The Ants

I remembered as a child sitting in my garden watching two ants fight over the dead corpse of a caterpillar, I watched closely as their tiny legs wriggled back and forth. Their strife seemed so insignificant, such tiny creatures battling with all their might over something that affected no one else, and now here we were hiding behind our barricades.
The last of the food provisions lay in the centre of the tunnel a dim flickering light illuminated them like a gift from the heavens. One man from our side had tried to reach the provisions, but our opponents just thirty meters away had shot him from behind their own wall. His hand was still outstretched as with his last dying breath he tried to take what we needed so badly, and now we were at a stalemate. Neither side dared to attack for they may lose their lives and neither side dared stand down for if they did they would defiantly die of hunger.

I pressed my back against the wooden boxes we used for protection, splinters pocking through my cloths into my skin, but I didn't mind the pain reminded me this was real, everything up there on the surface was gone all that was left was us down here squabbling over a few morsels. My hands shook as a gripped the cool metal of the pistol. The air was musty and the sound of water drop rung through the echoing catacombs.

“We must fight” Our leader cried “If we don’t we shall die, our children will die, survival is what matters”

I was almost too scared to even register what he said, but something within me clicked. I’d seen it all along, ever since I was a child it had always been there in the corner of my eye. The ants that ate the caterpillar, the mantis that devoured the butterfly, my father coming home with his rod and a case full of fish. This wasn't new what we were doing now, we’d always been fighting and the strong will consume the weak.

The air stilled and a deafening silence overcame the tunnel, the light continued to flicker and we sighed, we raised our weapons, we stood, we charged and the shots were fired.