The Training Run, Final Part

We were doing our best not to spook it. Ask any group of runners how they feel about the deer and most likely they will hold it in high regard. Those of us who were lucky enough to run over trails and mountains in our time of 100-mile weeks had had multiple run-ins with the majestic member of the Cervidae Family. We felt like we had a connection with the animal world in general and the deer in particular that other members of the Sapien race just did not possess. Months ago, we felt this connection made us superior. We simply knew more about nature and the world more than the members of our race who sat in cubicles all day pounding cheeseburgers within their sedentary lives. We did not have time for such things. We were runners and we knew best. We ate better; we lived better. That made us faster. That was our edge.

            But none of that mattered now.

            We were on par with all those mindless, unmoving humans in their cubicles. Those who were cursed enough to survive the blitzkrieg were on a similar hunt to ours now. They were after the same thing we were: sustenance. 

            We were face to face with our first meal in six weeks, and this was as close as we had gotten to a deer in ten sunrises. The last time, she got spooked just as Zephyr was getting ready to throw his spear into her chest. I had slipped on a fallen tree we were all leaning on while we watched him close on her. She left in an instant; gone as quickly as she arrived. Zephyr took off after her. I jumped up too in pursuit feeling the other sets of eyes pissed at me for fucking the whole thing up. 

            Guilt makes you react quickly, and Zephyr needed back up. I launched myself over the fallen tree, spear in hand hoping to get to 5-minute mile pace before the deer got into her stride. When that happened, we thought that was the ballgame. We learned. We adapted. The brush was a three-minute run from our location just off the dirt road. If she got away from us, it would be because she got a few good jumps over the brush that took us more than a few seconds to get through. Zephyr had figured out the trick that you could not give a shit about your body when you went through a bush. Most elite runners learned that is how you get through races: you have to simply not care about the pain you are inflicting on yourself in order to get to the line before anyone else. 

            This was tougher. This was blood and pain. Harsh reality. 

            The first two pieces of brush were no problem, but the third the deer jumped over brought us to a screeching halt. Zephyr went down trying to jump it. I went down, tripping over him. 

            We had found her again though. While I was curious why or how she had gotten separated from her group, I knew it I did not matter so I decided not to bring it up to the others. This time we spread out. She would run—that was known to us. We spread out over a half mile in an ellipse around her as she ate her greens—receiving her own nourishment. When she ran this time, we would run with her for as long as we could. This run would have to end with a kill if we were to continue with our survival. 

            The plan was for the first few of us to start the movement of the beast. Our wild card was the trail system—Meyer planted himself there a kilometer away to oversee the hunt as it got closer to him. Having one or two tribesmen on the trails was good because they did not have to worry about the brush at all. They could change directions to an extent as the deer moved away from the rest of us. We started moving, walking slowly toward her. Venison was about to be back on the menu, and then…

            CRACK! went a branch underneath Slim’s foot. She looked at us for a moment, gauging our motive as sinister and bolted. The game was on. Keep her in sight. We keep her in sight for as long as we can and we can get her. The run had started and we went from standing still to 5:30 pace in an instant. She was moving quicker than the last time we saw her. I was reminded of the first time I had almost hit one while driving—it jumped over my car's hood, took three big strides, and then cleared a five-foot barbed wire fence as if it were a doorstep. The chase was on, and we were springing as quickly as we could after it. She cleared a bush, then a tree stump and was nearly out of sight—the hunger would continue, as we had not eaten anything substantial since right before Pickens died.

            Just then a stroke of genius from Zephyr, he broke ranks and made a crossing move toward the beast. While he exposed an opening in our ellipse, he was able to clip the back hooves of the deer just enough for her to stumble for a few strides. 

            We were back in. 

            Imagine a middle school basketball team doing three-man weave drills down the length of the court. That was our aim as we pushed the deer closer and closer to her red line. We would let her get a few seconds away then as she slowed we would put in a surge like our cross-country coaches had taught us years ago. When you want to put someone behind you, go hard off of a turn. Do that enough times on a winding course and you'll put them behind you in a matter of minutes. I longed for that simplicity of sitting in a classroom learning about running from my coach. 

            Never again. 

            In no world would that happen. Not in this world. Not in this apocalypse.

            We held onto our up-tempo pace as if we were doing threshold training for an upcoming 10K or half marathon.  As we went through the cycle of turns taken to surge on the beast it would also be somebody's turn to take a recovery jog. A classic speed workout known as a Fartlek was the name of the game now. The beast was not getting as far away from us with each leap and bound. As her effort intensified, ours was lessening. We just had too many legs working against her.

            We did this for over an hour, never getting too far away from where we began because of the way we had her surrounded from the start.

            I could start to smell the aroma of cooked flesh in my nostrils. I never wanted to eat berries or leaves again. I knew I was not the only one feeling this sentiment. We started to share knowing looks as we traded positions in the pack. After a final fifteen minutes of this, we saw openings for th

            In a track race, it would be something subtle: the heel of your opponent kicking out too far or too hard on a particular step. A sign that they were beginning to tie up. Our deer began to do the same. On certain steps, she would incessantly kick her hooves out as if she was trying to push off the thin air to give herself an extra boost. 

            No luck.

            She was tying up. 

            During all of this, Meyer had been running along the front of the pack sometimes even getting ahead of her and trying to take a kill shot with his spear. He never threw it; he was a patient hunter. Throwing was a sign of desperation. We had learned that over the last month. 

            In the weeks since the bombs, we had evolved. We had to push our spear into the flesh. That was the only way now. The only way to be sure. 

            With each passing minute, she grew weaker and weaker. She would cough and hack for extra oxygen as her lungs constricted more and more making retention near impossible. Her lungs were between all four of her powerful piston legs and the harder they worked the tougher they made it on her respiratory system. 

            She was getting ready to suffocate—it was that or be caught. Both ended in her death, and we were all ready for that now. Her especially. 

            She slowed to a walk as she saw Meyer and a few others cut off her continued escape. She looked over her right shoulder at us in our slowing pursuit. It was time to put her down. Always look a dying animal in the eyes. She had nothing but pity and innocence in hers. As we closed to do the deed, she waited—knowing what was coming. As we stabbed, she fell to the ground. Though we were amateurs, we knew where to strike.

            Maybe she was just going to sleep. She was definitely free of us wherever she went, and that had to be a better place.

*  *  *  *  *

            We carried her back in silence.

            When we arrived back to Haven, we dressed her. We tried to be as delicate as our greenhorn hands could be using the tools we had to bury Pickens. We did not know how to be as respectful as the Native Seminoles who had hunted here centuries before. We grew up in a time when everything had been done for us; where there were “people for that.” Dressing an animal is a true trial.

            We did our best.

            We cooked and ate in silence.

            There was no seasoning, just cooked flesh for this first kill. We had no way of spicing it up at all. But we had figured out a way—a sustainable way—of hunting for survival. It had been six weeks since the bombs, four weeks since Pickens. We still had not discovered who had done that to him. We knew their methods though, and that meant our lives too were in danger.

            That said, it did not matter in those moments as we sat and ate our meat. She had put up a good fight, and we all knew that. We did not deserve her, and we all knew that, too. If all of this was the end of human dominance on the planet, then we all understood that was probably for the best. It could have ended any moment anyway, right?

            Especially in the wild. In the Red Oak Woods.

            We would perhaps have answers one day, but for right then, we were content—content with a fire-cooked meal and the presence of friends. For a moment, it felt like we had just gone camping.