A Dawn of Mammals Collection Page 19

  It raised its head, its long fangs coated in red.

  Hannah pushed back Ted, who was right at her side, and took a step forward to see better.

  They were definitely too late. M.J.’s neck had been broken, and the animal had already started to feed.

  “We have to go,” she choked out. Then louder: “Okay. We have to go.”

  “Leave him?” said Nari.

  Chapter 47

  “Yes,” Hannah said. “Back to the stream, everybody. We need to retreat to the cave.”

  “What do you mean, we have to leave him?” Jodi was sobbing the words out.

  “He’s gone, sweetie,” she said. “I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”

  Rex moved forward, looked out at M.J.’s body and turned away quickly. He cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we bury him?”

  The saber tooth hadn’t gone far. It was still there, fifty yards away, pacing back and forth over its kill now. It snarled at them. This was a kill it was not going to give up.

  “If we leave him,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “we can get away.”

  There was a silence.

  Then Zach said, “You mean, let the nimravid eat him.”

  She nodded. “Look at it. It wants its kill. If we let that happen, we can walk back to the cave and be safe—that is, if the other one doesn’t come for us. There’s nothing we can do for M.J. now. I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”

  Bob cleared his throat. “And if the saber tooth feeds now, it won’t want to eat for another few days. We’ll all be safe from this one, at least.”

  “God,” said Jodi, turning away.

  “That’s too—” Nari choked out. She began to cry too.

  “It seems wrong,” Rex said.

  “I know,” Hannah said. “But we can’t fight anymore. Three of us are hurt. M.J. is dead. We need to cut our losses.”

  As if agreeing, the saber tooth tilted its head back and screamed its defiance.

  “Let’s go,” said Claire. “I’m sorry about M.J. As sorry as anyone. But Garreth is bleeding, and so is Ted, and we need to go.”

  One by one, they turned away from M.J.’s still form. Laina made the sign of the cross before she turned, and Hannah looked down at M.J.’s body one last time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she began walking backward, keeping the saber tooth in her sight.

  When she had backed another hundred yards away, the saber tooth bent to claim its meal. She turned away, unwilling to watch, even if it left them exposed in this direction. After another hundred yards, she turned. It was pulling something red from M.J.’s belly, and she swallowed her bile and quit looking.

  An irreverent thought passed through her mind. At least he’s not missing alcohol now.

  And a selfish thought followed it. They had lost their expert on the flora and fauna of the epoch. They were really on their own now.

  * * *

  The hour-long walk back to the cave was made in silence, everyone alone with his or her own private thoughts. Hannah checked Garreth and Ted’s wounds once they were out of sight of the grove and decided they could both wait for first aid until they were back at the cave. Not until the cave entrance and the reinforced stockade were visible did the first quiet conversations start again.

  Bob let the kids get ahead and turned to Hannah, putting up a hand to stop her. He went back to meet her. “You okay?”

  “Better than M.J.”

  “I know. It was awful. They’re never going to forget this, not a one of them.”

  “No. Nor will you or I.”

  He sighed. “But what are we going to do for food today? We can’t just sit here and mourn. We have to keep up our work.”

  “Maybe now that it has fed well,” she said, “it’ll leave our traps alone for a day or two.”

  “If the raider was the nimravid at all. It could have been anything raiding the traps. We need to build more pit traps. I don’t think any animal will climb down into them. And if it does, it may just double our catch.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at the kids. Most had plopped down in front of the smoldering fire. Rex was poking at it with a long stick. A few were talking together, but most were sitting, heads bowed, lost in thought. As she watched, Claire took her shirttail and wiped her eyes with it. “It’s not even noon yet. Maybe we can give them a couple hours, and then send out work crews.”

  “Maybe one work crew. Everyone may be too frightened to go out in smaller groups.”

  It was a petty thing to think about, but M.J.’s death screwed up the numbers. Three groups of four now became two groups of four and one of three, without an adult in it. That one would be more vulnerable. All she said to Bob was, “We need to stay in bigger groups for a while. For defense, and for everyone’s peace of mind.”

  Bob nodded. “And we need to stick close to the cave, or to the old stockade. So we’ll have a place to hide, if need be.”

  Hannah hoped maybe the saber tooth would find that after all this, it hated the taste of human meat. And then it would leave them alone. Wishful thinking, of course. In the bloody world of tooth and claw, meat was meat. To the saber tooth, she was just a walking hamburger, easier to kill than some others.

  She’d have to work at making this group harder to kill, that’s all. Training, practice at weapon use, improving the technology of weapons: that would be her next order of business. As awful as she felt about M.J., think if it had been Laina, or Zach, or any one of the others. As she watched Dixie pull out her compact and lipstick and apply a smear, trying to get herself together as best she knew how, she realized even Dixie would have hurt her worse to lose. Not because she was more valuable than M.J. But she was just a kid. She deserved a chance at a longer life.

  But what kind of life would they have here?

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Dark thoughts,” she said. “Wondering if maybe M.J. isn’t the lucky one.”

  “Don’t let yourself go there.”

  “No. I know.” She couldn’t indulge herself in despair or depression. “You and I have to be strong.”

  “You be strong. I’ll be sympathetic.”

  She almost smiled at that. “I’m the traditional dad, and you the traditional mom, eh?”

  “Indeed.” He was watching the kids too, and Hannah took a moment to turn around and check for danger. Nothing.

  Bob said, “I’m wondering if—”

  At that point, Ted came running from the cave. He pulled up, looked around and caught sight of them.

  “It’s back!” he yelled. “It’s back! The timegate is back!”

  Chapter 48

  Hannah took off running toward the cave, yelling, “Stop! Don’t anyone go in there!”

  “Why not?” asked Dixie.

  “Remember how we all got separated before? We can’t let that happen again!”

  “But I want to go home,” said Claire, still crying.

  “Me too,” said Zach. “I don’t want to end up like M.J.”

  “Hold up,” she said. “Wait for your teacher. You don’t want to leave him behind, do you?” She pulled her flashlight off her belt loop. “Everybody line up, behind me.”

  Bob trotted over and said, “Ted, are you sure you saw it?”

  “You can even see it in the dark. It’s just the same. Glimmery, and colors, and everything.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “Everybody here? Look around, see if anyone is missing.”

  Bob counted heads. “Only eleven. Oh. Right. Yes, we’re all here.”

  “Let’s go then,” she said, and then stopped. “Grab the spears,” she said to Ted, who was right behind her. “And Dixie, grab the cordage that’s coiled by the fire there. And whoever is in back. Nari? Take that really good flat digging rock.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we may need them,” she said. “And someone, get those cured skins.” She didn’t want to say it aloud, but maybe they’d need them to survive. What if the timegate only went back, never forward? What
if they stepped out of the cave next time and were another 30 million years back in time?

  But they had to take the chance of using it. If there was any possibility at all that this was a stable gate, one end here, the other in the modern world, they had to step through.

  Hannah realized her hand holding the flashlight was shaking, half in terror, half in hope. She led them through the cave, past their line of mattresses, and back to the place where it had all started, almost a month ago. And there it was, ahead, a shimmer in the gloom.

  She walked nearer it and watched it for a moment, that same mesmerizing curtain of shimmering, shifting light. The kids lined up in a semi-circle around it.

  Ted said, “It’s up in the air. Just like we fell from it. Now we have to get up to it.”

  “Hmm,” Hannah said. He was right. And it was going to be a problem.

  “We can pile up rocks,” Bob said. “Everybody back out. Quick. Take what’s around the fire ring. We’ll build steps.”

  Hannah stayed where she was, alone, watching the timegate, hoping it didn’t disappear. How long had it been there? How long did it stay open when it was? Would it appear every month or so? Sporadically? Had it appeared every day, but they hadn’t been here to see it? She had no idea.

  Ted was back first with a big rock.

  “Don’t touch the light. I’m afraid you’ll disappear if you do,” she said.

  “Okay.” He sat down and pushed the rock forward with his feet, until it was almost directly under the shimmer. “Good?”

  “Looks perfect.”

  Garreth came next. He had seen what Ted had done, and he pushed his rock up to nestle against the first. One by one, the other kids built a platform, and then a step, and then another step. Three steps up, and they could walk through.

  She was terrified to do it. She was just as terrified not to. “Bob, you go first. Everybody else, line up. And do it quickly. We don’t want it to close and strand one or two of us back here.”

  They were trained by years in school. Forming an orderly line was easy as could be for them.

  Bob turned and looked her. “Ready?”

  “I’m ready. So is everyone. Go.”

  Bob stepped forward, jerked a little—probably at that initial shock—and then he was gone. Dixie was next. Nari. Garreth. Laina. Zach. Jodi. Claire. Rex. Ted was last and he shot a glance at her before he stepped through.

  Then it was her turn, and she pushed through the curtain of light. The charge zapped through her.

  And then she was falling again....

  TERROR CRANE

  Chapter 1

  Hannah felt herself falling. The trip through the timegate was much the same as the first time—the wall of shimmering light, the static-electricity jolt upon stepping through it, and a fall through total darkness. The fall this time seemed even longer.

  It was long enough that she had time to think while she fell, to worry about where they were headed. They’d gone back thirty million years the first time. She hoped against hope that stepping back through the timegate would bring them back to the modern day. If it was forty million years further this time, they’d be thrown back to the time of the dinosaurs.

  And if they landed in some long-lost time, they’d sorely miss M.J. The alcoholic paleontologist had been killed, mere hours ago, by a saber-toothed nimravid, an extinct animal whose skull had been nothing more to Hannah than an exhibit at the National Park museum where she had been working when all this began, almost five weeks ago.

  Five weeks ago—or thirty million years from now, it might be more accurate to say—or some other million years ahead or behind of wherever she was about to land.

  A flash of light made her squint, and then she did land, and painfully hard, on a flat rock. Her eyes adjusted to the light and she looked around. It was day this time, and there was the teacher, Bob O’Brien, standing and rubbing his hip like he had landed hard on it. Around him, at various stages of getting to their feet, were the nine teenage charges of his, four boys and five girls.

  One of them, Ted, a tall athletic kid, was sitting and rubbing his head.

  Hannah said, “Is everyone okay? Ted, are you?”

  Ted said, “My head bounced off the rock when I landed. I think I’m okay.” He didn’t sound entirely sure.

  “Are you dizzy? Seeing double?”

  “No,” he said. “No signs of a concussion. I know where I am—at least as much as anyone does.” Then he smiled at her surprised look. “We had to learn about concussions on the football team. I’m okay, just a little rattled.”

  “Oh no,” Dixie said, her backpack open on her lap. “My mirror is cracked.” She had a hot-pink compact open in her hand and was looking sadly at it.

  Bob said, “Does anyone have anything more seriously broken than a mirror?”

  Jodi said, “My rock hammer stabbed me, but I’ll live.” Once a plump girl, she had been the first of them to be seriously injured, but except for a nasty scar on her arm from the saber tooth’s claws, she was recovered now. And because of the difficulty in finding food, she was much slimmer.

  Too many of them had been hurt. Hannah’s thigh still throbbed from the place the saber tooth’s claws had punctured her. Leadership of the group had fallen to Hannah, and when she thought about all the injuries she’d allowed, she knew she had failed—failed to protect her charges. She had doctored all their wounds the best she could, but she had let them happen in the first place.

  When she remembered the saber tooth bending over M.J., pulling out a bloody length of his intestines, her feelings were so dark and twisted, she had no name for them. Horror and guilt seemed too tame for what she felt. She hoped the memory would fade in time.

  She was afraid it would not.

  “Okay,” she said, pushing it aside and clambering to her feet. “Where are we, and what are the dangers?”

  “On a plateau or something,” said Claire. She had come from a family of outdoorsmen and had helped the group learn to trap animals and how to dress the meat of their kills.

  “We have everything?” said Hannah. “Spears? Rope? Skins?”

  Sounds of assent came from everyone who had the items. “And I have the good digging rock,” said Nari, holding it up.

  Jodi pointed around them and said, “I think we’re all set for rocks.”

  Zach said, “My spear broke. I think I landed on it. Sorry.” He was the smallest of the boys, but his size belied his courage.

  Ted said, “Mine’s okay.” He took the spear in hand, balanced it with unconscious ease, and scanned the area around them.

  Hannah also looked around. On all sides of the plateau, she could see the canopy of a dense stretch of forest. A break in the green showed distant water.

  The trees were strange, though. Strange enough that she didn’t think they had popped back forward to modern times.

  “Geez, it’s hot,” said Garreth. “Am I wrong, or do you guys feel it too?”

  Bob said, “You’re not wrong. I’m sweating already. And I have the feeling it’s early morning, still.”

  Hannah said, “Why’s that?”

  “I’m not sure. Dampness in the air, maybe? We’ll know soon enough if this is early morning or late afternoon by the motion of the sun.”

  Nari said, “Is it still June, do you think?”

  Jodi said, “Is it still the Oligocene?”

  “I hope we’re home,” Nari said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bob. “June, maybe. But home? No. Oligocene? No.”

  Hannah said, “Where are we, then?” Again, she missed M.J. He’d have likely picked up a stray leaf and known immediately where—or rather when—they were.

  “We need to get down to that forest for me to have a hope of guessing,” Bob said.

  Hannah said, “Spread out, guys, and look for the best way down from here.” The direction she was looking was not going to be it. The plateau fell off in a steep cliff. As she stepped to the edge and looked over, she felt a w
ave of vertigo. The fall from here would be deadly. A hundred feet below, a ledge of yellowish rocks would be a painful place to land. “Not this way,” she said.

  “I think maybe over here,” Rex called. “It falls off pretty gradually.”

  Hannah turned to see him step off the plateau. “Rex, wait up. Everybody needs to go together. And remember, watch for danger.” This had been one of the hardest lessons to learn. Someone had to function as a lookout, and everyone had to be aware at all times, pausing during work to swivel his head and look around.

  Nari said, “You don’t think we’re home, do you?”

  “No,” said Hannah. “I don’t.”

  Just then, a raucous cry came from the trees below. Like an eagle’s, but deeper, and longer.

  Were they home? She really, really didn’t think so.

  Chapter 2

  “That didn’t sound too close,” Bob said.

  “Close enough,” muttered Jodi.

  “You okay?” Hannah asked her. The girl had suffered the worst injury of any of the kids almost a month ago. It would make sense she was more nervous than the rest.

  Jodi seemed to shake herself. “Yeah, sure.” She managed a wan smile. “A little spooked is all.”

  “We all are,” Hannah reassured her. She raised her voice to make sure everyone heard her. “We’re not going to find food or shelter up here, so we have to go. Just remember the rules. Don’t get separated. Watch all four directions.”

  Bob said, “Five directions, maybe. Overhead, as well.”

  Not a bad idea if there were big birds. Or, gods forbid, pterodactyls. Until they knew where they were—when they were—they had no idea what they’d encounter.

  They all lined up behind Rex. Hannah put Bob next. She put Ted, the tallest, about two-thirds back in the line, and she took the rearguard position. They scrambled down a rocky slope and into a patch of ferns and tangled vines.