This is when things get a bit fuzzy. Either that worker shot the dog, or the dog ate that worker and the rest of the workers killed the dog, or the dogs started messing with the hydrogen towers enough that they became pests and the workers started leaving traps and killing them. I mentioned that the dog may have eaten the worker. That may seem gruesome, but the plain truth is that they will eat humans. But whatever the case, and for whatever reason, the humans started killing the dogs, and the dogs became aggressive and lethal towards the terraformers.

Initially the theories were tame and based on scientific reasoning. But as the years passed, and the fourth and fifth waves came with less studied and academic thinkers, and more laborers and menial workers, combined with the ever present yet rare threat of attack from the dogs, the theories started to become myth and folklore. Some believed they were indeed martian, others believed they were genetically linked to the original terraformers who were lost, others believed they were planted by the NASA for some sinister alterior motive, and even some believed they were intelligent space travellers. Of course, most of these myths and conjectures were ridiculed. And most held claim to the belief of the original second wave of terraformers. That some tragic disaster befell the original terraformers and somehow their pets were able to survive and mutated under the Martian sun.

So, every terraformers farm had a warning siren to alert nearby farms and family of immediate danger. This could be anything from a sudden Martian windstorm to a dog attack.

What I remember is the high wail of the siren grinding out of our house like the wind was trying to tear itself in half. I was in the outlays seeding. I was immediately filled with excitement, anxiousness, and fear. This usually resulted in a trip into the house to watch the cascading corrugated windstorms of Mars. I hurried back home, and about halfway there the wailing slowly bled away into nothing. There was no noise. I was confused and continued home. I drew near to the house, things came into clear focus. I saw a movement on the front porch, and heard a banging behind the shed, as if someone in a rage was searching for a lost tool. I continued closer. They say that the natives of South America may not have even seen the conquistadors when they first arrived because their brains were unable to comprehend something so foreign as the Europeans. This can explain why I only felt the sharp pain in my shoulder and felt the cold dirt rise into my side. Why I never saw the dogs tearing past me in a frenzy, tossing me aside like a dead animal. What I could see, sideways, like a video-recorder recording after the cameraman dropped it, was my mother strewn across the front porch, bloodied and ragged, eyes staring up toward the sky. I tried to move to see the shed, but my body held to the earth like a root, sending sharp waves of pain prickling through my being when i made any slight movement. I saw my mother's head loll downwards, I saw her look me in the eyes. I felt so hot and wet and in pain that I thought I must have been drowning. She mouthed my name. I tried to reach out my arm, I felt it move toward her, but I never saw it reach out. I only felt pain. I closed my eyes and felt the sky fall on me.