The Deer Hunter

One thousand years later, a hunter moved silently through the jungle; a dead landscape forged by his ancestors, holding untold riches and the greatest dangers. Only a moment ago, he had been spied by his quarry. Afraid, it darted into the rusting labyrinth. Only a fool would follow. But the hunter’s children starved.

The animal had seen the man creeping along the treeline. Afraid, it bolted into the jungle. The iron forest meant danger to all who entered. Slowing in its run, the deer now edged along the pitted metal paths. The fields had smelled of brown grass and dry dirt, but here only something acrid stung the nostrils. The thirsty animal looked for water.

The hunter, who had never left the warm fields, felt a growing chill in the shade of the mountain towers. He recalled whispers that within these shadows still lurked the machines that changed the sky and brought the world to its knees. But now the sun parched the fields while his children starved.

A pool of thick greenish fluid drew the deer. Bending, it tasted some of the viscous fluid. The soup of toxic chemicals seared the throat. Choking, the deer threw up. Weaker now, the dying animal searched for water.

The hunter stood up among the debris and lifted his weapon. For a moment the deer and the man looked each other in the eye. In that instant, the generations spun backwards and somehow, though neither had been there, both remembered the way it had been: green fields stretched towards the great cities of the past, there was water and there was food.

The crack of a rifle rang out across the wilderness, and two more ghosts fled this world.