Mammoth (Dawn of Mammals Book 5) Read online

  “Let it!” She could hear the terror in her own voice, pitched several notes above where it usually was.

  “If you guys would help, we could drive it off!”

  Jodi stopped, turned around, and took in the scene. “Are you totally crazy out of your mind insane? Get away, or tomorrow it’s going to be pooping Ted turds all day long.”

  Crude, but true.

  Jodi jogged backward. Hannah ran at an angle to intercept her. With the tiger’s speed, splitting up wasn’t really going to help them. Better they make a stand together if it came for them.

  Another dozen steps and she glanced to make sure Ted was coming.

  He was not. Still barely outside reach of the claws, he stood, looking for a way to spear the cat, which was nosing at the antelope innards.

  Hannah pulled up and faced the scene. She was terrified she was doing so only to witness Ted’s death. “Ted, please.”

  “We need the meat.”

  “We need you alive!”

  The cat speared some intestines with its curved fangs. They drooped down from its jaw. It tossed its head back and ate half of them in a single swallow.

  Ted said, “Nobody cares about me. You’re all mad at me because of Dixie.”

  “We do care. Mad does not mean hate.”

  “You do hate me. All of you.” He circled the cat, which snarled again.

  “Damn it, Ted, this is the wrong time to have an adolescent meltdown!”

  Jodi yelled at him, too, peppering her language with words that might shock a felon.

  Hannah sympathized. She was tempted to break her language rule she’d been imposing on herself since she’d donned the ranger uniform. “Please, back off.”

  Ted darted in.

  Hannah gasped.

  A furred claw shot out, without the animal pausing in its eating. Hannah saw that the claws retracted as it drew the claw back in.

  Ted snatched the hide and darted back, unscathed.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah said. The hide was nothing, not worth Ted in trade.

  “Seeing how fast it moves.”

  “You saw that already. Too fast!”

  Jodi was curving back toward her. “Should we go help him?”

  “Not a chance. He wants to be suicidal, he can be. You and I are going to live.” She hoped.

  The tiger seemed to have had enough of Ted’s proximity. It stood, leaned forward, and snarled at him, its lips covered in blood. It crouched as if to leap.

  Finally, the tiger had done what Hannah could not. Ted scrambled back, cowed by the sight.

  He threw a spear down in disgust, and finally, finally, began marching toward the women.

  Hannah didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until he was halfway to them, more than a half-dozen of the tiger’s mighty leaps away.

  The tiger was feeding on the animal. It certainly had never had a conveniently butchered animal before. Didn’t really need someone else butchering for it, though, not with those claws and teeth. It held down a leg of the antelope with a massive paw and tore off a mouthful of flesh, the size of a roast, chewed twice, and swallowed.

  “We need to move,” Hannah said. “It’ll be done in no time at this rate. I want to be far away when it’s looking for dessert.”

  “Yeah, let’s run,” Jodi said.

  Ted still had the hide. “Should I drop this?”

  “No,” Hannah said. “Now that you have it, hold on to it. If it catches up to us, maybe we can offer it up in lieu of one of us.”

  “Doubt that’ll work,” Jodi said. “Let’s run, guys.”

  Hannah aimed for their old tracks. When she found them, they were able to move a little faster, stepping where they’d trampled down snow before. Once, her boot caught against something, a rock or a plant hidden by snow, and it got pulled partway off her foot, but she kept running, jamming it back down as she ran, ending up with her sock pulled all the way down her heel. No time to stop and fiddle with something like that. They needed to get away from the predator.

  Ted was looking behind them every few minutes. He made a frustrated sound once, but otherwise he ran without comment.

  They ran as long as they could. Hannah stopped first, but Jodi said, “Thank you. I was about to drop.”

  They’d come up over a slight rise and back down it. The rocky hill’s base and the saber tooth were out of sight now.

  Hannah kept walking, slowly, and caught her breath after five minutes or so. “We need to keep going. I don’t know if it hunts at night, but even if it usually doesn’t, it might make an exception in this case.”

  Jodi said, “We only have an hour or so of light left.”

  “I know. I have my flashlight right here. We’ll walk by its light after the sun is down.”

  “What about going back for the remains?” Ted said. “It might have left something.”

  Jodi snorted. “Maybe a head and antlers.”

  “At least we ate enough to make up for the effort of the hunt,” Hannah said. “That’s the good news.”

  “We also know the antelope exists,” said Jodi. “That’s more good news. We might find another.”

  “There is no good news!” Ted said. “We let our kill be stolen. We didn’t fight for it.”

  “And the third piece of good news is that you’re still alive, despite acting like you did,” Hannah said. “Ted, listen to me. Nobody hates you, and if you believe we do and are willing to commit suicide by tiger out of that belief, I’m begging you to do it somewhere out of my sight. I can’t bear to watch another friend die.”

  They walked in silence until sundown. Hannah shone her flashlight on the ground ahead of her, and the other two trailed her. When the flashlight began to dim, she said, “We have to build a shelter now. There’s still no moon.”

  They set to it, Hannah digging a pit with her hands and the other two rolling big snowballs. She noticed Ted was barehanded. “Where are your mittens?”

  “Probably in the tiger’s stomach by now,” he said.

  “Nari can make more.”

  “Not if she dies of starvation,” he said, petulant.

  “Ted, let it lie, please. We did what we could. We survived. Try to take some comfort from that.” She was frustrated, too, but they had no other choice. A meaner predator had won the battle, fair and square.

  They built a shelter barely big enough to hold the three of them. Ted jammed the two remaining spears into the ground and Hannah gave up her cape to drape over it as a roof, to keep the heat from escaping. All of them relieved themselves. Hannah flipped off the flashlight before she crawled inside, hoping that the tiger didn’t trail them here. They might have a rude awakening in a few hours. But even if it did decide to track them, Hannah needed rest. She was beat by the physical effort and emotional strain of the day. Let the tiger dig her up and bite her head off, just as long as he didn’t wake her first. They shared the two remaining capes as blankets.

  It was cold when Hannah woke. Jodi was by her side but Ted was not. She hoped he hadn’t gone back to the kill. When she crawled outside, he was standing there, fingering the fresh hide. “This is all we have to show for it,” he said.

  “No, we have you,” she said. “You safe and alive, and Jodi and me too. That’s worth more than a hundred hides or a thousand pounds of meat.”

  “I know I screwed up.”

  “That tiger was huge. There’s nothing you—or we two—could have done.”

  “No. I meant with the other thing. You know.”

  Ah. Dixie. “Yeah, well. You did, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Dying is the worst thing in the world.”

  “What you asked me the other day? About feeling anything for it?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t. I guess that makes me a terrible person.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “But people will think I’m a jerk, right? For abandoning what people want me to see as my family.”

  Hannah thought that wa
s ironic, considering she’d done the same thing long ago. She had abandoned her family, and it hadn’t been an easy decision. The comparison let her feel more sympathy for Ted. “You can’t make yourself feel what you don’t feel.”

  “Dixie feels something. I heard her talking.”

  “Well, it’s growing inside her. And she has pregnancy hormones probably making her feel more protective. So that makes sense. Fathers don’t get that, not that I know of. They don’t get the hormones or breast feeding or feeling the kicking inside them.”

  He winced at that. “You think it’s kicking?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “We should be back to modern times before it does.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “What do you think you should do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have over three weeks to decide. Give it some thought.”

  “What if I decide wrong?”

  “Then welcome to adulthood. We decide wrong all the time. You just accept responsibility for messing up, deal with it the best you can, and move on.”

  He rolled up the hide. “I guess we had better get going.”

  “Yeah, I’ll wake Jodi. The others will be frantic about us not returning last night.”

  Chapter 12

  As they approached the camp, Ted grew fidgety.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  Jodi kept walking ahead, anxious to get back to Zach.

  “Are you going to tell Claire about what I did? That I didn’t do what you told me to?”

  She was relieved he had begun to see his actions with the tiger as incorrect. “I see no reason to make a big deal of it. I tell you what, you tell the story of what happened. I’ll stay quiet.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Think nothing of it.” Then she called, “Jodi, wait up for a minute, would you? I have a favor I want to ask of you.” She wanted to ask Jodi to let Ted tell the story however he wanted. He was obviously struggling with more than the disappointment about losing the kill. Let him salvage some pride.

  Forty-five minutes later they spotted Bob and Claire, sitting around the campfire spot. No smoke was drifting up, and Hannah thought there might be had the others found fish or game yesterday. She saw Bob sag in relief when he caught sight of them. Claire looked angry. She understood that. When you felt the weight of responsibility for everyone in the group, it was hard not to lose your temper over risky moves. She had yelled at Ted, and in her turn, she’d have to take a scolding from Claire.

  Claire met them a few hundred yards shy of the igloo. “Where were you?”

  “Ted’ll explain,” Hannah said. “But it’s all my responsibility. You assigned me the team, so yell at me about us getting stuck overnight.”

  “I want to see Zach,” Jodi said.

  Claire said, “Jodi, wait.” Her look of anger was replaced by something else, a softer expression. “Zach’s taken a turn for the worse.”

  Without another word, Jodi broke into a sprint for the igloo.

  “How bad?” Hannah said.

  “His fever is so high that he’s delirious.”

  “You give him any willow bark tea?”

  “We think you have it on you. In your pack.”

  Hannah wanted to kick herself. How could she have forgotten that? “Ted, you fill Claire in. I have to do this.” She ran a few steps then stopped. “Claire, is there any fuel gathered?”

  “A small pile. You go on. Ted and I will grab some more as we talk and get a fire going.”

  Hannah went to greet Bob, who gave her a hug. “So glad you’re okay.”

  “What do you think about Zach? Is he going to make it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But at least we didn’t lose you three as well.”

  Hannah tore through her pack for the fire-starter and the willow bark. “Can you get the fire started?” She pulled a bowl over and put a few strips of the bark into it. “And fill this with water?”

  “Yeah. You go on inside.”

  Dixie emerged from the igloo just then. “You’re all okay. Good.”

  “Hi, Dixie,” Hannah said. “Sorry to worry everyone. I have to check on Zach.”

  “Yeah, he’s sick, and Jodi’s pretty upset.”

  Rex came out of the igloo just then. Hannah squeezed his arm on the way by, as apology for not stopping to talk, and crawled into the igloo. It was lit by diffuse daylight and a pinesap candle. Hannah’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the dimness.

  Jodi was bent over Zach, crying, talking to him between her sobs. “Monkey, Monkey. Please talk to me. I’m back. I’m sorry I left you.”

  Nari knelt nearby, her face a mask of concern. She obviously wanted to help, but right now Jodi was beyond help.

  Was Zach?

  “Excuse me,” Hannah said to Laina, who was also inside.

  “Get anything? Food?” Laina said.

  Hannah shook her head. “Not quite. Ted is telling Claire the story.”

  Laina took the hint and crawled out of the igloo, leaving just the three women and Zach. Hannah didn’t think she’d be able to peel Jodi away, so she crawled to Zach’s other side. When she touched his face, her concern escalated briefly to panic. He was burning up with fever.

  “When did this happen?” she asked Nari.

  “When all seven of you were gone. Maybe twenty hours ago we noticed, but it might have begun an hour or two before that.”

  “And he’s been like this all along?”

  “Sometimes he can talk. Then he falls back into this kind of state. Restless, saying nonsense. In and out of sleep. If you wake him, you never feel like you’re waking him all the way.”

  “Do something!” Jodi said.

  “We will. They’re brewing tea for the fever outside. Let’s you and me get his shirt off.”

  Jodi worked with shaking hands. Hannah rolled him and held him to let Jodi pull one sleeve off. She kept rolling him to his belly, and Jodi stripped the whole shirt off. “Let’s take him outside.”

  “Without his shirt?” Nari said.

  “Yeah. I want him in the snow. In fact, we’re going to pack it around his chest and arms and neck.”

  “Won’t that give him frostbite?”

  “We’ll only leave him like that for a few minutes, not long enough for that.”

  “You sure of what you’re doing?” Jodi said.

  Not really. “Absolutely,” she said to Jodi. “This is how they brought down fevers before there were drugs to do it. Water, ice. Basics.”

  Jodi pulled Zach and Hannah steered his legs. It was awkward getting him out the entrance tunnel, and Jodi’s rounded back broke through the last of the snow bricks, but finally, Zach was outside. Nari crawled out last and stood, rubbing her hands together nervously, obviously wanting to help.

  Hannah had Rex help pull Zach to the nearest patch of untrampled snow. She assigned Nari to help Jodi pack snow all around him while she checked the progress of the fire. “Barely going,” Bob said. “It’ll be twenty minutes or so before we have a warm rock.”

  “I know.”

  “I should have thought of that,” he said, pointing to where the others were burying Zach in the snow. Only his head and feet were left uncovered. “We used to bathe the kids’ foreheads with cold water when they had a fever.”

  “It’s a last resort. I don’t like getting him wet, but he’s burning up.”

  “Bad enough so that he has been delirious half the time, sleeping most of the rest.”

  “Has he been coughing?”

  “Not much, and I’ve heard worse-sounding coughs. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad news.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “Is anyone else sick at all? Even the sniffles?”

  “No one has said so. I feel fine—I mean, not like I have a cold.”

  Hannah stood. The rest of the group not attending to Zach surrounded Ted, asking him questions. He’d told whatever version of the story of the antelo
pe and the tiger that he chose. “Hey, everyone,” Hannah called. “Is anyone else feeling sick? I’m trying to figure out if this is a contagious disease or not.”

  “I’m fine,” Rex said. One by one the others echoed him.

  “Me too,” she said, and turned back to Bob. “Except for hungry—and dizzy from hunger if I stand up—I feel okay. I’m getting more fuel.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No, please, keep the fire from going out.”

  The group around Ted broke up as everyone but Claire peeled off to help Hannah look for fuel. Fifteen minutes later, they had a steady fire burning, and Bob was pushing rocks in to the center to heat them.

  Hannah checked on Zach. “I think that’s long enough,” she said to Jodi and Nari. “Let’s dig him out.”

  When they uncovered his arms, he flailed one. “Get me out,” he said. “Let me go.”

  “Zach, can you hear me?”

  “Monkey, I’m here,” Jodi said.

  Zach turned his head toward her voice. “Jodi?” he said.

  Jodi sobbed once before getting herself under control. “I’m here. Hannah’s here. We’re going to make you well.”

  “My fault.”

  “It’s not your fault you’re sick,” Jodi said.

  “The ice,” he said.

  Hannah and Nari kept digging, revealing Zach’s chest, pink with contact with the snow. It didn’t have white patches indicating frostbite, so she let him lie there for a moment longer.

  “I couldn’t hold on,” he said to Jodi.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I had hold of the ice when I broke through. But my wrist. It was weak.”

  “That’s not your fault either.”

  “I’m too weak.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re strong. Strong enough to beat a little head cold, for sure.”

  “You’re strong. I’m not.” His eyes drifted closed, and his body relaxed.

  “Is he okay?” Jodi said.

  Nari said, “He just falls asleep quick like this.”

  “Let’s drag him inside and get him dry,” Hannah said. “By the time we have him dressed and settled again, his tea will be ready.”

  Rex was coming back with a load of tundra plants by then. Hannah said, “Hey, Rex, would you chip up some ice from the lake next and bring it inside in a bowl?”