“I’m not really up to decision making,” she said to Bill when he broached the subject. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather continue as we’re doing. At least you’re managing to keep us alive.”
Bill couldn’t argue with that logic.
As he retrieved wood for that evening’s fire, a cold wind blew hard from the north,burning their exposed flesh like a frozen fire. Had it not been for the warm bison coats they were all wearing, Bill was certain he would have become a human popsicle in just a few minutes.
Meri’s pregnancy had advanced to the point that she no longer walked in a lithe manner; rather she tended to “waddle like a duck,” as she put it. Bill didn’t think so, but he wasn’t about to argue with a hormone-laden pregnant lady armed with a rifle in the middle of a wilderness. She no longer accompanied Bill on hunts, instead keeping the hobbit-hole clean and cooking dinner on the days he hunted. She also still spent a fair amount of her time gathering whatever edible plants she could find not covered with snow. Bill was constantly amazed at the variety of foods she would find them. If it weren’t for her, he thought, I’d probably be subsisting on bison and acorn, and getting scurvy in the process.
Several months were spent in the hobbit-hole. Oftentimes Bill would go hunting solo, while Meri and Karen spent most of their time inside. One one such trip, he got caught in a blizzard. Luckily, he was near the river, so he was able to construct a mini-wikiup and had access to fuel from driftwood. That hunting trip, like many others, was successful.
Hard not to kill something on this planet, what with all the wildlife here, Bill thought, as he dragged home more meat on a travois. He still hadn’t gotten over all the tick bites from earlier trips hauling fresh kills on his back.
As spring approached, the three of them were beginning to get a bit tired of each other. Even love can have a stretching point, Bill learned. It helped that he was able to get out and hunt often, or he was sure he’d turn bat-shit crazy.
Bill’s thoughts turned to Meri’s pregnancy. He didn’t know much about pregnancies, other than how they started and how they were supposed to end, but he had learned a lot over the past several months. The biggest and hardest lesson learned was “never joke with a pregnant lady who is suffering morning illness.” He wasn’t sure which hurt worse, the silent treatment for two whole days or the slap across the face.
Karen was finally pulling her weight, but she wasn’t the same Karen who started out leading their little expedition. Just being around her sometimes brought Bill down.
Yeah, she’s missing her kid, he thought. But, damnit, she’s alive, and it looks like pretty good odds that we’ll make it. So why doesn’t she pull out of it and act that way? Of course, Bill was pretty clueless when it came to the physiological components of depression, but that didn’t stop him from mentally screaming when he was alone.
The grass he walked over was starting to turn green, and the trees along the river were budding. Looking down at the river from his position high on a bluff, more than a mile from the hobbit-hole, he thought, Another month or so and we can start heading back upriver. Don’t want to take a chance being on it if it’s flooding. The ice breakup was a sight in itself. Glad we weren’t on the river when that happened.
As his gaze scanned the lowlands, he picked up signs of movement at the point where the flat lands of the river’s edge met the bluff he was standing on. He pulled a small monocular from his shirt pocket and sighted in on the movement. It was a short-faced bear.
Crap, Bill thought. That ain’t good. Hope he’s not heading downriver.
Bill watched the bear for over an hour, confirming with relief that it was heading upriver. Away from his wife and future child. He breathed a little easier seeing that.
After the bear had moved on, Bill continued his hunt, his head on a swivel, watching for any threats. The action had become so automatic that he didn’t even recognize he was doing it. He was soon rewarded with the sight of a small herd of flat-head peccaries, a distant relative of the common pig. They were larger than the peccaries on Earth and had longer tusks, something Bill had to worry about.
Last thing I need is to be gored by one of those. Hell, it’s bad enough being thousands of klicks from civilized help. Just think how much worse it would be to be stranded, injured, alone, and nobody knowing where you were. Hello? Death, anyone?
Dropping to a crouch, Bill began to stalk the animals. Fortunately, the wind was in his face, so they wouldn’t be able to smell him. Peccaries were notorious for having bad eyesight, so if he moved slow enough, they probably wouldn’t even notice him. Every few steps he would stop and turn around, making sure he hadn’t become prey for any other predators.
He had soon worked up to a distance of only 200 meters from the herd, most of whom were rooting around in the ground. Once again, he glanced around to ensure his safety. Satisfied, he extended the bipod of his rifle and got into the prone position. As he lined up his sights on the closest peccary, he once again wished for a rifle scope. While he was a good shot with the iron sights, he missed his rifle scope, which let him shoot groupings of less than a centimeter at a hundred meters. With the iron sights, he was happy to get a grouping the size of his palm at that distance.
Bill didn’t bother aiming for a head shot. Without the scope, he wasn’t confident he could make it. Rather, he aimed for just behind the shoulder, a spot that anywhere nearby would hit something vital.
The wind outside the hobbit-hole was howling, but thanks to the small fire in the stone fireplace and the bison blankets on the floor, it was warm inside the small dwelling. This was a good thing. Meri lay on the blankets, gripping Bill’s hand. Bill was amazed at the strength of the grip, which clamped down even more as Meri had another contraction.
Meri was in a basic birthing position, flat on her back, legs spread, knees up, and feet on the ground. Karen, sitting back on her heels at Meri’s feet, had one hand under the bison blanket that served as Meri’s skirt, which was hiked up on the knees.
“Just about there,” Karen said. “I can feel the head crowning. Another couple of pushes and we’ll have this little sucker outta there.”
Meri screamed again. As she did, she clamped down on Bill’s hand again, squeezing so hard his fingertips went white. Jesus, Bill thought, how long is this gonna last? He had been good standing by and doing all the other man stuff, but this whole birthing thing was freaking him out a bit. First off, he hated seeing Meri in pain, regardless of whether or not she was giving birth to their first child.
“One more push,” Karen said.
Meri stopped screaming. The crush on Bill’s hand let up. Meri lay there, sweat soaking her hair and brow, beads of moisture on her upper lip. She put her head back and panted. Bill didn’t know what to do or say, so he just shut up.
It was only a couple of seconds before another contraction began. Meri’s head came up, her hand clamped down on Bill’s in her vise-like grip, and she screamed again.
“Push!” Karen practically yelled.
Meri went silent, holding her breath. Her face became beet red, and she exhaled with a quiet scream.
“It’s coming,” Karen said.
Then Meri flopped back, loosing her grip on Bill again.
“I’ve got it,” Karen said, pulling a small, wet bundle from under Meri’s blanket. As she did, Bill could see the form of a human, umbilical cord still attached.
The feeling that came over Bill was one he had never experienced before. He wasn’t sure he would even be able to describe it, but it was a combination of amazement, love, fierce protectiveness — a multitude of feelings that no one would recognize until their time came as a father.
As Karen cut and tied off the umbilical, Bill stared in amazement.
That’s my son. I’m a dad. That’s our son. I’m a dad, was pretty much all he thought.
Bill was awakened from his reverie when Meri asked, in a whispered voice, “How’s our baby?”
It was hard for him to answer wit
h the lump in his throat; fortunately, he didn’t have to. Karen, who had wrapped their son in a small bison blanket, placed the small bundle on Meri’s chest and said, “Healthy, and probably hungry.”
Bill stared in awe at the little bundle on his wife’s chest, and didn’t even notice that Karen was cleaning up the remains of the birth, removing the placenta and replacing soaked bison rugs with a dry one. All he could do was stare at the future that lay on his wife.
Finally, he found his voice. “Hey, you’re a mom.”
Meri looked up at him, sweat-dampened hair plastered to her forehead, smiled, and said softly, “Hey. You’re a dad.”
The first night as new parents went relatively smoothly, considering that Bill had absolutely zero experience with babies, and no formal education in childbirth and dealing with newborns. Luckily, Meri had some babysitting experience with infants, and Karen had relatively recent memories of newborn childcare, since her son had been only two when they began the primary survey.
Without modern medicine and ultrasounds to tell them the sex of their child, they hadn’t spent too much effort figuring out a name. Now, they agreed to name the boy after both their dads. After arguing their points on which name should be first, Karen settled it for them by having them do rock-paper-scissors. Meri won, so their son was given the moniker of Jonathan David Clark. Jonathan, better known as Jack Lewis, was Meri’s father, the head of the Corps of Discovery. David Clark was Bill’s dad, whom he always thought of a “The Colonel” (quote marks, capitalization, and all), a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force at the time Bill joined the Corps.
“Can we call him Jack?” Meri asked.
“Sure. Why not? Of course, that might make it a bit confusing when we get back to Hayek.”
“Naw,” Meri said. “Different last names. Besides, little Jack is a lot cuter than my dad.”
Bill couldn’t argue with that.
A week of being a father had started to wear on Bill, mainly on the lack-of-sleep department. You’d think all the experience I’ve had not sleeping would pay off, he thought, yawning. Then again, I should feel lucky. Not like I have to be the one to wake up every other hour and feed the little guy. Bill had plenty of sympathy for Meri but was secretly glad he didn’t have to get sucked into that situation. Heck, by the time we get back to Hayek, I bet he’ll be sleeping through the night.
Karen had taken over cooking while Meri took care of Jack and Bill continued his duties as hunter. Right now, though, it was a bit too dark for hunting, and a part of the antelope he had shot the day before was being cooked in a stew with some wild onions and cat-tail root flour.
Bill had just returned from gathering wood for the fire and sat down next to Meri and Jack on the bison rug that served as both floor and bed. Leaving his bison coat on, he leaned his rifle against the wall and gave Meri a quick kiss.
“How’s he doing?”
Meri looked down at Jack, who was, once again, latched onto a boob, chowing down. “He’s doing great, but you better bring me a lot of protein. This kid eats a lot, sorta like his dad.”
“Who, me?” Bill asked.
Their repartee was suddenly halted when they heard a snuffling noise outside the closed door.
“What the hell?” Bill muttered, reaching for his rifle. Meri pulled a squalling Jack off her breast and wrapped him in a small bison blanket they had made for him.
The door was smashed in with a loud crash. Bill aimed and fired. The noise was deafening inside the contained environment; Jack screamed as the concussion from the shot assaulted his little ears. Meri placed her hands over his ears as Bill fired again.
Karen had grabbed her rifle and fired, too.
The creature roared: the largest bear Bill had ever seen. Its mouth was agape and its large teeth exposed. In the back of his mind, he recognized it as a short-faced bear. He fired again, and again, forcefully ejecting and loading each round after pulling the trigger. Each time he fired, the bear roared, but it continued its advance into the cabin.
As Bill chambered another round, he looked down to ensure the round was feeding — but there was no other round. His rifle was empty. There was nothing he could do to stop the bear from hurting his family.
Desperate, Bill threw himself onto his wife and child, covering them with his body. As he did, the bear reached out with its paw and swiped at him. Bill could feel the claws tear through his bison coat, shirt, and into his back.
He felt Meri moving under him, then heard and felt a PDW fire. Meri kept firing until she, too, ran out of ammunition. The room was filled with cordite, the sound of crying baby, and the screaming of Karen. Bill didn’t hear the bear anymore.
Tentatively, he stood up and turned around. The bear lay on the hobbit-hole’s floor, only inches away, the top of its head blown away. He looked back at Meri, who was holding a PDW in her right hand while protectively holding Jack in her left arm.
“I think you killed it,” he said.
Meri dropped the PDW, grabbed ahold of Jack with both hands, and began crying, while simultaneously trying to comfort the crying baby.
Karen was still holding her rifle, smoke rising from the barrel. All of them were stunned, Bill and Karen frozen into inaction.
“We need to get this outta here,” Bill finally said. Only then did he realize his back hurt. I wonder how bad it is? he thought.
Despite the cold air blowing in from the broken entryway, Bill stripped off his coat and shirt.
“Here. Take a look at this,” he said, turning his wounded back to Karen.
Karen set her rifle down. “You’ve got some pretty deep scratches here. Let’s clean ‘em up and bandage them. I think you’ll be okay, but you’re gonna have to take it easy for a week or so. Give those wounds time to heal.”
Karen cleaned and dressed Bill’s wounds, then suggested to Meri that the two of them dispose of the bear’s carcass and let Bill rest with Jack.
It took the women more than an hour to finally get the giant bear out of the hobbit-hole. The most difficult part was trying to keep the blood out of their quarters as they cut the dead animal up. There was no way that the two women, with or without Bill’s help, were going to be able to move an animal that weighed over a thousand kilos without cutting it up into parts. To their credit, when all was said and done, there was very little blood spilled on the floor that night, other than that from the multiple gunshot wounds that the bear had suffered before Meri literally blew its brains out.
45
Bill was first up in the morning. He stepped out of the hobbit-hole to gather more dead wood to add to the fire. Man, what I wouldn’t do for a cup of coffee, he thought, not for the first time since crossing the Atlantic. It had been more than a week since the bear attack, and his back was finally on the mend. As the fire grew in the hearth, there was movement around him, and soon the crying of a baby, announcing to the world that he was not only awake but hungry.
The others soon joined him, Meri with a small bundle latched onto her breast.
“Maybe we oughta change his name to Limpet,” Bill said. Meri answered him by sticking out her tongue.
Bill prepared breakfast, this time bear stew. Big surprise, he thought as he dropped the meat cubes into the pot suspended over the fire.
It had become warm during the night, and Meri suggested they eat outside. Bill agreed but suggested they get a fire going outside as well. “After all, it may be warmer, but it’s still a bit chilly.”
Once the stew was ready, Bill served everyone and they stepped outside to take breakfast on the veranda. At least, that’s what Bill called the collection of logs in front of the hobbit-hole that they sat on sometimes. They enjoyed the warmth of Meri’s fire, the sunshine, and the meal.
Bill heard it first. A buzzing that soon turned into a drone. I know that sound, he thought. Looking wildly around, he spotted a dot in the air, halfway between the northern horizon and the apogee of the sky. It took a few seconds for what he was seeing to register on
his brain.
“A plane! A fucking plane,” he practically shouted, pointing upward. Meri and Karen turned and looked where he was pointing. Little Jack was completely oblivious, sound asleep in the baby carrier strapped across Meri’s chest.
It soon became apparent that the plane was on an approach that would take it over the small group.
“Quick, we gotta get something out to attract them,” Bill said, looking around for anything that would serve as a beacon.
“Clothing. Spread out clothes in the universal sign of distress. I’ll get another fire going while you two set out it out.”
“Make three,” Meri said, unstrapping Jack from her chest and laying him down on the grass. “That’s the international signal for distress — three of anything.” Shucking out of her pack, she asked Bill, “Do you think they’ll see a flare?”
“Don’t know. Don’t worry about it now. Get the clothes laid out and I’ll start the fires. I’ll dig out a flare if they get interested,” he replied, grabbing several small pieces of wood.
Meri and Karen soon had clothing spread out on the slope, laid out on the grass in the shape of the letters SOS.
Bill got a small fire going, using some of the burning wood from the original fire. Once that was blazing, he and the women gathered enough material for the third fire, set to resemble the three points of a triangle.
The fires burning well enough and the plane almost upon them. “Keep throwing green wood on them, he told Meri and Karen.
He ran into the hobbit-hole and dug one of their few flares out of his battered pack, then returned outside. Bill now recognized the plane as one of the DeHavilland DHC-4 Caribou’s that the Corps used for aerial surveys in the secondary survey stage. It was just like the plane Meri had served on during her first survey on Zion, over a year ago.
The smoke turned a heavy white. It was obviously clearly visible to the plane’s occupants, as the craft began to alter course slightly to pass directly over them.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 48
