A Dawn of Mammals Collection Read online

  “What? If you do, what?”

  “I had better get to a hospital, or they could kill me.”

  She buried her head in her hands.

  “I’m sorry. And thanks for not hitting me.”

  “I want to. If I could slap you sober, I surely would.”

  “And the doc said I needed to get off the Xanax, because otherwise treating the withdrawals next time would be harder.”

  “That’s what they treat it with?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Do you have any left? Any on you?”

  “I took the last two yesterday, after Jodi was attacked.”

  She had so many questions. “What was going on before? When you woke us up?”

  “Hearing things. Voices.”

  “Will it happen again?”

  “Probably.”

  “What should I do for you if it does?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is this why you’re sweating too?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is the worst past?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Now I am going to hit you. Brace yourself.”

  He looked so pitiful, of course she wouldn’t.

  “You’re smarter than this,” she said.

  “I’m an addict.”

  Sounded like a tautology to her, not a very good excuse. I’m a drunk because I’m a drunk. Well, duh. “Will you be able to make it back to the cave in the morning?”

  “If I’m still alive.”

  “You’ll be alive.”

  “I don’t want to be.”

  “We need you. You know about this world. You know about the animals. You know about the rocks, so you’ll be able to tell us if a cliff face is safe, or if there’s likely to be water between two layers of rock, or whatever. We need you.”

  “I’m useless.”

  “Look. I’ll put up with your D.T.s. I’ll accept that you’re an addict and quit yelling at you for it. I’ll even forgive you if your being high resulted in Jodi being hurt yesterday. But I won’t listen to your self-pity. Think it all you want, but shut the hell up about it.”

  He nodded. “More water?”

  “You’re sweating it all out.” She filled him another bottle and thought that she shouldn’t judge him too harshly for self-pity. She was feeling plenty sorry for herself, being saddled with him right now. There was so much to do, and she would be stuck playing nursemaid to him until he got past this.

  No, she couldn’t afford that. She’d assign one of the kids to keep an eye on him. Dixie, maybe. Or Nari. They seemed like the two least useful of the group. The rest of them, she’d keep on work details that would help everybody survive, not just this one sad alcoholic.

  Not that she knew what to do, or to tell Dixie or Nari what to do, if M.J. deteriorated. She’d just have to deal with it as it happened.

  M.J. took the water bottle and drank half of it down. He looked at her. “You’re mad.”

  “Enraged, pretty much,” she said. “If you get us all killed, M.J., I swear. I’ll find a way to kill you a second time.”

  “You should get back behind the stockade.”

  “And leave you here alone? Ha.”

  “There are night hunters too, probably. Evolution,” he said, “fills that niche every time.”

  “I almost hope something attacks. I’m so mad, I could kick a saber tooth’s butt barehanded right now.”

  He smiled wanly. “No, you couldn’t. A Hyaenodon. A pack of dogs. The saber tooth that went for Jodi. Smaller nimravids that hunt in packs. They’re killers, Hannah. Skilled, hungry killers. And we’re just hungry.” He closed his eyes.

  She sat, her back to him and the fire, and looked out into the night. As he settled down and the world grew quieter, she grew more afraid. Afraid of animals, yes. Afraid for M.J. Afraid for these children. And for herself.

  Chapter 25

  Dawn came and, as she looked to the east where the sky was brightening, she saw a thin moon, a crescent as thin as a fingernail clipping. She heard a bird call out the dawn, like a rooster, and sensed the nighttime world giving way to the daytime. A different set of predators would be taking over.

  She scratched at an insect bite on her elbow, then made herself stop, no matter that it gave her a moment’s relief. In the long run, it just made them itch more. She turned to look west, then saw that M.J. was awake and looking at her.

  “You didn’t have to stay out here with me.”

  “How are you feeling?” she said.

  “Awful.”

  “Still hearing things?” He’d had one more bad wave of hallucinations a few hours ago.

  “No. And I’m not sweating as hard.”

  “Maybe the worst is over. Can you walk to the cave, do you think?”

  “I have to.”

  “We could stay here another night.”

  “No! We need to get to the cave.”

  She wondered why he felt so strongly about it all of a sudden, then she realized that he probably wanted to get back to a world that had liquor stores and drug stores. The only way back to that was the timegate.

  The kids began to stir and to go off in groups to relieve themselves, the boys to one side of the stream, the girls to the other. She’d trained them to walk at least a hundred yards away from their water source. Once they had a permanent camp, and once they had the food situation in hand, she’d build a latrine. Or two.

  But that was well into the future. As Ted and Zach came back to the fire, Ted said, “I’m so freakin’ hungry.”

  “I know,” she said. “We all are. As soon as it’s light, I’ll send you out to try and get some more small game, okay?”

  “Sure. You coming?”

  She shook her head. “You lead the group, pick two others, and explain to them how it works. Okay?”

  “Sure. M.J., how are you?” He asked the question without looking directly at the paleontologist.

  “A little ashamed at disturbing everyone’s sleep last night.”

  “No problem,” Ted said.

  Soon all the kids were up, and Bob as well. She asked Bob to walk M.J. out to relieve himself. M.J. was shaky and slow.

  With both Jodi and him in bad shape, she should head them toward the cave by noon at the latest, in case they had to stop and rest more than once on the way. They’d collect fuel and dig onions as they walked. Another wave of anger at M.J. made her clench her teeth. She still didn’t understand how a smart man could be so stupid.

  She asked who preferred what jobs, and assigned the kids to work based partly on that, and partly on who seemed best suited to the work. She kept the cord-makers at the fire and Jodi on lookout. The girl’s wounds had looked too red that morning, so Hannah had used some of the antibiotic cream on them, and on the wounds in her back. If infection took deeper hold, there was nothing she could do for her. Not without antibiotic drugs.

  The cordage-makers taught her what they were doing, and she sat and braided with them. They had gotten better at splicing the grass, and Rex uncoiled the strand he had been working on. She had him measure it against his height. It was fifteen feet long.

  “That’s great,” she said. “To make a fishing net, we’d need, what? Let’s say a three-inch weave. So four of those per foot. One of you math whizzes figure that out.”

  “How big do you want it?” said Laina.

  “Fifteen by ten? Fifteen by fifteen?” She knew they’d have to experiment, but that seemed a good starting place.

  “A hundred twenty lengths,” said Laina, with not a second’s pause.

  “Wow, you are a math whiz.”

  Garreth said, “She’s better than that. She can do things in calc that the math teacher can’t.”

  “That’s not really true. I just get to answers different ways than the book sometimes,” Laina said.

  “Smarter ways. And I’m no dummy, but I don’t get what you’re doing,” said Rex. He glanced at Hannah. “I tried to get
her to sit down and explain her thinking to me, but I was lost.”

  “Is that what you want to do?” said Hannah. “Math?”

  “Maybe,” said Laina. Then she frowned. “But maybe now I’ll just be a basket-weaver.”

  Hannah hadn’t realized it until now, but getting stuck here would be a tragedy for these teenagers. It would be for anyone, and for anyone young, who hadn’t had a chance to get out and experience the world. But for a genius kid, which some of them obviously were, it was even worse. They could have done something really meaningful and interesting. By 2050, maybe one would be under consideration for a Nobel Prize.

  And here she had them making string and picking up dried sheep plop.

  As she braided and braided and braided, she tried to think of a way to use their intelligence to the group’s advantage. If any of the smarts they had were of the engineering sort, they could design clever animal traps or human shelters. Maybe a permanent fish trap with gates. But try as she might, she couldn’t come up with anything else specific that brains could do here that brawn couldn’t do as well.

  She’d told everyone to be back before noon, but the hunters came back an hour earlier. She heard them arguing before she saw them.

  Chapter 26

  “You don’t know everything,” said Dixie.

  Ted said, “I was just pointing out that—”

  “You’re as bad a know-it-all as Rex sometimes,” Dixie said.

  Zach was saying, “Guys, it’s okay,” but neither of the others was listening.

  Hannah glanced at Rex, who continued to look down at his braiding. But his ears looked a little darker, as if he might be blushing. She jumped up. “Hey, do you two want to attract every predator for miles?”

  Ted looked sheepish, but Dixie pointed her finger at him and said, “And for another thing—”

  Just then, an animal shriek cut through the air. Everyone froze.

  They had grown used to the herds of oreodonts, and the oreodonts seemed to have grown more used to them, for the edge of the herd was as close as it had ever been. There was a disturbance in the flock right now, and it was on the move. Hannah scrambled up to the log and looked out over the hundreds of grazing animals. If she blurred her vision, it looked like a single organism, like an amoeba. One pseudopod was extending this direction.

  She realized that if the animals all followed that pod, she and the kids could be trampled. And there were three others out gathering food. She couldn’t see them. They’d have to fend for themselves.

  She called, “M.J., let’s get moving.”

  He just sat there, dazed.

  She had to protect him. “Everybody else! Let’s see if we can head them off. Make noise.” She jumped down from the log and sprinted toward the oncoming oreodonts. She screamed and waved her hands, wishing for a pair of cymbals or a whistle to make more noise. The rest of the kids came up behind her, shouting, whistling, and making a commotion.

  The animals kept coming, and she realized this might not have been the brightest idea to run toward them. The oreodonts were in a panic, and there were a lot of them. No one seemed to be bigger than fifty pounds, but a bunch of fifty-pounders running over them would kill them just as dead as one five-hundred-pounder.

  Ted was throwing rocks as he shouted.

  One of the lead animals seemed to catch sight of them and swerved. Others followed him, but in a swooping arc, and the closest animals came nearer and nearer. “Back up,” she shouted, backpedaling herself, but she didn’t think anyone could hear her over the sound of all those hooves pounding the prairie.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Ted take off in a sprint. But not away from the herd. Toward it.

  “Ted!” she screamed.

  The thundering herd and Ted were converging. They continued to veer away from the humans, but Ted was coming closer and closer to the pounding hooves.

  Her heart nearly stopped as he leapt and grabbed one of the animals. He wrapped his arms around its neck and was pulled off his feet.

  And then she lost sight of him.

  She took three running steps forward, then had to hold up. No sense in getting herself trampled too. But her guts were twisted with fear for the boy.

  The other kids kept up their yelling and jumping around. The herd kept curving away, and there was Ted, exposed again, on the ground.

  She sprinted for him. For a half-second she thought he was writhing in pain, and then she realized one of the oreodonts wasn’t running away, because he had a hold of it around the neck. Its back legs were still under it, but he had the front shoulders on the ground.

  He yelled something she couldn’t hear as he twisted and kicked a leg over the animal, trying to pin it. It backed up, dragging him a foot. He was losing his grip as Hannah reached them and threw her body at the oreodont’s. It fell over and she felt a stab of pain as it kicked her in the belly.

  Her help allowed Ted to shift to get a better grip. He had the thing in a wrestling headlock, and despite the danger, the pain, and the fight she was having with the lower half of the animal, she had a crazy urge to laugh.

  Dixie and Garreth reached them at the same moment. “Grab something!” she screamed, and they piled on. Zach arrived next. “Take my spot!” she called to him. The herd had swerved far enough away that hearing each other speak was possible once again.

  She had transferred her pocket knife from her pack to her pocket to cut grass earlier. She rolled away from the struggling animal, dug into her pocket for the knife, and flipped out the longer of the two blades. She moved, on her knees, up to Ted, and said, “Yank the head back.”

  He shifted, did his best to trap the animal’s head, and she plunged the knife into the oreodont’s neck.

  All that happened was the animal struggled harder. Zach cursed as he rolled with it. He trapped it once again.

  She stabbed again and again, shifting her aim, trying to find a killing spot.

  Blood gushed from the animal’s neck. She stabbed again, right there, over and over, until the slick, warm blood made it impossible to keep hold of the knife.

  “Hang on to him,” she said. Three of them did.

  Zach was rubbing his arm. Keeping half an eye on the animal, she said, “Did he kick you?”

  “Yeah. Hurt too.”

  “I know.” She pulled her shirt up and checked her belly where the hoof had caught her. There was a crescent-shaped red mark, but no blood. She touched it and winced. That was going to hurt for a while. She hoped she had no internal injuries.

  The animal’s struggles were weakening. Ted’s arms were covered in blood, and his shirt was soaked.

  “Ted, what were you thinking? You could have been trampled to death. Are you okay?”

  “A couple of them stepped on me, but I’m fine. And I was thinking I’m hungry.”

  “Well, you—” She stopped herself from scolding him and changed what she was about to say. “Are going to feed us for a couple days with this. Thank you for your quick thinking.”

  Zach said, “Yeah, way to go, man.”

  “Eww,” said Dixie, who was holding down the hindquarters. “I think it shat on me.”

  “Don’t let go,” Hannah said. “Not until it’s dead.”

  It took another ten minutes for the animal’s struggles to stop. Claire was one of the ones out looking for food, and she missed being able to ask the girl for hints about dressing it. “Let’s get it down to the river quickly,” she said. “Best way I know of to cool the meat.” She wondered if they ate half today, half tomorrow, if the meat would go bad. It was cooler in the cave by a few degrees, so maybe they’d be okay. Should they cook it or save it raw?

  Something to think about in a couple hours.

  All the kids were congratulating Ted. She wanted to check out his injuries, and Zach’s too, but it was probably more important to get this animal gutted here and now.

  She didn’t know what she was doing, and she asked for opinions, but none of the kids knew much either
. So she began to saw through the torso of the animal, a long vertical cut starting at the bloody neck. The skin was a little loose there, so she grabbed a handful of fur, pulled steadily, and began cutting the skin.

  By the time she was down to the belly, she wished she had kept this knife sharper. It was work to get through the skin, and the muscles were even harder to saw through. Finally, she had the thing opened, and intestines were spilling onto the ground.

  “That is really gross,” said Dixie, but she didn’t turn away. Rex and Zach had. Ted seemed interested.

  “What can we eat of that stuff?” he said.

  “According to Claire, and what she said about the squirrels, not intestines or bladder. But everything else. Brains, liver, heart, lungs, testicles.”

  Dixie laughed. “Really? Those?”

  Ted said, “I might pass on them.”

  “I’ve had cow’s,” Hannah said. “Out west. Rocky Mountain oysters, they call them.” She pulled out the guts as far as she could and was studying how they were still attached. Carefully, she cut membranes away from the ribs.

  “How were they?” Ted asked.

  “The oysters? Chewy,” she said.

  Dixie laughed again. “I just bet they are.”

  Hannah was torn between hurrying the job so she could cool the meat quicker and going slowly to keep from spilling feces into the body cavity. She sat back on her heels and studied it. “Who’s the best dissection person here from your classes?”

  “Probably Laina,” Ted said.

  She looked around and waved the girl over. Not the fastest runner, she hadn’t been in on the kill. She saw Dixie’s crap-smeared legs and said, “If you two can keep from fighting, you both need to go to the stream and clean off.”

  “Which two?” Dixie said.

  “You and Ted. He looks like something out of a horror film.”

  Ted looked down at himself. “Yeah. I’m a little bloody.”

  “Great Halloween costume,” said Zach. Rex was looking away from her butchering, but Zach seemed to be able to tolerate watching it from a distance.

  “You should go with them too, Zach,” she said. “Soak that arm in the cold water until I can look at it. It’ll keep any swelling down.”