Hunger makes us what we are. Any move an animal makes, it makes to get food. We are all hungry, all of us animals, always.

Out here, if you’re not hungry, you’re dead.

I had eaten yesterday morning, and the sun wasn’t high in the sky yet so I was strong enough to make it to the river. I shouldn’t have gone alone, but everyone at the camp was busy getting ready. Ready for food, if we could ever find some out here. I stopped to look behind me again. The morning light made long shadows out of the half-collapsed, enormous towers that surrounded me. Faded white and yellow lines snaked along the road at my feet in a random pattern. Whoever had built these towers and painted these roads must have known what they were for. But that was then, when things were new. Nothing was new now.

A small patch of brown weeds peeped out from under the shell of a bus. I didn’t bother to collect any. Eating roadthorn would slice up your insides overnight. No food to be found here, hadn’t been since granda was a child. This was just a huge pile of cement and rust for scavengers to sift through. I didn’t want to run into any scavengers, not today. Today I needed to find water and the camp needed to find food. I adjusted one of the straps that my jug was strapped to keep it from rubbing against my right breast and kept one hand on my knife handle. I liked this knife. It was small, like me. But this knife curved in a way that made it more dangerous than a stabber. If I got it around a bicep or even better, a throat, it sliced arteries apart that would bleed a big man in less than a minute.

I kept walking, making sure to stay in the shade of the building, but not close enough that a Mantis could lean out and reach me with their hooks. That was how my uncle had died. One minute he was walking behind us, then we could only see his boots disappearing into the blackness of a doorway while the Mantises inside had hooted and cheered. The whole camp had come back the next day and retaliated by throwing molotovs into every part of any building we could see. Now, scorch-marks covered almost every wall. We hadn’t seen anyone from the Mantis tribe since then.

I kept walking, feeling stronger now that I was in the shade and closer to the water. My stomach tightened, reminding me that I needed to be heading towards food. Always towards food. I didn’t plan to mess around. I’d fill my twenty-litre jug, seal the top and walk as quick as I could with the sloshing burden. I came to the place where two buildings had knocked down a bridge. Now the collapsed centre of the bridge made a sort of steep ramp that you could climb down and get to a stream below. Climbing up with the water jug was always hard but it was better than trying to take water from upriver, in enemy territory. I reached the middle of the bridge and peered down to the water below. It was clear and moving, good. Just as I began to lower myself down the ramp, I heard a bird. Actually, I heard someone trying to call like a bird. I immediately went to ground and tried to wriggle some of my outline against a chunk of concrete. My left arm and head were still exposed but I was wearing my dust-grey smock just for this reason. I froze and waited, straining my ears, not daring to breath. Long seconds passed, I heard another call, same place of origin but this call was less certain. I heard boots on the road. Two, no- four boots on the ground. Moving quickly, but cautiously; and definitely getting louder. Staying still was not an option. If they were looking for me, they would find me. I risked a glance ahead of me where I thought they’d be coming from. I didn’t see anything, but I thought I heard a murmured word come from the direction of the boots. It sounded like “filly”.

That was all I needed to hear. They were looking for me. I took one deep breath and scrambled forward, staying low, headfirst down the cement ramp. I tried to turn my body as I began sliding at speed. As I turned, I spotted two men running to where I had lain hidden. They were tall, golden-skinned and dressed in red. Just before I fell out of sight, the taller of the two looked directly into my eyes. His face was scarred and his forehead was tattooed with a huge black “M”. I gasped and he grinned wolfishly. I looked down and the rocks of the stream rushed up to meet me.

The next instant, my legs crashed into the streambed. The water was only up to my shins and I grazed both my palms trying to break my fall. I didn’t bother looking back, they were coming. I tried to stand and one of my ankles felt rubbery and numb. “shit”. I muttered to myself and hobbled upright, favouring my right side. I managed to take a few more steps but the uneven ground of the stream plus my shock from the fall meant I couldn’t make any ground. My heart began to pound in my ears as I turned around. Both men had taken their time in their descent to avoid injury. They were nearly all the way down. The tall one had stopped and was staring straight at me. His smile was gone and in its place was a look of pure fixation. Like a dog with its attention on a rabbit. I was rooted to the spot. My ankle was trembling and my palms burned and bled. He didn’t blink, he just kept staring and sniffed the air, as though savouring my scent. The blackness of his pupils seemed to swallow me up. The other man had reached the ground now and was only ten feet away from me. He barely glanced at me as he spoke to his companion. His voice was deep and pleasant. “Nice filly, Johnjohn. Real nice. She get out of the stables?”. He turned his attention back to me.

“You a runaway, little filly?”

The taller man’s head snapped back as though he had been in a trance. He relaxed his gaze, but he never stopped staring directly at me while he spoke. “Naw, Dagget. This filly wild. She ain’t even been broken in yet.”

This revelation seemed to excite the other man immensely. He came towards me speaking softly under his breath. “Wild filly. Not broken. We gon’ break her eh? We break the filly and bring her to th stables eh?

The taller man slid down the last part of th ramp with ease and began to circle to my right, nodding as he did.

“yea Dagget. We break this filly here and now. Soften her up for the trip upriver.”

Upriver. These were slavers. No doubt about it. I reached down for my knife. I’d gut one of these bastards at least before they took me.

I couldn’t feel my knife handle. The scabbard was empty. Before I could start looking for it, the man closest to me laughed and took two quick steps forward. He was close enough now that he could grab me with a lunge. He stayed at that distance, like he was savouring his pounce.

He was covered in tattoos. Nearly all of them said MASTER, or some form of the letter M. Each one represented a slave he owned. I knew that much from the stories back at the camp. I took another slow step back. He didn’t close the gap. Instead he reached into his belt and took out a length of rope, tied with two slipknots. They were manacles, for taking me upriver.

I made sure I could see both of them and that nothing was directly in front of them. Then I sat down in the stream. They both laughed and the closest one began murmuring again.

“nice filly, easy filly. We taking –“

He stopped as an arrow appeared in his throat, just under the jaw. He looked confused, and reached up to touch the shaft when another arrow buried itself in his eye. He dropped like a stone. His blood began mixing in with the clear water. The taller man was stunned. He looked at me and snarled like a wounded dog just as two more arrows struck him in the stomach and knee. He looked behind me as twenty or so members of the camp began striding out of the rubble from the collapsed bridge. Four of them had bows, the rest were carrying cruel-looking knives and buckets. The surviving slaver had slumped down and was clutching his stomach. Thick, dark blood oozed from between his fingers. I limped over to where my knife was lying in the stream and turned towards the slaver. I looked him right in the eyes as I spoke.

“Sorry. This filly stays free.” I spat the word filly like a bitter piece of fruit.

He looked furious and confused. He couldn’t stand up, but hatred burned in his eyes. A small trickle of blood was coming from his lips. He managed to gasp at me. “You gon’ die filly. You dead filly”.

I nodded and moved my knife to my right hand. His throat shone with perspiration. The rest of the camp began to circle him and his fallen companion.

“Of course, I’ll die, but not today. Today, you die, and we eat”.

Hunger makes us what we are.