by Frankie Love
"I know," I tell her, "I doubt myself all the time. How am I going to be able to handle this? Am I going to be everything this baby needs? Everything you need?” I shake my head, opening my heart to the woman I love. “Sometimes I wish I had a self-help book or a therapist to give me a pep talk. I don't want to mess up. I want to be everything you need, everything this baby needs."
"I guess we'll learn how together," she says softly. "Heck, we traveled two million years, I think we can do this. We can do anything as long as we’re together."
When the baby comes, it's loud and wild and terrifying. Fancy screams through every contraction, even though she practiced her breathing. Truth is, we don't really know what a Lamaze class would have looked like. When we both landed here, having children was far from our minds.
"You got it, baby," I tell her, squeezing her hand. "You’re doing great." I give her a sip of water and run a cool rag over her forehead.
She cries, "I don't think I can do it. It's taking too long. I think the baby is too big to come out."
I shake my head. "That's not an option," I tell her. "Focus on bringing this baby into the world. You can't fall apart, honey. You can't." Tears are in her eyes and I know she's scared because when this baby arrives, our world is going to change again.
There'll be an innocent child relying on us for everything, and in a world like this, in this prehistoric time, that responsibility is daunting.
Outside the cave, A.B. paces, worried and protective. Sometimes I hate that I was so dead set on not hatching that egg because A.B. is more than a watchdog, he's our bodyguard.
"You got this," I say. "Just think of seeing our baby’s face."
Fancy nods. "Okay." She bears down, squeezing her eyes and her fists tight until I see the head.
"Oh my God," I exclaim, tears in my goddamn eyes. I may be a wild ass cave man, but I'm also about to be a dad, a father. "I see her hair," I say. "It's just like yours."
Fancy gasps, amazed, and pushes again, and again, and again. And then there's a cry.
A loud, beautiful cry of a baby born in a cave in a paleolithic place.
"You did it, Fancy. You did it. It’s a baby girl."
Fancy's shaking as I place our infant on her chest. Fancy's hair is long and sweaty, curling around her forehead. Her eyes glisten with tears, her face glistening with sweat. She looks like a goddess, a real cave woman. Mine.
"She's perfect," Fancy gasps. "Look at her. She's so perfect."
I kiss my girls on their foreheads before reaching for the knife. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to cut the cord and make sure she delivers the placenta, but I'm going to have to figure it out. There is no doctor to rely on, no first aid kit – it's just me and my strength.
I can't let my girls down.
I do what needs to be done. Trying not to freak the fuck out. Hell, if Fancy just gave birth in a cave, I can sure as hell do this part.
After, I wrap our daughter in a blanket made from the leftovers of a sleeping bag, the softest fabric we own.
"Oh, Flint," Fancy says, crying in amazement. "We did it. She's here."
"And look at her," I say, "the goddamn spitting image of you. I couldn't be any luckier."
"We made a baby." She laughs. "I can't believe it!"
Outside, A.B. growls in happiness, letting us know he understands what's just happened.
A new life, a new generation in this untamed and reckless place, a beachside jungle paradise that's our home.
"What should we name her?" I ask Fancy.
She smiles. “Remember that T.V. show, The Flintstones? The little girl was named Pebbles. Too much?”
“It’s pretty damn cute.” I kiss my daughter’s cheeks. “Good to meet you, Miss Pebbles.”
“Now one day we’ll have to find her a Bam-Bam,” Fancy jokes. Even though it feels like a far-fetched dream to find other humans here, you never know. We sure as hell never imagined finding one another or making a baby. But we did.
Here we are, at the dawn of man, carving out a future, all our own.
Epilogue 1
Fancy
Five years later…
For five beautiful years we’ve lived here on the beach in peace with A.B., our bodyguard.
Pebbles is growing up so fast. And her little sister, Eva, is now two years old. Flint has been a fierce protector of his family, working hard to provide for his girls. Meanwhile, I've been tracing letters in the sand, trying to teach Pebbles to read. Our life is a bizarre mixture of never-ending vacation and the constant threat of making sure our resources are accounted for and our needs are being met.
A.B., Pebbles, Eva and I are at the lagoon for a morning swim after several stormy days that kept us indoors. I've been working diligently on teaching the girls how to hold their breath under water.
I may not have dozens of picture books for them, or educational toys, but I am doing my best as a mom. Teaching them things like swimming, counting, and the alphabet feels monumental in a world where there’s no such thing as basic necessities. But, the kids are thriving. And honestly, I'm thriving too.
I went to school to be a paleontologist and sometimes I wish I would have studied ancient history instead. Because I wish I truly knew what it meant to start a civilization. That's what we're doing here, starting a world from scratch. There are no other people to get to know, no friends to make, no religion or culture to speak of.
Just what we're making on our own.
Flint rings the bell from the beach. It's what we use for our messaging service, and I dry the girls off. Our few pieces of cloth are treasured items. And while I don't necessarily want to use them for towels, I do know Eva gets real fussy when she is wet.
"Come on, babes. We got to go. Papa is calling for us."
"Mama, fish." Eva turns, pointing to a giant blue-tailed fish that’s leaped from the water.
"Yes, that is a fish," I say. “Big girl.” I pick her up and tie her into the sling on my back. Not the same one that I used for A.B. when he was an egg, but similar.
"All right, let's see what Papa's got going on," I say. A.B. trots beside us. The path to camp from the lagoon is much wider than it originally was. Before, it was just big enough for Flint and me. Now, it needs to accommodate a dinosaur the size of a Prius.
I run my hand over A.B.'s head, scratching him. "Good boy, and thank you," I say as I pick Pebbles up and place her on the back of the dino. Flint made a saddle and fashioned a handlebar for her to hold. "Hold on tight," I say, always the nervous mother. I guess, no matter where you live in the world or in what time, that doesn't change. Between anxiety and mom guilt, I really am a modern mom.
Back at the beach I'm surprised to see Flint is upset.
"What's wrong?" I ask. He's packing our entire camp.
Over the years we've made wooden crates and other bins to keep our food and supplies safe, but I don't understand why he's packing up our dining room set, our forks and cups and knives.
"What's going on?" I ask.
He runs a hand over his beard. "Babe, I'm sorry, but we have to move out."
"What do you mean?" I ask, looking around our beach. "This is our home. I've only been gone 90 minutes. What changed in such a short amount of time?"
Flint points to the sky in the distance. The last few days have been stormy and since there was a slight break in the rain this morning, I took the girls swimming. But there's worry in his eyes I'm not expecting.
"Flint, what's going on?"
"Look," he says. "I don't want to worry you or the girls, but I think a hurricane is on its way. Those waves are getting wild. I was a few miles north of our beach and the entire shoreline is ruined from yesterday’s storm. We stay here a few more nights and this place will be wrecked. I can't let us be here when that happens."
"What should we do?" I ask. "Where should we go?" I shake my head. "Five years is a long time to call this place home. Flint, what are we going to do?"
"Well, we're not going to st
and around and wait." He points to the ocean. "Look, in the distance, you can see a cyclone growing.”
The skies are dark and full of lightning, and not the magic kind that brought our dinosaur to life. This is lightning that could wreak havoc that we are not prepared for.
Tears fill my eyes and Pebbles starts to cry. "It's okay," I say. "Pebbles, we're going to be fine. Daddy won't let anything happen to us."
"I sure as hell hope we’re okay." Under his breath I hear Flint's words, and they cause a shiver to run up my spine.
Bracing myself for the worst, I set to work. "All right, I'll help you pack. We'll go. We'll start over. I'd rather that than..."
Flint pauses. Seeing the fear etched in my heart, showcased in my eyes.
"Fancy," he says, cupping my cheeks with his hands. "We got this. Together we can get through anything. We made a baby and then another. Hell, we brought a dinosaur to life. There's nothing the two of us can't do. All right?"
I nod, bracing myself for whatever comes next, and set to work packing as the rain begins to fall.
A few hours later we're saying goodbye to the only home we've ever known. This is where I gave birth to the girls. Where I taught them to walk, say their first words. Where Flint and I made love for the very first time. Where we fell in love too.
This beach has been our beginning and I'm not ready to see it end.
But the storm is wild. The kind of wild I've never seen here in the jungle. And it would be foolish to wait to see what happens.
"Listen," Flint says. "We can come back in a few weeks’ time and check the beach to see if our home is still standing."
I take one last look at the pergola he built for me, our dining room table and chairs. The crib for Eva. We've loaded up A.B. with everything we own and Pebbles is in a sling on her dad's back. I have Eva on mine. A.B. is bearing the weight of our lives as we say our final goodbyes.
"It's going to be okay," Pebbles says. "It's an adventure, Mama. An adventure for our family." She claps her hands, so happy, delighted to go on a trip.
Flint gives me a kiss. "We got this, baby, we got it."
I choose to believe him. As we begin walking through the jungle, the storm only intensifies. We can hear it, the howling wind and the lightning cracks, and I'm glad we're already moving away from it.
"Flint," I tell him, "you were so wise in the decision to leave now."
"It kills me," he says, "to make you leave our home."
"But we'll start a new life," I say, wanting to find optimism in this heartbreak.
We camp out at night under an old fallen tree. Flint builds us a protective cover, and A.B. keeps watch while we sleep. We set out on foot again the next day, wanting to get further and further from the coast, and also wanting to find the right spot to settle.
It's hard to choose. The jungle is so vast and it’s important to find a large, dry cave. Even though A.B. is our bodyguard, we still need to have shelter from the elements. A lean-to or a hut only protects you so long. A stone wall feels more permanent.
On the eighth day of our adventure, as Pebbles calls it, we hear branches break.
A cry, a call.
Flint locks eyes with me. "What was that?" he asks.
"Quiet, girls." Eva's been babbling on my back and my muscles are so sore. Not that I would say I need a break. I know moving forward is more important than taking time off. We need to keep this momentum.
But now we pause, anxious. It could be a predator. That's this hardest part of living in the Stone Age. We never quite know what we're going to stumble upon. Or what is going to stumble upon us.
A.B. senses our fear and he begins to growl. It's a deep, low rumble coming from his core.
It is primal, terrifying if you didn’t know he was our gentle giant. He may be an herbivore who munches on grass all day, but when he feels threatened, his whole body rises in alert.
The spikes on his back seem to move ever so slightly, to sharpen. His tail begins thumping up and down, the club leaving a giant mark in the jungle floor.
"Holy shit," we hear someone shout.
Someone, a person.
I cover my mouth in shock. Surprise. A.B.'s tail swings.
"It's okay," Flint says. "A.B., it's okay." He sets his hand on A.B.’s nose, telling him everything's all right.
But is it?
Then I see two men emerge from the jungle. My eyes widen as we take them in.
"Holy shit," Flint says. "Stone? Rock?"
Their mouths drop open.
Three wild ass cave men run into one another's arms.
Pebbles on her father's back looks at me, confused. Just as a confused as I am.
"Fancy," Flint says. "These are the guys, my brothers from Special Ops. Holy fuck, you've been here this whole time?"
They nod. "Yeah. We found one another."
"Damn," Flint says. "Are you alone?"
That's when they grin.
Pulling back the vines of the jungle, they reveal a waterfall oasis, along with two women and their children.
"Wow," I say, relief flooding my weary body. "It looks like we've finally come home."
Epilogue 2
Summer
CAVE MEN
After a week of waiting for news on Fancy, I board a plane and head to the Yucatan jungle myself.
Of course the authorities are searching everywhere for the missing paleontologist, and it's not that I don't trust them to find my best friend, but I have to take things into my own hands.
It's Fancy we're talking about, my best friend since forever, my foster sister who's been with me through thick and thin. I can't lose her, not without looking as hard as possible for her myself.
I know she didn’t just leave her life behind. She’s a smart woman. She's been through too much to just do something reckless.
The authorities have suggested maybe she chose to walk away from her life. But anyone who knows her knows that isn't an option. She was excited about the research she was doing. This archeological dig was the finding of a lifetime.
I wipe my eyes as the plane takes off. It's totally out of my comfort zone. I've never flown on my own before. But I don't care about comfort zones right now. I only care about finding my best friend.
After a day of briefing with the dig team and the police, I realize they've done most everything possible.
There are no leads, nothing to go on.
She was in the Paradise Palms parking lot. When the rest of her team decided to go to the beach, she went exploring. They watched her turn left into the jungle and no one saw her again.
There’s no footage of her at any of the local resorts, no cameras catching her getting into a vehicle. There's no record of her at all.
Her phone was never used again, and it hasn’t been recovered.
There isn't a single clue as to where she went, except for this jungle. Her supervisor Carlos, is helpful to an extent. He shows me where Fancy slept, and tells me if there's anything I notice, I should let him and the police know.
But Fancy wasn't one for material possessions, and there's not much here. She didn't write in a journal, didn't keep a diary full of secrets. That wasn't Fancy's style. I was her closest friend and her only family.
Fancy's never even had a boyfriend, let alone a secret internet admirer she was running off to meet, as the police theorized. I'm not surprised to hear she didn't go to the beach with her teammates, though. That wasn't really her style either. She'd prefer a guidebook and gummy worms over a beach day.
Still, I can't give up. I care about finding her more than anyone else. So after I've talked to everyone who's working on this disappearance, I decide to set foot into the jungle myself.
I pack my bag with plenty of supplies. All of my home remedies, my elixirs and tonics and salves, because that's what I do. I am prepared, if nothing else. A childhood in foster care taught me that no one else is going to look out for me. It’s up to me to look after myself.
So when I dress an
d pack for the jungle, I do just that. I pack bug spray and sunscreen, plenty of protein bars, and iced coffee in a can for liquid fuel.
I put on sturdy boots, and over my bathing suit, I wear cargo shorts and a sensible Dry-Wik top. I fold up a raincoat just in case it gets stormy before I come back to the hotel that I've checked into.
The authorities don't know Fancy like I do. She loves to explore. She loves to go off the beaten path. It's where she feels safest, and I can relate to that. Our lives have never been normal. We were abandoned before we learned to read. We are survivors in the truest sense of the word, so maybe Fancy's out there surviving.
I follow the trail from the Palm Paradise parking lot and find myself on a path in the jungle. I can see it's been traveled on quite a bit, and at the end of the path, there's a fork in the road.
Thinking of Fancy, I take the one less trodden and begin to explore. I see an entrance to a cave and, considering my best friend, I decide to explore it. There’s a narrow entrance, and it looks like a tunnel system of interconnected caves. I put on my headlamp, because of course I packed a headlamp, and flip it on the moment I enter the dank space. There are stalagmites and stalactites growing from the floor and the ceiling, and I look at the mud on the walls, thinking it might work really well for a mud mask.
I've never considered using Mayan Clay. I've been working so hard to get my apothecary and body care business off the ground, and haven't quite made a niche for myself yet. But maybe I need to look at more exotic ingredients for my blends.
This is what I'm thinking about as the earthquake happens.
I say earthquake because that's the only way I can describe what happens next. The walls begin to shake, the floor begins to rumble, and the water at my feet begins to slosh over my boots. I brace myself on the cave wall, scared.
"What's happening?" I shriek, but there's no one here to hear me. There's nothing at all.
