Dawn of Mammals (Book 4): Killer Pack Read online

  Killer Pack

  Lou Cadle

  Copyright © 2016 by Cadle-Sparks Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 1

  Hannah’s knees ached. She had been on them for too long, staring at the place the timegate had been, the spot where Laina had disappeared into the future. The others were back with Bob, waiting for her and Laina.

  Shock gave way to anger at herself—how could she have not guessed that Laina would try something like this? Hannah had been, for lack of anyone better, the leader of the group since it had slipped through time to a world that should have been tens of millions of years dead.

  She forced herself to stand, brushed off her knees, put her watch back on her wrist, and turned away from the timegate’s position. An unfamiliar bird cry sounded in the distance. Clouds were gathering for the afternoon rain.

  Ahead of her, there were the others to be told, and there was Bob, weakened from what she guessed were heart problems. They were stuck here another month now, more than twenty million years away from the first cardiologist, and there was little she could do for him. Nor would he be able to walk back in his current condition to the brick cabin they had built near the lake.

  She raised her head to an uncaring sky and told it, “I’ve tried my best. I swear I have.” But the sky didn’t care. The world didn’t care. The world was what it was—without opinion or will, populated not by people but by what should be extinct animals, some of them ferociously good hunters, many of them weighing a ton, and all of them not caring if a band of a dozen humans lost outside their time lived or died today.

  Hannah shot the uncaring sky a middle finger, not that it cared about that gesture either. She made sure she hadn’t left anything on the ground. Yes—her spear. She plucked it from the grass. Then she turned back, retracing her steps.

  Ten minutes later, as she passed a copse of low-growing trees, just leafing out from the wet-season rains, she heard an animal snarl. Her spear was at the ready before the sound had died. At least there was this positive development: they were all getting to be better hunters, and raising the spear and getting into a defensive stance was as automatic to her as making a left-hand turn in a car used to be.

  Among the leaves she saw a flash of brown and then caught sight of the eyes. A small, fanged animal peered down at her, a creodont probably, a meat-eater certainly. Her frustration at Laina, at herself, at their circumstance was transmuted in a flash to anger at the creature.

  “Shut up. I’m bigger than you,” she said, moving toward the tree.

  It opened its mouth, tasting the air, trying to figure out what she was.

  “Your worst nightmare, buddy,” she said. “Prey with a big brain.”

  As her steps moved her in a spiral around the tree, the creature edged around. She closed the distance while circling the tree, making it work to keep her in sight. She was a couple of yards away when, as it repositioned itself on the slender branches, its rear paw slipped.

  Hannah leapt forward, pulling her spear arm back at the same moment. The animal regained its balance, but she was already there. As it reached up to climb out of her reach, she grabbed a low-hanging branch with her free hand, pulled herself up, planting a boot on the tree trunk, and propelled herself upward, thrusting with the spear. The fire-hardened tip sliced into the nearer leg of the animal, and Hannah used the last of her momentum to jam the spear all the way through. She felt it catch part of the animal beyond the near leg before it stopped against bone.

  Letting go of the branch, she kept a tight grip on the spear and let herself drop to the ground, giving her body a twist, wrenching the animal off its perch.

  It tumbled down, nearly on top of her, growling.

  Hannah’s knees bent, but the weight of the animal was a surprise, and she lost her feet, hitting on her rear with a thump that forced a grunt from her throat. The animal was twisting in midair, trying to get to her. She had it on the spear, meat on a skewer, but the spear wouldn’t hold up to its fight. It thumped to the ground by her knees.

  She let her pack slip off one shoulder and switched hands on the spear, wriggling until the other strap slipped down her other arm. With the strap of the pack in her hand, she swung the pack down with all her might onto the creodont’s head, catching it just as it gained its feet. Something inside the pack broke with a snap, but it stunned the animal for long enough. She dropped the pack, took the animal by the bristly hind legs and picked it up, spinning, aiming its midsection for the tree trunk. It hit with a satisfying sound, but not the snap of spine she had hoped for. She continued spinning, backing away from the tree a step, and swung the animal against the tree again. The head hit the tree with a crack.

  The animal sagged, no longer fighting. Hannah dropped it and wrenched the spear out. She plunged it into the animal’s neck—once, twice, a third time.

  She was panting when she quit stabbing it. The animal had been dead for a full minute, but she had been letting out her anger with those last few thrusts. Pulling the spear from its neck for the last time, she examined the spear. Didn’t seem to be cracked, despite the abuse she had just given it. Whatever this wood was, they needed to keep using it.

  Using a stone blade, she cut the throat of the animal and dug around in her pack for cordage and then slung her kill over the nearest branch. While the animal bled out, she went through the contents of her pack, trying to figure out what she had broken when she hit the animal, and if it had been something they couldn’t survive without. If that were true, she’d have something else to kick herself about.

  She had lucked out this time. It had been nothing more than the plastic case of her GPS unit. Though she had not been able to bring herself to leave the device in the wilds of the Cenozoic, it was useless in a world without satellites. They’d never been able to figure out any use for the circuit boards inside, or the lithium battery, or the plastic itself.

  And yet, even with the casing now broken, it wasn’t something she could part with. To do so would be saying she was willing to give up all hope of ever making it back to their own time, the time of rocket launches and cell phones. She put it back in her pack, along with everything else, and then untied the rope and eased the animal from the tree. She fed the spear through its leg meat until it was hanging securely from the end, and then hefted the spear and animal over her shoulder. It no doubt looked like those old-time drawings you see of a barefoot boy—Tom Sawyer maybe—running away from home, a stick with a kerchief tied to the end except she had a nasty little predator at the end of her stick, dripping blood.

  Chapter 2

  Ted was standing lookout. He waved when he saw her. She noted the moment he pulled up short when he saw that she was alone. He turned, took a few steps aw
ay from her, and called something to the group behind him, invisible from the dip in terrain where Hannah was walking. Then he sprinted toward her.

  “Where’s Laina?” he called, before he reached her.

  She shook her head, knowing that wasn’t an answer.

  He reached her side and grabbed her arm. “Is she dead?”

  “No.” Though she might as well be. How could they possibly find her again in all the infinity of time?

  “Is she hurt? Should I go get her?”

  “Don’t make me tell it more than once, please. Let’s get back to the others.”

  “Let me take your kill. Not much, is it?” he said, taking the spear from her.

  “Enough for two people for a day or two.” Her and Bob, in fact. She had made up her mind what would happen next.

  “Carnivores taste bitter, I think.”

  “They do, compared to the grass eaters. But it’ll keep us alive. How is Bob?”

  “He’s weak. Everyone is worried, and everyone is trying not to show it. It’s almost like a superstition. If we pretend he’s not sick, maybe he’ll be less sick.”

  “After this second time, I guess we need to stop pretending, eh?” Bob most of all.

  Ted let his stride lengthen until he was ahead of her by six feet, and then he turned around to face her, walking backward. “Where’s Laina?”

  “Once,” she said. “I can only bear to tell it once.”

  “But she’s okay?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “You think so?” His face went blank, and then she saw the thought dawn on him. “She didn’t.” He stopped walking.

  Hannah sighed and walked past him.

  He trotted back to her side. “She did not!”

  “Ted. One time. I only want to explain this one time.”

  “Fuck a duck,” he breathed.

  They crested a rise and there were the others, gathered around Bob, who was lying on the ground, his head pillowed by a basket stuffed with grass.

  “But why?” said Ted.

  Hannah shook her head and kept walking. She didn’t know why. Laina hadn’t shared her thinking. She’d just...disappeared. Into the future. Alone.

  Hannah dropped her pack and joined the group around Bob.

  Jodi said, “Where’s Laina?”

  “Gone,” said Ted.

  Jodi gasped. “Dead?”

  “No,” said Ted. “Gone through the gate. I think. Hannah?”

  All eyes turned to her. “Yeah. She went through alone. I couldn’t stop her.”

  An explosion of voices sounded at once. “Why?” was the first word. But there was also “Where?” and “What was she thinking?” and the sound of denial was in the voices too. She gave them a few minutes to get used to the idea.

  Claire said, “Shh, everyone. Hannah, tell us.”

  “Not much to tell,” Hannah said. “If I had any idea she was planning it, I’d have grabbed her. But she was close to the gate, as if studying it, so I was hanging back, not worried. You know Laina and the gate.”

  “It’s her thing,” Rex said.

  “Yeah. So I thought she was just—you know—examining it from close up for some reason. Then she gave me the time elapsed since it had appeared, tossed my watch back to me, and poof.”

  Dixie said, “You should have gone after her.”

  Hannah nodded. “Maybe I should have. I had maybe ten seconds to decide. And half of that time, I was staring in shock. Her or you? That’s what it came down to, Dixie. Make sure Laina wasn’t alone, or leave you guys wondering what happened to the two of us? I may have chosen wrong.”

  Rex said, “No, you shouldn’t have. I mean, you did right. Dixie, you know they couldn’t have stepped right back through. That’s not how it works.”

  The kids were all smart. She could see them thinking it through, each of them wondering, no doubt, what they’d have done in her place.

  Zach said, “If you had gone, there’d be two of you lost, not just one.”

  Rex said, “Or two dead.”

  Jodi made a noise of protest. “Laina’s not dead!”

  Ted said, “She’s gone. Far, far away.”

  They all fell silent as they thought about that.

  Bob said, “We’ll never find her.”

  “No, we can,” said Jodi. “We can just....” She frowned in concentration, but no more words came to her.

  Ted said, “It’d be hard to survive alone. I mean, there’s no one to watch her back, much less hunt with her.”

  “And plenty of dangerous animals to watch out for,” Nari said. “Poor Laina.”

  “She’s tough,” said Jodi. “Tougher than me.”

  Hannah doubted that, but she kept her opinion to herself. Let them grasp at hope.

  “But why?” said Nari again, looking at Hannah.

  “Maybe she thought she could discover something? Maybe she plans on coming back here next month?”

  “No way,” said Rex. “She couldn’t possibly time it that accurately. To the day? The month?” He snorted.

  “Maybe that’s what she’s trying to figure out,” said Ted. “How to time it.”

  “So what do we do when the timegate arrives next month?” Dixie asked. “Skip it and see if she shows up?”

  Hannah knew they should go. But it might take several days for them to get used to the idea and see it for themselves.

  Bob said, “There’s enough time to think about that before it happens. And Rex knows a little about the gate. For now, you guys should get back to the lake.”

  “All of us should, you mean,” Claire said.

  “I can’t,” Bob said. “I’m sorry to let you down, but I can’t.”

  That distracted them from thinking about Laina. They ganged up on Bob. “We’ll carry you.” “You can do it!” and even a plaintive “Please.”

  Bob smiled sadly and shook his head. His hand moved to his chest, and he rubbed it. The furor died down, and he belched. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  “Mr. O’Brien,” Nari said. “You can’t stay here alone.”

  Hannah said, “Not alone. I’m staying.”

  Claire said, “Me too.”

  Before they all said the same thing, Hannah held her hand up. “It’s time for a change. I should have done this a long time ago, but we need to do it now. My last decision made on behalf of everyone is this. You guys go back to the lake. There’s water, there’s food, and there’s defense at the cabin. Bob and I will stay here. I’ll hunt, and I’ll keep a Mylar blanket to collect rain water. We’ll be okay as long as it rains a couple times. In a week, two of you come back for us. Bob will feel better by then. That’s it, and no disagreements. It’s my last order, so humor me, please.”

  Jodi said, “Last order? But you’re not going to die.”

  “I hope not,” Hannah said. “Nor will Mr. O’Brien.”

  Rex said, “But you said it was your last decision. Like you plan on being dead soon.”

  “Not dead,” said Hannah. “I’m abdicating.”

  “What?” said Dixie.

  “Resigning,” Rex said. “As leader.”

  “I know what the word means,” Dixie said. “I just didn’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” said Hannah. “I wanted to do this a long time ago, but I keep forgetting it. You guys—not me and Bob—need to appoint a leader from among yourselves. Someone you respect. Someone you will all follow. One person to make the final decision. He or she can listen to opinions, but you all need to follow whatever the leader says at the end of a debate. No more behavior like Laina’s. You can’t go off on your own. Survival is about sticking together. So figure it out. Pick your leader, go back to the lake, and bring us food in a week. That’s it.”

  No matter what they asked her after that, Hannah bit her tongue and shook her head. She was done. She rose and moved to Bob’s side, sitting again right next to him. She took his hand and said, “You okay?”

  “Angry at myself. Gosh darn that Laina too.
”

  “You didn’t choose any of this. Certainly not having heart trouble.”

  He glanced over at the kids. “You think they’re ready?”

  She knew he meant to be on their own, to lead themselves. “They have to be. Laina thought she was.”

  “You must feel awful about her.”

  Hannah nodded. The kids were still looking at her and Bob. She waved them off. “Go decide,” she said.

  One by one, they turned away. Ted was the first to move. He walked off several yards and plopped himself down on the ground. Hannah guessed that he’d end up elected leader. He was a little reckless, but whatever they decided, she’d not complain. It really did have to be their decision. She would abide by it, as they had abided by her decisions up until now. Whoever they chose, that person couldn’t do much worse than she had. She’d lost three people. Two to death by animal attack, and now a third to an irresponsible choice.

  Bob squeezed her hand. “You did the right thing, not going after Laina.”

  “I know that in my head. But it feels so wrong in my heart.”

  “She made her choice.”

  “I know, I know. But we’ll never see her again. She’s out there, somewhere, alone.”

  “Shh,” Bob said. “Try not to think about it.”

  “If we ever get back to the 21st century, I’m going to have some terrible conversations with parents. ‘Mr. So-and-so, sorry, but I lost your kid. Let him die. Let her get lost in the vastness of time.’ I can’t wait for those moments.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Besides, we’ll probably never get back.”

  She had to smile. “Thanks. That cheered me up.”

  “I don’t think I’ll make it back, under any circumstances.”

  She turned her full attention to him. “I’m sorry. Is it that bad?”

  His mouth twitched, and she knew he hated admitting it. “Pretty bad. A bit of pain. Mostly I’m incredibly weak. It’s hard to sit up. Which is why I’m down here, an invalid.”

  “I wish I could do something for you.” Other than giving him willow bark tea, hoping it thinned blood like aspirin, she had come up with no better idea for what she was guessing was a heart problem. She knew the digitalis plant back in her own time, but there wasn’t any nearby, and if there were, she had no idea how to administer it or if it was even the right herb to give for Bob’s situation. Maybe it wasn’t native to the Americas but to Europe. Maybe it only evolved a few million years before the modern era, which meant it wasn’t here to be found. “You need to rest.”