Mammoth (Dawn of Mammals Book 5) Read online

  Hannah realized she had a reached a point where her apology would finally be entirely sincere. Maybe it was worth bringing the topic up again, just for that, for the relief of delivery of a heartfelt apology to the one she’d wronged. This Dixie—this pregnant, more empathic Dixie— was easier to apologize to. She was someone you’d actually want the forgiveness of.

  Hannah wasn’t sure if she’d changed any less than Dixie. They all had. Her own changes were harder for her to see. “I’m tired,” she announced. “Weary. I’m more than ready to get someplace where it isn’t a daily struggle to stay alive.”

  “Or someplace warmer. That’d be nice,” Jodi said.

  The afternoon wore on, and they had the shelter built. Dixie didn’t add any decorations to this one. They were debating whether to go back and check the herd when Laina appeared.

  “Are they gone?” Claire said. “The mammoths?”

  “No. I circled around to get here. I was cold sitting there. And I was curious.” She nodded at the shelter. “We’re staying here?”

  Claire said, “Unless you think it’s dangerous.”

  “No, I think it’s fine. If they wanted to kill us, I think they would have already.”

  “Maybe revenge isn’t in their emotional repertoire,” Hannah said.

  “Why would it be? It’s a waste of energy.”

  “Doesn’t stop people,” Hannah said, “and it’s a waste of energy for us too.”

  “In some ways, we’re stupider than the other animals,” Laina said.

  A half-hour later, Rex came up. “No change,” he said, pointing back toward the herd.

  “Is Ted okay?”

  “Yeah, but he’s too close to the mammoths to move safely.”

  “When it’s dark, I’ll go out and shine the light to guide him here,” Hannah said.

  “No moon until midnight, so that’s a good idea,” Rex said. “Anything I can do on the shelter?”

  “Everything’s done but the roof. Now we just need to wait for them to give up on the baby.”

  “I wish they’d move. I’m so hungry, I could eat my own arm,” Rex said.

  “I’m beat,” Jodi said. “Too long without eating.”

  “We only need to have the energy to cut up some meat,” Claire said, “and we’ll be refueled.”

  Hannah waited until full dark, and when Ted hadn’t returned in another hour, she turned on the flashlight and retraced her steps until she arrived at the place where she had watched the hunt. She flicked the light off and on, waited a minute, and did it again. Then she stood with the flashlight on, hoping Ted had seen the signal and was making for her. It took several minutes, but eventually she could hear him breathing hard as he came closer.

  “Good job,” she said as he reached her.

  “Wish we could have killed it more cleanly,” he said, throwing off his hide. “I’m so tired of the stink of this thing.”

  “Leave it here, if you want. In fact,” she said, a thought coming to her. “Let me use it for a second. Here.” She handed him the flashlight.

  She spread out the hide flesh side down, and then she pushed it around with her boot, scrubbing over all their tracks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Disguising our scent, I hope.”

  “Oh, yeah, I see. You think that’ll help?”

  “I honestly don’t think they’ll come for us. But why not take the extra precaution?” The mammoths probably wouldn’t use vision but scent if they did track. The hide should be leaving behind scent molecules, especially while it was still warm from Ted’s body heat. She bent over and dragged it after her, backing along the human tracks to the shelter. Ted kept the light on the ground for her. Halfway there, she dropped the hide. If this was the scent they tracked, their search would end here. If it was human smell they were interested in, Hannah hoped she had disguised that enough to confuse them. The whole effort only took an extra fifteen minutes or so. An hour and a half after she’d left the shelter, the two of them entered it.

  They’d all made it through the hunt alive. Everyone was safe and in the shelter. Ted accepted the thanks and congratulations of everyone and surprised Hannah by deflecting the praise. “It was mostly Laina. She landed both her throws perfectly. Without that, we’d never have brought it down.”

  Everyone was tired from the day, even Hannah, whose exhaustion was less from physical effort than from emotion. Some was from hunger. Her belly felt hollow, her limbs weak. They had gotten their kill just in time. And if tomorrow a saber tooth tiger came along and tried to steal it, this time she’d join Ted and fight it to the death. Leaving another kill that they’d worked hard to get was not an option. Not when there were so few game animals.

  The next day dawned clear. Hannah was the third awake and out. The first two, Claire and Rex, were back at the spot where they’d all stood watching the herd. “They’re leaving, I think,” Claire said.

  The mother still stood over the dead baby. Had it stood there all night? Another mammoth came to her, nudging her. It touched the baby’s body again, and then the mother. This went on for a good fifteen minutes, and then the mother raised her head. Finally, she stepped away. She looked dejected as she walked away. The other mammoth walked behind her, nudging her along every so often. The whole herd gathered around the mother, touching her with trunks.

  Ted walked up, yawning. “They’re moving?”

  “About to,” Rex said.

  And after another ten minutes of communion with each other, they did, marching off slowly. The mother turned one last time, looked at her fallen offspring, and finally turned and left.

  “About time,” Jodi said, yawning.

  “I want to see if the net can be repaired,” Rex said.

  “Probably not,” Claire said. “And we don’t need it.”

  “I’d hate to waste it. Some part of it might be salvageable.”

  “Maybe put Dixie on that,” Hannah said to Claire. “She’s not keen on butchering the mammoth.”

  Claire looked like she was going to balk at that, but she stared at Hannah’s face and something in it made her say, “Okay. Fine. Where is she?” Everyone else had risen and was standing together, waiting for the mammoths to move off.

  Dixie walked up five minutes later. Claire explained what she wanted her to do. “We’ll probably need the net to drag some of the meat, so keep that in mind.”

  Thirty minutes later, they approached the body of the youngster.

  “Do we gut it?” Ted said. “It’s huge.”

  “No reason to. We’ll have plenty of meat without trying to get every bit off it. Let’s just carve big chunks off it,” Claire said. “Hannah, you have extra knives?”

  “Yeah, and scrapers.”

  “The hide would be really useful,” Rex said. “Let’s try to keep it intact.”

  “We can drag the meat back on that, too,” Claire said. “If the net doesn’t work, it should.”

  They turned to the messy work of parting out the mammoth. The hide took three people to remove, using knives, one crawling over the dead body as they worked. The baby had a good amount of fat on it. More calories, so that was good.

  Even counting only the meat, there were a lot of calories here. Estimating weight and caloric content of the meat as being equivalent to beef, Hannah guessed there were two million calories. They could each eat five thousand a day, which was closer to what they needed considering their activity level and the cold, and they might begin to make up for many lean weeks. But five thousand a day for nine people meant about fifty pounds of meat per day for the group. And counting twenty-four more days left, that meant somehow they had to drag at least twelve hundred pounds of meat back. Everyone could carry forty, if their baskets or packs took the strain. But this meant that a thousand pounds had to be somehow conveyed back to the igloo. Dragging it with ropes and on the hide would be hard work. They’d be slowed down a lot. Three days here, but six days back, she guessed.

  She was thinking
about it when a thought struck her. “We need to send a couple people ahead.”

  “What?” Claire said, wiping a bloody hand across her face.

  “Nari and Bob and Zach need food. It’s going to take us a week to drag all this back. So we need someone to take them food.” She explained all her calculations and thoughts to Claire.

  “Damn, you’re right. They can’t last another six days without food, can they?”

  “Bad enough to make them wait three.”

  “I hate breaking up the group.”

  “There aren’t many predators,” Hannah said. “We’ve only seen one.”

  “Still, it makes me nervous.”

  “We used to go out two at a time. It was the dogs that changed us, what happened to Nari that made you decide on bigger groups.”

  “You’re right about that. Let me think about it while we work.”

  When Dixie was done with saving what she could of the net and rope, Claire set her to keeping watch.

  Claire stopped carving off roasts to speak again with Hannah. “Whoever goes would need five pounds per day for themselves for the trip, so fifteen pounds would be required to get them there. There’s no sense in returning. By the time they did, we’d be almost there.”

  Hannah said, “I’ll give up my pack. It’s sturdier and will carry more. Or send me.”

  “I’ll send you, in case there’s any medical problem back there. You and Jodi. She’d want to go anyway. And then you’ll be there, five of you, waiting for three days for us, so you’ll need seventy-five pounds more meat for that period. Ninety to a hundred total is what you two should carry.”

  “I can do that.”

  “And there’s no reason to wait.” Claire stood. “Everybody, listen up,” she said. She explained the plan to them. Jodi’s face lit up when she heard she was returning to Zach faster than the others.

  Claire checked all the available backpacks and baskets and picked the sturdiest one for Jodi. She and Hannah loaded up all the meat they could carry. And an hour later, the two of them were walking back over their tracks, heading home.

  Chapter 17

  They made it back just before nightfall two and half days later. Jodi pushed for speed, and Hannah let her. With plenty of meat—raw meat, but still—in her belly, she gained strength with each day.

  “How is he?” Jodi called, the instant she saw Bob, who was at the lake, near the opening in the ice. She had to call a second time, but then Bob looked up. He finished whatever he was doing and stepped gingerly away from the hole in the lake ice.

  “He’s not roped,” Hannah said.

  “He’s fine,” Jodi said.

  “Where is Nari? She should be helping.”

  Whatever Jodi thought in response to that made her drop her pack and break into a run. Hannah watched as she ducked into the igloo and bent to grab the pack. Hannah and Bob met each other at the campfire.

  “Is everyone alive?” she asked, dropping Jodi’s pack.

  “Alive, and hungry.”

  “We can solve that right now. Let’s get a fire going.” There was plenty of fuel piled up. Hannah shrugged out of her own pack, let it fall to the ground, and took one sweet moment to rub her shoulders where the straps had been cutting in. Her back too felt every minute of carrying the weight of meat. She said, “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful about being fed, but I’m tired of raw meat.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I’m beat. No, don’t lift that pack. It’s way too heavy.”

  “It sure is.” Bob let her pack drop. “What is it, mammoth?”

  “Yeah, we killed the youngest one. Still plenty of meat for all of us for the rest of the time. Jodi and I ran ahead to get you guys fed.”

  “We need it. I’m half-faint, and I can’t tell if it’s from hunger or if I’m in trouble with my heart again.”

  “Have some raw, then.”

  “Thanks, but I can wait another hour for cooked.”

  “Might be more like rare with a char. This fuel doesn’t last long enough to cook a roast.”

  “Let me find the salt.”

  Hannah had the fire burning in five minutes. “Glad you have the fuel piled up here.”

  “We were hopeful. It seemed worth the trouble to gather it.”

  Hannah dumped the meat from her pack. It was in four big chunks, and one chunk had been cut into to feed her already today. She had left one knife in the outer pocket of the pack, and she dug that out and began slicing off thin strips of meat. Bob pulled a tool belt out of the storage igloo and used a dental pick to roast a piece of meat. His hide mittens protected his fingers. Hannah arranged rocks for boiling water to get the most heat out of the fire before it burned down, and she carved some pieces of mammoth into stew-sized chunks to put in a bowl. She poured ice-cold water over them and waited for the fire to burn hotter. “How is Zach?”

  “Holding his own with the fever. But he’s really weak. Fever, lack of food, the virus or whatever, it all combined to drain him. I don’t know if he’d have lasted another week without food.”

  “I don’t know if any of us would have.”

  “You didn’t lose anyone? Anyone get hurt?”

  “No, we all made it just fine. Except Dixie, you might say. Killing a baby animal really set off her maternal instincts. And it was horrible—I don’t disagree with her. The mother grieved. We had to watch that for hours, and it wasn’t easy on me, either. For Dixie?” She shook her head.

  “You sound sympathetic.”

  “I am. My heart went out to her. Still does. I can’t imagine what is running through her mind right now. She must feel really alone in this.”

  “Ow,” he said, dropping the skewer. “It’s done enough. I hate to be greedy, but I will be.” And he put the hot meat in his mouth, chewing tentatively. “Good,” he said through a mouthful of meat. He pulled the meat off and threaded another strip on. “Next one’s for Nari.”

  “I’ll set up a stew. Everyone can eat as much as they need. And in another three days, I’ll build a big fire and get a roast ready for the hunters when they return so they’ll have cooked food when they come.” The smell of cooking meat was making her stomach growl again. It’d be a few more days of good eating before her body was convinced it wasn’t at risk of starvation. Eating cooked meat would be well worth the effort of collecting fuel a few hours every day. Ice age people might never have cooked their meat, but Hannah vastly preferred cooked to raw. She transferred rocks into the stew bowl and brushed her hands on her pants. “Okay, it’s started. I’m going in to check on Zach.”

  Just then Nari came out. She limped to Hannah and hugged her. “Jodi says everybody made it okay?”

  “Yes. We were lucky,” Hannah said. “And there’s dinner cooking for you. We’ll talk in a second, right after I check on Zach.”

  “Thank you,” Nari said.

  Hannah crawled into the dim interior of the igloo and waited for her eyes to adjust. Jodi was sniffling, lying next to Zach, and Hannah worried that he had taken a turn for the worse, but when she crawled closer, she saw they were just having an emotional reunion. Zach was clear-eyed when he said, “Hey, Hannah. You okay?”

  “I’m great. You?”

  “A little tired.”

  “Some stew will fix you right up.” A kind lie. It’d take several days of eating to help him regain his energy. “How we holding up on willow bark?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to ask my nurse.”

  “Nari?”

  “Yeah, she took good care of me.”

  “I’ll have to tell her hands off, now that I’m back,” Jodi said. “You’re my boyfriend.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Nari,” Zach said. “Or me.”

  “I know.” Jodi sat up. “I can smell cooked meat on you, Hannah. Monkey, I need to eat. I’ll be back in five with something for you.” She crawled out.

  Hannah said, “Mind if I feel your face for fever?”

  “Go on,” he said, “
though Jodi already did it like five times.”

  “Humor me,” she said, crawling to his side. He felt a little warm, but nothing like he had been when his fever peaked. And he wasn’t raving or restless in the least. “Seems like you’re better. Have you been coughing a lot?”

  “Hardly at all,” he said. “So there’s food?”

  “You’re hungry?” Another good sign.

  “Yeah.”

  “Steak or soup?”

  “Either. Your choice.”

  “What kind of meat is it?”

  She told him.

  “How is it?”

  “I’ve been eating it raw for three days, barely defrosted, so it’s hard to say. It’ll keep us alive, no matter what it tastes like.”

  “How much did you get?”

  “At least a ton—”

  “Whoa!” he said.

  “A lot. But we left nearly as much there. A ton is too much for seven people to carry, so we worked out how much we’d need and they’re dragging only that much here. Claire and them, I mean. They’ll be here in three days, I think. But I won’t worry until day five.”

  “Because it’s a heavy load.”

  “Half a ton, so yeah, I’d say so.”

  “How are they getting it here?”

  He was definitely better. Curious. And he sounded like the old Zach, so the worry she’d had that his fever had been so high as to cause brain damage evaporated into nothing. She smiled, as easy and real a smile as she’d managed in many days. “They’re dragging it. Have you been walking outside to pee, or not?”

  “Nari wouldn’t let me.”

  “I think as soon as you eat, I’ll give you the okay on that. Just don’t stay out for long yet, okay? Humor me.”

  “I’m spoiled by being warm all the time anyway. I probably can’t take sitting out there for long.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, we may as well stay inside for the next three weeks, except for gathering water and fuel. Until we get cabin fever.”

  “Is that a real thing?”