The voyage was long but necessary.  We had to live somewhere, and this place wasn’t dying, unlike Earth.

The supply ships that proceeded us were supposed to leave all the necessities for our colonization of the planet.  Unfortunately,  the payload on the ship that crashed had most of our food.  We found some native vegetation, a smelly corn-like plant with high protein content,  that we could eat.  We would have to find a way to cultivate it to survive.  For now, we foraged for the native plant, further and further away from the compounds.

We think that the plant we ate triggered the local carnivores, what we called wolves.  We knew there were mammal-like animals here but we thought we could dominate them.  Before we started to eat the plant, the wolves feared us and would run away when they could smell us. The more we ate of the native plant, the less fearful and more aggressive the wolves became.  After the third colonist’s killing, we knew we were hunted.

The darkness seemed to embolden them.  We foraged for the native corn only during daylight hours; at night we couldn’t see the large packs hunting us.   We rotated the foraging amongst us, ranging only as far as we could drive our all-terain vehicles and still get back before dark.

It was our family’s turn to go out.  As we started back to safety, the all-terrain shuddered, then stopped.  The engine would not turn over.  

“Dad, the sun is dropping,” Meg said quietly.  I tried to sound confident.  “Let’s jog!”

Behind us, we heard the AT being ripped apart. The strength of the wolves’ teeth and jaws was incredible.

We ran as hard as we could, the light fading, the wolves closing.

We got the security gates of home shut just before the pack hit it.  As they ripped at the metal, we knew it was only a matter of time.

A version of this story first appeared in Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction