Ares moved alone into the tree line.
The others had already taken different paths.
Their tracks separated early and vanished.
He did not follow them.
The order had been simple: find food.
How they did it was their concern.
The forest west of the orchard held a different quiet.
Fewer ant columns.
Fewer broken branches.
The ground was soft from the night’s damp, the air thick with leaf mould and cold soil.
Ares kept the rebar low and matched his steps to the natural gaps between roots.
Every few minutes he stopped and let the wind tell him what it carried.
Mid-morning the first tracks appeared.
Human.
Fresh.
Five sets.
Boots mixed with bare feet.
The prints sank deep and even, the stride long, purposeful.
Not running.
Walking with the confidence of people who knew exactly where they were going.
Ares crouched and studied them.
Camp searchers did not come this far without orders.
These tracks came from the northwest and cut across his line, heading deeper into the thicker growth.
The edges were still sharp.
Whoever made them had passed less than an hour earlier.
He followed.
The trail stayed clean at first.
A smeared handprint on a trunk.
A torn scrap of dark cloth snagged on a thorn.
Then the pattern changed.
The line tightened.
The steps shortened.
They had begun to move with more care, as if the ground itself required respect.
The smell arrived before the hollow.
It was not the ordinary rot of the woods.
It was thicker, sweeter, undercut by woodsmoke and the sharp reek of old urine.
Ares stopped, breathed through his mouth, and waited until the worst of it settled into something he could name.
Meat.
Human meat, cooked and raw at once.
He dropped lower and used the wider trunks for cover.
The tracks led into a shallow depression where the canopy opened just enough for grey light.
At the bottom a low fire still breathed thin smoke.
Stones circled the ashes.
The earth around it was packed hard from repeated feet.
Bones lay in a loose heap near one edge.
Long bones of arms and legs, some split for marrow.
A partial skull rested against a root, jaw missing.
The surfaces were scraped clean in places, the work careful and practiced.
Three rough shelters stood against the far bank branches and scavenged tarps.
A drying rack held thin strips of dark meat.
Tools lay ready on a flat stone: a hatchet, two knives, a length of rope darkened by use.
Ares counted four men and one woman before any of them spoke.
The woman was the first to move into clear view.
She was taller than the others, her left ear missing, the scar tissue pale against her skin.
A necklace of small finger bones hung at her throat and clicked softly when she turned her head.
She carried no weapon in her hands; she did not seem to need one.
“Still warm enough,” she said.
Her voice was calm, almost bored.
“We take the rest before dark.”
One of the men broad, bearded, missing two fingers on his right hand nodded toward the southern trees.
“Tracks came from the south this morning.
Three sets.
Camp people.
Soft.”
“They split,” another answered.
“Easier that way.”
The bearded man wiped a knife on a rag and looked at the woman for direction.
She only said, “If they come this way we don’t wait.”
No one argued.
The rule needed no further words.
Ares began to ease backward, one careful step at a time, keeping the thickest trunks between himself and the hollow.
The rebar never left his grip.
He had almost reached the denser cover when a dry branch snapped under his heel.
The sound was small.
In the hollow it was enough.
Every head turned.
The woman pointed once, sharply.
“There.”
Ares ran.
He did not waste time looking back.
The trees closed around him.
He cut left, then hard right, using the thicker growth.
Behind him the voices rose short, practical calls, the sound of people who had hunted this ground before.
No panic.
Only direction and speed.
A thrown spear punched into a trunk a hand’s breadth from his shoulder and quivered there.
He kept low.
The pack slammed against his spine with every stride.
The water skin slapped his hip until the strap caught on a branch and tore free.
He left it.
Water could be found again.
Being caught could not.
The ground rose.
He took the slope in burning strides and dropped over the crest into heavier brush.
For a moment the voices fell behind.
Then they adjusted and came on again, spreading into a search line.
Ares forced his way into a stand of younger trees where the undergrowth was thickest.
Thorns tore his forearms and the side of his neck.
He ignored the blood.
When he found a low depression under a fallen trunk he dropped into it and went completely still.
Footsteps passed twenty meters to his right.
Another set further out.
Someone gave a short signal.
Another answered.
The line moved past his position and continued down the slope.
He waited.
Blood from the thorn cuts ran warm down his arm and dripped onto the leaves.
He did not wipe it.
Any movement risked sound.
Time stretched.
The light shifted.
Somewhere far off a bird called once and then fell silent again.
Only when the ordinary noises of the forest returned wind in the high leaves, the distant crack of a falling branch—did he lift his head.
The hollow was no longer in sight.
The searchers’ tracks were already softening under new leaf fall.
Ares crawled out, checked the sun, and began moving again away from the hollow, away from the original trail, taking the longer arc back toward the open fields and the distant walls.
He did not run.
Running made noise.
He walked with the same measured pace he had used on the way out, rebar ready, every sense stretched for the pursuit that never quite returned.
By late afternoon the trees thinned.
Open ground showed ahead.
He stopped at the edge and studied the field for a long time before stepping into it.
Nothing moved.
No figures on the horizon.
No smoke.
He crossed at a steady pace.
The walls remained a low dark line.
Only when he was far enough that the tree line had become a single band did he allow himself one look back.
The people in the hollow would still be there when the next searching party came this way.
They would still be working whatever meat they had.
They would still speak of camp people the way other hunters spoke of deer.
Ares adjusted the pack on his shoulders.
The missing water skin left a light, unbalanced feeling against his hip.
The cuts on his arms had already begun to stiffen.
He kept walking.
Out here the old boundaries were gone.
Some of the humans had learned it more carefully.
Ares kept moving through the thinning trees long after the hollow was behind him.
Food remained scarce.
By late afternoon the sound of running water reached him.
He followed it until the trees opened onto a shallow riverbank and stopped while still inside the cover.
Two figures in white protective suits worked beside the water.
Full masks.
Sealed gloves.
A white equipment bag sat open on the ground between them.
One stood slightly back with a rifle.
The other knelt beside a massive wolf lying on its side.
The animal was alive.
Its chest rose and fell in slow pulls.
A shaved patch on its hind leg showed a needle mark.
Further up the bank sat a working vehicle matte-dark, heavy tires.
Two soldiers in tactical vests stood near it, weapons ready.
Ares sank lower and watched.
The kneeling figure drew blood and passed the vial up.
The standing figure sealed it and placed it inside the white bag.
A woman’s voice came through the mask.
“Sedation is holding.”
The man answered, “Get the blood first.
Then tissue.”
They worked quickly.
Fur.
Saliva.
A small core of muscle.
Each sample labelled and stored in the white bag.
The woman checked a device on her wrist.
“Five minutes.”
The wolf twitched.
One paw scraped the dirt.
She pressed another dose into the shaved patch.
The animal settled again.
The man spoke.
“This one’s different.”
“How?”
“It resisted the first dose.
The others went under fast.
This one fought it.”
“Record it.
We’ll compare it against the eastern samples.”
On the man’s shoulder Ares saw a small emblem three lines inside a circle.
The same mark from the old military bunker.
A low howl rolled through the trees from the north.
Then another, closer.
Both soldiers turned toward the sound.
The woman looked up from the bag.
One of the soldiers spoke first.
“We move.
Now.
We come back for the gene kit later.”
The woman hesitated, one hand still on the white bag.
The soldier stepped closer.
“Trust me.
There’s no one here except death.”
She held still a second longer, then nodded.
The man snapped the white bag shut and carried it toward the vehicle.
The woman followed.
The second soldier covered them.
The first soldier lingered a moment, eyes on the tree line.
“If the wolves reach us while we’re still loading, this car gets us caught in under a minute.
You know that.”
He glanced back at the woman.
“Sorry, Doctor Hana.”
She did not answer.
She climbed into the vehicle.
The others followed.
The engine turned over with a low, clean hum that did not belong in the ruined world.
Ares pressed flat against the trunk as the vehicle reversed, turned, and rolled away along the bank, leaving the sedated wolf and the empty riverbank behind.
The howls came again, nearer now.
He stayed hidden until the sound of the engine faded completely, then looked once more at the place where the white bag had been.