Fortunately, he fashions a wooden spear and kills the parents.
His legs found their wits first. Branches clawed at his face, and thorns tugged at his clothes as he sprinted away. He shielded his face with his arms and barreled forward, desperate to put distance between him and the towering terrors behind him. Just below the berserk bellows of the adults, he could hear the chicks squeaking at their parents’ pursuit. He dared not look back.
He sighted the shore ahead. At the prospect of escaping this obtrusive terrain, he picked up yet more speed, and seconds later his feet touched down on open sand. He slid into a sharp right turn and started making tracks down the length of the beach, hoping to himself that Big Bird’s demonic brethren had reservations about leaving the tree cover.
They didn’t. Rather, they took advantage of the clear ground as much as he did, closing the distance to the focus of their feathery rage. Without thinking, he angled gradually downhill to the wet sand and water. Out of options, he waded as quickly as he could out to sea.
Only when he was up to his hips did he realize that the remains of their least fortunate child still flailed from his white-knuckled fist. He swung his arm around and willed his hand to release, then jumped back into a furious sidestroke. The ragged corpse spun head over foot in a shallow arc, then landed with a thump at the feet of the demon birds. One of them bent over to nudge the corpse while the other squawked what he assumed were avian death threats. Neither continued into the water.
He rolled into a front crawl and pressed on until the demon birds quieted from distance and, he hoped, exhaustion. He veered to the side and crawled ashore for the second time today. It was hard to pinpoint how far he’d come exactly, but he could just make out the two figures in the distance as they returned to the tree cover.
A tiny peninsula of angular grey rock split the waves ahead. He carried himself over to a high, flat slab and sat. His stomach grumbled again.
He wondered how cavemen had dealt with situations like these. Humanity had once been as wild as the rest of the animals, and not unsuccessful, either. As apex predators, humans had not suffered the mammoths or saber-toothed tigers to bully them over food. Prehistoric people–his ancestors–had hunted these creatures to extinction before computers or televisions or automobiles or guns. But he could not feel such prowess in his veins when he compared his flimsy fingernails to the razor-like claws of a tiger’s paw. He did not feel fierce when he compared his flimsy arms to the muscular girth of a gorilla, or when he contrasted his modest incisors to a lion’s intimidating fangs. He felt, instead, like an undeserving heir. Weak. Unarmed.
Unarmed!? An indignant voice cried out in his mind. A true human arms himself, it chided. Millions of years of evolution had equipped him with the brains to make fists out of rocks, claws out of steel, and all manner of other tools out of things tougher than flesh. It was his birthright to conquer this island and whatever other wilderness he pleased!
Renewed determination launched him from his seat and to the nearest edge of the brush, where he scouted for materials. He claimed for himself a long branch, thick and straight, an armful of leaves and twigs, and several stones. He laid out his prizes back on the rock slab and set to work.
Ten minutes later, and with the help of his Zippo, he had a lively fire burning inside a circle of stones. With his pocketknife, he set about carving the head of what was to be his spear, the first tool of his conquest of this island. When he was satisfied with the sharpness of his weapon, he held its point over the fire to harden. He felt, at this moment, more manly than he had ever felt in his life.
He stalked back along the treeline in the direction of the nest. With his knees bent, his head crouched, and his hands gripping his spear, he regarded the shadows between the trees and dared his opponents to emerge. He hollered a wordless, carnal shout.
Movement in the trees. A familiar shudder of the canopy. A column of feathers emerged, and he charged forward.
The first demon bird stepped forward, sound spilling forth from its beak as it lowered toward him. He lunged forward, putting all of his weight behind his spear as its tip pressed into the beast’s breast, then through it. The behemoth kicked, but its leg went wide, just grazing his shoulder. He yanked hard, reclaiming his weapon, and blood poured out of the resulting wound. The creature stumbled, fell, and landed on its side.
Its partner sprang out of the brush and to his left side. It advanced in halting steps as he stabbed the air in front of it. He surrendered ground in calculated increments, just enough to keep out of its reach but not enough to signal his retreat. The two of them danced along the sand until one of the demon bird’s feet landed on unexpectedly loose ground; he seized his opportunity with teeth borne, rushing forward and impaling the avian freak as he had its mate. He stared his foe down for the length of its last heartbeat, then wrenched the wood from its chest and let it collapse.