by Lou Cadle
It staggered her, but she didn’t go down. Nari kicked with her bleeding leg at another dog coming in for her. Jodi was trying to get to Nari’s side, but now two dogs had taken on the job of herding her away.
Jodi was swinging wildly at them, but they kept just far enough away. They’d learned the reach of her club in mere seconds.
The dog in front of Hannah dashed back toward Nari, and Hannah ran after it.
The dog Nari was kicking opened its mouth and met her kick. It closed its jaws on her shin and planted its forelegs, then yanked.
Nari went down, hitting hard on her butt. With her good leg, she kicked at the dog’s face.
It didn’t let go.
Hannah felt teeth touch the back of her pants but she kept moving, raising the spear and driving it toward the flank of the dog that had Nari. She felt the spear tip’s slight hesitation at the skin, and then it slid in. The dog let go.
But by this time, some of the dogs that had been hanging back ran in. Nari was down, and that was their signal: they all closed in for the kill.
“Get up!” Hannah screamed. She tried to yank her spear back out, but it caught, and then the dog bit at it and it cracked. Hannah pulled at the end and was left with a stick no longer than a foot. She reached for Nari’s arm, which she could see, but the girl couldn’t see her.
The snarling and growling of the attack was terrible, and for Nari it must be unbearable. They were blocking her from doing anything but kicking blindly.
Hannah reached the melee and smacked her stick down on the nose of the nearest dog. It didn’t care. She did it again, and again. A crack sounded from behind her, and Jodi made a satisfied sound, and then Jodi was there too, battering at the dogs covering Nari.
Hannah dropped the useless bit of spear and reached in. She found a furred limb and yanked at it. This pulled a dog off Nari, but the dog turned and bit at her, and Hannah let go involuntarily.
Nari was curled into a ball, neither moving nor making sound. Hannah saw blood, and then another dog moved and covered Nari from her sight.
She was going to lose her. Like M.J. and Garreth. Despair froze Hannah for a moment.
And then Ted and Dixie were there, with spears, stabbing, and Hannah had never been so relieved to see reinforcements in her life.
Ted hauled back and kicked a dog hard enough in its ribs that they all heard the crack of bone breaking. Then he drove his spear into the dog’s side.
It died without a whimper.
Hannah lunged for another dog, meaning to pull one more set of teeth off Nari, but before she could, the dogs, as one, left their prey. They ran off a few dozen yards. Blood was on the muzzles of a few. One limped. And two dogs lay unmoving, the one Ted had skewered and the one Jodi had hit.
Nari lay unmoving too. Heedless of her vulnerability to the dogs, Hannah dropped to her knees, fearing the worst. She reached a hand out and touched Nari’s shoulder. Warm. She gently rolled the girl on her back and Nari moaned.
It was a sweet sound. A sound of life.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Nari, can you stand?”
But all she got in response was another moan. Then Nari curled up again, on her side, facing away from Hannah, and Hannah saw the damage, almost all on her back side.
She had been bitten at least a dozen times. Her shirt was bloody around the shoulders. Her pants were in tatters at the bottom.
Ted had placed himself between the dogs and the women. “Is she alive?” he said.
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “Dixie, Ted, is it possible to drive them off?”
“We’ll try,” Ted said. “C’mon, Dixie. Jodi, you stand guard over Hannah and Nari.”
Hannah lifted a bit of torn, bloody shirt and saw where a dog had torn a flap of flesh off Nari’s shoulder. Maybe going for the neck, or for breaking a vertebra, it had succeeded only in tearing out a fist-sized bunch of muscle. The muscle had been mostly detached, but there was enough skin intact that Hannah could sew it closed. It would probably take weeks for the muscle to knit itself up again.
A glance down Nari’s legs told her there was other significant damage. At the back of her knee, there was a bite that Hannah worried had successfully severed a tendon or ligament. If so, that was well beyond Hannah’s ability to treat. She had grown more skilled at sewing up flesh wounds she’d ever wanted to be—but Nari was in bad shape. This was going to take all Hannah’s skill, and then some. The shoulder muscle itself needed to be reattached, but she couldn’t do that, not without dissolving sutures and some way of stopping the bleeding.
“Nari, talk to me. Where does it hurt most?”
“The dogs are backing off,” Jodi said.
Nari said nothing. Hannah did a quick feel around her head, making sure there wasn’t damage there, but she could feel nothing wrong. The worst damage was to her back, the back of both her legs, and one deep bite on her upper arm.
“Nari?” she said. “The dogs are leaving. Did you hear that?”
Still nothing.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Bit.”
Jodi said, “No. Why isn’t she saying anything? Nari?”
Still nothing.
“Maybe she’s freaked out still,” Hannah said, then to Nari, in a gentler voice, “I know it was awful, but you’re going to be okay.” She hoped she wasn’t lying. “Jodi, I need my pack. Is it safe to get it, do you think?”
“I can do it,” Jodi said, and took off across the field to retrieve it.
Hannah made soothing noises to Nari while Jodi was gone. She also kept her eye on Ted, Dixie, and the dogs. Slowly, the dogs were being driven back, keeping a safe distance between themselves and these strange new creatures who had succeeded in killing two of the pack. She glanced over at the dead animals, making sure they were staying down.
She saw a movement from the one Jodi had hit. Its side rose and fell with a shallow breath. “Jodi!” she called.
Jodi came racing back with Hannah’s backpack. “What?”
“You didn’t quite kill that one.”
“Oh,” Jodi said, moving to it. With her club, she started a powerful overhand swing. The skull of the animal cracked loudly. Nari flinched with the sound, and Hannah felt relief that the girl was responsive to something. Jodi kicked the dog. “Definitely dead now,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Here’s your pack.”
The bloody meat was in the main section of her backpack, but the first aid kit was in a smaller zippered compartment. She pulled it out, marking it with bloody fingerprints. “Jodi, could you pour water over my hands before I touch the injuries?”
“Sure.” Jodi leaned her club against the dead dog and got out a bottle of water. “Hold ‘em out.”
A quick wash with water was the best Hannah could do toward following aseptic principles. She had nothing left to sterilize her hands with.
“You going to sew her up?”
“Yeah.” If I can, she did not add aloud.
“Her clothes are done for, I think.”
“I think so too,” Hannah said, and she took out a stone knife and slit Nari’s blouse up the back, peeling it carefully away from the bloody wounds. Nari was still curled up, so she’d wait to do the legs until she could get her to lie flat on her belly. “We still clear from the dogs?”
“Can barely see them. Ted and Dixie are on their way back.”
“Good. You can get your pack, I guess.”
“Right. Funny they didn’t go for the easier meat.”
Yeah, real funny, Hannah thought, looking at the mess of Nari’s back. She had another water bottle in the outer pocket of her pack and opened it, dribbling the water over the wounds. She needed a rag. Damn. The rag that had been Garreth’s shirt was still around Zach’s wrist.
Well, screw it. Hannah took her own shirt off and used it to dab the watered-down blood off Nari’s back, moving gently in case there were bites she hadn’t yet seen beneath the trails of blood.
&nbs
p; “Need help?” Jodi said.
“In a second I will,” Hannah said. She really did not know where to start with the shoulder wound. She finally decided she needed to wrap it first, to try and get everything—ugh—back in there. Get the skin in place, wrap it, try to get the bleeding to slow down while she worked on other wounds, then return to it.
She took her knife and sacrificed her shirt.
“You don’t have a spare shirt,” Jodi said.
“There’s the hide tunic,” Hannah said. “Or I’ll just wander around like this.” She had worn a bra, thankfully, on that day they went fossil-hunting. All of them had, except for Dixie. Though Hannah’s bra, like all of the younger women’s, was loose on her on the tightest hook, it still would serve for modesty purposes.
She bound the shoulder tightly. Nari made noises, but they weren’t anything like words. Just helpless little animal sounds of pain and fear.
Hannah tried to ignore them. She tried to see this not as Nari, not as a friend, not even as a human, but as a torn hide in need of repair.
A smaller bite came next. She handed Nari’s bloody shirt to Jodi and asked her to pull out more threads for sewing. Once she had, Hannah started her stitching.
The needle was so dull she knew it was hurting Nari, but except for one flinch at the beginning, she didn’t react to it. Jodi provided the thread and Hannah kept threading the needle, stitching up one bite after the other.
When she had gotten down to Nari’s waist, she loosened the bandage on the shoulder to see if she could work on the wound.
By this time, Ted was back. “They sure got her there,” he said.
“Yeah. I need another pair of hands.” Jodi knelt down, and Hannah had her hold the bloody shirt pressed to one side of the wound while she began stitching at the edges at the other side.
Ted wandered away to check for danger—or maybe to avoid looking at the surgery, which was ugly. Jodi gagged once when Hannah had to gently pull back the hunk of human meat and line up the muscle fibers so they were all headed in the same direction. Nari’s mewls of pain were hard to take, but Hannah tuned them out.
Finally, she had sewn up the shoulder wound. She still had no confidence it was going to heal right. And she had no idea if it would stay free of infection. But she had done her best, and it was all she could do. What I’d give for a bottle of ampicillin, she thought, and not for the first time. “Have we come across any soap plants?”
“No,” Dixie said. “I’ve tried a couple of waxy ones in water, but neither lathered at all.”
“Thanks for looking,” Hannah said.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, with more confidence than she felt. She took a break, sitting back on her heels.
The three of them stared at Nari, still curled into the fetal position.
“I could use some water,” Hannah said.
Dixie took a bottle out of her pack and handed it over. It had only a few ounces remaining. Hannah drank half of what was left. “Nari, can you drink?”
Nothing.
“Nari, I need to look at your legs. Can you lie on your stomach?”
Nothing.
“Jodi, maybe tug on her legs. Gently. Try to get them straightened out.”
“Okay,” Jodi said. “Nari, it’s just me. I’m going to touch your legs.”
Dixie dropped to her knees, taking Jodi’s place on the other side of Nari. She said. “Hey, Nar. It’s Dixie. We’re all here. Hannah’s helping you. You’re safe. Everything is okay now.”
It was the kindest thing she’d ever seen Dixie do, and then she remembered that Dixie and Nari had been friends once. Or leader and acolyte, perhaps. But when Garreth’s death had driven Nari away, Dixie hadn’t singled the girl out for punishment. And now she was being kind.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, surprised to find herself fighting back tears at the kindness.
“Don’t struggle,” Jodi said to Nari. “Relax, and Hannah will take a look at your legs.”
It took a few minutes of tugging, coaxing, and finally Jodi holding on to Nari’s shoes to keep her legs extended, but Hannah was able to look at the bites on her legs. The dogs hadn’t really dug in, except for the once, at the back of her knee. Trying to lame her. Maybe succeeding. Hannah cut off half of Nari’s slacks—they were shredded anyway—leaving her in ragged shorts.
“I guess I’ll wrap them,” she said. “But I’m running out of bandage material.” The bottoms of the slacks wouldn’t work in this condition.
“Ted,” Dixie called. “We need your shirt.”
Ted trotted over and looked at Nari. “She won’t be able to walk back, will she?”
“No,” Hannah said. Even if Nari could limp along, she was so unresponsive, Hannah didn’t think she would get up and move on her own.
“We need the travois to use as a stretcher.” Ted pulled his shirt off.
“I won’t cut it up,” Hannah said, taking his shirt.
“Do what you have to. I’m going back.”
“Not alone.”
“Yes, alone. I’ll run. I think it’s better if you all stay together, to defend....” He gestured at Nari. “Yourselves,” he finished.
“I hate to see people go off alone.” She knew the dogs were out there. And perhaps other animals equally as dangerous.
“I’ll only be alone in one direction, on the way there. It’s not that far. I’ll bring Rex back with me. Claire too, if she wants to come. And the wheeled travois for Nari.” He raised a hand in farewell and took off.
Hannah used a knife to cut the sleeves off Ted’s shirt at the seams. It could be mended when the bandages came off. With the sleeves, she wrapped the two worst wounds—knee and just above the ankle. Later, she’d stitch them. The smaller wounds she dabbed with pine sap to stop the bleeding.
By the time she was done treating Nari’s legs, Ted was well out of sight. So were the dogs. She left the comfort of Nari to Dixie and stood guard.
Jodi stood facing the opposite direction and, for a time, they said nothing. The oreodonts were out of sight. The river was visible only as a distant line of trees.
Speaking softly, Jodi said, “Did you notice how the dogs quit when they had two of the pack down?”
“They’d had enough, I suppose.”
“No,” said Jodi. “It was more than that, I think. It was like they could count, and two was all they were willing to lose.”
Dixie said, “Maybe they can’t get the job done with fewer than that number left. Five or six or whatever it was.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Maybe we can’t either.”
Hannah was afraid she was right. Every lost person made them more vulnerable. Everyone who was so injured that they couldn’t hunt—Zach, Bob, and now Nari—limited their options for hunting strategies. Every person who couldn’t run from danger or climb out of its way meant two others had to hang back to protect them.
Maybe the wolves knew that about themselves instinctively. Or maybe experience had taught them the lessons the humans were learning now. There was a minimum survivable population number. Hannah worried the humans had slipped below it.
Nari moaned again.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. She felt terrible that she could do nothing for the pain.
Jodi said, “It’s not your fault.”
“I wish we had some drugs.”
“Or M.J.’s flask of booze, even,” Dixie muttered.
To Nari, Hannah said, “We’ll get you home soon. I promise.”
Hannah longed for home too. For the home of the 21st century, its safety from vicious predators, and its medical technologies, but, barring that, for a safe cabin here with stone walls to hide behind. She’d work from dawn to dusk on it tomorrow if Claire allowed.
Chapter 22
“At least you saved the meat,” Zach said. And he immediately blushed and said, “Sorry. Not that Nari getting hurt would be worth a month of meals. I didn’t mean that.”
Jodi touch
ed his arm in understanding or perhaps forgiveness.
Nari had been carried back and Hannah had finished her stitching. Nari was settled into the debris hut, and she had fallen into a restive sleep. She still hadn’t spoken, but Hannah suspected it was because of emotional trauma, not physical. If it was emotional, time might heal it. She wouldn’t panic about Nari’s silence until tomorrow. Even tomorrow, panic wouldn’t help a thing.
Now they were baking the hearts and livers of the oreodonts for supper. They’d set up a roast wrapped in leaves for overnight and would begin to smoke most of the meat as soon as supper was eaten.
Claire said, “Someone—a pair of us—needs to sit up and watch the meat. In case the dogs or something else come after it.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Hannah said.
“No, I want you in with Nari right now. Just in case she needs something. Okay?”
Hannah nodded. “Can I work on the cabin tomorrow? I really want to.”
“We’ll all work on the cabin tomorrow, except for Mr. O’Brien and Zach, who will stay here and tend the fire and smoke the meat. And one other for defense maybe. I don’t know who yet.”
“And Nari?” Dixie said.
“We’ll see how she is in the morning,” Claire said. She shot a questioning look at Hannah.
Hannah shrugged in answer. She had no idea.
They were all hungry, but the liver tasted bad to Hannah. She knew the food was fine. It was what it had cost them that turned the taste to ashes in her mouth.
* * *
It was still dark when Hannah found herself swimming out of a sleep. Why?
“Hannah?”
“Nari,” she said, coming fully awake to a rush of relief. “How are you?”
“I’m sorry,” Nari said. “I screwed up, didn’t I?”
“No, no. Not at all.”
“I should have run faster.” She started to cry.
Hannah nearly put her arms around her but remembered just in time how torn up her back was. She found Nari’s face instead and rested her palm on the upturned cheek for a moment. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. Just bad luck.”
“They hurt me.”
