by Lou Cadle
Hannah said, “I can’t stand it. I’m with you, Dixie, let’s go look. Do you have a cell phone?”
“Yeah, why?”
“To take a picture for M.J.”
“Okay. Sure.” She took off her pack and dug into it as she walked.
Hannah turned to Rex and Jodi. “Just stand behind the tree that Ted is in, out of sight, if you want. Or come with us.”
Jodi elected to stay, and Rex trotted to catch up.
They had to walk up a short rise, and then the scene was before them. She crouched down to watch and motioned Dixie, Claire and Rex to do the same.
It was just as Ted had said. A pack of smaller animals was circling the kill. The saber tooth raised its head and snarled. She couldn’t hear it from here, but she knew it had to be making sounds.
The smaller animals encircled the saber tooth, who backed in a circle, trying to keep them all within sight. The smaller animals didn’t look like anything she knew from the modern world. They might be dogs, or another one of those creodonts M.J. had talked about, or they could be something entirely unknown in the fossil record. They were pack hunters, obviously, with an agenda.
As the saber tooth lunged at the one, another one came in from its back side, darting toward the kill. The saber tooth wheeled and lunged at the second one. This time, her attack made it leave its kill by ten feet, and when the next little animal darted in, it got right up to the dead oreodont calf and snatched at it. It had not drug it so much as an inch when the saber tooth turned and ran at it.
Yipping like a terrier, it darted back.
Again, the saber tooth stood over its kill. It opened its mouth and this time Hannah could hear its protest—a bestial scream. She wondered if they could hear it all the way back at the stockade. Possibly. It was loud.
And it made the hairs on her neck rise.
The hunting pack continued to dog the saber tooth, and for an instant, her heart went out to the animal who had done the work of killing. Hannah did not think it was going to be able to defend the meat from so many thieves. As the game of teasing, attack, and retreat continued, she thought it would inevitably lose. Even though these other animals were less than half the mass of the saber tooth, there were more of them. And they were persistent.
“Uh, guys?” she said. “I’m getting an idea.”
“What?” asked Ted, from up in the tree.
“Why can’t we do that?”
Dixie said, “Because we don’t have sharp teeth and claws?”
“Maybe when the saber tooth is driven away, we can drive the pack away.”
“With what?” Dixie sounded interested now.
“Rocks. And screaming. Look, there are six of us, and only five of them.” She turned back and looked at the base of the tree, where Jodi was peeking out. “Do you think you can do it, Jodi?”
“If you’re all with me, I guess,” she said, sounding frightened.
“I’m scared, too. But we need meat again. We need to eat.”
“The calf isn’t as big as the animal we had,” said Ted. “Enough for one meal, but no more.”
The animals continued to dog the saber tooth. Indeed, they might be dogs. Dixie had taken a couple of shots of the fight and put her phone away. The kill had been dragged a few feet away from its original position. One of the little animals nipped at the saber tooth’s flank, and Hannah thought it might have actually bitten the bigger animal.
Hannah knew her plan was a risk. But what about this way of living was not? “Everybody, we need rocks. All you can carry. All you can fit in your pockets. Let’s go get them.”
Ted swung down from the tree with the agility of a chimpanzee and all six of them went to the stream to pick up rocks. Hannah loaded her backpack and her pockets, and carried several in her right hand. “Everybody ready?”
“I can’t carry many,” Dixie said.
“Fill your pack.”
She grimaced. “I’ll probably break my mirror with them.” But she loaded up her pack.
Hannah led them back to the oak tree, and up the rise. By the time they got there, the saber tooth had been driven several feet away. It looked on mournfully—or maybe that was projection on her part—as the others tore apart its kill. Every second they wasted, more of the calf would be eaten. “Let’s go!” Hannah said.
As they ran over the grass, Ted said, “I’ll drive off the saber tooth.” Rex split off with him. Hannah prayed she wasn’t sending them to their death. She began to scream like a banshee, and the girls joined her.
The feeding animals looked up and snarled at their approach. Hannah stopped and hurled a rock. It hit one of the animals on the shoulder.
“Bull’s eye!” shouted Jodi, panting, bringing up the rear. The girls let loose with their first rocks, and one other animal was hit. One rock fell short, and the other landed between two animals and made them back away.
Hannah let her rocks fly as quickly as she could, then unloaded one pocket and let loose another barrage. The girls were getting more accurate with every throw. Jodi’s aim was the worst, but they kept advancing, step by step.
Rex shouted in triumph, “It’s running away!”
Ted said, “I’ll make sure it keeps running. You go help them.”
“No,” shouted Hannah. “You two stick together.”
The pack animals had backed away from the kill, leaving bloody strings of intestines trailing out from it. A thought spun through Hannah’s head: good thing Nari wasn’t here. And then all thoughts flew as she pressed their attack, becoming more like an animal herself, no thought, just pure aggression. The animals continued to back away, snarling their unhappiness, but when one turned and ran, Hannah’s heart lifted in triumph.
“Whoo!” shouted Dixie and jumped in the air. That startled the animals more, and soon the girls were all jumping up and down, a crazy, screaming sort of dance, like something out of an avant-garde dance troupe’s experimental repertoire.
One by one, the pack animals turned tail and ran.
The girls and she approached the carcass. It was rent with tooth and claw marks.
Claire, panting, said, “The intestines are punctured. It’ll taint the meat.”
“Right,” Hannah said, pulling out her knife. “I’ll do the best I can cleaning it up.”
Claire said, “Give me your pack. The water is in it.”
“Yeah, it’s a full gallon.”
“You cut, I’ll wash.”
Hannah glanced up and saw four sets of eyes watching. “All of you, form a box around Claire and me. Everybody look out. Make sure none of them are coming back. Especially that saber tooth.”
They all complied, and Jodi said, “It was smaller than the one that hurt me.” She sounded braver now. Hannah wondered if it hadn’t done her good to be the aggressor rather than the victim today.
Hannah focused on gutting the animal and rinsing away digestive juices and fecal matter. Enough of her brain power was left to feel guilty for risking all their lives like this. It was spontaneous, it was disorganized, and they had been lucky. But as a strategy, it wasn’t a terrible idea. With all twelve of them, they could drive off most predators. Maybe not those two big Hyaenodons, but smaller ones.
They’d survive by scavenging. By hunting, and scavenging, and gathering, and their wits.
For the first time, she felt real optimism about their chances for survival here.
Chapter 35
Hannah finished cleaning the meat at the river. It looked clean. She hoped it wasn’t going to hurt them to eat, with the contact with fecal matter. She wondered aloud when E. coli had evolved.
“I think maybe,” said Claire, sounding unsure. “You should cook it quick, now. What you don’t want is any colonies of bacteria getting a chance to get going.”
Hannah looked at her. “You’re really smart.” She looked around. “You’re all smart, and that’s going to save our lives. And brave.”
“I’m not brave,” said Rex.
“Yo
u jumped right in and drove off the saber tooth,” she reminded him. “That’s plenty brave.”
“I was scared,” said Jodi.
“But you did it.”
“I did it,” she said, and gave Hannah a sweet smile.
“Okay. So Claire is right, and I’m going to go right back to the fire. I need to split us up. Who wants to come with me? Who wants to go back to the group?”
Ted said, “What will we do back there? It isn’t even noon.”
Hannah reconsidered. She didn’t want to send three of them on downstream alone. Not with a hungry saber tooth and animal pack roaming around. Not to mention the two Hyaenodons. “Maybe we should all go back to the cave together and cook the meat.”
“What will we do, though? You wanted to explore today, didn’t you?”
“But mostly in the service of finding more meat. Now we have meat. We need to get it roasting, and if there’s time, we can walk back out there.”
“We said we’d meet the others back at the stockade,” Jodi said.
“Darn it, we did.” She sighed. The exploration of the stream further down its course would have to wait until tomorrow. But they did have meat for tonight. That meant, if they had to eat nothing but grass and onions tomorrow, they could survive one day of that. “Cave first—and cook the meat. And then we’ll go back to the stockade.”
Back at the fire, while Hannah cooked, the kids began again to build up the grass beds. They had smashed down during the night, and everyone agreed it would take a lot more grass than they had started with that first night to make sleeping on the rock comfortable.
Rex said, “I wish the grass didn’t poke me so much is all.”
“We need pillowcases,” Jodi said. “Or big sheets to cover it with. That’d feel better.”
If Hannah had a stack of sheets, she’d want them for bandages. But she let the kids talk among themselves, wishing for things from the civilized world. She was relieved to hear them talk not about Wiis or cars, but about practical, simple things. Pillowcases. A knife and fork. A bottle of salad dressing.
Of course, a knife and fork and pillowcase might as well be a Lamborghini or spaceship. Both were impossibly far away.
Chapter 36
Over the next few days, they managed to explore the river for five miles downstream. The fishing net was done, so they set it in the river. They had no chance to catch or scavenge big game, but three of the kids had brought down animals with rocks now, either squirrels or birds. And they had found a tunnel—by Nari falling into a hole and twisting her ankle—that had a big rodent in it, like a marmot or nutria. By waiting patiently, they discovered two other exits, and then one afternoon, six of them waited, two by each exit, staying quiet and still, and they managed to kill it with a rock.
Not the best-tasting meat, but it kept them alive another day.
One more plant had been added to the menu. Five others had been discarded. One left a welt on Zach’s lip, and Hannah kept a close eye on him all that day to make sure he didn’t show any worse symptoms.
Unfortunately, the fishing net yielded nothing. They took apart the cordage and worked at making traps with it instead. Again, Claire proved herself useful, showing them a simple loop trap for rabbits that could be used in the brush.
Another option they discussed were pit traps, but to work, the pits would have to be deep. Without a shovel, it would take too long to build them.
Nari said, “What about those traps I made for birds that never worked. A stick holding up a box?”
Garreth said, “But you’re a vegetarian.”
“I didn’t want to eat them. Just catch them. Maybe tame them. I was just a kid.”
Bob snapped his finger. “Deadfall traps, that’s what they’re called.” He threw an apologetic look at Nari. “Same concept, but you balance a heavy rock on a stick, so the animal is killed when they knock the stick down.”
That sounded good. It sounded easy. It sounded like few calories expended for a lot of potential calorie reward.
And so began a fortnight of learning how to survive, with traps, and scavenging, and driving off the smallest predators from their kills and stealing the meat. They got by. Everyone had bouts of homesickness, but everyone pitched in and worked, even M.J., though he wasn’t anything like his old self.
Hannah wondered if alcohol had been making him a more pleasant person all along. A terrible thought, but she couldn’t keep herself from thinking it.
Every day, at least twice, they checked the spot where the timegate had spilled them into the Oligocene. It showed no signs of ever having been there. That was one problem.
The other problem was the saber tooth.
Chapter 37
At first, she hadn’t been worried. The lookouts had spotted it about a week ago, and now for two days in a row. It was hundreds of yards away, and it seemed to be following the big oreodont herd.
But the second day, Nari, the lookout for the north side of the stream, called her over. “I think it’s staring at me.”
When she saw how far away it was, Hannah was ready to dismiss the girl’s worry as paranoia. But as she watched, she could swear that the predator looked right at her. It was sitting on a rock, making no effort at all to hide in the grass.
She couldn’t see the color of its eyes. She hoped she never got close enough to know them. But its head was turned this way and she knew, with her own animal sense, that it was looking back at her. She thought it might be the one that had killed the small oreodont, the one they’d eventually stolen from the pack scavengers.
It yawned, and though she couldn’t see its eyes from here, she could certainly see the teeth. The top canine teeth were long sabers, curving to well below the chin. Even with its mouth wide open in the yawn, they barely reached the level of the lower lip.
That’s because they aren’t chewing teeth. They’re killing teeth. Weapons.
She realized that Nari had said her name twice. “Sorry,” she said. “I was almost hypnotized by it.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Maybe we should move. You come back with me, and I’ll get everybody to wrap up the work.” They were clearing traps and re-setting them, in every patch of trees along a three-mile stretch of the stream.
“You’re afraid of it, too.”
“We’d be foolish not to be. M.J. says the Hyaenodons are probably the apex predators, and of course he knows better than me. But that saber tooth? It scares me.”
“It scares me, too. I thought I was the only one.”
“It’s not weak to be frightened,” Hannah told her. “It’s smart. It’ll keep you alert and alive.”
She told everyone in the work crew that she was worried they had a stalker, and it was time to move on.
“I’m not done setting all the snares,” said Claire.
“Whatever you have done is okay. We’ll pass this stand of trees again on our way back and set the rest.”
When they stopped at the next grove of trees, she set herself on sentry duty to the north. But she looked hard and long, and saw no more sign of the nimravid. Maybe it had found other game. Or maybe it hadn’t been watching them at all.
But she didn’t think they were that lucky. It had its eye on them.
She’d have to keep her eye on it, too.
*
She tried to rotate everyone’s assignments, so that everyone learned every survival skill. She even carved out some time to conduct another orienteering class, with Bob’s help. At the end, Rex raised his hand. “I don’t have the regular stars,” he said. “But we’re rotating on an axis, still. I can make a star chart and find a new north star. If you think that would help.”
“It’s quite a talent,” she said. “And let me think about it. So far, we’re not going out at night.” When he looked disappointed, she added, “But you’re right. If we do go out at night, some way of navigating is even more important, because if there’s no moon, or if it’s cloudy, we can’t look out and recogn
ize a stand of trees or the cave entrance.”
By now, they’d built a stockade fence at the cave’s entrance, too. It was easy enough for them to slip around on one side, but they’d bothered to dig post holes and had used sapling trunks instead of brittle limbs. A big animal like the Hyaenodon might be able to push it down, but not easily. And they’d hear the breakin in progress.
A pack of those little dogs—for M.J. had identified Dixie’s photo of the small herd of meat-stealing animals as borophagines, or early dogs—could sneak in past the individual saplings that made up the stockade. Maybe one day, they’d get around to setting more fence posts, but there was a lot to do already.
The morning after the orienteering session, she was out with a small group gathering reeds from a swampy patch of land nearly four miles from the cave, downstream. They were trying to teach themselves basket weaving. So far, they hadn’t come close to creating a waterproof basket, but they had made progress enough she believed it was possible. Trial and error would get them there, eventually. The wider the strips of material they worked with, the easier that would be—that much, at least, was obvious.
It was only three of them: Nari again, and Zach, and her. They rotated who was lookout while the other two pulled reeds.
It was on her watch that the saber tooth appeared again.
Chapter 38
She knew it was the same one. It had a pair of white light spots over its eyes, and a ring tail, and the same long, curved teeth. But its appearance wasn’t how she knew it was the same one.
She just knew.
It was nearer this time, and coming closer. “Uh, guys?” she said.
Zach said, “What?”
“Come up here and stand by me, would you?” She thought it would be less likely to attack if it saw three of them.
There must have been something in her voice, for the two of them scrambled quickly over to where she was.
She pointed. The saber tooth stopped where it was, its tail twitching.
“Is that the same one?” Nari said.
