Dawn of Mammals (Book 4): Killer Pack

by Lou Cadle

  “Did you? Accept?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “I kicked myself all the time. Every day. Over Garreth, I’m still kicking.”

  “That wasn’t your fault. Nor was Laina.”

  “I know that in my head. But my heart says something different. And hitting Dixie was definitely my fault, and I know that, heart and head both. If you’re a leader worth having, you’ll feel like crap half the time about what you can’t fix and about the mistakes you make.”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “That’s awful.”

  “But true, I think.”

  “What have I gotten myself into?”

  “You’re doing great,” Hannah said. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you’ll feel great about it.”

  Claire surprised her with a hug. “Thanks. That actually helped. Strange, considering it wasn’t all that optimistic.”

  Hannah laughed. “Glad it did.”

  The hunters returned without having killed anything, and Bob woke up slightly more cheerful after his nap. After a meal of jerky and water, they lit a fire and set watches. Hannah knew she’d have a restless night, anticipating whatever tomorrow would bring. They didn’t even know when the timegate might arrive, not for sure. Just today. Claire instructed the night watch to keep one eye aimed at its spot, just in case it came early.

  By dawn, someone was on watch every minute, doing nothing but watching the spot where the timegate would appear. Everyone was banned from going very far by Claire. “Relieve yourselves just beyond the camp. Everybody be polite and turn away at those moments. We can’t risk anyone else being split off.”

  Nervous anticipation descended on them all. There was little conversation. It was hardly necessary to keep a designated lookout for the gate. Every one of them glanced over at its location every few seconds. Hannah couldn’t keep from checking her watch. She needed to time it. Fourteen minutes, thirteen seconds, Laina had told her. If they had any chance at all of finding Laina, they needed to jump precisely when she had. Hannah still thought the chance of timing it perfectly was nil, but they had to try.

  “Is that it?” Dixie asked, pointing.

  Everyone stared. “No,” Claire said.

  “Sorry. I thought I saw something.”

  “No problem,” Claire said. “Better to err by seeing something that isn’t there than by missing it.”

  Ted took the enforced inactivity badly. By mid-morning, he was pacing in a tight circle, around and around.

  “Sit down,” Dixie said. “You’re making it worse.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “And I’m not bothering anyone.”

  Dixie said, “You’re bothering—”

  “Both of you,” Claire said. “Knock it off. No arguing. We’re all nervous. Take a breath.”

  “Let’s sing or something. Play a word game,” said Nari.

  “What, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat?” said Zach.

  “Whatever. Just something.”

  “Let’s talk,” Jodi said. “I know. Everybody tell what’s the best day everyone has had since you got here.”

  “What?” said Rex.

  “Your best day,” Jodi said, more loudly. “What was your best day here? During the two months here?”

  “Wheels,” Rex said. “When I figured out the wheels and axle design.”

  Dixie said, “I’m not sure I want to hear yours, Jodi. It’s sure to be over-share.”

  “The first kiss,” Jodi said, sweetly. “If that isn’t too awful to think about, Dixie.”

  “The second. Or third kiss,” said Zach. “Not the first.”

  “Thanks for sparing us more,” Dixie said.

  Hannah said, “What about you, Dixie?”

  “I don’t know. A hunting trip about five weeks ago, I think.” She looked at Ted. “You, Ted?”

  “Bringing down two animals in one hunt. Good day. Mr. O’Brien?”

  “The night the roof fell in.”

  “Really?”

  “It was as good as any. And the stress didn’t kill me, so I felt deeply grateful.”

  Hannah would be better at the game if Jodi had asked their worst day here. A month ago, Laina disappearing. The lightning strike was the next worst. An encounter with the entelodonts, the hell pigs, before both of those was also terrifying. They’d seen the same family group of hell pigs on the hike out here, walking in the distance, and had skirted well around them.

  Watching the faces of the others as they named their best days, she almost missed it. The shimmer in the air deepened. “The gate!” Hannah said. “Gear up.” She had her pack ready to go and slipped in on.

  Claire said, “Get the spears, Ted.”

  “On it,” he said. He carried them all through. And he’d jump first so he didn’t land on anyone with an armload of spears. Hannah would bring up the rear.

  Everyone was scrambling, putting on packs, shoving the last few items inside them. Ted formed the head of the line at the gate. Hannah checked her watch. “Plenty of time. But let’s line up anyway, okay, Claire?”

  They all did, in tense silence. Hannah patted her belt to make sure her flashlight was hanging there. They might arrive in darkness and she’d need it. Every minute she announced the countdown. A cloud of anticipation and dread seemed to settle over them.

  She looked at her watch again and counted down the last seconds. “Four. Three. Two, One. Go, Ted!”

  He stepped through. The purples flared around the timegate. Dixie was next. Rex. Nari. Then Zach and Jodi. Bob was just ahead of Hannah. Hannah took a deep breath, stepped through, and felt the now-familiar electrical jolt and falling sensation. She forced her eyes to stay open, and the light was all around her, pulsing in jewel colors. Then the colors faded and a new world came into view. She was out.

  Chapter 13

  Hannah rolled down a hill. She tried to arrest her tumble, but the hill was steep and she was gaining momentum. Slapping up against a boulder stopped her. That hurt, as she had smacked into a sharp protrusion with her hip and arm. She grabbed at the ground to make sure she was well and truly stopped, digging her fingers into dirt. Not much vegetation to hold onto. The slope was too steep for that.

  It was day, afternoon if she had to guess. Keeping one arm wrapped around the big rock that had stopped her, she worked her way up to a seated position and looked downslope. Everyone else was spread out over the slope. Some had tumbled quite a way. There was a pileup of three—Jodi, Zach, and Nari. Rex had managed to get to his feet already.

  The air, she registered, was cool. Cool and dry. Not cold, but who knew what tonight would bring. Or if this was a hot day for this season or a cold one. Or what month it was, for sure. Or what year. Millions of years forward from where they were, but millions shy of where they wanted to be.

  She yelled down the slope. “Ted, you see any danger? Animals?”

  He pulled a spear from the bundle, threw it aside, and pulled out another. “Two spears broke. Sorry!” he called. He turned his back to her and half walked, half-skidded down the rocky hill. There was a lot of scree, and footing was treacherous. Ted’s natural grace and balance kept him upright. She’d have to be super-careful getting down there with a loaded pack, or she’d slip and go ass over teakettle again.

  “Ow! Don’t!” yelled Zach.

  “Are you okay, Zach?” Bob called. He tried to stand, slipped and sat back down again. He slid on his rump another three feet before friction stopped him.

  “I think I hurt my hand,” Zach said.

  Jodi was bent over him, cradling his arm.

  “Hey. That hurts.”

  Jodi called up. “Hannah, I think maybe he broke something.”

  She took a deep breath and stood, bracing her shins against the rock that had stopped her slide downhill, and she tried to pick out a safe route. There wasn’t one, really.

  “Look out below,” she said. “Claire and Bob, I’m coming, and I might fall on the way.”

  Claire scooted off to the side, where a scraggly looking bus
h clung to the slope. She grabbed it. “Go on,” she said.

  Hannah hadn’t taken three steps before the rocks under her boots began to slide. She squatted, arrested the slide with a palm to the ground, and tried again. She moved in a crouch, ready to use her hands for balance or brake and, with a step here, a slide there, managed to make it down to Bob. She said, “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’ll come down once you’re there. I think I’ll just slide the whole way on my butt. Seems safer.”

  “However you can do it,” she said, and kept moving down the slope. When she reached Zach and Jodi, Nari moved off, saying, “I’ll go on down. Good luck, Zach.”

  Hannah asked him where his arm hurt. He pointed to his wrist. She palpated the area gently. He winced as she pushed on a protrusion. She said, “I think it’s a wrist bone. Might be cracked or dislocated. Can you hold the arm up?”

  He did so, but his lips were clamped shut against the pain.

  “Try rotating your hand, like this.” She demonstrated.

  “That hurts pretty bad,” he said, stopping halfway through the rotation.

  “Okay. We need to wrap it. Splint it.” She wriggled out of her pack and handed it to Jodi. “Hold this, would you?” She took a second to check her flashlight on her belt and make sure it hadn’t broken in her tumble. It was sturdily made, and it had come through with no more than scrapes.

  Jodi said, “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Sure. At worst, it’s a broken bone, but a small bone. He may be functioning one-handed for the next month. At best, it’s no more than a minor sprain. Though that’ll still take at least a week or two to heal.”

  “I feel stupid,” Zach said.

  “Well, don’t,” she said, softening it with a smile. “Could’ve happened to any of us. In fact, I’m surprised it didn’t happen to all of us. What a place to land, eh?”

  “You’re bleeding,” Jodi said. “Your elbow.”

  “Me?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah, but your shirt isn’t torn. A bit of blood is seeping through.”

  “No biggie, then. I’ll look at myself in a second.” She pulled out her carved tongue-depressor collection, and a wad of shirt material. “Jodi, I want to use these bits of wood to stabilize his wrist. So hold these three against his palm, like this, and Zach, don’t move for a second.” She put another three homemade tongue depressors over the back of his hand and wound one loop of material around. She adjusted everything to her liking, trying to make sure he’d not be able to bend his wrist, and continued winding. After two more turns, she said, “Pull your fingers away, Jodi, okay?”

  In another two minutes, Zach was wearing a supporting bandage around his wrist. “The wood isn’t very thick on those, so don’t stress it. I’ll splint it better when we’re settled.” She put her supplies away.

  Bob came up, sliding on his butt as promised. “Everything okay?”

  “Maybe,” said Zach. “I might have broken my wrist, Hannah says.”

  “That your dominant hand?” Bob said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Be careful going down the hill. If you fall, your inclination will be to shoot out that hand to catch yourself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get on down there.”

  Claire came next, walking. “Can I help?”

  “We’re okay, I think,” Jodi said. “Thanks. Go on. We’ll see you at the bottom.”

  Claire continued on, checking every foot placement before putting weight on it. Hannah helped Zach stand. “Bob made a good point. Why don’t you open your shirt midway, just one button, and shove your hand inside, so it’s harder to automatically grab with that hand.”

  “I’ll have a harder time walking, I think, with out both hands free to balance myself.”

  “We’ll take it super slow. Jodi, why don’t you go ahead of him, but close, so if he slips he runs into you.”

  “Take my club,” Jodi said to Zach. “You can use it as a cane until we get down.”

  Hannah followed with a hand hovering over his back, ready to snatch at his shirt at any moment to keep him from falling. But they took it slow, and the only one who fell on the trip down was Jodi, and she bounced right back up.

  Ted and Dixie had ranged out from the main group, scanning the vicinity for danger. They were in a deep ravine. Ted had veered to one side, Dixie to the other. Claire was finishing building a cairn of rocks to mark the place, Hannah realized, where they’d come down from the timegate. Smart. Hannah turned around and studied the slope, to etch it in her memory in case a flash flood swept the rock marker away.

  “Okay,” Claire said. “We need to find a place to camp. A water source. Our bottles are full, and it’s late in the day, so shelter is more important.”

  “Which way do we go?” Nari said.

  “Does it matter?” Claire said. “Hannah? Bob? What do you two think?”

  “Downhill to find water,” Bob said.

  “I think it might get cold tonight,” Hannah said, “So a stand of trees would be good, for shelter and for firewood.”

  “Okay.” Claire called over, “Dixie, Ted, do you guys see any trees in either direction?”

  “Not this way,” Dixie called. “Just some dead bushes.”

  “Not this way either,” Ted said. “But I think it opens up down this way. Widens, I mean.”

  “Ted’s direction, then,” Claire said. “Let’s get going.”

  They hiked down the left-hand fork of the ravine, which did widen, until they were able to walk three abreast with comfort.

  Bob said, “I think this must be carved by water. But whether recently or hundreds of years ago, I can’t say.”

  “We’re going downhill,” Jodi said. “You can tell if you look behind us.”

  They all turned to check it out.

  Hannah said, “I wouldn’t want to be caught here in a flash flood.”

  “No,” said Bob. “We shouldn’t camp in it.”

  “There’s more growing up ahead,” said Ted, who was in front. “Bushes.”

  And there was spotty grass now at the sides of the ravine. They were losing elevation with every step.

  Fifteen minutes later, the ravine had opened up into a wide spot, a sort of grassy bowl, where several dry water courses met. Beyond that were rolling hills. The sky was bright blue, with one patch of high cirrus clouds to the east. The sun was three-quarters of the way down the sky, so that direction, just right of their heading, had to be west. To the left of it, roughly south, the land fell away more.

  “I think there’s likely to be water that direction,” said Bob.

  Claire said, “There are trees, so there might be a stream.”

  “They’re turning, do you see? For autumn, I mean,” Jodi said.

  They were, showing a patch of yellow here and there, the beginning of the change.

  “I wonder what month it is,” Zach said.

  Rex said, “We can figure that out. We’ll time sunrise and sunset, and that’ll tell us if we’re before or after the equinox.”

  “I’ll reset my watch tonight,” Hannah said. “If you can help me remember to, Rex.” She’d set it once at sunset, to 6 p.m. as a default, and then when the sun rose, they’d know the length of the night. Tomorrow, she’d adjust her watch accordingly. Time travel gave a new meaning to changing one’s watch to local time.

  “At least there’s shelter,” Nari said. “We can get in the trees, build a fire, and spend the night.”

  Claire said, “We have no idea what kind of animals are around, so everybody keep an eye out. No one sees anything, do they?”

  “Birds,” said Dixie. “There’s something like an eagle way up there.”

  “Which means there’s prey,” Bob said. “Rabbits or rodents or whatever. Beyond that, there will be a whole ecosystem. Grazing animals, predators, snakes, insects.”

  “Were there rabbits back here?” Zach said.

  “Definitely. We must be around twenty or twenty-five million years ago—twenty milli
on before our original time, I mean. In the Miocene, if Laina’s calculations got us where she was aiming. There are a lot of animals alive in this epoch that should look more familiar.”

  “Does anyone see any sign that Laina was here?” Claire said.

  “No,” Bob said. “I’ve kept an eye out. Everybody should. Every time we go someplace new in this world, look around for structures, or boot prints, or anything manmade.”

  “She might have written a message on a rock face,” Hannah said.

  “With what?” Dixie asked, a hint of her old sarcasm in her voice.

  “Charcoal,” Bob said.

  “Animal blood,” Ted said.

  “Dyes,” Hannah said. “Maybe from plants. Boiled down fruit juice, for example.”

  Claire said, “Of course. We’ll keep our eye out for signs she is here—or was here. But right now we need to find shelter for the night. And get a fire going.”

  Hannah also wanted them to make debris huts. The chill in the air grew more pronounced, hinting at a cold night. There weren’t enough blankets and hides to cover them all, but debris huts should keep them warm enough.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m wearing down,” Bob said.

  “I’m sorry!” Claire said. “I should’ve asked.”

  Rex had carried the two-wheeled travois, the “Bob-sled,” as they still sometimes called it. Whatever it was, it made it much easier to haul Bob. And, come to think of it, it would speed up moving leaves for debris hut construction.

  The stretch of grassland they had to cross was wider than it had looked. The sun was not far from going behind the hills when they reached the trees.

  “Fan out in pairs, look out for both danger and opportunity,” Claire said. “Except Bob. You rest here, please.”

  Hannah paired with Rex. “Let’s keep an eye out for fallen trunks and branches that could serve as the spine of a debris hut.”

  “Check,” he said. “Look, an animal.” He pointed into the tree.

  Hannah didn’t look quickly enough to catch sight of it. “What was it?”

  “Squirrel-ish, both in size and how it ran off. No danger.”

  “Your hearing seems better.”