Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy

by James Paddock

  Apparently Matt is bored of playing with his new toys. I’m still digesting the revelation Becky just dropped on me, when he comes over and squats in front of us. “So, what’s next?”

  “Sam said she’d be right back.”

  “We need to be doing something.”

  “I agree, but we have to wait for her. She’s the only one who knows where they are.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Giving her cats battle orders probably.” I look at Becky. She shrugs her shoulders, too. Matt stands and starts pacing. Becky and I both lean forward, elbows on knees, thinking our silent thoughts. Thinking is not so simple for her, I imagine. I can read aura and impressions of people’s history, and sometimes little snippets of thoughts, but nothing like what she just demonstrated to me. I know when something bad is about to happen but I’ve never been able to see what it actually would be and then take action to change it. I’ve never been able to force my thoughts into other people’s minds. That’s what she did with the waitress at Denny’s the day I picked her up at the airport. It was weird, no doubt, but I wasn’t aware of how significant it was at the time. I just thought that she had inherited my special ability. Even then I should have seen that she was beyond me . . . way beyond me.

  I look over at her. Her head is in her hands. I’d love to reach in and see what she is thinking. Suddenly Tanya steps in front of us, interrupting the flow of Matt’s pacing. “I’m sorry, Matt,” she says, her voice soft, any hint of anger gone. “Could I have a little privacy with my family for a few minutes?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” He walks off beyond the fire.

  She squats down in front of Becky and me. “How’s your back?” I ask.

  “Better,” she says, “but I wish I had my brace and about a week to do nothing. It certainly could be worse, though.” She takes a long look at Becky and then turns back to me. “I need to say something.”

  I wait. I wonder if Becky is already reaching into her mind to see what she is thinking?

  “Reba forced me to think about a few things. She made me realize I’ve been very selfish. But don’t get the idea that this is an apology, or anything close to it. I have nothing to apologize for. I’ve been wronged and I’m still angry with that, but considering everything, I’m putting that anger aside for the time being. Christi is my concern now. I had forgotten about her, forgotten that if we don’t come out of this alive, how it will affect her. She’s the only innocent one in all of this, and at the worst age to be forced to face our deaths.”

  I feel a tug at my heart. I hadn’t even thought about Christi myself. Losing her entire family and then having to be raised by Aunt Suzie sends a chill to my bones.

  “For that reason and only that reason I back off my threat to kill the bitch.” She says it like she’s talking about the weather; there’s no angry inflection to her voice at all, even on the word, bitch. “Reba says Sam came on to you, and you pushed her off. I believe her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Enough of that.” She sits down. “What’s the plan to get out of here?” She spots the night vision goggles and the gun. “Where did those come from?”

  “Belongs to the guys that the cats killed yesterday. Sam grabbed them.”

  “Then we’ve got something.” She looks over at Matt who is digging around in one of the coolers.

  “Matt’s fired these before,” I say.

  “He’s fired an Uzi?” she says.

  “Yes, but these aren’t Uzis. These are MP5s.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Neither have I but they seem to be pretty good. The night goggles will help a lot. We’ve got a slight advantage.”

  She looks at her watch. “Only if you get going, soon. It’s going to be sunrise before you know it.”

  I call Matt back over. He squats down next to Tanya and offers up some jerky. Only Tanya takes a piece. “We’re waiting on Sam,” I say. “She went off to do something, I don’t know what. We can’t do anything until she returns as we don’t know where the camp is. One other thing. I was telling Becky that you and she should go deep into the mountain and hide.” I can see by the look on Tanya’s face she doesn’t like the idea. “You have no weapons to defend yourselves. If they get past us your only defense is to hide.”

  She shakes her head. “The dogs would find us.”

  “The first thing we’re going to do, unless Sam has some better thoughts, is to take out the dogs.” I look at Matt. “Do you think we can do that?”

  “We have to.”

  “We’ll have to get as close as we can until the first dog is alerted to us. Once we shoot, all hell will break lose.”

  “Can she get the cats to take out the dogs?”

  A voice from the edge of darkness says, “Maybe.”

  All heads turn to Sam. She’s as quiet and sneaky as the cats. She comes closer; a brown canvas bag hangs off her shoulder.

  “I’ve given instructions but I don’t know how these dogs are going to react,” she says. “They’re not barkers, which means they are silent search canines. I’m sure they’re trained to search and kill.”

  “That’s all we need are killer search dogs,” Tanya says.

  “Actually, that may be what we want. The killer dog is going to be aggressive which means it will be easier for a sabre-toothed cat to pull him away from the group. Once he is by himself, he’s as good as dead. He is no match against a sabre-toothed cat, let alone two of them.”

  “Can they get them without alerting the men?” I ask.

  “Let’s hope so. Are you guys ready?”

  Matt and I stand at the same time.

  “Okay.” She bends down and starts drawing in the dust with a stick. “Here is where we are. Here is the waterfall and the creek outside. The creek runs for about a hundred yards and then splits into two smaller creeks. One goes East this way, the same one you guys crossed just before you abandoned the Rhino. I’m fairly certain now that it is two men and one dog who are camped near the Rhino. We’ll cross that creek. The other creek turns North down a snaking ravine. There are three men and two dogs camped right about here. By the time we get there I’ll know whether the dogs are out of the picture or not. Ideally, we can walk into the camp, hold guns to their heads and tie and gag them.”

  “Why don’t we just kill them?” Matt spits out.

  “That’s not the answer.”

  “That’s what they’d do to us. They already did my dad. They’re scum! They’re dirt! They’re the rot of the earth!”

  She puts her hand on Matt’s shoulder. “First of all, Matt, the ones who killed your dad are already dead. Second, if we fire a gun, it’ll be heard by the others who are only a few miles away. They’ll try to communicate and when they can’t they’ll become cautious. It’ll be daylight before we can get to them and we don’t want them thinking there’s already a threat against them. We have to hit them with their guard down.”

  “Then we can beat them to death with a club.”

  “Matt,” I say. “Save your revenge for Victor Vandermill. He’s the man we want.”

  He looks between me and Sam, then says, “Right,” and relaxes.

  “Good,” Sam says. “If the cats don’t get the dogs by the time we get there, then you guys will have to do it.” That seems to please Matt. I’ve a feeling killing anything will make him feel better. “I hope you guys can move fast with those things on.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” I say. “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ve good eyes.” I think about earlier, in the dark outside the cave entrance, when she came and went with no visual difficulty while I couldn’t see her at all, even when she was sitting in my lap, her mouth plastered to mine. “Any other questions?”

  There’s a million, but I can’t think of one.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Tanya struggles to her feet. I reach out a hand to help and then she’s in my arms. “Come
back alive,” she says.

  “I plan on it. But just in case, go deep into the mountain and hide.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” We kiss and hug as though we’ll never see each other again. As the realization of that possibility settles in on me, I squeeze her harder, and find it very difficult to let loose. When I finally do, Becky pushes in a for a hug.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.” I notice again how tall she is. I also realize that I haven’t hugged her enough. This might be the last one. “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you, too, Sweetie.” I break off and turn away and pick up the MP5. I can feel something bubbling up inside of me and I want to get away, into the darkness before it surfaces.

  “Here,” Sam says, pulling the canvas bag off her shoulder and handing it to Tanya. “I’m sure you guys can figure out what to do with these.”

  With that, we’re gone. At the top, just before I turn my back for the last time, I stop and look down at my wife and daughter, standing next to each other, looking small and defenseless. I want to call down to Tanya to stand up straighter or her back pain is going to get worse. I want to yell something to Becky, like, “Take care of your mother.” Instead I yell, “Go hide!” I raise a hand. They do the same. I turn away and follow Matt and Sam into the tunnel to darkness.

  Reba

  Mom and I stare at the last place we saw Dad, maybe expecting him to pop back with some witty comment. I feel like I gave in too easy to not being allowed to go with them, but he was right. I’d be blind. It also wouldn’t be right to leave Mom alone. At least she has changed her attitude some so she is easier to be with.

  “Well,” she says, meaning it’s time to get to work.

  Go hide? Bullshit! It’s time to get ready to fight. It’s not my thought. It’s hers. I’d forgotten that I had dropped my firewall while Sam was here. I turn around and see her peering into the bag Sam handed her. I step closer and look in. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It’s exactly what you think it is.” She stretches and twists at her back. “I have to sit down, and then we need a strategy.”

  Chapter 59

  Zach

  It’s just as dark now as it was before, or maybe even darker, and it is raining. I mount the thing on my head, get it set comfortably, and then turn the knob. The world lights up in green, though not nearly as bright as it was inside the mountain. But it is enough.

  It takes some getting used to, like walking around with a bag over your head and a little peep hole to look out of. There is no peripheral vision side-to-side, or up and down. I can only see where I point my nose. I look down at my feet for a few seconds and run into a bush, sidestep that and fall over a log, flat onto my back.

  Matt returns and stands over me. “Damn!” I say. “This is harder than I thought.”

  “We’re going to have to move faster than this,” Sam says. She appears next to Matt, her skin glowing and her eyes huge and dark.

  “I just need to get used to this thing,” I say.

  “Daylight has slowed a little with this rain, but I never counted on those night vision things slowing us down this much. I had hoped it’d speed us up.”

  “Just go. We’ll try our best to keep up.” Actually, I’ll try my best. It doesn’t appear like Matt is having problems at all.

  They turn away. I scramble to my feet and catch up. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I have only one eye. You’d think that I’d have an advantage because I’m already used to living with no depth of field. We come to the creek. There is a huge tree lying across it. Sam walks it quickly. Matt’s not very steady, but he manages to get across. I step upon the log and realize that part of keeping ones balance is being able to see around you. As I look down at my feet, I can see nothing past the rushing water on each side.

  “Don’t look down,” Sam says. “Look at me and walk.”

  I look at her and back at my feet, take a step, and stop. The next ten seconds is spent waving my deadly weapon in the air to find my balance, and I’m not even over the water yet.

  “Zach!”

  I look up and she’s standing right in front of me. She puts her hand on me and I become stable. She’s too close to be in focus but I can still make out the hat, just like the one I wish I was wearing to keep the rain from running off my nose. Her face is alien—light green in spots, dark green, almost black, in others. Her eyes are dark pools.

  “I’m going to get behind you and grab you. Then we’re going to walk. We don’t have time to screw around with fears of height or any of that shit.”

  The next thing I know she’s behind me and pushing. I’m walking, one foot in front of the other, practically running when I hit the end of the log where I sort of jump and fall off at the same time. When I struggle to my feet she is already heading out, Matt right behind her. Don’t worry about me. I’m doing just fine, I want to yell. I take off after them, then feel eyes on my back. I turn. A sabre-toothed cat is standing on the log looking at me. I shiver from the wet where I have twice fallen on my back, and notice the huge dark pools where the cat’s eyes should be, not all that much unlike Sam’s eyes. A trick of the device strapped to my face, I’m sure. I shiver again and take off after my team mates.

  Reba

  Mom has no intention whatsoever of hiding. I have no intention of arguing with her, especially since we discovered that we aren’t totally defenseless.

  “You make me nervous. I wish you’d leave it alone.”

  “It’s stable, Mom. I could throw it and it’s not going to go off.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “Because I learned about it in school.” I roll the stick around in my hand. “It’s made up of nitroglycerin and . . .”

  “Nitroglycerin is unstable,” Mom argues. “You can’t drop it.”

  “As a liquid, yes. Who in their right mind would walk around with a tube of liquid nitroglycerin? When it’s mixed with something porous like sawdust, or something called kieselguhr, it becomes solid.”

  “You learned this in high school?”

  “It’s chemistry, Mom.”

  “But they taught this to you?”

  I grin at her for a few seconds and then say, “No. I didn’t learn explosives in chemistry class. I remember this because I wrote a paper about the man who started the Nobel Prize. He is also the guy who invented dynamite. Alfred Nobel. It was left in his will.”

  “He left dynamite in his will?”

  I laugh. “No. He left the Nobel Prize in his will. He was very rich when he died. In his will he set aside the funds to establish a foundation to give prizes each year for great inventions. He also made the rules.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Anyway, even though it had nothing to do with my paper, I was intrigued by the dynamite invention stuff. It must have stuck in my head.” I hold up the stick of dynamite. “I’m sure modern methods of production have changed but basically, this is made up of nitroglycerin, maybe with sodium nitrate, some kind of absorbent material, a plug of black powder and a fuse.”

  “I can’t believe my daughter knows about explosives.”

  “I know a lot of things, Mom. High school wasn’t a total waste.”

  “You’re prepared for a career as a terrorist.” She misses my rolling eyes as hers are on the stick of dynamite in my hand. “It seems sort of crude.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think we have a supply of C4 and radio controlled detonators.” I take the end of the fuse in my fingers. “It’s like a big firecracker.”

  “I don’t like firecrackers either.”

  “I wonder how long the fuse burns?”

  “Probably way too fast.”

  Or too slow. I dig around in Sam’s stuff for something to cut with and find a hunting knife in a scabbard. I also find another waterproof container of matches. I cut off five inches of the roughly twelve inch fuse and then put the stick back in the bag. I then light a match.

>   “What are you doing?” Mom asks in alarm.

  “I want to see how long this burns. It’d be kind of nice to know if we have five seconds or an entire minute before the dynamite goes off.” She doesn’t look convinced. “Don’t worry. This is less dangerous than a sparkler on the Fourth of July.” She relaxes and I apply the flame to the piece of fuse lying on the ground. I start counting out loud. “One thousand one. One thousand two.” I keep counting until it stops burning at ten. “About two seconds per inch.”

  “And?”

  “How much fuse do we need to throw one of these at the feet of the bad guys?”

  “I sure wouldn’t want it going off in my hand.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but I also wouldn’t want it to burn long enough that the bad guy could pick it up and cut the fuse, or worse yet, throw it back at us. It has to be timed close.”

  Mom’s face is white. “This scares the hell out of me,” she breathes.

  “Me too, Mom.” How short do I have to cut the fuses. This is not as easy as it looks on TV. “Me too.” I try not to think about the part that I’d be killing someone. Shit to hell!

  After ten minutes of staring at the fuse residue, I mount the hunting knife on my belt, then ask Mom what time it is. She holds her arm up to catch the torch light. “four-forty.”

  “What time is sunrise?”

  “An hour . . . hour and a half.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take the second group to find us?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “How are we going to know if Dad and them are successful?”

  “I don’t want to think about if they aren’t successful,” she says. “It’s not if. They have to be and they will be and your dad will come back unhurt. When? I don’t know.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t have both gone. Maybe one gun and one set of goggles should have stayed here.”

  Mom looks at me as though I just made some deep philosophical statement. “You’re right. Why did they both go?” She gets to her feet and starts pacing slowly. “They left us here totally defenseless.”

  “We have the dynamite,” I point out.