When rain came down the forest,
it scrapped off the first layer of every tree. This gave the trees a really
scary look, as if they were bleeding from their whole body. It was the reality
of the world now, where acid rain had gotten worse. Plants and animals were
having a very difficult time surviving the new state of things. In other parts
it wasn’t much better. There was sand where there used to be farmland and many
islands had disappeared far from the continents. It was a new world.
Gaby was one of the many women
that had decided to form a team to go into the forest every day in the morning
in order to pick up as many fruits and mushrooms as they could. They were rare
and fragile, so they needed the soft and delicate hands to pick them up from
the ground or grab them from the tallest branches. The men, as always, had been
doubtful of the enterprise at first but they eventually came around when
noticing that everyone had to work in order to survive.
Even children helped by fishing
from the streams or picking up berries that were far more resilient that other
fruits and would usually grow close to their camps. They had changed, as
humanity had done before, into a nomad kind of people. They would built small
towns from old plastics and some wood and stay in the same place for at least
six months, at most a year. After that, they scouted for new places to live and
then they would just move out, all at once, to start again.
Gaby had been one of the first
women in the morning team and she had already learned the many ways of the new
forest. They carried books to check if what they were picking up could be eaten
or not and they soon learned that many of the fruits that humanity had enjoyed
for a long time, were now extinct. Mostly tropical fruits, but also plants that
needed a calmer weather to survive. Maybe they still lived in other places of
the planet but that seemed almost impossible.
Animals, on the other hand, were rare
now. Some smaller ones could be seen sometimes when walking around the forest
such as rats and squirrels. They were resilient little creatures. But the tall
trees had been deprived of other mammals such as monkeys and finding a bird was
almost impossible. Their beautiful chants had been silenced. Nature clearly had
no place for such delicate creatures anymore. It was a reminder that humanity’s
days could be over sooner than expected. But people would still try to live
another day, one step at a time.
Gaby had actually discovered a
small woodpecker she had found in the tallest branch of a tree, after picking
up some chestnuts she had discovered by accident. She knew for a fact that many
of the children and elders would love to eat such a strange thing but it was
then when she saw the little bird, with a broken wing. She looked at it for a
long time until one of her teammates called from her from the ground. Gaby
opened her small bag and put the bird inside, hoping it wouldn’t make a noise.
This has to be explained further.
As bird reminded humans that their immediate future could be extinction,
running into a bird wherever they went would be seen as a bad omen. People
still had those strange beliefs that came out of nowhere. They were normally
things based only on fear and feeling related to such contempt for things alien
to ourselves. Birds became a sign of death and an undesirable future, so people
left them to die when they found one, never minding the greater meaning of
life.
When she hit the ground, Gaby
still had the chestnuts in her hand. She put them fast inside the bag and kept
to her work for the rest of the morning. Some black clouds of rain loomed over
them and it was decided they should be back home as soon as possible as they
had neglected to bring special covers that resisted the acid in the rain. They
made it in time and realized the men had also arrived, which was extremely
uncommon as they normally spend their days in caves or deep in the forest,
where the rain had trouble reaching them.
They were all reunited in the
biggest house in the camp, which was normally used for important matters. As
rain started to fall, the men told the women that they had found something very
strange in the forest. The women listened in silence, as the men told them they
had discovered an abandoned power plant. They had investigated inside the place
and, apparently, it was in perfect condition. It generated energy using the
waters of a small lake, enclosed by a huge concrete wall.
That was the problem. The rain,
that was making a horrible roaring sound, was the one causing the huge wall to
have small holes all over. This made the whole basin below a very dangerous
place to stay and it was there they had been living for at least four months.
The concrete wall could break at any moment so it was imperative to escape the
basin to another place. For the last two years they had been following the same
river, slowly, but it was clear they needed to travel further this time in
order to find a proper place to live permanently, as nomadism was not
sustainable.
The women had taking advantage of
this story in order to leave the food they had found in small pile in the
center of the house. It was clearly not enough for everyone but they had all
grown accustomed to the lack of food. It was then when Gaby remembered the
woodpecker in her bag and checked on it for a bit, when everyone was looking at
the men telling the story. She kept a chestnut for it and tried to close the
bag as well as she could in order for the small bird to be kept a secret.
Everyone agreed that it was
necessary to leave for another place as a tragedy could happen anytime. They
decided to pick up everything they could grab with them and start walking as
soon as they rain had stop. Not everyone had fabric to protect themselves from
the rain, but those who did decided to go back to their houses and prepare for
the evacuation. Gaby was one of those, and she ran as fast as she could in
order to properly check on her bird. She lived with other girls her age, but
they didn’t mind her closing her door when she entered.
She finally put out the little
bird and noticed it was still trying to flap its broken wing. However, it
seemed a little happier than before, maybe because it had eaten half the
chestnut she had left for it inside the bag. She looked at it very close and
the bird seemed to do the same. They kept their silence, only breathing slowly
and moving their eyes from one place to the other. She was amazed to see how
bright its feathers were and how small it was. But she knew it had to be
different before.
She took a book from her bookshelf
and opened it in a page about birds. Although there was no picture of a
woodpecker, it showed a similar bird and stated it was at least twice as big as
they one that was curling up on her bed. It looked really cute right there,
looking at her at closing its eyes, visibly tired but also happy to have had
something to eat. It seemed so fragile, a little bit as the children of the
small town who had no spark in their eyes anymore, just a glaring sad look.
Then, Gaby heard footsteps
nearby. She looked at the window and realized there was no more rain on the
other side. Just in time, she grabbed the small bird and put it inside her bag,
along with a few other things from her shelf, which made her seemed worried
when other girls entered the room.
An hour later, a large group of
people was crossing the woods. They thought they had been able to escape their
doom but then a strange sound was heard all over the woods, which made the
woodpecker cry for the first time. It was a clear cry of death.
