by Lou Cadle
Garreth and Ted were talking in low tones over Bob’s seated form. They squatted down and got their hands linked under Bob and slowly lifted him. She could see what a strain it was. She felt a surge of pride at the boys for being so fast and brave and good. Rex came over and leant a hand. Between the three of them, they hauled Bob up onto the bank. Ted jumped up with his typical grace, and Garreth ran along the edge of the water with his spear in hand.
Hannah reached for it, but he said, “I got it,” and he waded in next to Claire, spear aloft, scanning the water.
“I’m taking my boots and pants off,” said Laina, and soon one boot then another was flung onto the shore. Her jeans followed.
“Want help?”
“No, I got it. Just keep your eye out for me too, would you? I have to get these ants off.”
“I will.” Hannah put herself between Laina and the deeper part of the lake. Let the damned thing come for her first.
But it didn’t. It was hurt by Garreth, apparently. Laina was out of the lake first, and looking hard at the ground for ants as she took every step.
“They’re gone?” Hannah said.
“I don’t see many at all. I think most of them here are dead and floated in from the lake.”
“Good.” Hanna sidled over to Claire. “Need help?”
“Yeah, my back,” she said. “They’re biting me right now.”
Hannah lifted the girl’s shirt and found the dozen remaining ants and pulled them off, pinching them in half and dropping them into the lake.
Ted called, “What should I do for Mr. O’Brien?”
“Elevate his foot. Above his heart. I’ll be there in a second.” She had the girls’ bites to check too, to see if there was anything she could do for them. “Is my pack up there?”
“It’s still on your back,” Garreth said.
“Oh.” She couldn’t help but laugh at herself, despite the situation, despite the new injuries that would take the last of her medical supplies. She had no idea what she’d do after they were all gone.
Deal with today today, and let tomorrow take care of itself.
But tomorrow would be dangerous too. And the next tomorrow, and the next, and the next.
Chapter 26
When Hannah saw Bob’s injury, she was sobered immediately. “That thing has sharp teeth.”
“Tell me about it,” Bob said, wincing.
“I need to sew.” The bites were deep. There were four serious ones, about two inches long each. She thought they might go all the way through to the bone.
“Do what you must,” he said.
The boys had all stripped off their shirts, and she used all three to soak up blood as she worked. Back in the Oligocene, she had gathered all the extra thread possible out of hems of jeans and shorts and shirts. They all looked a little ragged as a result, but it meant that the needle was threaded and ready to go right now.
Hannah hated working in such unsanitary conditions. She hoped Zach’s guess about the soap plant was right. With soap, at least she’d be able to wash hands and wounds. This? Stitching a wound that had just been in this swampy lake? This was irresponsible and dangerous...and the only choice she had.
Each wound took only three stitches, and then the boys had their shirts back. “Be careful when you rinse them in the lake. Ants, crocogators, whatever. Keep your eye out.” She said to Bob, “Your pants have seen better days.”
“He shredded them, didn’t he? Just slice them off with your knife, I suppose.”
“No, we’ll put a couple stitches in those too, and try to save them.” She looked at his face, looking for signs of shock and seeing none. “How are you doing?”
“All things considered,” he said, “I’m okay. If it had been a full-grown one, it would have taken off my leg. I thought it would anyway. Every time I tugged at my leg, it seemed to clamp down harder.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“I can’t protect everybody—I get that. But I can’t protect anyone, it seems.”
“Hannah,” he said, his voice sharp. “Look at me. It’s not your fault.”
“I know. And listen to me, all full of self-pity when it’s you and the girls I should be pitying. You’re all hurt more than me.”
“You should take a look at them too.”
Hannah glanced around. The two girls were at the water’s edge, checking each other’s backs. “I’ll look at your bites first. Where did the ants get you?”
“Hands and ankles, pretty much. Though the one ankle, I’m sure you can’t see those for the bigger bite.” He smiled, but it was forced.
She checked his ant bites. Each one was a dark red circle. In the middle, where the bite had been, there was a small raised white area, the bite itself. Allergic reaction? Probably. “Do yours hurt?”
“Not now. But they’re starting to itch, and I bet by tonight, that’ll be worse.”
She wished he hadn’t made the suggestion. She could feel hers starting to itch too. She called over, “Girls, don’t scratch those bites!”
“What I’d give for some antihistamine pills,” Bob said.
“Or even some calamine lotion.”
He said, “There might be a plant that would do the same thing.”
“There might be. And rubbing every possible plant on my skin might result in worse allergic reactions than this.”
“I know. And we’re not likely to run across a medicinal plant guide here, are we?”
“No. I’d even take one from the 21st century. Even if one out of ten plants matched, we’d be better off. I wish I’d carried one all the time.”
Bob said, “Woulda, coulda, shoulda. And with thirty pounds of fossil-collecting gear, your radio, first aid kit, and ten pounds of water, I doubt a book that weighed a pound would have ever been on your packing list.”
“No. Maybe on a day I was doing nothing but inventorying local plants, but not the day we went out into the canyon.”
The five kids were talking together, over on the beach, all of them wearing dripping shirts. In fact, only Rex’s pants were dry. She looked down at herself. She was in no better shape. Her pants had soaked up some of Bob’s blood. “Now that I know about the ants, I want to wash my pants and yours of your blood. No reason to risk attracting them.”
By the time she was finishing that job, the kids had wandered back up to the bank. She caught the tail end of their conversation. “It’s weird. There’s nothing left at all.”
Hannah looked up. “Of what?”
“The fish guts. The ants actually ate them down to the dirt. And then they just left. Except for the dead ones on the beach, you can’t even see that anything happened.”
“I can,” said Claire, scratching at her arm.
“Don’t scratch,” said Hannah. “You’ll make it itch more.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Please don’t. If you scratch, some of them will become infected. And I’ll have to use more antibiotic cream, and we don’t have much. I need to use it on Mr. O’Brien’s bite, right?”
Claire looked ashamed. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Brien.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said. “Okay, I’m ready to try standing, if you boys will help me up.”
Garreth and Ted gave Bob their arms, and he got to his feet. He tested the weight on his leg. “I think I’ll be okay, as long as we take it slowly.”
They gathered the remaining supplies and, Rex carrying the net, Claire her fishing pole, and Laina the remaining water bottles, they made their way through the jungle. About halfway, Bob asked for a rest and Hannah examined his wound, which was oozing blood. “I think you pulled a stitch out.”
Garreth said, “We’ll carry you, Mr. O’Brien.”
“I’m too heavy.”
“No, we can, right, Ted?” Garreth said.
Hannah and Laina pitched in too, and between the four of them, they got Bob elevated and carried him. Hannah managed to grab everything else. They
were making a poor pace, and Bob was awkwardly sagging between his porters, but at least he wasn’t tearing any more stitches. They had to put him down twice and shift their grips. By the time Hannah caught sight of the ring of trees, and the smoke curling from the cooking fire, she was ready to collapse, not from actual fatigue, but from the let-down after the surge of adrenaline she’d had at the lake.
“Fish is on,” called Jodi. “If you guys are hungry.”
Bob was made comfortable in the campsite and the children vied with each other to get him water and food, and to try to make him more comfortable. Hannah would check on his wounds later and take another stitch if need be, and treat him with the antibiotic cream. For now, she sat at the fire and ate hot fish.
Dixie and Nari came back from a trip to the latrine, and Garreth, seeing Dixie limping, scurried over and said, “Are you okay, Dixie? Is there anything I can do? Maybe you should sit down or something, like Mr. O’Brien.” He offered her his arm. “You can lean on me.”
“I can’t think of anyone I want to lean on less,” she said. “Quit crowding me.”
Hannah was reaching her last nerve with this girl. Fine, she didn’t return Garreth’s interest, but did she have to be so mean to him?
Garreth turned away, saying, “Okay,” and he walked away from the fire.
Chapter 27
Hannah couldn’t let him go out there alone. All the boys were inside the circle of trees, so she got up, wiped her hands on some soft ferns they had been using as napkins and toilet paper both, and she trotted in Garreth’s wake.
She caught up to him in two minutes, calling out softly, “I’m behind you. Just in case you’re out here to take a leak.”
He shook his head and stopped. His shoulders were slumped, his head hanging.
She came up behind and said, “Try not to let it bother you. She’s not worth the agony.”
“She isn’t always like that. She can be nice.”
Hannah hadn’t seen much evidence of that.
“She doesn’t like me, is all. And I can’t seem to help myself.” He was facing away from her still.
Poor kid. Hannah had a maternal urge to gather him into her arms and pat him on the back, but she pushed the urge aside. “You’re one of the best people in this group, Garreth, and I hate to see you tear yourself up over anything so....” Unimportant, she wanted to say. Minor. Stupid. But of course an unrequited crush wasn’t anything of the sort to a young person. “Impossible to fix,” she finished.
“Is she going to be okay? From where the bird stepped on her?”
“She’s just bruised. Nothing is broken. It’ll heal up. I’m more worried about Mr. O’Brien’s wound.” She did touch his arm then. “You did great with that. Really smart and fast thinking. Without you, it would have been far worse.”
“I can’t sit there like a coward when Ted’s so willing to jump in.”
“Ted’s a little too willing,” she said, with a little laugh. “But you did great, really. You saved him a worse injury. It might have bitten his foot right off, given enough time.”
He turned to look at her. “Really?” His eyes were damp.
Poor kid. “It’s not impossible. So you did a good thing there. And your urge to help Dixie is also good, but she doesn’t want it. Maybe back off until she asks.”
“But you’ll help her.”
“As far as I can. I’ll help all of you as much as my abilities allow me.” She felt another stab of guilt. “I wish there weren’t so many injuries piling up. I promise to do better at that, to try and protect you all from harm.”
“Don’t let anything happen to Dixie, okay?”
“I won’t let anything happen to any of you, not if I can prevent it,” she said.
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’ll be vigilant and cautious and I’ll try to be as brave as you when the time comes.”
“I’m not brave. Sometimes, I’d do just about anything to get home.”
“I know.”
He turned away again, and she could hear the catch in his breathing. “My mom must be so worried.”
“I’m sure she is, if she knows.”
“What do you mean, ‘if she knows’?”
“I mean, if we can jump around in time, what’s to say that we won’t jump back to a half-hour after we left?”
“It’s been five weeks or something, right?”
“Yes, but with the timegate, who knows? Your parents might not even know you were gone.”
“That’s weird.” He wiped at his eyes with his shirt sleeve.
“That’s an understatement,” she said. “Everything is weird now. Everything outside us, that is. But inside us, we’re still what we are. And what you are is a good guy. I see that.”
“Dixie wouldn’t agree.”
“One day she’ll grow up, and she’ll get it. Teenage girls can be pretty clueless about who the good guys are.”
He turned and gave her a sad smile. “You weren’t.”
“Oh, I was.” She laughed, remembering. “I think I just figured it out about five years ago, actually.”
“But you’re smart.”
“Not like you guys. Besides, hormones can make us stupid,” she said. “Sometimes it takes work to force our intellect to override them.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“I wasn’t.” Though maybe she was. “The heart wants what it wants, or else it does not care, as the poet said.”
He cocked his head. “What does your heart want?”
“To get you guys home, all in one piece.”
“I mean, for yourself.”
“That is for myself. But I appreciate you asking.” She was actually impressed by it. He was looking at her as if he saw her as a human being, with needs and wants of her own. Not a lot of teenagers did—or could. They were self-centered creatures. And he was in pain, but here he was, worried about her own. “You’re growing up,” she said to him, just as the thought entered her head.
“Am I? I’m not sure I like it,” he said.
“I’m not sure I like it for me, either,” she said.
He laughed. “But you are grown up.”
“Sometimes,” she said with a smile. “You ready to go back and finish that fish? Before it gets cold?”
“Nothing gets cold here. I never thought I’d want winter, but I want to feel cold.” He stretched. “Yeah, I’m ready to go back.”
They walked back to the camp, and as they got into sight of the fire, he stopped her with a touch on her shoulder. “And thanks.”
“For what?”
“Listening. You’re okay, Hannah.”
“So are you.”
Sweet kid. She wished if he was going to crush on someone, it’d be on Jodi or Laina. As a lesbian, Claire wasn’t a good choice. Crushing on Nari would drive Dixie crazy. She smiled to herself at that thought. But she didn’t want Dixie crazy with jealousy, or any more divisive than she already was. And Hannah would try to think of a way to tell her to be kinder, if she could come up with any words that wouldn’t only make the girl angry and defensive.
The girl bore watching. But controlling her? Hannah feared that was beyond her abilities.
Chapter 28
For the next ten days, no one else was injured. They adjusted more and more to the climate, and to the animals. They learned to see and to kill scout ants from the swarm of flesh-eating ants before anyone was badly bitten again. The crew that fished got better and better with the net, and a day’s catch took them little time.
They had plentiful fish and ferns to eat. Hannah figured out how to make clay, and they built the pool to hold the spring water. The terror crane didn’t seem to hunt in the afternoon, so every afternoon they all trooped out there, drank their fill, filled the bottles, and bathed and washed their clothes with the soap plant Zach had identified, which worked pretty well by crushing it and wiping it over skin or cloth.
She spent some time hunting for it, but she never could fin
d the terror crane’s nest.
In the mornings, as soon as she could see, Hannah took Ted and one other kid out to fill the bottles at the spring. They always ran back over the clearing between the plateaus and the trees, trying to beat the beginning of the terror crane’s hunting day. Only once did they see it, moving sluggishly, flapping its wings to dry them of the morning dew, and seemingly unaware of their presence in the twilight.
The worst problem during that time was not Dixie, as she might have predicted, or Garreth’s puppy-dog looks in the girl’s direction, but Laina, who was more and more withdrawn. She spent time every day scratching mathematical formulas into the dirt, or using a burned stick and drawing them on flat rocks around the fire.
Hannah tried to talk to the girl about it, but Laina was too distracted by whatever was going on in her mind to have a sensible conversation. Finally, Hannah took Bob aside one day. “I’m worried about Laina.”
“She does seem a little off.”
“Do you think this is a serious mental break?”
“I don’t know enough about the topic of mental breaks, or even if the experts still believe in such a thing. I do know I hear her muttering to herself sometimes.” He looked around to make sure they were out of earshot of any of the kids. “I even had a terrible thought yesterday.”
When he didn’t finish, she said, “Yes? What?”
“This is the age when schizophrenia strikes, if it’s going to. I couldn’t help think of that mathematician, the Beautiful Mind guy.”
“Okay, now I’m really worried,” Hannah said.
“Or it could be a perfectly sensible coping mechanism. When my son was stressed, he’d binge-watch Arrested Development. We don’t have that, or gaming, or texting, or movies, or sports to watch. We don’t have distractions. We have work and little else. So maybe she’s just inventing her own distraction.”
“I’ve let it slide, that she’s not pulling her share of the load. We’re doing pretty well with food and basics. But I wonder if the others are feeling resentful.”
