There was a little additional discussion of the hunt but Bob\u2019s prognosis on the end date seemed to have depressed his comrades and so they departed one at a time after a few minutes.\u00a0 Dave headed home and reached his front door just as the dusk warning siren sounded.\u00a0 He felt a little shudder of fear pass through his body at the sound.\u00a0 Maybe tonight\u2019s talk had depressed him more than he thought.\u00a0 He opened the outer door and closed it behind him and then the scanner activated and after twenty seconds the inner door opened, he stepped inside, the inner door closed behind him and the safety bolts shot home with a loud and comforting bang.\u00a0 And based on that sequence he knew that everyone was home for the night.\u00a0 They were locked up tight and could live and sleep secure for the night.\u00a0 Walking through the entry hall he reached the dining room where the cheerful yellow light revealed his younger brothers and sisters sitting around the table working on their school assignments.\u00a0 They looked up as he entered but it was his father who smiled with a relieved expression that the last of the family was home, \u201cBusy day Dave?\u201d\u00a0 He shook his head, \u201cNo Dad, I just spent some time with the boys to blow off some steam.\u00a0 Nothing too busy,\u201d he lied, not wishing to upset his family about the hive found so close by.\u00a0 His father nodded his head and went back to working on some chore at his work station.\u00a0 He walked through to the kitchen and found his mother cleaning up from dinner.\u00a0 She smiled at him and handed him a warm plate of meat, mashed potatoes and some kind of vegetable hash of some sort.\u00a0 He smiled at this mystery course but thanked her and sat down at the kitchen table to eat.\u00a0 \u201cGina stopped by today and asked if you were going to the social this weekend,\u201d she mentioned in what she hoped sounded like an off-hand way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh really.\u00a0 And I suppose you told her I could\u201d he shot back.\u00a0 She looked offended and said, \u201cI did nothing of the sort.\u00a0 I told her I\u2019d tell you to call her.\u00a0 And you should.\u00a0 She\u2019s the nicest girl you\u2019ve ever brought around here and she\u2019s very pretty too and if you\u2019re not careful someone else will speak up and win her away from you.\u00a0 Girls like that don\u2019t wait around forever you know.\u201d\u00a0 Dave laughed to hear her vehemence but he promised to call her that night.\u00a0 Finishing his plate, which was quite good even to the unrecognizable goulash, he put his plate in the dishwasher and patted his mother\u2019s shoulder and thanked her as he headed for the living room.\u00a0 His father had migrated there too and was watching a video about a new surveillance system that incorporated lasers and advanced machine intelligence.\u00a0 Seeing this brought back Dave\u2019s gloom as he reflected on how life always came back to the hunt and the lock down.<\/p>\n
His father must have sensed his black mood and turned off the video and said, \u201cSorry Dave I needed that video for a work meeting I have tomorrow.\u00a0 I should have had it on the small screen where you couldn\u2019t see it.\u201d\u00a0 Dave smiled halfheartedly and said, \u201cNah, it\u2019s nothing Dad.\u00a0 Just one of those days, you know?\u201d\u00a0 Then he said less cheerily, \u201cWe found a nest pretty close by today and I guess I let it get me down.\u00a0 Then Mom starts telling me that I better scoop up Gina before she marries someone else.\u00a0 It just feels like we\u2019re living in a nightmare and I can\u2019t see how it goes on.\u201d\u00a0 His father looked down and sighed then looked up, \u201cYes, I know exactly what you mean.\u00a0 When I was about your age, I met your mother and she wanted to get married right away but I couldn\u2019t imagine bringing children into the world with danger and horror all around us.\u00a0 Back then it was considerably worse than it is now.\u00a0 We had lost two of my brothers to the beasts when I was a teenager.\u00a0 They were older than I and had been part of the hunt.\u00a0 A communication snafu had them unprotected practically on top of a hive in their sector.\u00a0 I was devastated.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t see the sense in living that way, always one mistake away from losing friends or family to these awful creatures.\u00a0 I despaired.<\/p>\n
But my father told me something that has stayed with me ever since.\u00a0 He said, \u2018Hal, remember that you come from the smartest, toughest animal to ever appear on this green Earth.\u00a0 Your ancestors had to fight off saber-tooth tigers and cave bears with flint spear-heads and bone clubs.\u00a0 And their only protection were caves and maybe a campfire.\u00a0 But over the course of a million years, they killed off all those predators and made the Earth a garden.\u00a0 And by God, you and your descendants are going to rid this Earth of these giant vermin, take my word for it.\u2019\u00a0 So, I thought about what he had said and I understood.\u00a0 There is within us all of the cunning, courage and tenacity of our ape-men ancestors and we should look at this crisis as a challenge that we must accept and overcome.\u00a0 We\u2019re men and our enemy is just a stupid bug that needs exterminating.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a part of life.\u00a0 A problem no different than cancer or earthquake.\u00a0 Something we use our brains to figure out and eventually eradicate.\u00a0 Just like the saber-tooth.\u201d\u00a0 His father looked off into the air for a second and then said, \u201cYou know your mother is right about Gina.\u00a0 A girl that pretty is going to be snatched up pretty quickly if you don\u2019t wake up.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you give her a call.\u201d\u00a0 Then he walked away toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Dave sat there for a few minutes thinking about everything his father had said.\u00a0 Then he called up Gina and asked her out to the social.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a little additional discussion of the hunt but Bob\u2019s prognosis on the end date seemed to have depressed his comrades and so they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[1557,1290,265,161],"class_list":["post-33405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-giant-ants","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction","tag-them"],"yoast_head":"\n