by Eddie Patin
He wanted to pull his gun, but there was no time. Instead, Jason dodged to one side, bringing his cane up, and he found himself taking it with both hands and jabbing the primitive in its naked, scaly chest as if he was thrusting with a fighting staff.
As the cane’s tip punched into the savage’s breastbone, the creature let out a wet sound and crumpled to the ground, dropping the axe. In that instant, Jason noted that the other cannibal had only bluffed, and was now backpedaling, holding its club in front of it and sidestepping around the melee toward the tunnel leading outside.
"Get out!" Jason bellowed, trying to make himself as big as possible.
As the second cannibal scrambled for the exit, Jason felt the one on the ground seize his ankle with one strong and wiry hand from the floor. He looked down to see the creature scowling back up at him, pulling itself closer to ... bite his leg?!
Jason’s eyes darted around in anger for a moment, then he spotted the dropped stone axe. Reaching down quickly, Jason snatched up the heavy tool, raised it high with a growl of his own, then smashed the savage’s skull in with a mighty blow.
The creature's fingers spasmed against Jason’s ankle then went slack
Jason stepped back, his heart hammering in his head.
The other cannibal was gone, and Jason was suddenly filled with stark panic.
He’ll bring more! he thought, wide-eyed.
Dropping the axe and his cane, putting his flashlight in his mouth, Jason bent down to grab the dead and twitching cannibal by its wrists, then heaved to drag it out of his cave. The raptor cuts in his shoulder stung a little as he pulled, and Jason’s knee cried out in agony, making him groan. He had several more aches and pains now and could feel places where he was jabbed by bones when he fell out of the portal into the wyvern’s cave earlier. But despite the pain and a growing fear that sat like a lump of lead in his stomach, Jason pulled the body to the hillside outside the cave. Then, he retrieved his cane and dashed out into the immediate area to collect some wood.
After a few terrifying minutes of dread, feeling like raptors or cannibals would ambush him from the darkness at any moment, Jason stacked up some firewood and dropped his ass down to the dirt at the cave’s entrance, immediately fishing out his cigarette lighter and building a fire.
The lighter’s flame was low.
"Fucking great..." he muttered. He was going to run out of fire and then what?! Steal fire from the cannibals? Make offerings to the great and powerful wyvern?
As the fire caught, Jason blew steadily and gently into it, growing the flames. When his heartbeat and breathing calmed, images of his aged parents started drifting through his head again. He felt tears welling up in his eyes.
Why'd I come back here? he thought. Why?
Where was his home world? Why couldn’t he get home? He could get to a parallel world where he and his parents never crashed in British Columbia. He somehow found his way to a reality where Mom and Dad were never killed and Jason was never crippled; a place where he went on to be a successful person with a good life that consisted of more than just dead-end jobs, desperation for friendship, and video games. But he couldn’t find his way home?
If he was cycling through lots and lots of alternative Earths like that, how would he ever get home? What was the trick? Some sort of visualization? Or a mental muscle that he didn’t realize he could flex yet?
Jason’s stomach twisted in furious hunger and he groaned in pain.
How long had it been since he’d eaten? A week?
He forgot about his nasty clothing and his plans to scour his body for more bugs. After the run and the battle, he didn't feel itchy anymore.
Now, he only felt hungry. Desperately so.
As the fire grew and became hot in his face, Jason stared across the flames at the limp body of the reptilian cannibal. He thought about the stone axe back in the cave and his eyes drifted over the creature’s limbs, hips, and shoulders. A horrible thought slithered into his head...
Could he eat this primitive?
Fear boiled up inside.
Would it be like cannibalism to eat it—like what they did to each other?
They’re not human, Jason thought. It doesn't count.
"But they’re intelligent," he said.
Not really.
"Still technically intelligent. They use tools. They have fire..."
No, they steal fire, he thought. Would it be cannibalism to kill and eat a Neanderthal, or a human that’s much closer to an ape?
"I guess not," he said with a sigh.
Jason’s stomach bubbled and cramped so badly that he clutched at it. Something about eating the creature felt weird and wrong, and Jason eventually figured that he’d wait until the morning. Then, he'd try to kill a raptor or something using spider pieces for bait. Maybe he could use the cannibal for bait...
You’ve got to go back to the wyvern’s cave in the morning, he thought. Got to get home. Try again...
"No time for hunting?"
Not really.
It wasn’t long before Jason was back on his feet and in the cave, picking up the stone axe. The tool was crude and heavy, but would probably work pretty well for cutting down smaller trees with its knapped and chipped edge. Moments later, he was standing over the dead cannibal with the axe in his right hand, looking closely at the creature’s knees, then its elbows, then its shoulders...
It wasn't human, but it was a humanoid.
It would sure feel like eating a human...
You ... are ... starving.
Jason reached down and pulled the body onto its side. He stretched its right arm out in front of it, puckering the muscle of its shoulder. Then he touched the crude blade of the axe to the flesh of the joint, feeling its weight bounce on the strange skin.
"Oh, God help me..." he said, raising the axe into the air.
Screw it, he thought.
Cutting down, being careful to hit his mark, Jason chomped into the shoulder with the stone axe. He felt the bone crunch under the blade. A moment later, dark blood pooled around the strike, seeping down the skin to be drank up by the dirt and gravel. Jason expected a spurt or two, but then he realized that the heart wasn’t pumping anymore. He raised the axe and smashed into the joint again with a sickening sound, severing through the structure of the shoulder but leaving the arm still attached by soft bits; whatever muscle fibers remained intact, as well as ligaments, veins, and the skin under the arm. Jason stretched the arm out further, stepping on the bicep, then struck twice more to finish cutting the soft and connective tissues. He tried not to look at the ragged shoulder joint or the broken, pale white shards of bone that poked out of the bleeding meat.
He looked away, taking a big breath of the night air. Then Jason picked up the arm and headed back to the fire.
The creature’s blood stank. It smelled ... acrid or something.
Sitting in the dirt at the entrance to the tunnel again, Jason set the arm carefully into the fire and took several long drags of water from his bite valve. He turned off his flashlight and put it away into his pack, realizing with regret that it had been on ever since he encountered the cannibals.
He couldn’t believe that he made it to that world with his parents and didn’t manage to eat anything. He hardly had a drink of water—just what he drank from his hands in the bathroom. He really wished that he could have had that warm tea...
"No tea," he said. "No batteries."
The man passed the time by dealing with the boiling water as the arm cooked. He retreated into the cave for a few minutes to take off his gear and clothes, then shook it all out to make sure no bugs were still around. After getting dressed and gear up again, he walked back outside and took his coffee mug off of the fire. It had been boiling for long enough. He spent a few minutes stirring the cup with his knife and blowing on the water to cool it off. After that, Jason filtered the water through his hat, and added it to his CamelBak bladder.
Filling his coffee cup again from one tu
rtle shell full of rainwater, Jason contemplated for a moment whether or not the rainwater here was already safe to drink. Uncertain and not wanting to experiment with his guts, he set it to boil.
The cannibal's arm was starting to smell like cooking meat tinged with a dark and crisp odor that bothered Jason’s nose. He was vaguely reminded of the smell of burning electronics.
Eventually, he took the disembodied hand—still cool, left out of the flames—in a morbid handshake, and pulled the smoldering arm onto a big, flat rock.
The smell made Jason’s stomach crazy with hunger.
Using his pocketknife and a stick for poking, Jason sliced through the skin of the upper arm, which was stiff and crinkly, and cut off a long strip of triceps that was still smoking. He stuck it on the end of his knife and blew on it to cool the meat.
Jason smelled it. It smelled like cooked meat, but something was ... off.
Once the slice of arm was cool enough not to burn the shit out of his mouth, Jason took a small, exploratory nibble from one end...
The texture was like meat, and it seemed okay at first, but in the next instant, Jason’s mouth was filled with a terrible bitter and acidic taste that made him think of horseradish and fermented orange juice.
"Oh my—what the hell is that?!" he muttered, immediately going for the water at his shoulder. Jason took a long sip, swishing his mouth, trying to make the nasty flavor go away.
Eventually, Jason worked himself up to try another taste, and the second bite seemed even worse.
So much for that idea.
Is the entire body like this? Jason wondered, spitting the tiny chunk of meat out onto the ground. It was so bitter; so acrid...
He smelled the meat, and the scent of roast flesh made Jason’s stomach insane with desire. He could detect that same strange and overpowering bitterness just behind the familiar fragrance of barbeque all over the section of arm that he'd cooked.
It wasn’t edible. Not really. Jason was desperate to just make himself eat it even though the meat was so foul, but the thought of it made him wretch. There was no way he could power through that weird, bitter taste. The cannibal tasted damned disgusting.
"It’s something not normally from Earth," Jason muttered to himself, flicking the strip of meat into the dirt off of his knife.
With a chest full of sadness and a stomach full of pain, Jason stoked the fire, processed his boiling mug, and continued preparing as much clean water as he could. He had to fill his pack. Tomorrow would be another try at the portal...
After painful dreams of eating all sorts of weird things that he thankfully couldn’t remember after waking, Jason stood and stretched in the morning. His pack's water bladder was full and he had taken the time before bed to brush at his filthy, stinky clothes with a rough rock to remove as much of the gunk from the rotten log as possible.
When Jason emerged into the pale light of morning, he sat next to his embers for a time, watching the world get moving. Pterosaurs and other flying creatures circled the sky and soared past him from time to time. Jason wasn’t sure if the smaller ones were actually birds or if they were some sort of tiny bird-like dinosaurs that just looked a lot like birds.
He tried to think of when official birds—according to modern times—had come around, but he really had no idea.
The body of the cannibal was still there, lying on its side in the dirt a dozen feet down the hill, missing an arm. The raptors did not eat it in the night.
"I guess they don’t like them either," Jason said to himself.
Down the hill from his cave, Jason saw one of the smaller, egg-stealer ostrich dinosaurs moving like a pale and spotted ghost through the woods. It was probably headed down to steal another egg or two. Just after Jason had spotted the thieving dinosaur—which stood about a head taller than Jason was himself—it was gone again.
After checking to make sure that all of his gear was accounted for and nice and tight, Jason retreated back into the cave for a moment to hide the stone axe. He wanted to keep it. If he managed to find his way through the portal again to another world that wasn’t his home, if he ended up back in this prehistoric world once again, it would be good if the axe was still where he left it. If cannibals returned to his spider cave, Jason didn’t want them to just take it. After covering the stone axe with rocks and the carcass of one of the larger dead spiders, Jason stepped out into the sun again and started heading down to the river.
He hadn’t seen the wyvern yet, and hoped that he would spot it leaving its cave. If the monster didn't show itself by the time Jason reached the area, he didn't know what he'd do...
Wait outside or take the risk?
After a careful descent and quickly crossing the creek—moving fast to avoid what looked like crocodile eyes drifting his way from upstream—Jason quietly moved through the woods toward the valley.
By now, the man had become accustomed to keeping low near the underbrush. When he suddenly heard the distant, echoing howl of a cannibal, he ducked down into a thicket of ferns just before he the quick, sprinting steps sounded of multiple primitives running his way. Pulling his Glock—just in case—Jason spotted five of the cannibals running through the woods to the south. They weren’t targeting him. It seemed that he’d gone unnoticed. Instead, the reptile-men moved together in a loose cluster through the bushes around him, passing him. They sprinted away, two of them carrying stone weapons, running through the trees and underbrush like a pack of wild dogs, determined and grunting as they went.
When the cannibals were gone, Jason holstered his pistol and continued through the forest, making his way toward the growing sunshine of the valley ahead.
How many rounds left? he wondered. Seven?
"Almost none," he said quietly, sneaking through some fat, green leaves.
At the edge of the valley, Jason looked for the mini-rexes. He couldn’t see them at first, but then he spotted the trio of carnivores roaming around a herd of ceratopsians far to the south. Jason dashed across the valley through the tall grass and cattails until stopping in some thick bushes twenty yards down the valley from the sacrificial slab. He felt his heartbeat quicken and his blood grow hot as he drew in close to the wyvern’s cave. Several cannibals were milling around down there.
There was no sign of the wyvern and no fresh kill on the slab.
Already gone? he thought, crouching low to watch for a while. Jason’s knee complained, but it wasn’t as bad today. Normally, whenever he tried to squat, he felt a stabbing pain just above his kneecap. He didn't know why it wasn't agonizing like usual, but at any rate, he welcomed the relief.
Cannibals howled and vocalized, dashing and leaping around the big, stone slab down the slope from the wyvern’s cave. Several carried in more sticks, stacking the wood around the rock formation so that they'd catch on fire whenever the wyvern attacked whatever offering they intended to bring next. Jason noted—being closer—that some sticks were broken, but others were clearly chopped and cut off of trees by the cannibals’ tools.
Did they do this every day? Jason wondered. What did they do with all of that fire? Were they just letting the flames die? It shouldn’t take much intelligence to realize that they should tend their fires to keep them going ... forever, even. Jason figured that if he was stuck on a desert island, if he got a fire going, he’d keep it burning all the time.
Then, he realized with a smirk, that he hadn’t done any such thing while here.
Once his cigarette lighter would inevitably run out of juice, he would have to start maintaining his fire constantly. Else, he’d have to steal it—not something that Jason wanted to do.
He wanted to stay away from the cannibals—not compete with them.
With any luck though, he’d be back home today.
There were fierce sounds from down the valley, and Jason watched as the three mini-rexes killed one of the ceratopsians in a brutal display. The fight was far away, but seeing the medium-sized tyrannosaurs work on the lumbering herbivore with their
great jaws and powerful hind claws chilled Jason’s spine.
After a while, Jason was really starting to think that the wyvern was already gone.
He waited a few minutes more, then started to stand from where he squatted in the bush. Just like before, he’d have to take the cannibals by surprise, running through them before they realized that he was there. They probably wouldn’t chase him into the wyvern’s cave; they were probably terrified of—
A sudden bestial shriek from the cave up ahead turned Jason’s guts to water.
The wyvern was goddamned horrifying. He dropped down into the bush again and watched as the monster emerged from the cavern’s mouth, crawling out on the clawed knuckles of its big wings, its neck curved like a snake’s. Its head weaved back and forth as it slithered forth from the darkness scanning around the valley. Sunlight glimmered on the nest of spikes and spines around its long, dragon-like face. Jason caught a quick glimpse of the back of its neck. Those spikes ran down from the back from its head past its wings, no-doubt leading all the way down to the venomous tip of the beast's tail.
The cannibals howled and screeched in response to their emerging fire god, ramping up the energy of their sprinting back and forth and leaping around the sacrificial slab.
The wyvern gave a cursory and apathetic glance down at the primitives and the rock formation—no doubt checking for food—then it crawled the rest of the way out of the tunnel, spread its wings with a heavy snap, and leapt into the air, beating against gravity with powerful, creaky bursts. The monster became airborne and pulled its clawed feet in close to its armored belly, then took off, lazily pulling itself higher and higher, heading away to the south...
Jason watched with awe until the creature was good and gone.
Then, standing from the bush with a painful pop of his right knee, Jason gripped his cane, took a deep breath, and broke into a run through the ranks of cannibals up the slope toward the wyvern’s cave...
Chapter 28
"Come on!" Jason exclaimed, shoving his fist with the folded cash at the air again.
