Evolution

But Patch immediately attacked Whiteblood, ramming her head into his chest and beating him about the temples with her fists. He fell back, startled. Patch hurried back to the other males and made perfunctory presentations of her rump to them, uttering rasping hoots. And then she threw herself back on Whiteblood.

Subtly, alliances shifted, dominance dissolved. Without even looking at each other the brothers came to a quick decision. They joined in Patch’s attack on Whiteblood. Whiteblood began to fight back, snapping and warding off the blows that rained down on him.

It was a grotesque battle, waged by four badly depleted creatures. The blows and kicks were soft and delivered in an eerie slow motion. And it was waged in a silence broken only by gasps of weariness or pain: There was none of the screeching and hooting that would normally have accompanied an attack by two juniors on a dominant male.

And yet it was deadly. For, under Patch’s leadership, the brothers herded Whiteblood step by step toward the lip of the raft.

It was Patch who delivered the final blow: another ram to Whiteblood’s belly, made with a hoarse, wrenching roar. Whiteblood toppled backward and fell through the raft’s loose fringe of branches and into the water. He bobbed, splashed, and spluttered, his fur immediately becoming soaked and impeding his movements. He looked back at the raft, mewling like an infant around his blackened tongue.

Crest and Left were confused. They had not meant to kill Whiteblood; few dominance battles among the anthros ended lethally.

Roamer felt an odd pang of regret. There had been few enough of them already. Her instincts warned her that too small a pool of potential mates was a bad thing. But it was too late for that.

Whiteblood weakened rapidly. Soon the effort of keeping his mouth and nostrils above the water proved too much for him, and his struggling stopped. The shark, attracted by the blood that leaked from Whiteblood’s stale wounds, took his body in a single bite.

After that, the suffering got worse. As the softly creaking raft drifted over the great unforgiving shield of the ocean, as these small creatures rapidly depleted their reserves, it could only get worse.

Roamer’s limbs had swollen. The stretched skin ached continually and cracked easily. Her tongue squeezed past her jaws, as if her mouth were crammed with a great lump of dry dung. Her eyelids had cracked, and it felt as if she were weeping, but when she touched her fur she found blood leaking from her eyeballs.

She was undergoing a living mummification.

At last, one morning, she heard a cry, high and feeble, like a bird’s.

She pushed away her covering of leaves and sat upright. The world turned yellow, and there was an odd ringing in her ears. It was hard to see anything; her vision was a blur, and when she tried to blink her eyes she got no relief, for her body could spare no moisture.

Still, she made out two anthros — Patch, Crest — sitting side by side over a dark, huddled form. Perhaps it was food. Painfully she pushed her way forward to join them.

It was Left, lying flat, his limbs splayed.

The sucking heat of the sun had done its work well. There was barely any of his white fur left on his head or neck. His flesh had shrunk on his bones. Roamer could see the shape of his skull, of the fine bones of his hands and feet and pelvis. His naked skin had turned purple and gray, and it was covered with huge blotches and streaks. His lips had shriveled to thin strips of blackened tissue, exposing teeth and cracked gums. The rest of his face was black and dry, as if burned. The flesh around his nose had withered, so his two small sideways-pointing nostrils were stretched, exposing the black lining of his nostrils. His eyelids had shriveled too, exposing his eyes in an unblinking, sightless stare at the sun. The conjunctiva that surrounded his eyes, exposed, had turned black as charcoal. He had been scrabbling at the bark, helplessly seeking food, and had cut his hands and feet. But there was no trace of blood; the cuts were like scratches in cured leather.

But he was still conscious, emitting dry, wistful cries. He moved his head gently and spread the fingers of his stronger left hand.

In the end, starved of input, striving to keep its vital systems running as long as possible, Left’s body had consumed itself. Once its fat was gone, muscle had begun to be absorbed, a process that soon resulted in damage to the internal organs — which, badly deteriorated, were beginning to close down.

But in these last moments, Left was in no pain. Even the sensations of hunger and thirst had ceased.

Roamer watched, dizzy, bemused. It was like watching an animated skeleton.

Left’s last eerie calls faded to silence. His fingers remained outstretched, frozen forever in his final gesture. His shrunken stomach growled, and a final noxious belch passed through his lifeless lips.