Chrome Meat Bone: A Short Story

by Jake Corvus

Cars roam the wilderness in herds, hunted by motorbikes and planes. Houses rot to reveal skeletal remains. The new generation of mankind has forgotten domestication. Bee has no children, and therefore no authority in the tribe. No power at all. Still, it is her job to assist with the hunt. To kill cars and keep the teenagers under her care alive. When the hunt goes horribly wrong, how does one woman, with no power, keep the next generation safe? _____________ I LIE AWAKE SOME NIGHTS and wonder about submarines. Were there enough of them left to establish a breeding colony? Or are they extinct now? What do they eat? We come across the first tracks four hours before dawn—the tyre tracks cut into the mud with sharp definition. A fleet has passed through here, recently. Some of the tracks wide, like SUVs, then hundreds of smaller ones, no wider than bicycle tyres. The new generations don’t have LEDs or even old-style bulbs, just a faint natural bioluminescence that makes them almost blind at night. “Cars?” I ask Peter. He grunts. They breed in the hundreds, birthing giant schools of young that whizz around them, beeping in the sun. They are flightier than other prey—more likely to run when we strike, leaving the wounded to their fate. But there’s very little meat on a car. Last month we stumbled on a sleeping fleet of semi-trailers. Slower breeders, bigger young, but enough meat to feed us for a year. We’d suffered casualties. The fleet did not. BUY NOW TO KEEP READING....

15 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 24, 2020