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scent of the others, those who had escaped… and somewhere in the night forest… his son.
    Miles away, moving swiftly in the other direction, Malcolm paused and raised his head to listen to the howling.

CHAPTER FIVE
    The forest took him in. It sheltered him from the night and hid him from the men who shouted and cursed as they crashed through the brush searching out the few survivors of Drago. In the morning the shouts were farther away. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. The sun was a pale disk behind a curtain of cloud. Malcolm rested and realized he was terribly thirsty. His instinct was to cry, but he did not. Instead he set out to find water, and the forest showed him where to look. There were shallow pools from the last rain, hollowed-out stumps that held enough to drink, and half-hidden streams that a man could miss if he did not stop to look.
    Food was easier. Pine-nuts were plentiful, and there were wild blackberries and grapes. The leaves and stalks of goosefoot, and the fleshy green purslaine were tough and chewy, but they gave him nourishment. Sometimes he ate things that cramped his stomach and doubled him up in pain, but soon he learned which foods to avoid and which would give him the strength to go on.
    But to go where? Everything that he had known was behind him, burned. Destroyed. Gone. He had no destination. The days passed. And the nights. He stopped counting. Sometimes Malcolm could hear the men in the woods. They were still out there stalking him. And he could smell them. Smell the acrid sweat of the hunter. The men were clumsy in the woods, and slow-moving compared to the boy. Still, he could not risk discovery. The men had guns. Malcolm well remembered what the men had done to his village. To his people.
    By night he moved, restlessly and without destination, sustained only by the conviction that he must keep moving. During the day, when he would be more easily seen by the searchers, he rested under a simple lean-to constructed of boughs. It was an aimless existence, and a gnawing ache grew in Malcolm’s heart. Somewhere, he felt, there was a place for him, could he but find it.
    The growing ache was not only in his heart. For the first time in his life Malcolm knew hunger. Real hunger. The edible plants he found in the forest, the berries, the roots, the bark stripped from tender saplings, these were enough to keep him alive, but he was never completely free from hunger. Hunger for meat. It was a pain that never left him. A pain that grew worse every day.
    Then one morning in desperation he snatched at a squirrel that sat on a stump regarding him curiously, Malcolm was surprised at the ease with which he caught the little creature. He killed it quickly, tore away the fur as best he could with his hands, and devoured it. He ripped the raw flesh from the tiny bones with his teeth. The meat was rank and tough, but it was better than bark.
    Soon Malcolm discovered he was quick enough to run down and catch other small animals with his hands. Opossums, raccoons, once even a small deer. The streams were not deep enough to provide fish, but there were frogs to be taken. Malcolm’s muscles grew lean and hard in his hunting exertions. His teeth white, his jaw strong enough to crack a bone.
    There was no question of making a fire to cook the meat once he had caught it. Malcolm carried no matches, and a fire would surely attract the men. At first he had to force himself to gag down the raw meat, still warm from the living blood, but he learned. Before long, to his surprise, he liked it best that way.
    The days stretched out, one indistinguishable from the next. During the nights he continued his aimless travels. Once he circled back to where the village of Drago had been. Nothing was left but ashes. Everything gone. Everyone dead. Malcolm never went back again.
    And yet Malcolm sensed he was not alone. They were out there somewhere, others of his kind, running and hiding just as he was. He longed to