Razor Camels and Short Hoppers

The blackfellows from Downchurch called them razor camels. No one knew when the camels arrived, but the group had first been spotted in the lowlands nearly three years ago. Although no official tally had been kept, it was believed there were about 23 of them, mostly males. Razor camels seemed like an odd name for the indigenous people to call them; they carried no sharp instruments and didn’t know how to use a Motorola cell phone. Thought of mostly as desert animals, these camels preferred the seclusion offered by the forest. Seen so rarely, some said they were only specters, dromedary ghosts, better not seen or heard, but when the dry, Australian night wind blew, you could hear them, and what you heard was frightening. Apart from the occasional night-wind camel grunts, the group never bothered anyone; they kept to themselves and asked for nothing.
The troubles began a few months ago, shortly after the Great Roo War of the far outback. When the dust had settled on the bloody uprising, surviving, malcontent insurgents were driven from the west by King Longtail’s army and started arriving in the area. They came in pairs or groups of up to 15, most of them bearing scars and nasty attitudes. They became known locally as the Short Hoppers, and they were looking for a place to heal and plot revenge.
At first, the Short Hoppers settled at the edge of the forest, but it was clear they had aspirations on the forest itself; it was a perfect place to build a terrorist encampment. The fact the forest had been claimed as a homeland by the razor camels made no impression on the battle-hardened roos; they believed their cause justified any action they took to further it was Loki’s will.
The razor camels were not unaware of the roos’ presence and intentions, but abstained from direct confrontation. For the time being, they preferred to remain aloof, hidden, and calm. The people of Downchurch and its environs were growing apprehensive; by the end of the month, the roos’ numbers had swelled to more than 350 and the tension in that remote part of Australia was palpable. Small gangs of 15 to 20 Hoppers would occasionally be spotted in town, lounging on street corners, smoking weed or whispering secretively to one another. Dogs would whine whenever the Hoppers appeared.
It was the first of November that the tension escalated, and the fist casualty occurred. Henry Pontic, the old shepherd from the Boswell ranch, found a razor camel near the tree line of the forest on his way into town. The camel was dead, the victim, it seemed, of a savage tail thumping. Henry, a spiritual man, buried the camel under the watchful eyes of a dozen more camels standing in the shade at the edge of the forest. When the camel was interred, each of the other ones came out one by one and stamped a hoof on the grave. The last to emerge thanked Henry for his kindness and said, “Please, send word to the Hoppers, and tell them if they hop into the forest, they will be hopping into Thermopylae.”