A Dawn of Mammals Collection Read online

  “Do you feel okay?” Hannah asked her. “Hot, or cold? Chills, nausea?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “That’s great.” But she would continue to keep a close watch over the wound, which seemed to her to be showing signs of a minor infection. She did not want to let it get worse.

  Chapter 29

  They were sitting around the fire, eating cooked onions and oreodont, though Hannah had passed on the onions. They were giving her gas, and in the confines of the cave, that could get unpleasant for everyone.

  The meat was a little tough, as she had insisted everyone cook it to well done in case there were parasites or bacteria. Rare, it might have been as good as any steak or lamb chop from a supermarket.

  M.J. had a partial denture, which she had not known until now, and he had to chew on one side of his mouth. Was it his withdrawals or the chewing that made him pick at his dinner? She didn’t know. Everyone else, she encouraged to eat as much as they wanted.

  “I want to try some of the testicles,” said Dixie, all innocence. “I’ve never had them before.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s not your first time,” said Claire, just as innocent.

  Hannah had to stuff a big piece of meat into her mouth to keep from laughing. She didn’t know Claire had that in her—neither the cattiness nor the ability to make it sound so sweet. Zach exchanged a look with Ted, who smirked.

  Bob said, “Claire,” and nothing else. Just a slightly disappointed sound in his voice.

  She looked away from him and sighed. “I miss real food.”

  “This is real food,” said Hannah.

  “I mean a pizza.”

  “Hamburger,” said Zach

  “Hobuk jeon,” said Nari.

  “What’s that?” asked Bob.

  “Fried zucchini, pretty much,” she said. “With a noodle salad, that’d be perfect.”

  Bob said, “Don’t you eat in the cafeteria most days?”

  “Yes, I eat American food too,” she said. “But I’m missing my family, and my grandmother makes such wonderful traditional food on Sundays.”

  “I miss mine too,” Jodi said.

  “We all do,” said Bob. “My wife is going to kill me for being home this late.”

  “She wouldn’t kill a fly,” said Ted.

  Hannah wouldn’t mind killing some flies right now. They were still bedeviling her. “If everyone is done, let’s set up the steam pit,” she said.

  Rex said, “One more piece for me. It’s pretty good, really.”

  Dixie said, “Anyone want to finish this roasted, um, man-part? I don’t like it at all.”

  Hannah said, “Toss it over here. I’ll give it a try.”

  Claire said, “I will too.” She had been the most enthusiastic about the liver.

  It was chewy and not very good, but Hannah choked down a slice. None of the boys offered to partake. Nari kept her eyes averted.

  The pit had been dug with rocks and hands. At Bob’s direction, they used their rock hammers to scoop coals into it, covering them with the greenest grass they could find nearby. He kept saying, “More,” until there was a foot of grass smoldering over the coals. Then the meat went in, a full hindquarter chopped into roasts, and most of a shoulder. More grass on top of that, and then they used their hammers again to push dirt over the whole thing.

  “Won’t the fire go out without oxygen?” Garreth asked.

  “It should smolder all night,” Bob said. “And in the morning, we’ll have roasted meat.”

  Hannah recruited volunteers to go get water. Bob volunteered to go along, and she gratefully accepted. The place where she’d taken the hoof was more tender than ever, and she’d be happy to skip the two-hour walk. Everyone drained the last of the water and handed over the empty bottles, and a group of four walked back to the river.

  “Let’s work on the beds some more,” said Jodi. “I want the softest possible place to sleep.”

  Hannah grabbed her solar light off the rock where she’d been letting it recharge and gave it to Jodi. She took out her paper with her notes and settled down to digest and think about what their next priority was.

  Food, of course, was at the top of the list. Defense. They could build another stockade wall at the cave’s entrance and make it hard for a predator to corner them in there.

  “There’s an animal over there,” Nari said. “In the grass, coming this way.”

  Chapter 30

  Hannah leapt to her feet and looked where Nari was pointing. Grass was stirring, and close to them. The burst of adrenaline had her expecting another saber tooth, or something worse, but in a few seconds she could tell it was something smaller. She sat—more of a collapse, really. Too much adrenaline called upon in too few days was making her even more tired. And, of course, she hadn’t slept most of last night.

  “What is it?” Zach said, moving toward it.

  “Don’t!” said Nari.

  “It’s not big,” Hannah said. “But don’t threaten it anyway.”

  “No,” Zach said. “It’s not big. Here it comes.” He stepped aside.

  From the grass came a tiny rodent with a short tail, beige and white fur, and a decidedly cute face.

  “Aww,” Jodi said. “It’s adorable.”

  It came forward, sniffed the air, its whiskers twitching.

  Zach said, “It doesn’t seem to be afraid of us.”

  Hannah said, “And no, you cannot keep it.”

  “What is it?” Garreth asked.

  M.J. roused himself to look. “It’s a hamster.”

  Cries of delight greeted this announcement. Nari, who still seemed hesitant, said “We have a hamster in the science classroom.”

  “We had two, but a parent complained about subjecting us to hamster sex,” Garreth said. “So Mr. O’Brien had to get rid of one.”

  Ted said, “And that cut into my income from the hamster sex pornos I was putting up on YouTube.” He grinned at Hannah to show he was joking.

  “How different is it from our school hamster?” Garreth asked M.J.

  M.J. sat, staring dully, and not quite at the hamster.

  “Is anyone going to take care of him? The hamster at school?” asked Nari, and she began to cry. “Mr. O’Brien isn’t there. Our hamster might die.”

  Someone else started sniffling.

  Jodi said, “It’s not the hamster I’m worried about. It’s my parents.” And then she began to cry too.

  Ted said, mournfully, “I argued with my dad the other night. I’ll never be able to apologize.”

  The mood shifted, as if a foul wind had blown over them and poisoned them.

  The hamster looked up, straight at Hannah, and cocked its head, as if to say, “Well? What are you going to do about this?”

  What a time for Bob to be gone. He’d know what to do. Hannah glanced at M.J., who was still in a stupor. He was no help. Comfort them? Try to snap them out of it? Let them cry it out? She sat there listening to more and more sniffles, feeling about as useful as M.J.

  She decided on distraction. “Let’s work on the bedding, guys. I know you miss your families—”

  “My mother is going to be worried,” said Garreth. “If I don’t come back, it’ll kill her.”

  “I’ll pick grass,” Hannah said, with false brightness. She looked around for the two least unhappy kids. Zach and.... Well, only Zach. “Come on, Zach, let’s get some more bedding material.”

  He stood and brushed himself off. Hannah knew herself for a coward, walking away from the sad teenagers. But maybe it would be best to let them sit there and grieve, in a group, and find comfort from each other.

  She set herself and Zach back to back, out of hearing range of the weeping at the campfire, and reminded him to stand up and scan the horizon every few minutes to keep a watch for danger. After ten minutes of work, he said, “I’m glad no one misses me.”

  “I’m sure someone does,” she said.

  “No. No one. I don’t have a girlfriend. So
me of my best friends are right here. And my dad might not notice until I’m gone a couple of weeks.”

  “You live with only your dad?”

  “Yeah. My mom left when I was little. She lives in San Francisco. I visit her every other year, but it’s uncomfortable. We don’t really know each other, and I don’t think she wants me there.”

  How awful. Her heart went out to him. “I don’t have an easy relationship with my mother, either.”

  “How about your dad?”

  “He left us when I was seven, and he started another family. Same thing, a long ways away, so I didn’t see him much.”

  “My dad works a lot. He’s an attorney.”

  “Did you have a nanny or housekeeper growing up?”

  “No. My grandmother—Dad’s mom—until I was nine. And she died, and Dad said I was old enough to stick something in the microwave myself, or call a neighbor if there was trouble.”

  “I might have made my own trouble if I’d been left to my own devices,” she said. “Let’s move over to your right.” They had mowed this section of grass pretty well.

  “I was shy as a kid. No one to get in trouble with. Mostly, I explored. Streams, woods, whatever. I got more interested in science because of bugs.”

  “Is that your expertise?”

  “I don’t know about expert.”

  Hannah stood and stretched, rubbing her back. “What do you think about the bugs of this world?”

  “I haven’t been able to look at them.”

  “We’re pretty busy, aren’t we?”

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind work,” he said.

  “You’re a good kid. And I bet your father will miss you, and sooner than two weeks.”

  They worked in silence for another several minutes, and Zach said wistfully, “Do you think we’ll ever get back?”

  “I wish I knew.” She looked over the empty grassland and sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  Chapter 31

  She set the kids to making the bedding deeper and assigned Jodi to lookout duty as well as to watching over M.J. When she and Zach went back out to gather more grass, Ted and Garreth offered to go with them. She took Ted aside. “I want the strongest person in the group there, in case something bad happens. I trust you to defend people. You can do that, right?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will. Just don’t jump on the back of a passing rhino to do it, okay?”

  He grinned. “I’ll have to work my way up to that.”

  When the sun fell to the horizon, she called off the work. The water-gatherers were back with another armload of wood, and everyone had a drink of water. She built up the fire, put the big rotting log across it, making sure if it burned to the ends it wouldn’t set the grass alight. She told everyone to use the “facilities,” though they had none. “Tomorrow, we might build a latrine.”

  “When do we get a day off?” asked Dixie. “Aren’t there child labor laws or something?”

  Bob said, “Not for thirty million more years.”

  “If we want to survive, we have to work,” Hannah said. “There may come a day when we have everything how we want it, and we can take an afternoon off now and then.”

  They went into the cave and bedded down. The grass was enough of a cushion, barely, for comfort. Three times the depth would be better.

  Halfway through the night, she woke up, scratching herself. Something had been biting her. Maybe something like fleas? She wondered if the grass was full of them. What she’d give for a can of bug spray. Maybe once the bedding had matted down, they could drag it out to the fire and let the smoke drive away whatever bugs were in there.

  The thought had woken her up enough that she knew she wouldn’t be able to return to sleep right away.

  The cave was dark, but a dim red glow from the fire shone in the distance. She rose quietly and made her way toward it, intending to build it up again to keep predators away. She pulled up short when she saw that M.J. was sitting at the fire.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” she whispered.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  At least he was well enough to talk again. The big log had burned through the middle, and she kicked the two ends around so that the rest of the log would burn through the night. Then she dropped down by M.J. “How are you feeling? You only had the one seizure, right?”

  “Yeah. I think the worst is past.” He cleared his throat.

  As the logs started to burn at the edges, she was able to see that his face was streaked with tears. Despite her frustration with him, she felt pity. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” He barked a sour laugh. “We have to fight for every meal. There’s no soap or hot water. Really, the list is long enough, don’t you think?”

  “We’re managing,” she said.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Through tomorrow, I think. Then food becomes an issue again.”

  “Being food is the bigger issue.” He sat up a little straighter. “I’m not sure which I’d call the alpha predator, but there are five families of animals that are very dangerous to us. Some probably have big hunting ranges. If they find us, we might be done for. I’m worried that the saber tooth already knows our scent. And has a taste of our blood.”

  Hannah shivered despite the warm fire. “But we weren’t an easy kill. It knows that too.”

  “It could be out there right now, watching. Stalking.”

  She wished he’d knock it off. In the firelight, it seemed all too real of a ghost story. “We’ll make spears tomorrow. Take a couple trips back here with good throwing rocks. Pile them up right by the entrance there, and have them ready to throw at an attacking animal. We’ll get this. We have big brains, and all we need to do is use them.”

  He smirked.

  “Don’t talk like this to any of those kids.”

  “They’re hardly kids. They’re almost grown.”

  That wasn’t untrue. She sat quietly, listening to the pops of the fire. “Were you crying because you missed your wife?”

  “No,” he said. “I was crying because it finally dawned on me.”

  “What?”

  “That I’m living in a world without booze.” He wiped at his face. “I don’t want to live in a world without booze.”

  She stopped feeling sorry for him. “Christ, M.J.”

  “I know it’s sick. I know it’s pitiful. I know you hate me. I hate myself.” His voice was growing louder.

  “Shhh. You’ll wake everyone.” Or draw the saber tooth, who she now imagined out there, on its haunches, watching them.

  His voice was quieter when he said, “That’s why recovery never took. I tried twelve-step. I tried Antabuse. I tried a Jungian therapy retreat, trying to confront my shadow self. I tried everything. But it doesn’t work because I like to drink. I like being high, and numb, and just that much removed from the world.” He held his first two fingers up an inch apart.

  She couldn’t imagine. Sometimes, she felt removed from the world and wished there was something she could do to push herself closer. Maybe there was. Maybe some drug—cocaine or something—would do that for her. But it had never occurred to her to hunt for a drug to solve that feeling. If there was a failing, it was in her, and it was her responsibility to fix it...or to live with it. “I don’t know,” she said, hesitant. “I’m not you. I don’t feel what you feel. I don’t need what you need. Maybe if I had your life, I’d drink.”

  “You don’t really think that.” He gave her a wry smile.

  “I don’t know what to think, except this. We need you, M.J. You know things about this world. I don’t want you drunk. I don’t want you sick. I don’t want you moping so hard over long lost vodka that you don’t help us survive.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  That irritated her. “I’d happily turn over being boss to you.”

  “I don’t want it. Besides, you’re doing fine. You can make a game of it. See how many of us you
can keep alive for how long. If you only lose one a week, I’d say you’re doing pretty well.”

  She stood. “I don’t like you very much right now.”

  “Join the club,” he said.

  She knew she shouldn’t leave him alone out here, but she’d had her fill of him. She went back into the cave and edged around the feet of the sleeping teenagers until she saw the open space she thought was her own. She climbed back onto the flattened pile of grass and closed her eyes, trying not to worry. About M.J. About the saber tooth peering at the fire from the grass. About any of it. Somehow, despite all the problems she knew she’d wake up to, she fell back asleep.

  She woke when the kids began to stir. Bob was already up, at the fire. He had dug up the roasted meat. “It’s done,” he said. “Should we eat it now, or save it for later?”

  “Eat it now,” said Ted, coming out and rubbing his eyes. Others echoed him.

  “If we walk around with meat,” said M.J., “it makes us a target. And if we leave it here unguarded, something else might find it.”

  Pessimistic as it was, it was also a good point. “Meat for breakfast,” she said. “But remember, it may be the only food we get all day.” She pointed to Zach and Laina. “And we three food-tasters should start on another vegetable later today. Try and expand our menu.” The cooked tuber hadn’t sat any better with her stomach than the raw.

  Chapter 32

  They ate oreodont roasts, stuffing themselves as full as they could. No one had digestive problems from last night’s meal, so there was no reason to be cautious. And the meat would go bad in the warm weather, so they might as well eat it all.

  “What are we going to food-taste later?” asked Laina.

  “Something plentiful. If we can find something familiar, like cattails, that would be best. Barring that, something there’s a lot of. So everyone can help. Keep your eyes out.”

  “I see grass, and grass, and more grass,” said Garreth.

  “Near the water, there’s more variety,” she said.

  “That’s where we’re going?”

  “Yes. Aim for the stockade, and drink all we want there. And today, some of us are going to explore downstream and see what’s down there.”