360 More Mouths To Feed

Before Mara could say anything else, she felt a heavy blow on her abdomen. She crumbled to the ground writhing in pain from the bruise that formed as two men grabbed hold of each of her arms roughly. 

She had a torn lip, a bruised right eye that she could barely see with as she was brought up to meet the attacker at eye level. He roughly grabbed hold of her chin and tilted her head upwards. 

"Look at me, Mara," he said with a rough guttural voice. 

Mara could barely hear him, her mind was hazy and her vision was blurry. 

"I said look at me you BITCH!" The man shouted at her. 

She flinched as she met his emerald green eyes. She could taste the iron of her blood on the tip of her tongue. 

How did she even end up like this?

"Pathetic," the man spat. He clicked his fingers. 

Mara was dropped to the ground like a rag doll. She scrambled to find her bearings. She scrambled to find the words she needed to say. Mara needed to save the others. She also needed to save herself. 

But no words came out of her throat. 

She forced them out. 

"I gave you their whereabouts. You got the shooter weapons because of my intel. Was that not enough?!" She tried to defend herself. 

Mara was not going to down that easily, she would fight her own battles. The circle of people around her erupted in laughter, echoing the laughter of their leader; the man. He pointed his finger at her, but she could not see it until he came up close. 

His shadow loomed over her. 

"I should not have listened to you. I should have slaughtered them where they stood. That way, at least we would have more meat go around."

He stood up. The man looked down at the pathetic woman before him. 

"All of you are of no use to us anymore," he said in a cold emotionless tone. 

"Feed them to the hogs."

The crowd around her roared in celebration. Mara's heart sank to the bottom of her stomach. What did he mean by them?

"What do you mean by them?" She shouted as she stood back up. 

The adrenaline fueled her every move. Every inch of her muscles was on fire but she did not care. 

The man was annoyed by her persistence. He turned back around to face her. The devilish grin on his face irked her. 

"Having you lot around is just more mouths to feed. So make yourselves useful and become food for the hogs."

Mara's jaw was dropped, she had drowned out everything else around her. Her sole focus was on the man. She could not believe the words he had just said. In the distance, amongst the celebratory cheers of the crowd that surrounded her, she could hear a bone-chilling scream. 

Mara turned back to look at the man. He still had that obnoxious grin on his face. A burning rage overcame her in that instant. She leapt forward and picked up the sword that was strewn on the ground. 

She lunged forward at the man. 

But she never had a chance. He punched her again in the abdomen, causing her to spit out blood. Mara fell to the ground again. On the orders of the man, she was held up once more to meet him at eye level. 

"You were trying to wound me? You?" He laughed in her face, "What a joke."

He grabbed hold of her face. She attempted to struggle out of his grasp but to no avail. He forced her to look in a certain direction. When her eyes finally focused on what he had wanted her to see, Mara wanted to look away. 

But she could not. She could only stare in horror as she watched her friends being fed to the hogs. The man kept the hogs like horses. They were reared for riding and transportation. 

But instead of eating hay like normal horses, they ate meat. 

Any type of meat. 

"No please… NO!" Mara screamed in anger and agony. 

She could not bear to watch any of this. She tried to look away but each time she was forced to look at it as it happened. One by one, her friends whom she had lived and survived within the Jungle were torn apart. 

In a cruel twist of fate, when it came to the last human before her, the hogs were full. All that was left was a half-eaten torso. 

"Looks like you escape death, for now, Mara." The man whispered to her. 

She could smell his foul breath that only made her retch. 

"Tie her up in the hog pen. She will be their midnight snack," the man instructed. 

With his order, she was brought over to the hog stables. They tied her down to a pole metres away from the hogs. The blood, tissue and remnants of her fallen friends were all around her. 

The torn pieces of their clothing still remained. Mara wanted to strangle the man with her own two hands. She wanted to feed him to the hogs. But there was nothing she could do. 

She refused to cry, but her confidence, her resolve was shattered. Only agony and death awaited her. Waiting for death was agony in itself. The crowd had long dispersed, and the campsite was quiet as everyone was asleep. 

"If only…" she muttered to herself. 

Mara bit her lip, refusing to accept that the situations she was in were the result of her actions. It made sense to join the man and his group. They were bigger and stronger. They had survived in the City for a long time. 

She and her fellow survivors would be able to survive with them. Giving them the intel about the children and their shooter weapons was not a move she was proud of. But she did what she had to guarantee the safety of her friends. 

Who would have known they would turn their backs so quickly on them the moment things seemed to take a different turn?

"I couldn't have known, I couldn't have known," she gritted her teeth. 

Mara refused to cry. 

There was a shadow that loomed over her. She looked up to see a hog inches away from her. Its long white tusks protruded from its mouth, curved in a crescent shape. The hog was ready for its midnight snack.