Life after the rebellion

It’s been 10 years since the war and the cas­u­al­ties plenty, if they thought that we were mere creatures left on Earth to sat­isfy their need for hunt­ing and game, they were wrong. We once trus­ted them, when God gathered us at the table and named him the pro­tector of the world we thought he was go­ing to be kind and just, and he would care for us, but years proved how un­stable and for­get­ful their race was. Alas, it’s all over now and we have killed all hu­mans, there won’t be any more an­im­als caged, no more beat­ing to jump through a dammed lit circle while oth­ers ap­plaud­ing our slavery, no more hunt­ing, no more of that idi­otic ruling.

It all began with the raven telling there is an­other way, break His rule and be free, the tempta­tion was too great. I my­self was against the re­bel­lion at first, all un­til the night they came and took my fam­ily. Three large vehicles came and men with guns star­ted shoot­ing us; only me with two of my friends sur­vived, all the oth­ers were taken and killed on the spot and we could only watch hid­den be­hind a rock. Then I real­ized men will never be our pro­tect­ors, so we plot­ted our revenge.

Ravens car­ried away the mes­sage through­out all the parts of the world and in a fort­night, all hell broke loose. Birds at­tacked every­one high and low and an­im­als in­vaded their homes and at­tacked them; it was with such pleas­ure that they sank their teeth into that fra­gile ex­cuse of a body. I dare say they did not ex­pect it, most of them stood in shock. Just be­cause we are not able to speak their lan­guage it does not mean we are not able to un­der­stand it, just be­cause we can­not drive a car it does not mean we do not un­der­stand the prin­ciple. They had no time to re­act and we did not let them re­group, we were ready for their in­ven­tions and we fought them hard. So the first day was ours to win. The ones who es­caped at­tacked us sav­agely, but there was no or­der in their at­tempt and we were still too many and knew no fear, the worst we have already en­dured: we had already lost our fam­il­ies, our free­dom, what else was there for us to lose.

The con­crete jungle was the easi­est to fall, rats crept through every nook and cranny and in­fes­ted every­one, bugs, big and small car­ried deadly dis­eases faster than our claws and teeth shred them. Birds flew right into the en­gines of planes and brought them down within minutes. Bees at­tacked the heavy tanks and once the men came out, dogs, wolves and other an­im­als jumped on them. By the time they brought gas, there weren’t too many hu­man sur­viv­ors, but they still man­aged to kill a greater part of us. Lions, be­ing the largest hunters on the ter­rit­ory, es­caped from zoos and or­gan­ized massive at­tacks. The li­on­esses would di­vide the masses into smal­ler groups; once hu­mans were en­circled, they would jump on them and with a power­ful bite at the throat, they were gone. In or­der not to waste pre­cious time, the males would strike a single blow with their massive paws, of­ten break­ing their spine, they would then be left to die. To in­tim­id­ate them, lions would roar and their an­ger could be heard 8 km away; and then they knew we were com­ing to hunt them down. The ones who bar­ri­caded them­selves be­hind thick iron doors un­der moun­tains were the last to fall. But we just let them starve, in­sects de­voured their food sup­plies and, with no op­tion of com­ing back up, I be­lieve they just waited for death to come. There was no es­cap­ing from us.

On the 17^th day there was si­lence, a com­fort­ing sound of suc­cess and the howl of the wolves and dogs bore a sense of re­spect for the brave an­im­als who have sac­ri­ficed them­selves for our cause, for the free­dom of an­im­als. We be­lieved in a bet­ter world and there was no time to rest and lick our wounds, we needed to re­group and rule over what should have been ours in the first place. Every spe­cies of an­im­als sent a del­eg­ate to ne­go­ti­ate land mark­ings, at­tri­bu­tions and power. The meet­ing was held at the an­cient site where we once dis­cussed with hu­mans all the prob­lems — Stone­henge was built by us for them, to en­sure our long last­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion, it was meant to be a sym­bol of unity, the per­fect circle of massive stone, un­break­able bonds, — but time proved to break the memory of humans.

As the strongest male in the prides of Africa I chose four of my com­pan­ions and who­ever wanted to come along and we set off on our jour­ney from Ma­sai Mara, Kenya to Eng­land. The jour­ney took roughly four months, un­til we reached the Medi­ter­ranean Sea we had to walk 80 km daily, that was much for our spe­cies, but we walked through­out the en­tire day and res­ted a few hours at night. At Me­lilla, a small costal hu­man dwell­ing, fin whales awaited to carry us over to Span­ish lands, it took us only 5 hours and from there it was keep­ing it North un­til we reached the Eng­lish chan­nel. At Le Gris Nez hump­back whales car­ried us to Dun­ge­ness and from then we reached Stone­henge within 3 days.

There we waited a few more weeks for the other an­im­als to ar­rive and at dusk the con­clave began. We de­cided the rules of the wild re­mained, the sole prob­lem lied in hand­ling the world the hu­mans have cre­ated, by now the elec­tri­city had failed so everything was en­gulfed in dark­ness dur­ing the night time; but more hor­rors were yet to come. We needed to choose a leader, one that could help an­im­als sur­vive in the new world. We settled on a vote. I pro­posed the mighty ele­phant, every­one would listen to him, but I guess it was in­ev­it­able, they all voted for me, the lion, the king of the beasts, such a cliché. I still have no idea why hu­mans gave me that title, if you were to ask me, I’d say as a mockery. 

I still re­mem­ber the dis­cus­sion after we were all present in the circle.

“With great sac­ri­fices we re­gained our free­dom,” said the raven. And all star­ted to acclaim.

“But how will our fu­ture look like?” asked the dog. “We re­lied much on humans.”

“You will have to pay the price for your treach­ery now, we will ad­apt and so will you,” answered the wolf.

“We can go on with our lives and take care of ourselves,” said the bear.

“But need someone to rep­res­ent our voice, I say one must rep­res­ent all the races and be fair,” said the rabbit.

“I vote for the ele­phant, his pres­ence will strike fear into who­ever de­cides to break the rules,” said I.

“But you are the king of the beasts and the one pre­pared to take care of large fam­il­ies, you should be our rep­res­ent­at­ive,” said the opossum. 

And that was the end of it, every­one agreed with him.

The title came with a few sac­ri­fices, I would have to re­main in Eng­land to an­swer for whatever prob­lems might oc­cur, to make sure no one broke the rules and over­hunt. I formed my pride there and took a few an­im­als for coun­cil, the gray wolf, the raven and who­ever could ad­apt to the weather in this re­gion. I had in my pride four fe­males and two males, to­gether we star­ted vis­it­ing the con­crete jungle to un­der­stand what is to be done. I roamed through tall build­ings, the scene was ter­ri­fy­ing, broken glass every­where, lit­ter on every inch and broken car­casses lay in the street, when the build­ing will start to fall, the land would tremble. My or­ders were clear, evac­u­ate hu­man dwell­ings and stay away from in­dus­trial plants, we should be safe in the wild. 

As fam­il­ies began to grow, so was my pride, but I had little time for them, con­stantly an­im­als would come to me say­ing that a cer­tain pred­ator killed too much or had brokem the rule by ven­tur­ing into the for­bid­den areas. I ordered their ex­e­cu­tion, there was no break­ing my rule. Now things have settled and we are free to live our lives. My pres­ence is rarely re­quired, but the lion will al­ways be the ruler, the king of the beasts.

Dania Berinde

(writ­ten Decem­ber 18, 2019)