Hell Pig (Dawn of Mammals Book 3)

by Lou Cadle

  Dixie said, “Like one of those hell pigs couldn’t just bust down a bunch of sticks and leaves where you’re sleeping.”

  Bob said, “Luckily they seem to be diurnal predators.”

  Zach said, “What’s that mean?”

  “Daytime predators. Nocturnal means at night. And there’s a word for only at twilight, too, but I forget it.” He winced as he adjusted his position.

  “Your chest hurt again?” Hannah said.

  “No.”

  “So, kids,” Hannah said, “let’s pile up that grass so Mr. O’Brien can rest easy tonight, all right? That’ll be the last task of the day.”

  She watched their renewed energy as they set to the task. They seemed to hold on to the respect for their teacher, even through all these weeks of living side by side with him. Familiarity was supposed to breed contempt, but with Bob it had not. He had managed to keep himself at a remove from them, still the teacher, even though he ate with them, slept next to them, and the boys had all seen him naked while bathing. It was a testament to the sort of man he was, and to the sort of teacher he must have been. That a teacher, in these times, could engender such a deep and lasting respect was something of a miracle.

  In her times, it would have been too, as her times were only, after all, fifteen years ago. She felt ancient, though, living among the teens, closer to Bob in mental age. A twinge in her back made her stop and rub at it. Make that mental age and physical, both, at least at the end of a day of hard work.

  She’d been overworking Bob. The thought had crossed her mind, far back at the beginning, that he wasn’t young, and she should adjust for that. But then life had gone on, needs had grown, and she had forgotten, treating him no differently than she treated herself or the teenagers.

  She might feel as old as Bob, but in fact she was not. Nor did she know what it felt like to be him. What it was like to be seventeen, she could remember. What it was like to be sixty, she could only guess.

  Her mother would be sixty soon. The thought surprised her. She didn’t think of her mother often. She had learned not to. She pushed the thought out of her mind. Long habit made that easy.

  She was about to take the other three debris-hut dwellers away when Bob said. “Crepuscular!”

  “Bob?” She was a little worried the outburst might be a sign of a stroke.

  “The word for twilight hunters. Diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular.”

  She was relieved. “Avoid crepuscular predators then, and good night, all.”

  *

  The next morning, they unloaded the bricks first thing. Rex made a suggestion about making the kiln fire burn hotter by digging a trench, and she let him do that. Claire said she was out of bait and so they cast the net, but it only took a single cast to get enough herring to satisfy her bait requirements.

  Rex said, “I have an idea for a single-person net, too, so Claire—or anybody—could use it on her own.”

  “Cabin first,” Hannah said, “and other things later.” She had other projects in mind, too.

  As she worked on making more bricks that morning, she thought about that. She wanted to weave baskets to use as backpacks for everyone, so that gathering grass or fruit didn’t have to be done by the armload. They had three useful backpacks. Dixie’s small and fashionable one was falling apart. Also, the more gear they accumulated, the more they needed a way to carry it through the timegate.

  They had a big clay soup pot and five smaller ones. She could easily make another five, once the cabin was built. They had the fishing net, much repaired, some small-game skins from the Oligocene, and some bones and turtle shell and clam shells they’d saved from the Paleocene. They had the spears they carried, and Jodi had her club. Now they had the hand axes, and they were likely to make more tools. They had coils of cordage, though they were quickly using up all that in making the structure for the upper walls and roof of the house.

  There was a lot more on her mental to-do list. She wanted to find a really good honing stone and carry that with them. She wanted to make more animal traps: snare, deadfall, and pit. They hadn’t collected the snare traps when they had fled the Oligocene, and with these woods and game trails, it was stupid not to trap every day. That fish were plentiful was terrific, a great gift of nature, but game provided red meat and skins and possibly tools. Claire had suggested that if they saved the ligaments, they could make some use of those. Hannah wanted to try and drill holes in some bones so they had more needles. The one steel needle she had was getting dull. She wanted to try and collect pine sap or some other such material for glue.

  She wanted to test more foods and find more fruit. She needed to figure out how to process the cashews, now that they’d eaten their way through almost all of the tart fruit. Because it drew insects, they had it stored a couple dozen yards away from the cabin building site. The nuts seemed to be left alone, for the most part, by rodents and the primate, which told her more than anything else that the humans shouldn’t consume them either, not until they worked out how to treat the nuts to remove whatever was putting off the other animals.

  The fruit was very astringent, possibly because it was underripe. But two of them—Ted and Nari—had seemed to have a mild allergic reaction to it, getting red around the mouth when they ate it. Nothing worse than that had happened, but she worried that it was an allergy and that if they continued to eat the fruit, it’d get worse. She had no way of dealing with a case of anaphylactic shock. She finally asked Ted and Nari to not eat the fruit, and they had to look on mournfully as the other kids did.

  She hauled another load of bricks out to the kiln, which she had Nari tending. She’d asked Zach if he wanted to do that, not wanting to only pick girls for the less physical tasks, but he’d said no, he was enjoying learning how to build a house.

  They took a break for an early lunch. It had taken longer for Claire, fishing alone, to catch enough food for a meal for ten, but she had. They ran out of bricks just after lunch, and so she set the net team to helping catch a larger supper. She pulled Claire off fishing and asked if she felt up to constructing some traps.

  “Yes,” she croaked.

  Hannah said, “I think maybe you shouldn’t talk the rest of the day.” She had said a few words at lunch, and her voice had seemed stronger then. Now it was fading.

  Claire held up a finger. “Dixie,” she said.

  “Is she bothering you somehow?”

  An adamant shake of the head. “Doesn’t like you.” It was clear how much it pained her to get those few words out.

  “I know. That’s no secret, Claire. But you really have to quit using your voice now. Tomorrow morning, you can try again.”

  Claire looked frustrated but she said no more. It had to hurt her to talk. She had eaten some fish at lunch, too, small pieces, well cooked fillets. Her throat probably had taken all the stress it could.

  Hannah joined the people sitting in the cabin, now four and a fraction courses of brick high, over knee-high even to the tallest of them. All the bricks being made today were being made with the holes designed to hold the structural arms of the roof. It was going to be an A-frame cabin, with a single gable. She had imagined the brick wall would reach above her waist, but it was taking too long to make the bricks.

  Rex had pointed out that if they didn’t mortar in the columns for the roof, they could lift it to add another course of bricks later on. So for now, they were building a cabin too short for Rex and Ted to stand in except maybe at the very center. They wouldn’t have skimped on the height, except that everyone who had slept in it agreed that they felt too exposed to danger. By tomorrow night, they’d have a roof on, and even if a roof of pine boughs and woven twigs wasn’t any real protection against something dangerous and determined, it would have a powerful psychological benefit.

  Everyone had fallen silent while doing their work. Bob was propped again against the wall, twisting cordage. Everyone else was working at lashing the last of the structure for the roof together. Hannah was abou
t to return to help with more brick-making when she heard a crashing sound in the trees. Not too close, but close enough to make her sit up and pay attention.

  Whatever it was, it was coming closer.

  Chapter 17

  “Has to be big,” Bob muttered.

  “Shh.” Hannah waved the others into the cabin. She dragged a pair of the larger pine boughs over to block the doorway. It wasn’t much protection, but it might fool an animal that relied on its eyes to hunt. Zach did the same with the opening they’d left for the fireplace.

  The animal noises were getting louder. Hannah patted the air, trying to get everyone else to stay down, to hide behind the wall. She looked around for a spear, any spear, spotted one, and grabbed it up. Her tool belt was off, lying on the ground. She considered strapping it on but decided it would only weigh her down. Better to stay light and able to run faster.

  Then, hoping she wasn’t doing something incredibly stupid, she moved toward the sound. A smarter person would surely be moving away from it. But Bob couldn’t run away right now. She worried that even the fear over the noise would be too much for his heart. She had to keep the animal away from the cabin, whatever it was.

  The clearing was free of extraneous twigs by this point, but soon she was past the first broad trunks and into an area with leaves and fallen branches underfoot. She had to pick her way carefully to avoid making loud noise.

  That the animals ahead weren’t taking any trouble at all to be quiet worried her. If they were that noisy, it meant they had nothing to worry about. And if they had nothing to worry about, that meant she had a whole lot to worry about.

  The crashing gave way to a quieter sound. Rustling. Rooting. Crunching.

  She saw them from a distance, through a narrow break in the tree trunks. It was a group of hell pigs. And they had found the pile of cashews.

  Whatever had kept the smaller animals away from the nuts wasn’t bothering these monsters at all. They were jostling each other for position, snarfing down nuts, the remaining fruit, and random bits of fallen material.

  She circled around them, aiming for the lake. If they went back the way they had come in, no problem. If they turned for the cabin, she had to drive them or, more likely, lead them away. She couldn’t outrun them on the grassland. She might be able to climb a sturdy tree. A medium-sized tree, with more convenient branches for her to grab, they could push over. But they might not be able to swim.

  If she found a perfect climbing tree, she’d stop at it, make noise, and get ready to scamper up. Otherwise, she wanted to circle around so that she had the shortest possible run to the water.

  She tried to keep them in sight, but she had to duck around a stand of bushes. When she lost sight of them, their heads were still all down, busy with eating. When she caught sight of them again, three heads were up.

  They were sniffing the air. One was backing up and making a turn.

  Hannah backed away from them, feeling behind herself for obstacles. She didn’t want to trip on anything.

  When the jaw of the hell pig that was backing up swung around, she appreciated for the first time how big its head was. It had to be at least a quarter of the length of the rest of it. It had to be big enough to fit her whole arm in there. That’d be the last she’d ever see of that arm. One snap of those huge jaws, and it’d come right off at the shoulder.

  Her heel hit a fallen log with a low thud and she stumbled.

  The animal that had been turning looked right at her.

  She managed not to fall, but by the time she had her balance, it had taken a step toward her. The second step it took was bigger, and she saw it was going to break into a run.

  She pivoted and ran for all she was worth, straight for the lake. She knew she couldn’t outrun the animal, not over any distance. Her only hope was reaching the lake. Her only hope after that was that it didn’t swim.

  If it did swim, she was a dead woman.

  She burst out of the trees and into a patch of low bushes. Vaulting them, wishing she had Ted’s natural athleticism, she pounded down the slope and into the lake. When the water was at her knees, she dove.

  The last thing she heard before she went under was the huffing sound of the hell pig, far too close for comfort.

  Her dive had been shallow, of necessity, and she tried to keep herself both under the surface and off the bottom as she stroked hard for deeper water. If it couldn’t see her or hear her, she figured her chances of survival were better.

  But if it had any brain at all, it could just follow her straight in.

  The thought made her turn to the right, rolling on her side and bending her legs so her feet were snatched up. Without having any idea where the predator was, she was still finding it easy to imagine it was only inches away, hunting for her.

  She took another stroke, then rolled to her belly again and swam for deeper waters, angling to the right. Her lungs were starting to demand air, but she ignored them. They’d be much happier lungs to be inside a living person in two minutes, so they could just wait.

  Her boots were a weight dragging her feet down to the lake’s bottom, so she kicked even harder, trying to keep them from planting themselves in the muddy lakebed. Another stroke. Another. Her lungs were insisting now, demanding that she rise and breathe.

  No.

  She managed three more strokes before she lost the battle between will and physical need. She tried to pop to the surface. But she couldn’t. The weight of the boots was too much. She let them drag her legs down, and kept going down until she was in a squat, and then she propelled herself upward with the strength of her leg muscles, and she broke the surface and gulped air.

  Again, her boots dragged her down. Her pants were heavy, too, but she should have been able to overcome that. Good thing she hadn’t been wearing the tool belt, as well. That was twenty pounds extra she would not have been able to fight.

  She was a damned good swimmer. She didn’t understand what was wrong, but as she was trying to suck in a second breath, she was pulled under again. Not by the teeth of a predator. By simple gravity. But under these circumstances, it was nearly as dangerous to her.

  She got herself into a squat again, pivoted 180 degrees, and shot out of the water again, facing the bank.

  As her eyes cleared of dripping water, she saw the hell pigs. There were two of them on the beach, and one was in the water up to its belly. It was far too close.

  She gasped another breath in as her mouth cleared the water, and then she was down again, unable to fight the weight of her boots and pants for long.

  The realization hit her that she had two terrible choices. Get deeper but risk drowning. Or stay here, and risk the slavering jaws of the hell pig.

  She let herself sink all the way and felt along her boots for her laces. But they were waterlogged, and she had them tied well, a double knot that, blind in the muddy water, there was no way she could see. She’d take her pants off and save herself that weight, but she knew that she couldn’t get them off past the boots.

  She wondered how long the hell pigs would wait for her.

  She wondered how long she could keep up the trick of pushing herself to the surface to gasp in a single breath. An hour? Less? Not forever, that was certain. She’d run out of energy eventually, and one time, she’d push, and her head wouldn’t clear the surface…and that would be the end of her.

  If the hell pigs were patient creatures, she would die. Unless they left, she was a goner. She didn’t want to die. But she’d heard drowning was a pleasant way to go.

  Which of course was nonsense. If you actually died from it, you could hardly come back and report on what a pleasant death it had been. If you were resuscitated, then you hadn’t actually died. So that claim was bull, and she knew it. But no matter how unpleasant drowning might be, it had to beat being torn in half by the hell pigs.

  So, when her lungs forced her to break the surface again, she pushed herself out from the shore even further, at an angle. She whipped
her head to clear her eyes, and as she sunk back under the surface registered that the hell pigs hadn’t moved.

  Forget rescue. She didn’t want anyone to try and rescue her. There were four hell pigs, and three of them surely weighed half a ton, and the biggest of them could eat someone like Nari in two bites. It was best if no one came looking for her, if all the kids stayed with Bob.

  With every jump up, she propelled herself away from the predators. They couldn’t swim, it seemed. Or they didn’t deem her worth the trouble.

  Problem was, they also didn’t leave. The meal she represented was worth the trouble of waiting for, they seemed to have decided. She could feel the beginning of muscle fatigue in her thighs. It was worse because now that the immediate danger had abated, the adrenaline of the chase was draining, leaving her muscles shaky and weaker.

  She looked around on her next hop up and saw a possible solution. There was a thick patch of bushes she’d already checked out a few days ago—berry bushes, with unripe berries and thorns—to the right of the hell pigs, on a protrusion of the coast where the land was slightly higher. Maybe if she went that way, she’d get behind the bushes, and they wouldn’t be able to see her beyond them.

  She doubted it. But she couldn’t bounce up and down right here until sundown. So on her next plunge up through the water, she angled herself ninety degrees to the right. And again on her next breath.

  Now her path was describing a right angle to her previous one.

  And the hell pigs were drifting along the beach in the same direction. Maybe they’d had this experience before. Maybe they knew if an animal was chased into the lake, it had to come out eventually. And to get a meal, all they had to do was wait.

  Hannah found herself getting angry. She wasn’t even that much of a meal. There couldn’t be sixty pounds of good meat on her.

  Of course, there were the organs, and her brain. And examining the remains of their kills had made it clear the hell pigs ate bone, too. Hannah had no idea what she weighed now. She was about 140 when she had started, most of it muscle. But she was downright skinny now, probably under 120. Divided four ways, that was hardly an appetizer to the animals. So she wasn’t even worth their trouble! Damn them, anyway.