting team with many of her pioneering students, setting off into the wilderness each day in search of game. They used traps and snares mostly, baited with things that none of them were interested in eating. But she carried one of the camp’s shotguns over her shoulder, in case of larger game. But those opportunities never came. On a good day, that meant a rabbit, maybe a few squirrels. She would think the wildlife were bigger here, if she didn’t know it was herself who was so much smaller.  It was grisly work, since the creatures they caught were usually alive when they found them, struggling to escape from simple snares. One of her boys usually brought them down with a bow, or just a few large rocks. There was nothing pleasant about watching some little animal die. Amie didn’t just see them die—she felt it. They might not be people, but they radiated the same terror, the same agony as they were killed. Maybe this is why so many native religions worship the animals they hunt. It meant she did her part to keep the camp supplied. She hiked back with their kills each day, leading a half-dozen or so proud campers. Already they were gaining a reputation in Stella Lacus. In their spare time they crafted little necklaces from the camp’s supplies, adding or marking a bead each time one of their traps brought in a kill. Without any intervention on Amie’s part, she watched as her campers found their way to the top of the camp’s burgeoning hierarchy. Of course the bugs working so hard to expand the camp’s little chicken farm were helping in their own way. But a promise of eggs months from now was nowhere near as immediate as tossing something into the stew for that night. They had more manpower than tasks to be done, which meant campers relegated to the very bottom—picking up litter, sweeping floors, or doing anything to “contribute” somehow. So long as they did, they still got to come to supper. Her brother was among this last group. Wes didn’t have the stomach for hunting, or even creating traps he knew would be used for it. His very first trip out into the woods had also been his last. The soil made for poor farming, and what had been imagined as a vast crew of workers turned into two dozen to nurture a greenhouse full of herbs, and a few test plots. Those would probably turn into chicken feed, if they survived the harvest. Shame the camp didn’t have pigs or cows. Even so, Amie made a point of visiting her brother for dinner each and every night. It wasn’t very hard to get vegetarian rations from the kitchen, with a simple request. With no one interested in eating it, it was just slowly going bad. Most meals weren’t in the multipurpose room anymore, but separated into their labor groups. For her hunters, that meant wheeling a cart out to the Pioneering pavilion just before nightfall. They had relocated their tents near the building in the last week—despite some protest from other counselors, no one stopped them. It made sense for people doing the same stuff and living the same schedule to be together. Only her brother looked out of place in their number. He wore no necklace of kills, and attracted mostly uncomfortable stares whenever they looked his way. “Line up!” she said, stepping inside. Someone switched off the old projector, and a few kids clicked their laptops closed. Others stopped sharpening spears, or carving arrow-shafts. “Last of the hot dogs tonight. Enjoy your last taste of crappy gas station food.” They all lined up. Without anyone to ask for it, she found the line formed according to past successes—those who had recently brought in several kills were first to the front, while those who only worked on traps from camp were in back. Her own brother was at the very end of the line. Not that it mattered—she knew how many there were, and always brought back the right number of portions from the kitchens. Even a few weeks were enough to see the first effects of deprivation. Her kids looked… leaner somehow, particularly the ones that started heavier. If she started to look that way too, she couldn’t see it in the mirror. Sometimes she joined her best hunters at the front of the room. But she could tell something was bothering Wes, so she joined him in back. She settled her plate to the table beside his, grinning. “How’s the homefront?” He shook his head. “Coming apart at the seams.” He poked at his hot dog, then descended on it like a ravenous animal.  She waited patiently, her own food untouched. While they ate, she remained alert to what her students were doing. Their strange new senses let her feel all their emotions, even if her eyes were closed. There was lots of pain—home sicknesses, regret, and an underlying despair. But positive feelings dominated—excitement about the hunt, and relief in friendship and shared labor. They were all castaways now, separated from families and friends. At least they didn’t have to do it alone. “Not so bad here,” Wes said, a few minutes later. “The way they look at me Amie—” He shivered. “Nurse Sobol has her whole list of differences, but it doesn’t help explain why. I should be a bug just like you, and I’m not.” She reached across the table, resting one hoof on his. It wasn’t nearly as supportive as she could’ve been with a real human body, but she didn’t have much choice. “If anyone gives you a hard time, call one of us over.” She raised her voice as she said it, looking around the room. “Nobody gives my brother a hard time, right? You look out for him.” There were several nods of agreement. She felt real enthusiasm from them, matched in equal measure with some underlying hostility. They don’t like that he doesn’t hunt with us. But at least for now, their loyalty to her won out. “He’s our mascot!” someone else said. “Our good luck! The marksmen team has rifles, but we still have them beat. What’s the score at again, Collin?” “Fifty-one to thirty-eight” Collin said. He was one of the few more interested in his laptop computer than their meal. He better eat that quick if he didn’t want another bug to snatch it. “Good luck, yeah.” Wes looked down. “Guess there are worse things to be. Maybe that’s what I should do—follow you around on hunts with pom poms. I could cheer.” She giggled, then pushed her tray towards him. “Might scare our food away if you did that, Wes. I think you’re doing great from right here. Doing…” She hesitated. “What are you up to these days?” He took one look at her portion, then devoured it. There was no waiting for her permission, not after so many nights of doing this. The gratitude she felt from him in response was more satisfying than any steak could be. I might starve to death, but Wes is making it home from this. No matter what it takes. Any day now she would start feeling the effects of hunger. Not today. “The intranet,” he said. “I’m not as technical as the robotics kids. I don’t know how their new antenna works. But writing pages is pretty simple. I use this template, then add information about stuff we’re doing in camp. I spent the last few days putting movies into a computer and… ripping them? I think that’s what it’s called. Guess it will be pretty cool when we can watch stuff from wherever. I’d rather just go home.” She got up, crossed to his side of the table, and wrapped one leg around his shoulder in a hug. “Me too, Wes. Me too.” They stayed like that for a few seconds. The hunters wouldn’t act so affectionate with each other. But they could eat grass if they wanted her not to act like family around her struggling little brother. When she looked up, she found them staring—but their emotions didn’t make sense. She felt hunger, the same as when she arrived with the night’s meal.  It was harder to read bug eyes, compared to human faces. Even so, they didn’t seem to be watching her much. It was Wes who interested them. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “When you said weird—you meant like this?” He nodded weakly. “Yeah. It’s not all the time. But it’s happening more the longer goes by. I wonder if I’m your food.” “No,” she snapped. Too loudly not to be overheard. But she didn’t care. “You’re nobody’s food, Wes. We’re basically the same species, with a few subtle differences. You’re like us, but… without the holes. And with a more versatile diet. We just need to figure out more about us.” She looked up, then waved over Rick. “Hey, Rick. I’m curious about something!” He hurried over. He was shyer than most of her campers—that was for the best. The longer they kept so many teenagers together in one place, the harder it was to keep them… behaved. “What is it, Ami?” “You’re still in camp, listening to the radio like I asked. Right?” He nodded once. “And watching the intranet. The way a mesh works, there’s no one with true webmaster permissions. But I see everything public.” That meant the library of media her brother was helping with, along with the little websites and the public message board. That was the mass-texting area, where campers chatted with each other and vented their frustrations. Using it was nominally against the rules, but Mr. Albrecht was secretly encouraging it. It meant the staff had free access to how the campers were really feeling. “Any new discoveries about bug-horses? What happened to that girl who claimed she could do magic tricks?” “She hasn’t said anything about it,” Rick said, hopping up onto the bench across from them. “But I poked around. Nurse took her off work duty, took her in with medical. Hasn’t left since.” “I heard Adrian said he was figuring out how to fly,” someone else said. “Wouldn’t that be cool? Instead of hiking to all our traps, we could just fly right over!” “Or we could go to the other mountains. That one with buildings on it might have food to sell us.” She stood up. “If someone figures it out, we’ll all practice until we can do it. We’ll get better at it than anyone else at camp. We’re not going to let some other group beat us, are we?” “No!” they shouted. Any conversation about her brother or his unexplainable strangeness fell to the wayside, forgotten. For another night, anyway. So went another week. Their meals got smaller and less frequent. Excitement around camp faded into the background, transforming to a sense of general resignation. Summer finally relinquished its grip to fall. It got colder at night, and the game they hunted a little harder to find. She could live with all that. On the other hand, it was far harder to accept the way they treated her brother.  Outside of her hunters, bugs stopped talking to him. She had to escort him around camp when he wanted to go anywhere. It wasn’t just her campers who felt hungry around him—now almost everyone did. There was something strange about a bug with color that set them apart from anyone else. But it was the camp director that convinced her it was finally time to do something, when he called her into his private office. “Miss Blythe…” He gestured for her to sit down. “There’s no easy way to ask this. But you’ve been one of the most reliable people since this whole thing began. You’ve weathered this storm better than people twice your age.” She nodded once, taking the offered seat. “If this is about our lower yields—we’re working on it. We’ve come up with ways to venture out further without—” He lifted one hoof, silencing her. “It’s not that. I’m sure you’ll figure that out, I won’t pretend to understand it better than you do. This is about your brother.”