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Birds and insects buzzed and fluttered around the dense foliage, pollinating and feeding and surviving; higher up in the towering trees, squirrels and monkeys climbed, dashed and darted from branch to branch, hunting and searching for mates; out in the distant meadows, under the midday ‘sun’, herds of wild zebras and antelope trotted and grazed at the wispy grass.
The scene was idyllic, blissful even, but deep in the heart of the jungle some kind of struggle was taking place.
A small family fled along a narrow dirt path that snaked its way through the thorny jungle, snapping branches and jumping over fallen logs in a frenzy. There were three of them: a man, a woman, and a young boy. The man led the way, hacking and kicking his way through the relentless thorns and leaves, his movements displaying the urgency of someone sensing death on his tail.
‘Keep up, will you? Come on!’
‘We’re trying!’ cried the woman, pulling the boy along by his wrist.
After a few more minutes of hacking and stamping and pushing, the family broke out from the overgrown path and found themselves in a small enclosure.
‘Keep quiet,’ said the man, slowing his pace and peering out through the gaps in the huge tropical trees.
Ushering the boy over to a smooth patch of grass, the woman said, ‘Sit down over there.’
With the boy out of the way, the two parents turned to look at each other.
‘What do we...’
The woman stopped mid-sentence when she heard a noise behind her. Turning, she saw two figures emerge from the pathway, each dressed in black and blue combat attire with radios on their belts.
‘Leone! Run!’ she screamed at the boy. ‘Get up! Go! Get out of here!’
The boy jumped up and did as he was told, but after a few paces, he stopped and lingered on the grass. The situation was too bizarre for him to take in, too strange for his juvenile, rural mind to process. The two intruders were unlike anyone—or anything—he’d ever seen before, their black uniforms alien to his primitive eyes.
Noticing his hesitancy to flee, the father began yelling. ‘Leone! Get the fuck out of here, now!’
Normally, his father’s words would have been obeyed, but it was too late—Leone had now seen what the two intruders carried in their gloved hands.
Stood there a short distance away, glued to the spot by an icy terror that paralysed his limbs, Leone idly watched on as one of the dark figures sprinted towards his mother and swung a cosh—an extendable metal baton—towards her head. It landed clean on target with a muffled thud, followed by a spray of crimson claret that shot several feet into the air, as though her cranium was letting out a spit of protest.
His father then leapt towards the attacker, only to be grabbed from behind by the second assailant, who was carrying a large knife. With one gloved hand, this second assailant grabbed a tuft of the father’s hair, pulled back his head, and drew the knife across the tender skin of his throat. The first stroke exposed a gaping windpipe, the second stroke grinded through bone, and the third stroke separated the head from the body.
With two lifeless bodies now slumped on the damp, dewy grass, the knife-wielding figure tossed the severed head into the nearby foliage for the rats to feed upon.
Two words then fell from his mouth with a snarl: ‘The boy.’
Tears were streaming down young Leone’s cheeks by this point. His parents were gone, massacred right in front of him by these...monsters? The word monster didn’t seem strong enough to Leone. These were worse than that, much worse. Machines seemed more accurate. What else could they be? The unusual attire, the strange black boxes on their belts, the emotionless, ruthless actions...yes, they were machines—and they were now running his way.
Snapping himself out of his daze, young Leone took off as fast as he could, hurtling through the overgrown, unforgiving terrain of the verdant jungle, the insect and animal sounds all around him merging and morphing into an orchestra of crazed, hysterical insanity.
