by Lou Cadle
The animals didn’t bother them or even take much note of them. There seemed to be a rule in place about the animals keeping distance from one another. Probably they knew how fast they could run and were choosing a distance based on that. But Hannah entertained the thought that maybe it was a kind of etiquette. She knew it was a ridiculous notion, but it felt like that, that the drinking animals were like people arriving early for a flight at an airport and taking seats as far away from each other as they could.
Or maybe that never was etiquette either. Maybe all along it had been animal behavior, unconscious, about survival, hardwired into the human brain millions of years before.
She had, and not for the first time, the sensation of being an animal, of being nothing more than an ape wearing boots. The trappings of civilization were falling away as items they owned were proven useless or wore out. What remained—a social order with a leader, communicating, making tools out of what was on hand—really wasn’t that different than what the other animals did. She had read that humans share 95% of their DNA with all the other mammals, but living like this, it was no longer another fact from a book. She felt the kinship.
That night, in the debris hut, she repeated the line of thought to Nari and said, “I think I understand your vegetarianism more. It’s impossible in this setting, and it’d require agriculture on a large scale to support it, but as the differences between me and the other animals disappear in my mind, I can see why you’d hesitate to kill and eat them. It’d be like killing and eating Bob or Claire, in a way.”
“If animals have souls—and I believe they do—then it’s a terrible responsibility to end a life,” Nari said. “It’s huge.”
“Doesn’t it bother you to work with the hides?”
“Not really. I mean, we killed them, and it’d be wasteful to let the hides rot. Ignoring them won’t bring the animals back.” She sighed. “I also don’t like meat. The texture bothers me. It’s gross.”
Probably not something animals ever thought about their kills. Or maybe they did. Maybe they had favorite meals and would go out of their way to find them. If so, the riskiest thing you could be in this world wasn’t slow, or stupid, or small…but tasty.
Chapter 20
After three days of exploring, they finally found a good place to set up a cabin. Only an hour’s jog from the river, there was a rock face in a hillside that would serve as one wall. Rex sketched out a design for the most efficient use of stones to build the rest. They would have to haul some stones up the hill.
Bob would have to be brought water at the new cabin because it would take him four hours to walk roundtrip, but it was a minor inconvenience.
Hannah would feel better with walls around her at night again. Lying in the dark woods with nothing between a nocturnal predator and her but a pile of sticks was not conducive to solid sleep. Every little noise made her pop awake, and the more days they had slept like that without an attack, the more she felt they were running out of luck.
Days were crammed full of activity again, fishing, cooking, exploring, gathering nuts, and working on the new cabin. Bob experimented with mortar recipes, using dirt samples they brought him at the end of every trip.
After three days’ work on the cabin foundation, they were running low on food. The fish had grown wise to them, or they had fished out the stream. After a light supper of fish and wild onions, Claire announced they’d hunt the next day. She picked a large hunting party of Ted, herself, Hannah, Jodi, and Nari to hunt oreodont. “Enough to last for several days,” she said, “through the building of the cabin.”
Rex protested. “That’ll leave only me and Dixie working. With only two of us on the cabin, we won’t make much progress.”
“And if we can get a lot of meat, we’ll all be better fueled,” Claire said. “It’s hard work moving those rocks.”
“We have most of the first row in place,” Rex said. The first course of stones were rocks as big as two people could carry. Rex had directed them to find rocks with one flat surface, which they’d made the top of the row, digging down as needed to level them. “It’ll be easier from now on. And faster.”
“Still. We have to eat.”
Hannah thought that Zach wasn’t the best of them at fishing, and that might explain the sparse catch. But she didn’t say it aloud because she was no better at the task herself, and had it been she with the broken bone, assigned to catch them enough fish to feed them, she’d have probably done even worse.
Claire said, “So we need to hunt. We’ll get the cabin done, Rex. In less than a week, we’ll all be safe behind the walls.”
The oreodonts were relatively easy prey, if they could find them. The next morning, the hunting party left early and crossed the river to hunt for where the herd had gone. They tracked them by testing the freshness of the dung on the ground.
“I wonder how they decide where to go,” Jodi said.
“What do you mean?” said Nari.
“Up the river, away from it, wherever. They move every day to new grazing. Is there a plan? Is it species memory, and this is how they’ve done it for millions and millions of years? Do they have a leader who decides?”
Ted said, “I never saw any of them leading in any obvious way.”
“They might have a leader,” said Hannah. “Wild horses do.”
“But sheep don’t, do they?” said Nari. “Not that I’ve known any sheep personally.”
Claire bent to test a pile of oreodont droppings. “Fresher,” she said. “This way.”
“The grass that’s left is still trampled down,” said Ted. “So they’ve been here within the last day, I think. Otherwise, it would have sprung back up.”
“We’re going in the right direction,” said Claire. “Let’s head for that patch of trees. Maybe you can climb one and spot them, Ted.”
They caught up with the herd an hour later. It was another hour before they caught up with it. Ted directed them to cut off the rearmost group in a flanking move. “But move slowly at first. Stop and start. Think like a grazer.”
Hannah and Nari went with Jodi, who walked with her club balanced on one shoulder. With hand signals, Ted directed the hunt from across the field. Slowly, taking care not to startle the oreodonts, they moved up to the same area where the grazers were munching the grass’s ripe seed heads. As they came up the flanks of the herd, the oreodonts pressed closer to each other to avoid the strange animals—the humans—drawing alongside.
Following hand signals from Ted, they managed to get ahead of a group of several animals, and then they swung inward, convincing the hindmost group of animals it was wiser to back up than to the follow the larger herd. They had split off a group of twenty-five or thirty.
Now came the hard part: actually running down dinner. Hannah’s group worked like sheepdogs, driving the animals toward the waiting Ted and Claire, who stood as still as rocks for the first minutes. Hannah realized that the wind was at her back, and that Ted had chosen the positions and roles well. The oreodonts were only yards from the waiting hunters when they caught their scent and veered away.
That was when Ted sprang forward with his spear.
The motion scattered the animals and Jodi said, “This one,” and sprinted for one that had swerved away from the whole group. Hannah knew it would try to rejoin the others, that instinct would turn it back, and she ran for the spot she thought it would be headed next. It stopped, turned as if to head in Nari’s direction, but she waved her hands over her head. That distracted it for another moment, and by then Jodi was on it, club raised overhead.
Thunk. Her club coming down on its head sounded more like a bass drum being hit than a sharp crack. The oreodont’s legs stiffened, and as Jodi wound up again for a second hit, it shuddered, and its knees bent.
Hannah ran forward as Jodi hesitated, and she ran her spear into its neck.
“I think it’s done for,” Jodi said. The animal stayed on its knees for a moment longer, and then it keeled over. It sh
uddered and they watched as it did so again and again.
Nari came closer with her spear and said, “Do I need to stab it again?”
“If you want,” Jodi said. “Might finish it sooner.”
Nari nodded. Hannah tried to remember if she’d ever dealt the killing blow to any animal. Probably not. Perhaps a fish or two.
“Through the neck?” Nari said.
Jodi said, “Yeah.” She pointed with her club.
Nari moved another step forward and took her spear two-handed and rammed it home.
The oreodont jerked. Its spasms ceased.
“Good. Let’s gut it,” Jodi said.
Nari was backing away. Hannah glanced at her. She was white-faced and staring at the animal, looking ill. Should Hannah say something to comfort her, or not?
Not knowing what to say, what words might offer any ease to a vegetarian who had just killed her first mammal, is what decided her. She’d leave Nari alone to recover. Hannah took off her pack and pulled out the stone knives, handing one to Jodi. Together, they began the process of turning the animal into meat.
When they had the hide stripped off, Hannah took it and a scraper to Nari. “Clean this, please?”
Nari nodded and took the scraper without a word. She still looked a little sick, but she bent to the task. She’d be okay, Hannah decided. And she was glad to see her doing the work. They all needed to practice these skills. What if Nari were separated from the group one day? Killing and cleaning animals would be a crucial part of keeping herself alive.
When she looked across the field at Claire and Ted, they were at work on the animal they’d killed. Two decent-sized oreodonts would last them for how long?
As she sliced meat off bone, she thought through the energy equations. If pressed for a guess, she’d say the animal she was cutting into pieces right now had weighed 175 pounds alive. A good butcher probably could have gotten almost 100 pounds of meat from it. Being considerably less skilled, she and Jodi were probably getting eighty pounds, not counting heart and liver.
This animal had some fat on it, so Hannah figured the meat to be providing perhaps a thousand calories per pound. Nine people. Try for nearly 3000 calories per day. They’d be fed for six days from this hunt. She said, “Two more hunts like this, and we’ll get through the month.”
“We can set traps again,” Jodi said. “Might be we only need to hunt one more time if we do that. I want to figure out how to trap those yummy rodents.”
“Ted likes to hunt. He’d do it every day, I think, if Claire let him,” Hannah said.
“I like it too,” Jodi said. “Better than hauling rocks. Fishing is okay. Cooking. Making pots. Anything but hauling rocks.”
When they were done with their butchering, they loaded up their packs. Jodi and Hannah split the meat and Nari took the hide. She’d take the other one from Ted’s kill, and everyone would end up hauling about forty extra pounds back to camp.
Hannah didn’t mind the weight so much. She minded that she smelled of fresh blood to predators. Jodi was worse off, though. She had a basket pack, and the blood dripped through.
They joined the others. Ted and Dixie had finished cutting their kill into chunks of meat. They hadn’t done anything to the hide. Nari rolled it up, still needing to be scraped, and added it to her pack.
The five of them turned for home. Ted led, Jodi and Dixie came next, and Hannah and Nari brought up the rear.
They had gone not a half-mile when Hannah, turning in a circle to check for danger, saw the dogs.
At first her brain tried to turn them into dogs, domesticated dogs. They were close enough in appearance that there was no doubt they were related to the dogs she knew. She was reminded of huskies or other sled dogs, except these were brown, like the autumn grasses around them. Several of them, running low, homed in on the bloody remains of the butchering.
“Dogs behind us,” she said. Everyone halted and turned to look.
The pack closed in on the bloody remains of the kill.
“Eight of them,” Jodi said.
“Seven adults, one adolescent,” Ted said. “Or maybe that small one is a little female.”
“We need to go,” Nari said, as two of the dogs fought over one of the heads. Even from here, Hannah could see their ferocity as they fought over the bits of meat left on the ground.
“Yeah, let’s move,” Ted said, and he took off at a fast walk.
Hannah followed, trying to think. “Was there any cover between here and the river?”
“Those trees. They’re out of our way, though,” said Jodi. “We can cut down to the river more directly.”
“That was my plan,” said Ted. “Hannah, are they after us?”
Hannah spun briefly. “No,” she said. “Still eating.”
“Let’s get out of their sight, at least,” Ted said “Can you all run with your packs full?”
“We can always drop the packs,” Nari said. “Just let them have the meat.”
“No, we need to eat,” Jodi said. “I can run with a pack.”
It was awkward trying to jog with wet chunks of meat sloshing around in her backpack, and Hannah had it easier than those with basket packs. Blood ran through Jodi’s basket and stained the seat of her jeans.
She glanced around again and said, “They haven’t come yet. But I think they’re almost done eating.”
Nari said, “Let’s sprint. I want to be way out of their sight.”
Hannah suspected they already were, but that it didn’t matter at all. The smell of the frightened humans and their kill would lead the dogs to them. Everyone put on speed and ran as fast as their awkward loads would let them.
Hannah glanced back and saw Nari lagging. “Come on,” she said.
Ted said, breathing hard, “There’s a patch of trees ahead. Not many. Maybe one is climbable.”
Hannah saw them: evergreens. She didn’t have a lot of faith the branches were sturdy enough to hold the humans, but some animal part of her brain preferred to have any sort of cover, anything to hide behind. The trees were better than nothing.
Ted had outpaced them all. Hannah didn’t stop him. If he could get up into a tree, he’d be able to help the rest of them up.
She turned again, only to see Nari had fallen behind farther.
And behind Nari, loping easily, came the dog pack.
Chapter 21
The dogs weren’t running full out, but they were gaining on Nari.
“Nari, they’re after us!”
Nari turned, saw them, and stopped.
“Throw your pack off. Run!” Hannah said. They could survive without the hides. She took off in pursuit of Ted.
Two dozen steps later, she turned again, to see the dogs were closing the distance. “Run!” she screamed, stopping to let Nari catch up.
Jodi let out a breathy curse. “We’ll never make the trees.”
“Let’s drop our packs then,” Hannah said.
Dixie and Ted had outdistanced them and were too far away to hear their words. Hannah didn’t want to yell at them to wait up. Let them run for the trees.
But Nari was in trouble. As the lead dog broke into a run, Hannah’s heart leaped into her throat.
She wrenched off her pack and swung it by a strap, throwing it as far as she could to the side. If she could get them interested in her pack, in the easy meat it contained, maybe they’d leave the humans alone.
At least for long enough to get to the trees.
Jodi had run several feet in another direction and was doing the same thing, flinging her basket pack off.
“Nari!” Hannah said. “Go! Come on, faster!”
Nari was the smallest of them, with the shortest legs, and while she was running as hard as she could, the dogs were closing the distance with shocking ease, speeding up, running low.
“Damn it!” Hannah said. She couldn’t leave Nari to the mercy of the dogs; they had none, she was sure. She hefted her spear and ran back toward Nari.
“H
annah!” Jodi said, then something too low for Hannah to hear. And the sound of her panting told Hannah she had turned too and was running in Nari’s direction.
Hannah was closing the distance, but not quickly enough. The dogs were fast, horribly fast. The lope before had been nothing. They closed in on the smallest and most vulnerable of the human herd.
Hannah recognized the technique because they had used it themselves. She let herself feel a flash of regret she had let Nari fall that far behind.
The front dog leapt. Jodi screamed, and Nari flinched away when the dog hit her. The force of its weight hit Nari in the ribs. She staggered, and for a moment Hannah thought she was going down, but Nari caught herself. She had a spear, but she only flailed with it, and then the second dog was there, a smaller dog, darting in, biting at her legs. Hannah heard the click of its teeth meeting as it missed.
They were trying to lame her. When Nari could run no more, they’d kill her.
And eat her.
Not if Hannah could help it. She ran in yelling, going for the lead dog, who was circling for another leap. It saw her coming and darted to the side, agile and fast.
All the advantage Hannah had over the dogs was the spear. Their jaws were stronger, their speed better, their experience greater. The reach of the spear and its narrow tip was all she had to defend against their teeth. What intelligence people might have over the dogs was no longer in play. This was now a battle of physicality, not cleverness.
Jodi was there now, her club whirling overhead then coming down on the hips of the dog trying to lame Nari.
This dog was, if anything, faster than the first. It slipped laterally out of the way of the club strike, and Jodi’s club hit the ground.
“Try to get close to Nari,” Hannah said. “Back to back.”
A third dog was on Nari, and it snapped at the back of her knee. This one did not miss, and Nari shrieked as its teeth pierced flesh. Hannah lunged with the spear, but she was blindsided by the force of a dog leaping on her.
She could smell its breath, meaty, just before the force of its weight in flight hit her. With a split second to brace herself, she took the full force of it in her ribs.
