When I put my son to bed, I want to tell him a story. But the only ones I know are about animals, so I don’t.

Instead, I ask him the same question every night. 

“What made you happy today?” I recite as I spread the metal sheet onto his cot. 

His eyes are heavy, and he wants to sleep, but he still answers. “I carried two water buckets by myself,” he says. “And I found a bean they left behind.” 

My stomach clenches. I remember the long days I spent on the crops, how I slowly unrolled all but one of my cigarettes into the water bottle and sprayed each leaf, how I wiped the crumbs from the corners and grouted all the cracks in the floor, how I had gone thirsty so they could have water. Only to discover the chickpeas had been devoured overnight. No doubt they intended to starve us out. 

 I shake the beans from my mind. “I’m proud of you for carrying the buckets,” I reply. I look at his protruding belly, loudly empty, and feel something come over me. I make a promise I don’t know if I can keep. “Soon I will get you something to eat that is better than a bean.” It echoes in my ears all night as I try to fall asleep. 

 After only a few hours the roosters crow, off in the distance, like they do every day, but now the sound is like a knife. I jump to check the door. I have to ease my nerves before my son wakes up so that​​I can show him how to be happy​.   

I go to harvest the greens. They’re crunchy from the grow light and stink like the generator. I try to ignore the ache of my stomach by meditating on the repetition. I yank the lettuce from the dirt, shake it off, toss it into the basket; yank, shake, toss, yank, shake, toss. I let this rhythm lull me, and for a moment I feel peaceful.

 Then, exploding the silence, the metal door at the end of the corridor that I checked minutes ago folds in with a crash. I tell myself I imagined it, though my hands go cold and my heart pounds. I count. I barely reach four when whatever collided with our bunker growls.

 I have only moments to flick off the generator and cover myself before others will come. One has caught wind of me, and if more come and smell us too, they won’t stop until they get in. I fly to my son’s bed and jump under his aluminum sheet. I hold him still against me, hoping that he can’t tell how afraid I am. For the millionth time I vow to get out of here, away from this island, off this planet altogether. In the darkness, I pray for everything to go back to how it was before we ruined it. 

#

Everyone already knew that the atmosphere had been torn to shreds, that the trash had overridden the land, that the air was too hot for any of us to last forever. People made jokes about it, said “Oh well, too late now!” when they overshot the recycling bin. We knew all of this before we realized that the animals might change, too. 

They turned on each one of us, slowly at first. The dogs and cats ran off, their dishes still full of kibble. Farmers watched with their mouths hanging open as the chickens flew into the distance, never to be seen again. In the beginning, we thought they were sick, maybe dying off somewhere, but more reports came in of abnormal activity, of mutations. We saw violet-eyed opossums eating discarded hypodermic needles, giant turtles roaming the beach in shells of styrofoam. Long unseen herds of moose, twice as big as we remembered them, started amassing at midnight on main streets to smash all the shop windows and topple traffic lights. A falcon with glow-in-the-dark claws flew in the window and snatched away my neighbor’s baby, and then it happened again twice more, in the same month, to other mothers around town. 

Many advocated for their rehabilitation. Veterinarians trapped and treated them; biologists studied them. Environmental advocacy groups encouraged personal accountability, tried to temper the damage by suggesting lifestyle changes. Some went into the wilderness to cordon off sanctuaries, to rescue the most endangered. Those people did not return.

When the tiger monster attacks started in our town, my husband insisted we move to our bunker. Mine was one of the families who had started preparing early. The radio still worked then, and the news reported increasing activity on every continent. All we could do was sit by as it got worse, as the outside fell apart. We listened, my family and I, to reports of biblically proportioned plagues of poisonous frogs, whole cities of people with mosquito stings the size of basketballs, a stampede of livestock trampling a parliamentary meeting in London. We heard an entire village in Congo was annihilated by a single alpha gorilla who strangled every single resident personally, one by one, somehow resistant to their blades and bullets. Enormous pods of blue whales, undeterred by torpedo-fire, hurled themselves against military submarines, smashing them onto the ocean floor. Horses kicked in gates, and elephants stomped down walls. Whole nations were being destroyed; we heard Germany was already sending survivors into space. 

I was afraid, but at that time the fear was bearable because we were all together. But now that it is just my son and me, the terror has become acute, unrelenting. I am very tired. My husband used to remind me that we had a future to look forward to, but he went so terribly, the boy’s father. Again, I close my eyes against the memory.

#

He heard the tigers growling and said he’d had enough, dressed in fatigues, loaded the rifle. He said we couldn’t live like this, hiding all the time. He asked me to cover him, and handed me a pistol. “Don’t come out of the hatch,” he warned. I had never shot a gun before.

 I watched as he tiptoed away from the shelter, veered off the path, crawled further up the ridge than I would have dared to go. He made a perch there, his binoculars panning across the jungle. I was impressed by his bravery and let myself hope he would kill one for us. 

I didn’t notice until there were already two or three. A few blueshock butterflies had wafted down from the canopy and fluttered around him. They landed, their silk-string legs clinging to his head and shoulders, their wings opening and closing. Just the sight of them rang alarms in my mind, so I considered everything. They had no teeth or claws, they weren’t poisonous. They had fallen on him like feathers and he hadn’t even noticed. For a moment they seemed like they could even be a good sign.

 But they kept coming. There were ten and then there were fifty and soon, he was elbowing them away, blowing from the side of his mouth, trying to keep his rifle still. They covered him until he became unfamiliar, a jerking pile of technicolor. I could see it had gone too far, aimed my pistol. But how do you shoot a butterfly?

They kept coming, and soon only his wheeling eye peered out from the blue until the last one flitted in and I couldn’t see any trace of him anymore. The winged mass thrashed, dropped the rifle. He fell beneath the suffocating onslaught of them, so many clustering together that their wings raised a shimmering, choking cloud of dust. My pistol was still lifted​​when I heard his muffled scream rise from inside, and I understood that in seconds the tigers would come, that our time had run out. I closed the hatch against the shattering of my heart, and cried in the deafening rustle of wings. 

#   

I admit that I was sorry for a long time after that, too long of a time. I stayed in bed, but I didn’t sleep. I didn’t pay enough attention to my son. I can admit that now because I have pulled myself out for him. He needed me, needs me. 

I can’t show him that I am scared. He is still so young, and my mood is his barometer. If I’m unwell, the world is unwell, and it’s too soon for him to know. So everyday I force a smile, try to whistle as I do the chores. I clean the bunker to keep the insects at bay, and I mud our skin to deaden our scent as if it has always been done this way. I make our short trips outside for fresh air into a race, all the while listening for the buzz of mosquitoes in the jungle, wondering how long until a swarm could descend. 

Now I can only hear the clock on the wall ticking, its little battery still valiantly alive after all this time. It feels like I have waited hours since the growl, under the sheet in the dark, my hand over my awake son’s mouth. I wait another count of two hundred before I get up. I turn the generator back on first; the darkness is sometimes the worst part. 

It has to be today​, I say to myself. 

With the coast clear, my son also slips out from under the sheet and goes for his morning shower, walking unsteadily on his bandy chicken legs. I stare at his distended belly, watch as he bites back an ache from picking up the empty bucket. 

I have seen a belly like my son’s before. Back when I was a doctor, I saw it all the time. I have no doubt that what he has is called ​kwashiorkor​, which used to affect the poorer children in the countryside. I have known for months that without sufficient protein, he will die. I do not say this so as not to entice his death with its naming. For a while, I told myself that the beans would sustain him. But the beans are gone, and I see with crushing clarity that to save him, I will have to face the animals. Despite myself, I resent that his father is not alive to help me, and my memories of him sour.

I tell my son that today he will do his chores alone. I ask him to cut as many of the herbs as he can and not to go outside for any reason at all. I can see he’s tired too. He doesn’t ask me where I’m going. 

I disguise myself well, cake my underarms with mud and wear the hazmat suit. Still, my heart is bucking as I climb the ramp up to the hatch. When I unscrew the wheel and throw the door open, at first all I can see is light. Then the valley comes into focus, the path leading into the perimeter of the jungle, the ridge behind. 

Though my nerves are wracked, I make a straight line for the path. It is only a moment before I reach the edge of the forest, but it is a moment of pure, acid vulnerability. The twisted border of the jungle is wide and wheezes like a dying beast. I scan for any movement, check that the ankle and wrist seams of my suit are sealed. Against my wailing panic, I push off the path into the dense scrub, staying low. After a few minutes of brush crawling, I begin to relax. I know none have noticed me yet because they haven’t come to kill me. I am hidden.

 That’s when, with a mouth-drying pang, I notice it. Directly in front of me, the sage bushes are matted with silver fur. It must be fresh, shed in the noonday heat. A tiger has been here and not long ago. 

In the same place where seconds before I had been safe, I can feel eyes all around me. Maybe I am already surrounded; maybe they’ve been watching me since I left the bunker, letting me think that I’m all right, toying with me. Panicked, I spot the fat trunk of a breadfruit tree and run to stoop behind it. I consider climbing, but that would alert the birds. I am cemented into stillness and the word mistake​ drums in my head until my vision blurs with tears. 

Looking down to blink the crying away, I catch a white mark not far to my left, shuffling beneath the scrub. I go rigid, crane my eyes. Its small size and nervous shuffling are unmistakably those of a rabbit. I can see that the animal is drowsy, stopping frequently and loosely looking about. There is the pink sheen of dried blood on his mouth. He is not well, which is likely why he hasn’t sensed me yet. It is a sign, a blessing. ​Maybe there is a God, ​my mind thinks, wild with adrenaline. 

I should make sure there are no others around to witness and avenge him, but my body is slick with sweat and my hands are rattling, and I know if I don’t do it now I will lose my nerve. With one gulping breath, I whisper my son’s name in my heart and raise the blowgun to my lips. Even before I give myself permission, the dart is gone with a whip crack and the rabbit is lying flat in the grass, the dart sticking tall out of his back. 

I have no time to celebrate because the countdown has begun. The tranquilizer won’t last long, and I can’t kill him here. Any of them can smell death from miles away, and they would come at the first drop of spilled blood. 

 My legs beat out the ten meters to his body, there and back. Behind the breadfruit tree, I strap him into the harness on my chest and zip him into my hazmat suit. His little body is still hot and for a moment of pure insanity I think about how cute he is.

I begin my race back towards the hatch, this time braving the path. The swish of the plastic suit is louder than I would like, but I am elated. For the first time in months, I am looking forward to what will happen next. I am thinking of how excited my son will be when I show it to him, how the color will come back to his face when he eats it. I am running, reeling from my first sense of hope since the butterflies when I feel a sharp tug at my elbow. 

I whip right. Sailing alongside me is a parrot, a freak cockatoo, his black claws gripping the arm of my suit, his steel beak smiling malevolently. He is enormous, his wingspan as long as mine, his plumage archaic ivory.

His marble eye looks into my plastic mask and he screams.

It is piercing, guttural; it sounds like my own voice. 

 More flock at his call, and then there are twenty more hustling around me, pecking and grabbing. It hurts, but I keep running, my eyes closed, and head bent towards the hatch door, now just fifty meters away. Their wings are beating, and the feathers are flying and there are so many that the hatch disappears in white. They are everywhere, their beaks snapping every inch of me. The pounding rhythm of my footsteps stops, and I can’t feel the ground anymore because my feet are lifting. I ice over. I know the birds have me. 

But my suit is slippery, made of microporous plastic. I hear the rip of perforation and feel the exquisite sinking in my stomach as they lose their grip, drop me. My still-running feet catch up with the earth, and though my legs tangle, I am now so close to the door that I can scramble to it while they peck. I am kicking up dust and beating off the feathers enough to yank the hatch open and slam it closed behind me, perhaps pinching some claws in the seal. 

I am safe inside. I hear their muffled scratching, but they are unable to breach. My breath heaves in the quiet. I am out of danger. I have done it, the thing I have dreaded for months. It is over and we are safe. I can feel the warm body of the comatose rabbit humming against my chest. 

I draw back the hood of my suit and descend into the shelter. I do not find my son in the hydroponic garden. Instead, he is lying in his bed, breathing heavily, a leaden fatigue in his eyes. When he sees me, he sits up, says, “I was just taking a break.” His little lie cuts me. 

I tell him to forget the herbs and set the table, because tonight there will be something special for dinner. I tell him not to ask questions, that it will be a surprise. I warm when he smiles, the pain in him seeming to subside. I watch him hop to get our pewter plates, the same ones we use every day.

My heart is still dangerously revved as I unzip the suit and remove the rabbit from the harness. He is still sedated, his body a ragdoll. The room goes lightning white as I wring his neck. It isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I don’t feel much. 

I find a bucket and a knife, and I skin him, leaving his soft fur in long scraps on the floor. As I work, I hear my son pouring water into our glasses. Before he can see, I lop off the rabbit’s head. I don’t want him to be afraid.

It has to look good for him to eat. 

He comes back, fresh and eager, the heat of his enthusiasm radiating. “Well, what will it be?” he asks, only betraying a note of desire, ready to show he will be grateful for whatever I’ve brought him. I see that even in his weakness, he is brave. 

I show him the pink body, unable to say “rabbit” or “meat.” I know my son still understands what it is, though he was an infant the last time he saw an animal. “We are going to eat this, and it will help your belly,” I tell him. 

My son stays nearby, his eyes wide and locked on the alien in our kitchen, as I scoop it onto the cutting board in reverent silence. With a little ceremony, I call him to sit across from me and watch me break it down. I want him to know about this practice, done for centuries, that feels connected to my parents and their parents and our ancestors. 

He looks on as I take a fork and stab it into the animal’s side. I drive our longest knife between its shoulders, and slice the skin all the way down to its haunches without stopping. Making sure my son is watching, I use the fork to pry the sides open, revealing its insides. I expect him to see delectable organs, unctuous red blood. He doesn’t.

Instead, inside the carcass pulses a rainbow of neon shapes, geometric and hard cornered. Together they beat a robotic, synthetic rhythm, and inside each one, globules ooze back and forth like lava. They fill our shelter with radiant, fluorescent light. Revulsion dilutes the wonder in my son’s eyes. 

I don’t know what to do. “I’ve never seen one like this before. Maybe we can still eat it,” I say, meekly and implausibly. I push the tines of my fork into one of the organs, the blue one, as if to test it for tenderness. When I do, some tension is punctured, something comes loose. The flashing organs go dark and melt into a broken juice, the prism of colors muddle to brown. The liquid seeps out of the skin and pools onto the counter, drips down to the floor. My son’s hands fly out as he tries to scoop the liquid up, but it is too thin to catch, and soon there is nothing on the counter but a dry, haggard skeleton. 

He looks at me sadly, understands. There is nothing left for us to eat, not anymore. He sucks some brown water from his finger and goes back to bed. Alone, I toss the rabbit into the trash chute. I hide in the garden and smoke my last cigarette.