A Dawn of Mammals Collection Read online

  “Why?” Dixie chimed in.

  “It might be different, or better, or we might see fish in the stream, or berries that are ripe.”

  Jodi said, “What about the rest of us? You said half.”

  “Finish making the fishing net. And if that gets done, collect rocks to throw and long branches that will work as spears.”

  “For hunting?” Ted asked.

  “And self-defense,” she said. “We need weapons at hand. One advantage we have over the animals is that we can use tools. We aren’t as fast. We aren’t as strong. We aren’t as experienced at hunting or being hunted. But we can attack from a distance by throwing things, or by poking them away with long spears, and that gives us an advantage. Right now, we’re not using it well enough.”

  “An advantage for a while,” said M.J. “Until they learn better.”

  “For long enough for us to grow more experienced as hunters,” she said, putting as much confidence into her voice as she could. “Eat up, everyone.” She looked at Bob until his eyes met hers and jerked her head to the right. She wanted to meet with him privately, where the kids couldn’t eavesdrop. She carried the rest of her chunk of roasted meat with her.

  When they had gotten a few hundred yards away, she turned in a slow circle, looking for danger, but she saw nothing to worry about.

  Bob said, “M.J. seems to be on the mend.”

  “His mood is bad. Lousy bad. I’m going to ask you to stay around him today and try to deflect that. I don’t want him infecting everyone with his pessimism. Can you?”

  “I can try. If I can get him talking about the flora and fauna here, I think he’ll be okay. No matter how lousy he feels, it still is his passion.”

  “Good. And I want to ask you if it bothers you that I’m giving so many orders. Are you okay with that?”

  He looked sincerely surprised. “Of course not. You’re a natural leader, so why would I mind?”

  She shook her head. “Just a comment M.J. made. But you’ll speak up, won’t you? If you disagree, or know something I don’t.”

  “I did with the cooking, didn’t I?” He smiled.

  “You did, and I thank you for it. This roast is actually pretty darned good. Way more tender than the overcooked stuff last night.” She took another bite.

  “We need a pot to make stew of the leftovers to get the most out of them. Maybe a tightly-woven basket. You know, you can drop hot rocks into water in a pot, and bring it up to a boil. So even if the container is flammable, like a basket, you can still have soup.”

  “Great idea. I’ll put it on the list. Do you have any talent in basket-weaving?”

  “Not a bit.” His eyes went unfocused. “Or maybe a wooden bowl. We could whittle out a big stew pot.”

  “We could. I don’t know how long my knife edge will last.” Of all the rotten luck, of the twelve people caught here in the long-ago past, she was the only one with a pocket knife. “We do have those dental picks.”

  “We need a stone to keep your knife sharp. A hone. I’ll keep my eye out for something with the right texture.”

  “That’s great. I had a problem yesterday I wanted to talk to you about. The kids sort of melted down about missing their families, and I wasn’t any help. And a hamster they were worried about?”

  “Ahh, Lillian. She’s the classroom hamster. I’m sure the school janitor will continue to care for her.”

  “One problem solved.”

  He laughed. “May they all be that easy from here out. The kids seem recovered from the upset this morning. We’re doing okay. It’s day three, and we’re all alive.” He nodded at her. “Well-fed, even, thanks to you.”

  “Thank Ted, that crazy kid.” Now it was her turn to laugh. “When he launched himself at that stampeding herd, I tell you, I about wet myself.”

  “They’re teenagers. With all the good and bad that brings, like spontaneity.” He sobered. “I’m more worried about M.J. right now, and what you say about his mood.”

  “He’s grieving alcohol. He said as much.”

  “Hmm. I’m grieving my wife. And kids, and grandkids.”

  “M.J.’s married and hasn’t mentioned her once—just the booze. And I’m sorry about your family.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “Not to speak of, no.” She finished the last piece of roast and licked her fingers. “Better be getting to it. We have a lot to accomplish today.”

  Zach ran back with her flashlight to check for the timegate, but he came back to report it hadn’t appeared. They buried the bones from their meal in the steam pit, and covered it with fresh grass, then the dirt, and topped it with the largest rocks they could find, hoping to keep scavengers away from the bones, which Hannah wanted to keep for their marrow. Everyone was so stuffed with meat, they had to take it slow walking back to the stream.

  As they approached it, they saw a pair of new animals taking a drink downstream a few hundred yards.

  “M.J.?” Rex said. “What are those?” There were two round-backed animals, the size of small cows. Brindle-colored. Powerful-looking.

  M.J. was stirred from his morose silence. “Hyaenodon. But we don’t have any fossil bones of specimens this big. Not from the Oligocene.”

  Chapter 33

  M.J. sounded perkier with every word. That was the good news.

  The bad news was, when one animal raised its head to tilt it back after the drink, its teeth gleamed in the morning sun. Its fangs were long, but unlike the saber tooth, not curved. They were straight, and thick, and serious-looking.

  Hannah licked her finger and tested the wind. It was moving from downstream to upstream, so at least the animals weren’t going to catch the scent of the humans. She hoped they were nearsighted too.

  “Will it attack?” asked Jodi, unconsciously rubbing her arm. “Should we go the other direction?”

  “Probably,” said M.J. Then, to himself, “I wonder if it’s Hyaenodon horridus, just a large specimen. Or a new species.”

  “Looks horrid, for sure,” said Garreth. Like everyone, he was speaking quietly.

  “It’s definitely a meat-eater,” said Bob. “You guys can tell from the teeth, right?”

  M.J. said, “It has really great back teeth, like knives, set at angles. It’s like a kitchen meat-chopping tool.”

  Rex said, “So it’s a hyena?”

  “Not at all,” said M.J. “It’s a creodont. ‘Hyaenodon’ means ‘hyena-like teeth.’”

  “Does it see us?” asked Nari. She and a few of the others had crouched down.

  “Maybe we should be quieter and move upstream,” said Hannah. Scavengers or predators, whichever they technically were, they looked like they’d be willing to prey on humans. They must each weigh close to 200 pounds, and with teeth like that, they’d make effective killing machines.

  The group angled off, aiming more directly for the stockade across the grassland, and Hannah walked backward at the back of the group, keeping her eye on the pair of Hyaenodons. They seemed happy to stay where they were, drinking their fill. She glanced behind and saw Ted and Dixie had picked up rocks. Good. M.J. still hadn’t moved, and the group was drawing away from him. “M.J.,” she said, as she passed him. “Don’t get left behind.”

  With him standing all alone like that, away from his pack, a predator would go for him first.

  Reluctance clear in every move he made, he began to walk backward too. When he caught up to her, he said, “Look how long the tail is too. That’s new. The ridge on the neck?”

  “Fascinating,” she said. “And deadly, right?”

  “Certainly. In a paper by Simpson and Xing, the crushing strength of the jaw was estimated to be over 2500 psi, approaching an alligator’s.”

  “And that means?”

  “Pounds per square inch. It could bite your head off, easy. And we know from tooth marks, it generally went for the head. Bit them right off.”

  Her neck tingled. “Then let’s move faster,” she said.

 
“I wish I had my cellphone,” he said. “I’d take a picture.” He turned around and looked ahead to the group. “Maybe one of the kids’ phones.”

  She turned her head and saw the teenagers were strung out in a line. Ted, Dixie, Garreth were trailing, all armed with rocks. Bob was in the middle of the line, and the rest were moving as quickly as they could without running through the grass. “Forget the snapshot. We’re too strung out. C’mon, M.J. Hurry, we need to catch up.” She turned and began walking forward, turning her head once to see M.J. still dawdling. “Do I need to carry you? Or are you coming?”

  “Coming, coming,” he said, and then he finally did turn around and start walking. As always, when he wanted to move, he moved quickly. She hoped that was a sign he was physically mending. She had been wondering if the seizure had done his brain any damage, but his quick recital of species and jaw strength had her reassured about that.

  Good. They needed his brain and everything stored in there.

  They made it back to the stockade without incident, and everyone drank their fill. She divided up the group but stopped to check injuries before letting them leave. She thought Jodi was well enough to come along, but Ted’s bruised abdomen worried her. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  If he had a ruptured spleen or something like that, surely he would have displayed symptoms before now. She wanted him with her group, for his athleticism and bravery. “Jodi, are you feeling up to more activity?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Bob and M.J. would stay with the weavers. She picked Ted, Dixie, Jodi and Claire to go with her. And she wanted one more. She’d go with brains rather than brawn, which suggested Laina or Rex. She picked Rex for the rather silly reason that it was a more even divide between the sexes. It’s not a cotillion, Hannah. Nevertheless, she stuck with the choice. He’d doped out cordage-making, but now enough people knew the technique, they could teach anyone who did not.

  Hannah filled her water bottles here, where the water was fresher, and Dixie put two of the smaller bottles in her backpack.

  As they walked upstream, through the copse where Ted had brought down the squirrels and bird, Jodi said, “Do you think those hyena-things are gone?”

  “We’ll see,” Hannah said. “And we’ll give them a wide berth if they’re still there.”

  Rex said, “Seems like a lot of the animals take a drink and move off, to do whatever they do all day.”

  “Hunt,” Ted said.

  Dixie said, “Or mate.”

  “Probably they nap too,” said Jodi. “Like my cat.” She frowned, then she said, “Do you think these big mean animals play? Like the one that got me?” Her voice cracked on the “got.”

  “I think all animals play,” Hannah said. “At least when young. It teaches them how to fight, and hunt, and compete for mates later on.”

  Dixie said, “I’ve seen that on TV. On nature shows.”

  Hannah said. “Like kids wrestling. Tickle fights.”

  Ted said, “Not sure tickle fights have much survival training in them.”

  “Sure they do,” Hannah said, oddly cheered by the discussion. She looked at the stream ahead. “They were just up there, weren’t they? The Hyaenodons? By that patch of bushes.”

  “Yeah,” Claire said. “I want to go look at the tracks.”

  “That’s a darned good idea,” Hannah said. “Then we’ll all know what they look like. Everybody keep a sharp eye out, in case they haven’t gone far.”

  Ted climbed up the bank to look for them, and he shook his head. “Nowhere in sight.”

  Hannah wondered if the animals were capable of crouching down in the bushes. They hadn’t looked like crouchers. They’d looked like they were big enough to have other skills for hunting, rather than springing out from hiding. She wondered how fast they ran. She imagined the pair of them bearing down on her and got a chill.

  Claire was pointing to the tracks. “One is actually smaller than the other, see?” They didn’t have hooves but five toes, each ending in a sharp claw.

  Dixie said, “Maybe it was mother and child.”

  “That’s a smart idea,” Rex said, looking at her with surprised pleasure. “The young can stay with the mother until almost grown. So they can learn how to hunt.”

  “Lucky she didn’t decide today was a good day to teach it how to kill humans,” Dixie said.

  Hannah turned back to study the stream, which was clear and wide here, hoping to see the flash of fish. She saw nothing—which didn’t mean they weren’t here. Bottom feeders could hide in the shadow of a rock and be invisible to her.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said. There was a patch of reeds just ahead, and she wanted to collect some of the roots to test them as food.

  Ted said, “There’s another herd of oreodonts over there. Or the same herd. Maybe we should hunt them. We’re out of meat, pretty much.”

  He was right, they were. “I don’t know how to hunt them.”

  “We could do what we did last time—except instead of relying on something else to make them run, half of us could do that, and the other half could be waiting.”

  So much could go wrong with that. This time one of them could be trampled to death. The animals could smell them and swerve away. Splitting into two groups made the smaller groups more vulnerable to predator attack. Hannah said, “Let’s think about it.”

  They made it to the reeds, and Hannah dug up one. She’d try the roots, which were white and fat. If they were safe, there was a thick patch here, and she could see another patch ahead. That’s what she needed, a plentiful plant or two that had some carbs in it.

  Another copse of trees was ahead. Ted said, “Can I hunt squirrels?”

  “Sure. If there are any. Let’s approach quietly, now.”

  They quit talking and crept up to the outside of the patch of trees. There was another metasequoia here, not as big as the one fallen over at the stockade, but that towered over the rest of the trees.

  It was cooler in the stand of trees, and dimmer. Hannah slipped off her sunglasses and let her eyes adjust to the dimmer world. She thought the tree nearest her was a myrtle. It was funny how the trees looked much the same as 21st century trees, but the animals were so different.

  Though they waited for long, silent minutes, no rodent or bird made itself known. Ted said, “I’m going to climb this tree.” He picked an oak on the side of the copse away from the stream and jumped for the lower branch, then swung himself up.

  It was impressive. He really was a natural athlete, moving with speed and an unconscious grace. If only adolescence hadn’t been such a painful time, Hannah might wish she were one again for the physical part of it—if she could still retain what she knew now about the world and relationships and so on. Impossible dream, though. She watched as Ted climbed higher and higher. He stood on a branch, one hand lightly on the trunk, and gazed out over the grassland.

  “Guys,” he said. “There’s a saber tooth over there. Not far off at all.”

  Chapter 34

  Hannah tensed. “What’s it doing? Coming this way?”

  “No. It’s stalking an oreodont herd, or a piece of the herd that broke off, about two hundred animals, I think. It’s low in the grass, just watching.”

  Dixie said, “I want to see.”

  Rex and Jodi looked ready to run the other way. Claire was alert but didn’t look on the verge of panic.

  Hannah said, “It’s okay, guys. We’re not what he’s hunting for.” This time.

  Dixie said, “I want to see.”

  “Come up, then,” said Ted.

  “No way. I hate heights,” she said.

  Ted said, “It’s getting ready, I think. There it goes!”

  Dixie said, “I want to see.” She took a step.

  “Stop!” Hannah said. “We need to stay together.”

  “But—”

  “Ted can describe it to us. Give us the play-by-play, would you, Ted?”

&n
bsp; “It has it already. It picked a little one, a calf, or whatever you’d call it. Lamb? Took it down just like that. The rest of the herd is running, uphill, away from it and away from here. Now it’s tearing it open and eating from its stomach. And—holy crap. Look at that.”

  “What?” she said. Now she wanted, like Dixie, to rush from the trees and look.

  “There’s a bunch of animals. Littler than the cat—um, nimravid, sorry. They’re crowding around. I have no idea where they came from. They just appeared.”

  Hannah said, “I can’t stand it. I’m with you, Dixie; let’s go look. Do you have a cellphone?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “To take a picture for M.J.”

  “Okay. Sure.” She took off her pack and dug into it as she walked.

  Hannah turned to Rex and Jodi. “Just stand behind the tree that Ted is in, out of sight, if you want. Or come with us.”

  Jodi elected to stay, and Rex trotted to catch up.

  They had to walk up a short rise, and then the scene was before them. She crouched down to watch and motioned Dixie, Claire and Rex to do the same.

  It was just as Ted had said. A pack of smaller animals was circling the kill. The saber tooth raised its head and snarled. She couldn’t hear it from here, but she knew it had to be making sounds.

  The smaller animals encircled the saber tooth, who backed in a circle, trying to keep them all within sight. The smaller animals didn’t look like anything she knew from the modern world. They might be dogs, or another one of those creodonts M.J. had talked about, or they could be something entirely unknown in the fossil record. They were pack hunters, obviously, with an agenda.

  As the saber tooth lunged at the one, another one came in from its back side, darting toward the kill. The saber tooth wheeled and lunged at the second one. This time, her attack made it leave its kill by ten feet, and when the next little animal darted in, it got right up to the dead oreodont calf and snatched at it. It had not dragged it so much as an inch when the saber tooth turned and ran at it.