Down a stretch of gravel road the two vehicles went, Burney screaming as the dust flew past his smoking face. In short order, they drove past the tiny city limits of Greenfield and entered a large green field. A small sign of cut wood read Prey of Birds. The sign would have been impossible to spot unless one was going down this exact road. And there appeared to be no reason to go down this exact road save to possibly bury treasure or sit by a rock to write some sort of wilderness manifesto.

One such wilderness manifesto had actually been written there not too long ago. It had been penned by a very disturbed young man who had thought all the ills of the world were to blame on high fructose corn syrup. The manifesto he wrote was well thought out, insightful, and wonderfully passionate. Unfortunately, as previously stated, he was a very disturbed man and had only shared his manifesto with a small family of squirrels.

Whether the family of squirrels had been capable of understanding the man’s world-saving manifesto has never been fully understood. But that particular family of squirrels has never been seen eating high fructose corn syrup, nor have they had any sort of trouble in their lives. If this is due to not eating high fructose corn syrup, or just the simple fact that they are squirrels, is largely up to debate.

Sadly, the world continues to consume high fructose corn syrup, and any efforts by the squirrels to spread the manifesto’s message have been highly unsuccessful.

Steve followed John Michael’s truck and turned off the gravel road onto the driveway of a large colonial-style home. As Steve pulled into the driveway, a squirrel threw a nut from a black walnut tree at Burney. The burnt nut’s intended anti-corn syrup message went completely unheeded as the car’s occupants made their way toward John’s home.

“Have you actually ever shot a gun before, Steve?” Dawn asked as Steve pulled in behind John Michael’s truck.

“Enough times to know which way to point,” Steve replied as he turned off the engine.

“The end with the hole in it,” Gore said, and practically tore the door off its hinges as he exited the car.

“Yes, that would be the proper end.”

“Unless it’s a breach-loading eighteen-inch rifled cannon capable of firing armor-piercing shells at a distance of twenty-six miles. Then both ends have a hole.”

“I don’t think you would want to shoot ducks with one of those,” Dawn said.

“You use them to blast American warships into little bits! And they didn’t use robots to fire them!”

“Gore, what are you talking about?”

“The armament of the Japanese battleship Yamato. It fought in World War Two. I stole one of its guns once. Could a robot do that?”

“Your knowledge of Japanese battleships only enhances your status as a robot, Gore.”

“I am not a robot!”

“Remind me to ask you to tell me the story of how you stole a Japanese battleship’s main deck gun someday, Gore. And never use it to blow up ducks,” Steve said.

“We’re not hunting ducks,” John Michaels said as he walked toward the group, arms full of hunting vests. “We’re hunting quail. Here, put these on.”

John tossed a hunting vest to each member of the group. Steve caught his and put it on immediately. Dawn caught hers and discarded it. Gore threw his back at John. And Burney, well, did what happened when one threw a piece of fabric at him.

“You can add that to our bill,” Steve said, pointing to the combusted vest.

It took nearly an hour for all the details to be put in place and John to deliver the necessary safety instructions. They stood in a large shed about a hundred yards into a large field in John Michael’s immense backyard, a bird dog pen nestled close by. There were leather harnesses and aged deer heads proudly displayed on the walls, along with tack for horses and row after row of rust-stained shovels, pickaxes, and various other tools. The shed had a musty stench of age and importance, carrying the weight of use that can only come from something well-worn and well-hone.

The only things that were not present in the shed were the guns themselves. These John brought with him from his home in hole-pocked leather cases, keeping them out of reach till he could finish his instructions.

During this time, Gore described the various reasons why he was not a robot and listed his extremely non-robotic qualities. Dawn was able to completely ignore the safety lesson by prodding Gore with quite convincing arguments that he was in actuality a robot. Even Burney contributed to Gore’s mocking. Sadly, his jokes were terrible, so no one laughed at them.

“And here is your ammunition,” John Michaels said after he concluded his safety instructions. “I’ll start you all off on twelve gauge. Kicks a little more but you’ll get a better spray. Based on your experience, that’ll probably be best.”

Burney tried to take some of the distributed shotgun shells, but Steve shoved Gore into him, knocking the burning man safely distant from the live ammunition.

“No guns for you, Burney,” Steve said. “And I don’t think I should have to explain why.”

“Next time you want to hit Burney, just ask me to do it,” Gore commanded.

“You would have just let Burney grab the ammo, Gore,” Dawn noted.

“Exactly. It would have been hilarious!”

“Hilarious enough you won’t shoot no quail,” John Michaels said. “I’ll not tolerate safety violations, understand?”

Dawn put a hand out to stop whatever comment Gore was about to say. “We understand,” she said with a smile.

“Now, how we operate is you buy the birds and I distribute them into the field. You hunt them with our dogs, and I clean whatever you get. There’s lots of birds out there from past hunts that got away, so it’s possible you can shoot more than you bought, if you’re good enough.” John took a gun for Steve and offered it, making sure its safety function was on, then did the same for Gore.

“This is not sufficient to bring down large surface vessels of the Japanese Imperial Navy,” Gore said as he looked in contempt at the shotgun.

“I clean the birds,” John said, ignoring Gore. He pointed toward a large plastic sink that looked strangely out of place amidst the musty shed. A garden hose dripped inside the sink, cleaning streaks into the dried blood from previous hunting prizes that had stained the thin, white plastic. “Then we cook ‘em.”

John pointed to a low grill made out of cinder blocks and amateur-welded metal rods. The cooking surface was black and the ground thick with the ashes of past fires. All this together, however, combined to a glorious stench that Steve took in with a hearty breath, stimulating a primal sense of adventure and hunger.

“There’s nothing better than fresh cooked quail you just shot,” John Michaels said.

“I sure hope so,” Steve said as he loaded his gun. “You got any bread?”

“Back in the house. Why?”

“And pickles!” Gore added.

“No pickles, please,” Steve said.

“I have to get your receipt anyway,” John said, and looked at the four companions. For a moment, he had the look of a man weighing the gravity of his current condition. There was a hell knight, a woman in a strange hoodie, a man with a fedora, and a man on fire standing before him with shotguns he’d handed them. Well, the man on fire didn’t have a shotgun, but that would have almost made Burney look less strange.

Before he could really think too hard about his present circumstance, a corn syrup-protesting squirrel threw a black walnut at John’s head and made him realize there was a credit card being presented.

“Be right back,” John said, and took Steve’s credit card.

“You sure this is going to get you a good sandwich?” Dawn asked, investigating her gun. She loaded it as she’d been instructed, but did not think she really wanted to shoot anything at the moment. Maybe Gore, but that was her typical inclination.

“It should. Like John said, nothing better than fresh-killed meat you shot on your own,” Steve said, and loaded his own gun. “No fancy sauces or ingredients. Just the thrill of hard work and victory straight from the source… gah!”

Gore suddenly fired his shotgun, making Steve cup his ears and juggle his own gun, nearly dropping it. There was a heavy silence in the gunshot’s echo, and Steve looked down to where Gore was aiming to see the shattered remains of what had once been a turtle.

“I hate turtles,” Gore said, click-clacking his gun to ready another round in a most impressive yet completely inappropriate fashion.

“What was that for!” Steve said.

“I hate turtles.”

“You didn’t have to shoot the thing,” Dawn said.

“I. Hate. Turtles.”

“Well I hate mayo but you don’t see me shooting mayonnaise packets at drive through windows do you?” Dawn crossed her arms and scowled at Gore.

“You should. That would be fun!”

“You shouldn’t shoot innocent turtles!”

“What about a turtle sandwich? We could make a turtle sandwich,” Gore said, pointing to the pieces of what no longer resembled a turtle.

“I don’t think that would taste very good,” Steve noted.

As the group continued to argue about the validity of shooting random forest creatures and attempting to construct sandwiches out of their plausibly-consumable corpses, the only entity on John Michael’s property who seemed pleased with the seemingly random death of the turtle was the squirrel who’d struck John with a black walnut. In actual fact, the nut had been intended to strike the turtle, who’d been slowly making his way to the tree to complete his life-long scheme of vengeance upon those who would sully the name of high fructose corn syrup.

The squirrels rejoiced that their world-saving message could finally flourish now that the dreaded corn syrup-apologist turtle lay in pieces. The squirrels even extended an invitation of feasting to the one who had vanquished their foe. Sadly, the invitation was misinterpreted as just another black walnut that bounced off Gore’s armor and burnt to ash when it landed on Burney’s head.

“Did I hear a shot?” John Michaels asked as he emerged from his home with a receipt and a loaf of bread.

“Maybe,” Steve said.

“You can’t just shoot randomly. We have to be at a safe place and quail don’t come close to the house,” John scolded as he walked toward the group.

“Wasn’t a gun. It was Burney,” Gore said, and tossed a shotgun shell at Burney. The shell hit Burney’s body and immediately exploded in his face. Those who understood the concept of physics would realize that this would be more annoying than unsafe to those standing further than a foot away from such a minor explosion. They would also understand that it was still not that pleasant to have a shotgun shell explode in one’s face. Burney fell down screaming and singed the grass around him.

“You, don’t handle anything flammable. Or, anything at all. And especially don’t touch my dogs,” John Michaels warned Burney as he walked toward a fenced-in dog pen and let loose his bird dogs.

There were three dogs, each a different mixture of colors with no discernible pattern. Slender and excited to the point of hysteria, the dogs took off immediately upon release toward the field they knew they were intended to investigate.

“Come on,” John Michaels said, and followed the dogs. “The dogs will sniff the birds out and scare them into flying. All you gotta do is point and shoot.”

“Just not at turtles,” Dawn pointed out.

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind her,” Steve said. “That way, then?”

They made their way across a well-worn path through an immense field. The field had at one point been planted with soybeans, and was littered with the remains of the previous season’s harvest. Just beyond it was a field composed entirely of cut grass that had been munched clean by cattle. Set between these two fields was a raised pond, its edges the dark color of Ozark clay and mud. A chipmunk sat at the edge of the pond, peering into the water and possibly frozen in terror for the approaching bird dogs.

The chipmunk had nothing to fear, though, as the dogs were well-trained. They ran to the fence row of trees that bordered one side of the field. Perpendicular to this line of brush, a second and thicker cluster of trees followed the path of a lightly rippling creek that flowed through smooth stones and gnarled roots. The scenery smelled of water, fallen leaves, muddied branches, and the fertility of a pasture free from humans.

“Bird!” Gore shouted, and put twelve gauges full of shotgun pellets into the skull of a quail that sat in the middle of the field.

“You don’t shoot them when they’re on the ground,” John Michaels said as his dogs zipped toward the ruined bird. The dogs sniffed a pile of feathers that may have once been a bird but would require a full reconstructive autopsy by expert crime scene investigators to verify.

“I don’t think you can make a very good sandwich out of that,” Steve noted.

“That’s why you wait till they get in the air. Plus it ain’t right.”

“Ground or air, you’re still shooting them,” Dawn said as they made their way toward a lone tree.

It was set in the middle of the field, not far from where Gore had first shot. Tall grass extended from the tree’s low branches, and the dogs approached with a caution that made John put his hand up, signaling the team to slow.

“Look in here. Spread out,” John instructed as he approached the tree. “Shoot the quail in the air. Then they have a chance to fly off. That’s the difference between hunting and slaughtering.”

The echo of Gore’s laughter as he slaughtered another quail on the ground was almost as loud as the echo of his gunshot. “I prefer slaughter,” Gore said.

“Gore, stop that. I’m trying—” Steve said before John shouted, “There they go!”

A dozen quail leapt into the air while half a dozen more ran on the ground. Steve aimed his shotgun at the closest flying bird, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. The gun erupted and sent a blast of pellets at super-sonic speed toward the back end of the quail. However, this did little more than jostle a few oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and Steve missed the birds entirely. No one heard whether the molecules minded the disturbance, but the quail didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Steve cursed and fired again. This time with his eyes open. Once again, all that occurred was a disturbance of non-reactive gaseous compounds. There were three shots in the semi-automatic shotgun’s chamber, and Steve fired the third at another bird. On this shot, Steve may have hit a feather or two. But this may also have been the quail crapping in mid-flight to mock Steve as it flew toward the other end of the field.

The birds Steve missed continued their escape toward the tree line. As Steve grimaced at the untouched birds, he heard three shots ring out in quick succession behind him.

Steve turned to see if Gore had missed, and found that he most definitely had not. There were three globs of blood and feathers on the ground, with Gore laughing as he reached into a pocket containing more shotgun shells.

“Gore! You’re supposed to hit them when they’re in the air,” Steve scolded.

“So are you. Hah!” Gore mocked, pointing at the dozen untouched birds that were nearly to the tree line.

“Shooting them on the ground is, well, wrong.”

“Why?”

“It’s more fun to shoot them in the air.”

“Really?”

Gore stepped around Steve, looking through his helmet’s eye slits to the cluster of flying quail roughly fifty yards away. With a running thrust and a “grar!” to add emphasis, Gore hurled his shotgun into the air. The firearm spun like a Frisbee as it sped toward the descending quail. Moments later, the gun struck with a distant squish. Crushed bird and ballistic gun fell to the grass just shy of the tree line.

“You’re right. It is more fun!” Gore shouted.

“Did you just throw my gun?” John asked.

“He used it as it was intended,” Dawn pointed out.

“It wasn’t intended to do that!”

“It was intended to kill a quail. Gore just did it more… creatively.”

“Let us track them down. I desire to throw things some more!” Gore said, and ran toward the tree line where the rest of the still-living quail had landed.