Dawn of Mammals (Book 4): Killer Pack

by Lou Cadle

  “Best position to avoid a lightning strike. And we should spread out a bit, so if one of us gets hit, the current doesn’t jump to the next person.”

  The wind picked up, and the rain continued to pour. Her hair was plastered to her face, her shirt to her back, and there was a stream of water running down into the back of her jeans. As the others spread out from each other, it became hard to see them through the driving rain. Hannah felt alone in a world of wind and rain and noise. A gust of wind tried to steal one of the water bottles she hadn’t yet filled, and she had to lunge for it to keep it from being carried off forever. Then the Mylar blanket threatened to blow away. She wadded it up and pulled it closer to her body.

  The rain let up. A flash of lightning temporarily burned out her vision. Two seconds later, thunder boomed. Getting closer. And then hail began to fall. Big hail, golf-ball-sized, at least.

  Every few seconds a hailstone hit her on the head, and it hurt. She couldn’t protect her head with her hands without letting go of the Mylar blanket and empty water bottle. The full bottles were rolling around in the wind, but they weren’t being carried far. Not farther than she’d be able to find them, at least.

  “Ow!” she said as a particularly large hailstone clunked off the crown of her head. She shoved the neck of the empty water bottle between her teeth and wrestled the Mylar blanket over her head. That made the rain noisier, but at least the next hailstone didn’t hurt.

  She stayed like that, hunkered down, holding tight to the blanket in the gusting wind, and closing her eyes with each lightning strike. The delay between lightning and thunder shortened with each strike.

  If she were hit by lightning, she hoped she was killed quickly. Outright. Being disabled by a lightning strike and becoming a burden on everyone else would be unbearable. Her thoughts spun to Bob. She hoped his heart was holding up to the strain. Her own heart was thumping fast from fear.

  She felt the hairs on her arms stand up. A metallic odor filled the air. Through ringing ears she heard Bob yell, “Cover your ears!” She smashed her fists, Mylar blanket and all, against her ears.

  And then the world turned white, the white of a nuclear bomb detonating. Her eyes had shut instantly of their own accord, but the bright light still burned through her eyelids. It dawned on her that she was about to die, and strangely, no fear came with the thought. Her only feeling was a sort of mild wonder. Death—how interesting.

  Before the light faded, the thunderclap burst, and it hurt. She’d never heard a sound so sharp and loud that it hurt her. Even through her fists, her ears felt it. And her jaw and her face—her sinuses, she supposed, had been compressed by the blast.

  The light faded and she opened her eyes, but her retinas must have still been in shock, because she couldn’t see anything more than a gray haze. She wondered, ludicrously, if she was still alive. “Testing,” she said aloud. If she could speak, surely she was alive, right?

  Vision returned, pixilated at first, but clearing with every heartbeat. “Is everyone okay?” she yelled.

  No answer.

  Chapter 7

  Hannah was torn. Another close lightning strike wasn’t impossible, and the last thing she wanted to do was stand up and be the tallest thing around. But she had to know if the others were fine.

  “Hannah?” Ted’s voice. “You okay?”

  “I think. You?”

  “I’m—I don’t know.” He laughed nervously. “I think so. Mr. O’Brien?”

  Hannah heard the faint reply. “Present and accounted for.”

  Ted said, “Rex?”

  No reply.

  Hannah yelled, “Rex?” She turned around, unsure what direction he had gone in.

  Still no answer.

  “Don’t stand up!” Bob said.

  The rain stopped as if a faucet had been shut off. Hannah twisted all around and saw Rex, fifteen yards away, lying on his side on the ground, in the fetal position. “Rex!” she screamed, and she rose only inches and hurried, still hunkered down, to his side.

  She turned him gently to his back, and when he moaned, she felt a wash of relief. One hand was clasped to his head.

  “Were you hit?” she said.

  His eyes were closed.

  She gave his shoulder a shake. “Rex!”

  His eyes opened. “Hannah?”

  “Thank God,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you were okay.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Rex.” She was starting to worry he’d been hit and his brain was damaged. “Are. You. Okay?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Your hand is still over one ear.” She reached out and tugged his arm down. “Better?”

  “It hurts.”

  “What hurts?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Rex!”

  Ted showed up at her side. Standing.

  “Get down,” she said.

  Ted squatted on the other side of Rex. “You okay, bro?”

  “I can’t hear you,” Rex said, looking from one to the other. “Either of you.”

  Hannah said, “Were you hurt?”

  He shook his head.

  “So you heard me that time?”

  “I can’t hear you.” Panic had crept into his voice.

  She patted his arm. “You’ll be okay.” Hannah forced a smile. She made an okay sign with her fingers.

  “I’m not okay. I can’t hear!” He sat bolt upright. “Ted, say something to me.”

  “The thunder was loud. Were your ears covered?”

  Rex shook his head. “Louder.”

  “Were. Your. Ears. Covered.”

  Rex said. “Nothing. Not a sound.” He turned to Hannah. “I’m deaf.”

  She made herself smile at him again and tapped her watch. “Give it a few minutes.” She held up five fingers.

  Ted said, over Rex’s head, “Are you telling the truth? Is his hearing just—I dunno, in shock or something?”

  “Maybe,” Hannah said. “I’m no doctor. But I’m still seeing afterimages of the brightness. Aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am.”

  Rex tried to stand up. Hannah pulled on his arm. “There’s still a risk of lightning,” she said, wondering before her last word was out why she was trying to talk to him. She tugged harder and shook her head. She pointed at the ground, emphasizing the message.

  Bob called something, she couldn’t hear what. Rex had been in the opposite direction of Bob, so she was further from him. But still, she should have been able to hear him. Maybe her hearing wasn’t all that good right now either. “I’m going over to Bob,” she said. “Stay here. Try to keep him calm, Ted. And on the ground, squatting again if you can convince him to.” She squat-walked away, her knees protesting the weird position.

  Another lightning strike and boom of thunder startled her. But it wasn’t as close. The storm was moving fast, moving past them.

  Ted said, “He said he heard that.”

  She called back, “Good!” and resumed her trip across the wet hillside to Bob. She reached him and realized he looked angry.

  “You shouldn’t be walking around.”

  “I’m staying low,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “No chest pain?”

  “Not any new chest pain, no.” He made a gesture as if to shove that aside. “But what are you doing—?”

  “Rex is hurt. Or something.”

  Bob’s irritation disappeared in an instant, to be replaced by a concerned look. “Did he get hit?”

  “No. I don’t think so. He isn’t burned that I can see. He’s talking. But he can’t hear.”

  “Were his ears covered?”

  “I think so. It’s impossible to ask him questions. I was able to indicate to him it might be temporary. Is it, do you think?”

>   “I’m not sure.” Bob grimaced. “I wish we had a doctor. No offense.”

  She wasn’t offended in the least. “I wish we had one too.”

  “If his ears were uncovered, the pressure might have ruptured his eardrums. If he took a hit to the head—even of peripheral current—it could be brain damage.”

  “He’s lucid. His speech isn’t slurred or anything like that. It’d have to be pretty localized brain damage. Not that we can do a thing about either.”

  “Ruptured eardrums heal.”

  “In someone that young, probably better than in me or you.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “You said not to move.”

  “Sorry. I understand why you did.”

  “He wasn’t answering. I had to go find him.”

  Bob said, “We could all have been hit. Current travels through the ground.”

  “The storm’s moving off.”

  “It has to be six miles away for us to be totally safe.” He winced as he stood.

  “Your heart?” she said.

  “My knees. Sucks getting old.”

  Hannah hoped that the short walk to Rex wouldn’t be too much for him. After a few squatting steps, Bob dropped to hands and knees. “It’ll be like playing horsey with the grandkids, but my knees can’t take this position.” After covering a few yards, he said, “I’m sure I look a fool.”

  “You look as dignified as ever,” she reassured him.

  He laughed. “Not at all, then.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that.” She did think of him as dignified. Controlled. Calm in the face of crisis. “I’m being serious.”

  “And I’m being wet,” he said. “Glad it isn’t colder than it is.”

  “Temp dropped with the storm, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, cold front, I think.”

  She said, “To the left up ahead. See them?”

  “Yeah.”

  They made it to Rex’s side just as a break came in the clouds, spilling sunlight over them all for a moment. Then the clouds covered the sun again.

  “Any better?” she asked Rex as they reached his side.

  “I can tell you’re talking. But I can’t hear anything but—I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Not a buzz. I hear a buzz all the time. When you talk, the buzz changes. So I can tell something is going on, but it’s nothing like words.”

  She pointed to her watch again and raised her eyebrows in a question.

  “I don’t know if it’s getting better, if that’s what you meant.”

  Again, she tried to give him a reassuring smile. She patted the air in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture, pointed to her watch, and turned her head away to say, “Bob? What do you think?”

  “I want to look at him, look carefully for any scorching.”

  “I felt scorched myself when the lightning hit,” Ted said. “I mean, I’m not. But wow. It was close.”

  “Indeed it was,” said Bob. “We all probably took some current. But if we had taken a lot, we’d be much worse off.”

  “I smelled metal,” Hannah said.

  “Ozone. I smelled it too,” Bob said. He was crawling around Rex, checking him out. “No sign of a hit.”

  “Wouldn’t he be—?” Ted said. “I mean, would any of us have survived a direct hit?”

  Bob came back around Rex and sat. “You guys stay squatting. It’s safer. My knees aren’t up to it.” He gave Rex a thumbs-up sign.

  Rex said, “What are you guys talking about? Me?”

  Hannah made a zigzag sign in the air. On cue, another stroke of lightning flashed in the distance, the thunder a second behind it. She pointed.

  “Oh.”

  Ted said. “I guess we could work out sign language.”

  “We could. I’m less worried about communicating with him, if his hearing loss doesn’t go away, than about his safety,” Hannah said. “He wouldn’t be able to hear a big predator crashing through the trees in his direction.”

  “I’m more worried about his mental state,” said Bob. “To have a disability out here, on top of everything else? But let’s not borrow trouble. It might resolve itself. It might be that in an hour, his hearing will start to come back. Or it might be ruptured eardrums, and they’ll heal over a matter of weeks.” He smiled and nodded at Rex.

  “Everything is not okay,” Rex said. “Quit telling me it is.”

  Bob reached for Hannah’s wrist. He raised her hand, pointed to the watch, and stuck up one finger. Then he rotated it his wrist, drawing out the sweep of a minute hand around to describe an hour.

  “Maybe we should give him something to do,” Ted said. “Distract him from worrying.”

  “We can still be hit by lightning. Six miles, and we should be safe,” Bob said.

  “Maybe the risk of moving is worth it to get his mind focused on something else,” Hannah said.

  Ted said, “It’s weird talking about him right in front of him.”

  Bob said, “You’re not wrong about that.”

  “There are still water bottles to be filled,” Hannah remembered. “Let me go find that empty one.” She had dropped it in her haste to get to Rex. “Here, hang on to the blanket, Ted.”

  In fact, all her water bottles had scattered from the wind. But she had tightened the tops well and nothing had spilled. She had one empty and one half-full, and she had to crawl a bit farther to retrieve those than the full ones.

  As she turned back, she saw lightning arc across the sky. Two whole heartbeats passed before the thunder. Good. The storm was leaving.

  She gave the bottles to Ted and said, “Work with him. Use your shirts, soak up rain water, squeeze it into the bottles. And drink your fill too. We may not get this much water again until we’re back at the lake.”

  With gestures, Ted engaged Rex in the water retrieval project.

  Hannah said, “You too, Bob. I mean, soak up some water with your shirt and drink.”

  “You may as well too. With your shirt soaked as it is, there’s hardly a difference between you being shirtless or not.”

  Hannah glanced down at herself. Not strictly true, but the shirt was plastered to her. “I think even my underwear got wet.”

  “Gully-washer,” he agreed, peeling off his shirt. He looked too thin, ribs pressing against skin marked with the signs of age, liver spots and tiny moles on his flanks. But then, they were all too thin. Only Claire, whose stocky build seemed to be all muscle and bone, looked at all a healthy size.

  Hannah waddled several yards away, turned her back to the men, and stripped off her own shirt. The grass was so wet, she was able to give her shirt a wash first, wringing it out, soaking up more water, wringing it again, until she had it as clean as it was likely to get. Only then did she start wringing it out over her open mouth. The rain water tasted a bit cotton-y from the shirt. She drank until she could hold no more and pulled her shirt back on.

  By the time they had done that, and the water bottles were full, there were five seconds between lightning and thunder. Bob said, “Another ten minutes, and we can go.”

  “I guess I’ll be doing the bulk of the pulling now,” said Ted. He gave one last turn to the bottle cap, and then, satisfied it was secure, he tossed it into his pack.

  When Bob said it was safe to move, they resumed their trek. At first, it was slower going than before, as the wet grass made the wheels of the travois slip. But as the grass dried, they were able to speed up again. When they came to a rocky patch and Bob needed to be carried, Hannah stepped forward to take one end of the travois, but Rex waved her away. She thought it was a good sign that he was willing to pitch in. At least he wasn’t retreating into depression. Hannah wasn’t sure she’d be taking it so well.

  When his hands were free, every few minutes Rex snapped his fingers next to his ears. The hour Bob had suggested it might take for his hearing to come back had long since passed, and Rex gave no indication his hearing was improving.

  They had no campfire that night. All
the potential fuel was wet enough that nothing could be lit.

  After her third failed attempt with the fire starter, Ted said, “We’d need a can of charcoal lighter to get a fire going.”

  “I think you’re right,” she said, pocketing her tool.

  “Let’s eat the last of the fish you guys brought and go to sleep,” Bob said.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” Hannah said. “I’m less tired. I did less work today.” She, Ted and Rex were supposed to split the night watches, but she realized Rex wouldn’t be particularly useful now. In the dark night, he couldn’t see much, and now he couldn’t hear much. She mentioned it to the others.

  Bob said, “Give Rex his turn on watch anyway, I think. He’ll feel less useless.”

  When everyone had settled down, Hannah listened to the night sounds. Faint animal vocalizations sounded far away. A hush of wind swept across the grass. Another sound in the grass might have been a mouse or other rodent on its nightly hunt for food. She appreciated being able to hear. It was one of those things she always took for granted, but with Rex’s situation, she was attending to it and feeling grateful.

  An hour later, there was another sound. Rex, his breath catching. She crawled over to him and, after a moment’s hesitation, put her hand on his shoulder. He surprised her by turning to her and pulling at her. She let herself be pulled down, and he grabbed onto her like she was a life raft, and he sobbed into her shoulder. She patted his back, soothing him, as she would a crying child, until the tears passed and he fell asleep.

  She didn’t wake him for his watch.

  Chapter 8

  Two days later, they were back at the cabin. And Rex’s hearing was better, but not nearly as healed as they had hoped.

  Ted explained the situation to the rest of them. “If his back is to you, he can tell if you’re yelling. If he’s facing you, don’t yell. He can catch some of what you’re saying—not much, but maybe enough—from context and lip-reading and guessing. But if you yell, he can’t read your lips at all.”

  Hannah was hanging back, watching the group dynamic, worried about letting herself open her mouth. She’d have to police herself to keep from unconsciously taking over from Claire. For now, she wanted to pretend to be a mouse in the corner, overhearing, but not drawing attention to herself.