Dawn of Mammals (Book 4): Killer Pack

by Lou Cadle

  “Where? I can’t see them,” Nari said, craning her head.

  “I can,” said Dixie, the fear in her voice clear.

  Hannah caught sight of them. They were definitely dogs of some sort. Or maybe not. The saber-toothed nimravid had looked just like a big cat, but M.J. had said it wasn’t. So it was possible that something else, some other form of creodont maybe, was right now taking the dog niche and looked like a dog. But her gut said “dog,” and she couldn’t shake the sense that it was one.

  Seven adults and one youngster made up the group. The same group, perhaps, that Ted and Dixie had encountered before. From this distance, they all looked identical to one another. They were lean in the hips but strong in the chest, mostly brown, with bits of cream-colored fur. The younger one ran around the others, apparently trying to get someone to play with him. One of the adults turned and snapped at him, and he dropped to his belly, cowed.

  Hannah was just as happy the dogs were moving away from the river, done with whatever their task had been that morning. Drinking, possibly. Or perhaps they’d already killed.

  Ted rolled over on his back and stretched. “Eight of them, six of us,” he said.

  Dixie said, “We’d need fifteen of us for eight of them, minimum. I haven’t seen an animal that scared me as much since the snake got Claire.”

  “The hell pigs were scary,” Nari said.

  “I vote for that unpronounceable one that weighed two tons,” said Jodi. “It could have squished me flat without ever noticing I had been standing there.”

  Hannah thought of the terror crane, and Garreth’s death. Or the crocogator things back in the time not too long after the dinosaurs. That was the worst of the epochs they had visited. It had the swarms of biting ants too, able to render a body into a skeleton in no time flat. She said, “All things considered, I’m glad we’re moving forward in time.”

  Dixie said, almost reverently, “You haven’t seen the wolves moving yet. So fast.”

  Claire said, “In any case, they’re almost out of sight. But let’s give them five more minutes to get away. Hannah, time?”

  Hannah told her. They had been walking at a good pace, and there was still plenty of daylight remaining.

  “I guess we can’t do any jogging with all this stuff on our backs,” Claire said. “But I want to get to the stand of trees before ten, so let’s keep walking.”

  Once they were at the patch of woods, they dropped most of their gear. Claire divided them up into two teams. Ted led one, Jodi the other. Hannah and Dixie went with Jodi, Claire and Nari with Ted. Almost everyone had a spear, even Nari. Jodi carried her club. Hannah took two spears, just in case, and kept her pack with rope, first aid kit, and stone knives in it, but she dumped out everything else and left it with the pile of heavier gear. They’d left all the gear in a pile just under the shade of a tree, so it’d stand out to the three coming along later. Dixie carried a mostly empty basket backpack, in case they found anything to gather or scavenge. Jodi kept herself unencumbered so she’d be quick to defense if the need arose.

  Jodi’s team backtracked up the stream and forded it barefoot at a shallow place. The water was cold on Hannah’s feet, a little too cold to feel good. “I’m going to take a long bath tonight if there’s time,” Dixie said. “I’m gritty.”

  As during times she’d backpacked for a long distance when life was normal, Hannah had grown quickly accustomed to being dirty all the time. If she let herself think of it, she longed for a hot bath, though having one was unlikely. “If we could find a hot spring one of these times, we could have hot baths.”

  Dixie moaned a little in pleasure.

  Jodi said, “Hot sponge-baths, you mean?”

  “I’ve been in hot springs that were as big as a house,” Hannah said. “In the Sierra Nevadas. And in plenty as big as a hot tub.”

  “You’re killing me,” Dixie said. It was as good-natured as she ever was, and for that, Hannah was grateful.

  “Could we?” said Jodi. “Find hot springs?”

  “There’s a town Hot Springs, not too far away,” said Dixie. “There are hot springs there.”

  “I suspect there are some in every state in the Union,” said Hannah. “Or will be, in twenty million years. So why not now? They’re a lot more common where there are volcanoes. But you can find them anywhere.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” said Dixie.

  “Okay, let’s go up that rise,” Jodi said. “See what we see from up there.”

  Hannah kept her eyes on the ground, looking for signs of strange vegetation that might mean the soil was different, that clay was underfoot. She stopped them once to test the soil, but it was a sandy patch, the opposite of what she wanted.

  When they crested the rise, they saw a big herd of grazing animals, five or six hundred in all.

  “More oreodonts?” Jodi said.

  “I think so,” Hannah said.

  “Gosh, they lived a long time. If they were so hardy, why’d they all die out?”

  “No idea.”

  Dixie said, “Bob says climate changes make animals go extinct.” Hannah noted she was the first of his former students to call Bob by his first name, at least in Hannah’s hearing.

  Jodi hadn’t seemed to notice it. “But it feels not all that different than our autumn.”

  “Or competition, maybe?” Hannah said. “Maybe something else came along that did a better job than these guys. Horses, maybe. Deer.”

  “A better job at what?” Jodi said.

  “Breeding or eating or both. Sheer numbers could drive away competitors. I have no idea at all when oreodonts went extinct.”

  “Less than twenty million years ago,” said Jodi. “Ted will be happy to know there’s pretty easy hunting.”

  “I feel bad for not going for one while we see them,” Dixie said. “But if Claire says not to….” Her rebellious feelings sounded half-hearted.

  Hannah said, “We can collect dried dung for the fire.”

  “Gross,” said Dixie.

  “Not really, not when it’s dry,” Jodi said. “And I’ve smelled worse. I’ve smelled much worse in litter boxes in people’s houses.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick it up,” Dixie said. “If you guys do too.”

  “I will,” Hannah said, “but I think Jodi should keep her eyes peeled for danger.”

  “Why should something eat us when there’s a whole herd of meat down there?” Dixie asked.

  “Let’s keep walking for now,” Jodi said. “We can gather dung on the way back. Then you’ll have a shorter distance to haul it.”

  “I’ll vote for that,” Dixie said. “What are we looking for again?”

  “A better home site,” Jodi said.

  Hannah said, “Clay to build with. Berry bushes and nut trees. Anything else that looks like food that doesn’t fight back.”

  Jodi added, “Animal census. It’s good to know what’s out there, prey or predator. Let’s put this little ridge at our backs and zigzag across the area ahead. Hannah, you stop us if you see any sign of clay soil.”

  They kept exploring. The herd of oreodonts moved slowly away from them, not as trusting as some animals, but not running, either. They seemed to want a quarter-mile between themselves and the three humans.

  Hannah dug up soil in several areas in the lowest-lying areas, but she was getting nothing but test mud pies that broke apart too easily.

  Jodi asked for the time again and said, “Okay, I think we should walk over to where the land rises again. We have forty-five minutes to waste, so let’s walk quickly and then we’ll turn right around and take a slightly different route back.” There were hills in the distance, and the land rose steadily in that direction. They wouldn’t be able to reach the hills, but they made for them.

  Hannah detoured them to a suspicious spot with no vegetation at all. They chased a couple of camels away. That was odd, as there was nothing growing so nothing to eat there. Hannah reached the spot first, dropped to her
knees, and dug. The dirt crumbled to nothing. “Definitely not clay.”

  “It’s weird-looking,” Dixie said

  Why had the camels been here? Hannah sat back on her heels and frowned. She went to where the ground had been disturbed by the animals and dug with her fingers, pulling up a patch of lighter brown dirt. Then she saw the crystals. Perfect cubes. She plucked out one, brushed the dirt off it, and popped it in her mouth. She grinned at the others.

  “What are you smiling about?” Dixie said. “And why are you eating dirt?”

  “It’s salt. We’re at a salt lick.”

  “Oh man,” Jodi said. “Really?” She dropped to her knees too and said, “What part’s the salt?”

  Dixie joined them, and Hannah explained how to identify the salt crystals. Dixie used the back of her spear, Hannah one of the rock knives, and Jodi her hands. They dug, and Dixie said, “Wow, look at this!” She pulled up a crystal of salt as big around as her thumb.

  “That’s a keeper,” Hannah said. Within minutes, they had enough salt to flavor several meals. Hannah stored the smaller crystals in the largest of her empty Altoids containers. The biggest one that Dixie had found went into a plastic bag.

  Jodi stood. “I’ve not been keeping an eye out for danger.” Her voice was guilty.

  “We survived it,” Dixie said. “Stew is going to taste so much better with salt.”

  “Or the nuts. Everything,” Jodi said.

  “I’d be happy to munch on salt by itself,” said Hannah, “but I’d like to purify this, I think.”

  “What do you mean?” Dixie said.

  “Dissolve it in water, and let it recrystallize. Just in case there are dangerous minerals in here.”

  Dixie said, “The animals were eating it. And so did you.”

  Jodi said, “Doesn’t the fact that it’s a crystal mean it’s pure?”

  “I’m worried about it being brown. I think pure salt would be white.” She wasn’t sure.

  “NaCl,” Dixie said. “It’s transparent, really. Which is why when you dissolve it in water you can’t see it.”

  “That’s right,” said Jodi. “I remember now. From class. We did that experiment last year where we saw how much you could dissolve in water. Saturation point.”

  Dixie nodded.

  “So I didn’t know all that,” Hannah said. “I just thought that white salt would be better than brown. And I think dissolving it and letting it recrystallize is probably the way to get there.”

  “Mr. O’Brien will know,” Jodi said.

  “Good point,” Hannah said. “We’ll let him decide what to do.” She checked her watch. “We’d better turn back. We still have dung to pick up.”

  Dixie groaned as she got to her feet. “I’m honestly weak from lack of food. I hope they caught fish early and there are some to eat the second we get back there.”

  Hannah felt the same, so she didn’t begrudge Dixie her complaint. They were doing a lot of work today on too few calories. They needed a day or two of good fishing to catch up on food.

  “And keep your eye out for prairie dog holes,” Jodi said.

  They found plenty of dung—enough dried dung to power a bonfire—but no prairie dog holes, no clay, and no plant Hannah wanted to test for edibility. There’d be more growing along the stream.

  When they crested that last rise before the river, they could see Rex, Zach, and Bob at stream’s edge. Jodi waved both hands overhead. Zach waved back. Jodi’s pace sped and she drew ahead of Dixie and Hannah.

  “Wait up,” Dixie said. “He’ll still be there in five minutes.”

  Jodi, obviously reluctant, waited for them to catch up.

  Hannah was glad to see all three of them safe and well. Bob was sitting barefoot on a flat rock, fishing with Claire’s homemade pole and his straw hat on, an elderly Huck Finn. A campfire at streamside sent out a thin plume of smoke. Rex and Zach were on opposite sides of the stream, downstream of Bob, dragging the net along. The scene looked so idyllic, she wished she had a camera to capture it.

  Instead, she tried to commit it to memory. Wouldn’t it be nice to supplant the horrific memories with ones like this?

  When the three women arrived, there were fish ready to eat, kept warm on rocks by the fire. Hannah downed her first one in about three bites but made herself wait to take a second.

  Bob was excited about the salt. “I think it’s safe to use as is, if you saw animals eating it.”

  “What about the color?”

  “It means there are other minerals in there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They could well be minerals we need. Iron, zinc.”

  “With our all-meat diet, you’d think we’d get plenty of iron,” Hannah said.

  “Probably,” Bob said. “Salt. Good job!”

  “Can I salt my second fish then?”

  “Sure,” said Bob. “You’ll want to crush it first.”

  “I’ll get one of the bowls. I’ll crush some with a rock,” Dixie said, and ran off to find their gear.

  “Find anything else good?” Bob asked.

  “Just the salt.”

  Jodi said, breaking off her reunion with Zach, “The herd.”

  Hannah had forgotten. “And several hundred oreodonts. So dinner tomorrow, if they’re still there. But no better home site than here, and no clay.”

  “Someone will find both,” Bob said. “It’s not like looking for gold.”

  Rex said, “I never thought about it, but all the gold in the world is untouched right now. And all the silver. Uranium. Iron. Copper.”

  “Oil,” said Bob.

  “Yeah. If we could bring it all with us, we’d be rich,” Rex said.

  “Not sure how we’d carry hundreds of gallons of crude oil, even if we found it spilling out of the ground,” said Bob.

  “I know. It makes more sense to carry another bowl forward, or a tool, or something that will help us survive,” Rex said. “I was just dreaming.”

  “If you find a chunk of pure gold lying on the ground, I certainly won’t stop you from pocketing it,” Bob said. “Oh, a bite!” He yanked his fishing line, and a shimmering fish flew out of the water and landed right in Hannah’s lap.

  She laughed, even as Bob apologized for his aim. “No prob,” she said. “Let me get a knife out and clean it.”

  “Use mine,” Bob said, handing over the half-moon of rock.

  Hannah dispatched the fish quickly, cleaned it, and took it to the fire. She pulled a rock out from the fire with a forked stick and laid the fish meat-side down on its hot surface.

  It was another hour before everyone had eaten their share. There were nine good-sized fish left for the others, and Hannah had put together a stew with fish heads and bones and the few tiny fish they had caught in the net. She had spotted some wild onions along the stream and was in the process of testing them on herself, though she was pretty sure from the odor that they were in the onion family and safe.

  She checked out the debris huts. The guys had built four, and the ground in them looked a little bare, so she asked Dixie to help her pull grass to make them warmer.

  “I was enjoying resting.”

  “I know. I’m tired too, but I’d rather work a little more right now than freeze my butt off tonight or feel roots pressing into my hipbone.”

  That convinced Dixie. They used the travois, as it wasn’t needed to haul Bob right now, and made short work of gathering a big pile of grass for every one of the shelters. “Let’s start with yours,” Hannah said, wanting to give the girl a reward for her cooperation.

  Woman. The young woman. She was still battling her urge to think of them as kids.

  The other exploring team came back as they were working. She and Dixie went to hear their news.

  “I think something was sleeping there. A bunch of animals,” Ted was saying, as they walked up.

  Claire and Nari were seated, eating fish.

  Hannah checked the stew, took out the cooled rocks, and added more hot ones.
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  “This fish tastes so good!” Claire said.

  Zach said, “It’s the salt.”

  Claire’s eyes widened. “You guys found salt?”

  “Plenty of it too,” said Dixie.

  “This is great.”

  Ted left off talking and tried the salted fish. “It tastes weird after so long without. But good.”

  Claire grabbed a second fish and made quick work of it, and then she took over finishing their report on what they had found while Ted ate. “No clay yet. But we did find a stand of pine trees. And a few pine nuts were left.” She dug in her basket-pack and pulled out a handful.

  “All we need is basil, and I can make pesto,” said Hannah.

  Nari said, “Don’t you need olive oil too?”

  “You’re right, I forgot,” Hannah said. “But a pine nut-herb crust on fish might be really good.”

  Zach said, “I’m happy with any food, plain food. I don’t need herbs or anything.”

  Jodi elbowed him. “So I can have your share of the salt?”

  “No, I like the salt,” he said. “I’m no different than any other animal.”

  Jodi grinned at him.

  Claire cleared her throat. “I wanted to remind everyone, we said we’d revisit the leadership question about now.”

  Zach said, “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. O’Brien said that you should be able to vote someone else in if you want, once we were settled here. Or that I could quit if I wanted.”

  Jodi, wide-eyed, said, “You want to quit?”

  “No, but if you don’t want me—”

  “We want you!” Jodi said. She looked around. “I mean, I do. Zach?”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Me too.”

  Hannah noticed Dixie didn’t say anything, but enough of them reassured Claire that she was still their choice that the topic was dropped. Hannah was relieved.

  Just before dusk, animals began to congregate at the river again to drink. Nari and Dixie both moved into the debris huts. The rest of them all quieted down, sat still and watched.

  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.