“Indeed, the flames have been lit, and shall provide the backdrop to a much more dramatic pose,” Gore said, and walked toward a cluster of trees. He cut one down with a swipe of his sword while the wall of flame rapidly approached, scores of burning animals racing for safety.

“Look what you did! Look what you did!” John shrieked. He backed away from the fire, and whatever Gore was doing with the trees, and whistled for his dogs. “Come on fellas, let’s get out of here!” As John ran from the fire, he called out to his son back at the house, hunting dogs yipping around him. “Boy! Call the county fire department! Call the insurance company! Then call the high school and get some hot dogs! We’ll have ourselves a weenie roast and charge five bucks a head!”

John Michaels was, if anything, a good capitalist.

Two things came across Steve’s mind as he saw John racing back to his house. The first, was that a country man with a shotgun worrying about making money selling hotdogs in the middle of a forest fire was just about the most American thing he’d ever seen. The second, was that one of the birds Gore had set on fire was still flying.

“Steve! The fire’s coming this way!” Dawn shouted as Burney ran screaming toward her, “And the burning grass is heading toward us too. I need to get out of here before heaven and hell decide that arson-caused forest fires aren’t natural disasters!”

Burney screamed.

“No, Burney, tossing bunnies into the forest fire would not improve the situation,” Dawn noted.

Steve looked up at the wounded bird and reloaded a shell into his gun. “Give me a second, Dawn,” he said, following the flight path of the dying quail. Burney, still screaming, was nearing the spot beneath where the quail was flying.

“So far this isn’t upsetting the balance of good and evil and I don’t have nearly enough water gun-carrying bunnies to call into existence. I mean, I used to be able to summon water balloons into existence, but there was that one time with the pope and—”

“Dawn. Shush.”

Steve found the bird, and set the gun’s sights at its tail feathers.

As Steve aimed, the flames reached Gore, and the hell knight stood upon the tree he’d just cut down. All while Burney ran under the panicking quail.

Steve ignored his companions and moved the gun’s sights to just ahead of the bird, leading it, and set his finger against the trigger.

Just fifty yards away, Gore posed beneath the burning quail, his sword held out in a Napoleonic stance, and cried, “I am Gore, destroyer of four domesticated fowl with one Burney!”

At the same instant that Gore shouted his triumphant declaration for no one’s veneration, Steve fired his gun. The shot hit the burning quail and put it out of its misery. It fell like a rock and hit Burney on the head, knocking the burning man over and searing all the juices and flavors inside the bird so that its taste could be at optimal serving conditions.

Steve smiled and set his gun on the ground. “Dawn, get the bread,” he said, and ran over to fetch his prize.

Gore saw Steve approach and posed once more, shouting, “I am Gore! Destroyer of four—”

“Yeah, yeah, new colloquialism, whatever. Look! I got one!” Steve said, and presented the bird he’d shot.

“One,” Gore said, and hopped off his posing tree. The fires of the burning field crackled around the four sandwich-seeking companions as high schoolers armed with hot dogs began to arrive at John Michael’s house. They were quickly approaching the field. And they were hungry.

“There’s not much time. Gore, can you cut this bird open?”

In one sweep of his sword, Gore cleaned the feathers off the dead quail and tore out its organs, while tying its intestines into a little bow that he hung from his horns with a deep chuckle.

“Thank you for not trying to cut off my hands that time.”

“No problem.”

“Burney, would you mind holding this a second?” Steve asked.

Burney screamed as Steve handed him the bird meat.

“No, just hold it a second,” Steve replied. “Dawn, you got the bread?”

“Right here,” Dawn said as Burney screamed again.

“Burney, I don’t want to cook it too long,” Steve said as Dawn handed him two slices of bread.

Burney, sniffing a fiery sniff, screamed as he looked down at the cooking bird.

“No, Burney, you can’t have a bite till I get one,” Steve said.

Burney screamed.

“Because I shot it,” Steve said, extending the slices of bread. “Okay, now drop it here.”

Burney, screaming in disappointment, dropped the finished sandwich meat-ified quail onto the bread. Amidst the swirling sparks and roaring wind and approaching hot dog-wielding teenagers, Steve examined his hard-earned sandwich. With a smile of satisfaction, Steve took a bite.

“Gah!” Steve shouted, the sandwich crunching against his teeth and his now furiously bleeding gums. “Why didn’t anyone tell me quail meat had so many tiny bones in it!”

“How’s the meat though?” Dawn asked.

“Like pretty good chicken with razor blades inside.”

Steve offered Dawn the sandwich as he tried to pick quail bones out of his teeth. With a judging examination that would have made a show dog flinch with disappointment that it had just lost the Best of Show title, Dawn took the sandwich and turned it end over end. The nibble she took barely had a chance to touch her tongue before she spat it out.

“You’re right. This is terrible,” Dawn said.

Burney screamed in response.

“Fine, take it,” Dawn said, and tossed the sandwich toward Burney.

Gore, however, decided that he was owed at least one bite.

Even though he hadn’t shot this particular bird, Gore had eliminated nearly a dozen others. So, keeping with the reformation of colloquialisms that he’d started upon, Gore figured that if “a bird in the hand” was indeed “worth two in the bush,” a “bird in the sandwich” should be “worth a dozen birds shot with a twelve-gauge shotgun and various other implements.”

With this unspoken and not likely to catch on colloquialism in place, Gore stole the sandwich and shoved it into his mouth.

“Gore!” Dawn scolded.

Burney screamed in disappointment.

Gore was about to say some snide comment in response, something like his newly minted colloquialism, but the single bite he took of the quail sandwich made such a loud crunch that it muted even the fires surrounding him. It was probably not a good idea to eat a whole small bird in one bite, and thus Gore spat the sandwich onto Burney.

Perhaps one or two pieces of half-chewed bird made it into Burney’s mouth before incinerating against his skin. The scream of disappointment Burney made implied that it wasn’t a sizable quantity.

“Hey guys, I think John has more guns back at that house. And ones that have a longer range that bird guns, so…” Dawn said, looking around nervously.

“Okay, escape pattern forty-two!” Steve said.

Burney shouted a question to that remark.

“Yes, Burney, that’s the escape pattern where you and Gore play meat shields while we run for the car,” Steve replied.

As Burney screamed with disappointment over once more being called into service as a meat shield, a squirrel was escaping the fire raging in the field and trees to find shelter beside a small pond. It was the same pond where a chipmunk had been fearfully hiding while all the shooting had been going on.

The squirrel and the chipmunk escaped the flames and teenagers and quickly proposed a conference of nations, declaring peace between the respective principalities of squirrel and chipmunk-kind. They united with a mutual hatred of the four creatures who had destroyed their lands and ravaged their livelihoods. With the turtle menace now defeated, a much more dangerous foe had surfaced, and squirrel and chipmunk quickly began discussions over what military solution could be proposed. Negotiations quickly broke down, however, when a hawk snatched up the head of the squirrel nation and ate him for supper. The chipmunk, in response, made a flag of truce with Steve and the demons and made a quick show of peace. This was, of course, misinterpreted as the chipmunk scampering away and eating an acorn.

And so, Steve, Dawn, Gore, and Burney left the home and land of John Michaels, lacking both a decent sandwich and an understanding of the geopolitical conflicts inherent to the small woodland creatures world.

“Why am I still hungry?” Steve asked as he drove along a gravel road. The import was having difficulty maintaining a steady speed through the waving hills and narrow turns that made up the rural highway.

“Because you haven’t had a decent sandwich today,” Dawn noted, bracing a hand against the window. Steve navigated a tight turn that nearly slid the car off the road. Trees surrounded the vehicle on either side and loomed overhead.

From his position chained to the roof of the car, Burney felt like he could almost reach out and touch those trees that shielded the travelers from a full view of the sky and surrounding countryside. A thick haze of churned-up dust and gravel followed the car in its wake. With Burney’s flames mixing with the dust, the car almost looked like it was trailing a cloud of fire, a jet-stream at the back of the rocketing import that had no business being on such a road.

“I don’t suppose there’s a Square Root of Sandwich restaurant around here,” Steve said, seeing nothing but thick leaves and overgrown branches on either side of the car.

It had been a miracle that they were even able to make it to the car. John Michaels and his dogs had chased Steve and his friends once they saw them trying to flee the property. Thankfully, escape plan forty-two allowed all the bullets John fired to strike harmlessly against Burney. Even when John shot Gore, the bullets ricocheted into Burney. Sure, he complained about blood loss and massive pain while Gore strapped him to the car, but this wasn’t more than a normal amount of screaming and the wounds cauterized anyway, so no one paid attention to Burney’s whining.

They especially didn’t pay attention to Burney’s whining when he started noticing that the road was getting narrower, and that there was no sign of driveways or road signs.

With danger of gun-toting arson victims far beyond the burning dust cloud that was Steve’s tiny Japanese compact, the gang were able to focus on actually getting some decent food.