A/N: This work is for those of us who wished the Terminus storyline had gotten 1000x more exploration. Chapters one and two are mostly a basic back story of how their turn to cannibalism began. The more in-depth stuff begins in chapter three. They're written somewhat like episodes. The POV alternates between some of the other Terminants, but mostly told from Gareth's POV.

This story began on a whim and was experimental at the time. I hadn't yet found my footing when it came to writing. Therefore, some of the pacing and omniscient to limited third person POV may be a bit odd to read. Also, chapters 1-9 have been majorly edited and the writing improved. I'm in the slow process of polishing this entire work. And at some point in the future, I will most likely add/insert a few chapters to further flesh things out as well.

Read on and review if you wish!

Last updated this summary on December 10, 2015

The vast majority of people don't know what hunger feels like. When they say "I'm starving," they mean they skipped breakfast and have an appetite for steak and potatoes for dinner. They say "I'm famished," when they crave an ice cream sundae and get a stomach ache when they eat their fill of it. They think hunger is a feeling you get in your stomach, your throat and your mouth. They think hunger is just craving a taste and texture on your tongue, but they don't know what hunger truly is.

Hunger is when the pangs you feel gnawing away in your gut, the ravenous want you experience when you smell something cooking, the way you can almost feel and taste food on your tongue, consumes your whole body. Your entire body screams for nourishment. It hurts.

"Do it. Alex, we talked about this. Don't hesitate, you know they wouldn't," Gareth ordered. Alex gave a sheepish nod a

nd struck the blade into the man's knee. "No! Not there," Gareth said, irritated, "it's harder to get it through. Let me show you."

"Sorry if my knowledge of how to dismember a human leg ain't in tip-top shape." Alex intended his sentence to be an insult, a snap at the guy lecturing him on how to be a butcher, but his voice shook with every word.

The hell is he doing this? How's he being so cool about this? Alex thought.

Alex was still in shock over the events that occurred over the past few weeks and in the past several hours. He felt as if he might fall to the floor at any second and be unable to move. Yet somehow he kept his body in motion. Somehow he kept breathing and thinking, he managed to continue to understand the words that were being spoken to him. And he continued doing what his brother told him to do, what they'd discussed in the traincar. As long as it kept his heart beating, he'd do it.

Gareth ignored his brother's remark and stepped over to the man's body, taking the knife from Alex's hand.

"Gareth, show me," Theresa spoke up from the side of the room.

Theresa had spent the previous weeks being raped repeatedly by the men who'd taken them hostage. The one who lay dead before them, his head torn in half down the middle from the same knife Alex was using to cut his leg off, had been one of her main offenders.

"I have to show Alex."

"Show him on the next one. He's mine," Theresa said, her voice stern. It was the first time her voice hadn't cracked during a sentence in weeks.

Gareth recalled her screams during her assault. Her broken, watery eyes and filth-covered face. The way she buried her head in her arms and curled up into a ball each time she was thrown back into the train car.

Most of the occupiers, the rapists and killers who'd mangled their home, their lives, their bodies and their minds, were finally dead. Gareth was right, they could take it back. And they did. Knives plucked out of holsters, guns stolen, messily sprayed bullets taking out three of them at once. It was precarious at first, they lost two more of their people during the attack, but they won.

"Gareth, let her," Alex said. Gareth met Alex's eyes, then looked down at the mangled body before him.

Gareth figured Alex was probably right, that letting her be the one to execute this task would be good for her. Therapeutic.

"Okay," Gareth agreed. Theresa moved over to them and accepted the knife Gareth extended handle-first to her.

What followed were the harsh sounds of flesh being cut, cartilage being ripped, and bones crackling under a gnawed on by a knife that wasn't made for cutting meat or bone. Blood poured from the incision and formed a thick, glossy pool underneath the man's leg. Theresa's precision and focus surprised Gareth, making him regret having thought her of her as porcelain doll who could break at any moment.

Theresa stood up, holding the knife at her side, the blade coated in blood that dripped off the tip creating dark red spots on the concrete floor below her.

She turned and faced Gareth and Alex with a confident expression. "There. Now what?"

"We strip the skin," Gareth answered.

Alex could feel his empty stomach churn at the sight of what he'd just witnessed, despite the fact that he'd killed one of the occupying men just an hour earlier, the first living person he'd ever killed. He didn't hold back in that moment either, no one did. They'd taken them out like they were bottles at a carnival toss game. Yet this was different. This was slow, it was planned, and he knew the insides of the bloodied leg he saw on the concrete were going to be inside of his stomach.

"Alex, don't be the cattle. We talked about this," Gareth reminded his brother of the words they had exchanged, causing Alex to realize he had seen the shock on his face.

"I'm sorry," Alex said. He meant it. He knew this is what they had to do to survive, there was nothing out there for them to eat.

"We can't go out there, as weak and hurt as we are. We're starving. We are literally starving. We have to do this, I'm sorry, but it has to be this way," Gareth had said to Alex, Mary, Theresa and the others in the train car.

Gareth faced Alex, and took his trembling hands in his own and looked him dead in the eyes. "Hey, look at me. This will be easier when we cook it. When you smell cooked meat it'll have all been worth it."

Alex nodded, he knew it was the truth. In spite of his nausea, he was hungry, agonizingly hungry. And as Gareth had said, they were weak, this action is all they could muster on their thin and empty bodies. They'd already been going hungry before the men came. The runs they made came back empty and the animals they caught hadn't been near enough to feed all of them.

"You saw how Theresa did it. She was focused, you can do that too. You know you can." Gareth gave the slightest hint of a warm smile at the end of his sentence. The kind of smile that frequently accompanied a pep-talk that he had given Alex throughout his life.

"Alex, she likes you. Go talk to her," Gareth had said to him when they were in highschool and Alex had a large crush on the red-head on the debate team.

"Alex, you'll be okay. It's just a broken leg," Gareth had said to him after a car accident in his early twenties.

In that moment, Alex felt a rush of comfort. He had worried his brother was gone, he had barely recognized the person before him, giving directions on how to butcher a dead man. Although the smile he saw, and the way Gareth held his hands, he saw some of his brother, the real Gareth, come back.

"Why are we stripping the skin?" Theresa broke into their exchange.

Gareth released his grip on Alex's hands and turned to Theresa. "Human skin is thick and tough. It's not like chicken where you can leave the skins on," he replied.

The mention of chicken meat, just the idea, sent shock waves throughout the three of them. The universal hunger for any nutrition is hard enough, but the specific cravings are the worst. They're the ones that invade your head and stick in your throat. They're the ones that are so loud and so urgent you can't ignore them, you can't even sleep. They're the ones that scream and throw themselves around like a madman in a padded cell.

Meat. They needed meat.