The Crest

He noticed one at first. The crow perched along the crenel, staring at the human. Wildlife was so rare along the Crest, and out in the void, there remained so little habitat for birds to survive. Of course, there were refugia—hidden pockets of biodiversity that the fire and heat never penetrated, but those were outliers, aberrations in the general pattern of devastation upon the land.

The bird’s beady eyes followed the defender, penetrating his cold exterior, probing the human’s soul for a fragment of compassion. He tossed a piece of his sandwich to the hungry bird and watched it eat. The bird hopped closer. Staring.

He tossed another piece of bread and the ravenous bird crept even closer.

“How are you, my friend?” the protector asked.

The crow stared at the defender, as if it understood, wanted to speak, but could not, dared not. The warm-blooded avian knew something, understood that humans ate its kind out in the wilds. The crow likely wondered how mankind could stoop so low as to eat its avian brethren. If the bird could verbalize, it might say you brutes, you depraved humans. The humans out there in the eclipsed wilderness pursued them with nets and snares, traps, and gins. Homo sapiens ‘out there’ had slinked back to the swamp, to an earlier evolutionary state, but here on the Crest, he was a friend.

After a while, Margot came over and started feeding the bird as well.

“Seems tame,” she said.

Just then a few more crows flew in and perched on the crenels of the curtain wall. The two guards stood mesmerized, wondering about the feathered creatures’ dispositions, lost, pursued, exhausted, hungry, of the above? The crows were a welcome distraction to the monotony of the wall. But then, a massive flight of crows appeared out of nowhere, circling the battlement, chattering loudly. It took three minutes before the collection of birds passed and descended to the interior, into a place with a veritable forest, into the green of the enclave.

“Holy shit,” Keegan said. “What do you think is going on?”

“Don’t know, but that’s the biggest flock of birds I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“They’re called a ‘murder’,” he told her.

“A what?” she asked.

“A ‘murder,’” he said. “A flock of crows is called a ‘murder.’”

“You’re kidding me. An auspicious omen if you ask me,” Margot said dryly.

They followed the murder of crows as far as they could see them in the haze until they dropped out of sight. Somewhere inside, the birds happily perched on the green conifers of the enclave.

“Weird, I wonder what’s gotten into them? Something attracts them, you think?” Keegan said.

“Don’t know? Could be they ran out of food,” she said.

“Maybe, but why now? he said.

They moved to their sides of the wall, pacing, and scanning the horizon out in the great beyond. After a while, they heard more bird vocalizations from out there.

More crows? Keegan thought. But the sound was distinct. A more harmonious pitch and louder than the crows. The sound seemed ethereal, if not haunting. Then, it came at once, as a massive pulsating life form. Keegan and Margot saw it at the same time.

“Look at that,” he yelled.

“Yea, I see it and it’s headed toward us.”

The starling murmuration came closer to the pair of protectors standing along their concrete wall. It was an impressive display of bird flight, bird communication, bird art, in the sky. The starlings flew in finely tuned mathematical synchrony, traveling in vast numbers somewhere, to a haven inside the enclave. The birds swirled around the two puny humans at speeds of 90 mph, they appeared to spearhead directly at the two defenders on the wall only to veer off at the last second in stunning precision.

The tens of thousands of starlings formed one final geometric shape against the opalescent sky and then vanished into the enclave, down, down to the green and finally out of sight.

“That was fucking crazy!” Keegan screamed.

“It’s a murmuring,” Margot said, catching her breath.

The pair of sentinels stood in astonishment, they forgot about the patrol now, their adrenaline rushing. They were blown away by what came next. Another river of birds poured over them like a torrent, a confederation of grackles, red-winged blackbirds, robins, finches, and starlings stormed the pair, creating a tempest of sound, flutter, and glint.

At least a million birds swarmed the battlement in a dazzling display of aerial sleight of hand; the flock moved eerily on the Crest with dark mysterious patterns that shifted instantaneously.

Keegan and Margot crouched under the curtain wall, their hearts pounding. They watched the winged cloud with astonishment as it swirled above their heads. They contemplated the avian storm. A magic carpet, a beating whirlwind, a thing of beauty. They smiled. They felt noble, privileged to see such a thing.

Down in the enclave, the scientists scrambled to figure out the murmuring phenomenon.