A Dawn of Mammals Collection Read online

  “Any theories, Bob?” M.J. said.

  “Nary a one. You?”

  “I’m stumped. It must be some optical effect of...no.” M.J., moving gingerly, made his way toward the light.

  “Be careful,” said the mother, from well in the back, following it with a quieter, “No, honey, don’t get any closer.”

  M.J. moved forward, carefully put his arm forward—the blood-soaked one—and reached out for the thing. “Ow!” he said, snatching his fingers back. He sucked at them for a second.

  “Aren’t you beat up enough?” Hannah said.

  “Yeah, but I just want to....” He reached out again, twitched a little when his hand touched the colors. He pushed his arm forward.

  Hannah could see the colors shifting, forming a shape around his arm. He took another step—

  And vanished.

  Chapter 5

  “What the hell?” said one of the boys.

  Hannah didn’t know where M.J. was, but she knew he was hurt. She had to at least doctor his cut arm. Before she knew she had made the decision, she had her backpack dangling from one hand and stepped up to the light curtain. A quick breath, and she stepped through.

  There was no pain. Just a tingle then a sensation of falling, as if from a long distance. She hugged her pack to herself, strangely reassured by being able to feel something. Was she falling? Where was she? It was pitch black, and the fall—if that’s what it was—seemed interminable.

  Nothing hurt her. There had been a moment of shock, like a static shock, when she pushed through the...thing.

  Really, it had been seconds now. What was happening to her? What was that thing? Where was she?

  With a thump, she hit ground. But not as she should have, after a fall of that many seconds. Not a killing fall. More like jumping off a park bench. “Oh, come on, now,” she said, rolling up to a sitting position.

  “Hannah?”

  “M.J., is that you?”

  “Yup.”

  She rose to her feet, stuck her hand out and aimed for the voice, tripping a little over a rocky patch. She felt his arm, and the stickiness of the blood. “You’re still bleeding.”

  “And that’s what you come up with to say? After that experience?”

  “Well, you are!” She felt defensive.

  “We just had a.... Something amazing just happened, don’t you get that?”

  “I get it, I get it. I just don’t understand it. Where are we?”

  “Not a clue. Do you have a flashlight or lighter?”

  “I do; wait. Yeah.” She reached around her backpack to fumble at the side pouches. She kept a solar flashlight clipped there. Whenever she hiked in the sun, it charged. It weighed next to nothing. She unhooked it and flipped it on.

  The dim light came on. She held it up to M.J.’s face. “You okay?” He looked shocked, but not in shock in the medical sense. She imagined she looked like that too. “Did you fall for a really long time?”

  “I did. Move the light to your left, please.”

  Hannah shone the light around to her left. There were rocks, a face of dark rocks. Not the sandstone and siltstone and tuff of the Badlands. This was something else. “What’s the rock? What kind?”

  “Basalt. I think we’re in a cave, or a lava tube.”

  She continued to shine the light around, and a second later, almost exactly where she was looking, Ted popped into view, fell down, and jumped back up.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “That was awesome.”

  Then another of the kids, Laina, came through. And another, falling on top of Laina. Hannah took a step forward, meaning to help, but then another came, and another, falling over each other like puppies. She backed away as more came through.

  “Hey!” came a female voice.

  “Get off me!” said a boy.

  “If someone is touching my tit on purpose, I swear, you die,” said Dixie.

  All Hannah could do was stand helplessly, along with Ted and M.J., until the last body came tumbling through. It was Bob O’Brien.

  What followed was chaotic, as the kids untangled themselves and shoved and complained. Hannah stared at the place where they had appeared, and tried to figure out where they had come from. It wasn’t a hole in the ceiling. It was a hole in reality, she supposed. Midair, they had simply appeared, fell a couple feet, and landed.

  When the kids had brushed themselves off, they began to ask the obvious questions.

  “What happened?”

  “M.J., what’s going on?”

  “Mr. O’Brien?”

  The three adults looked at each other. O’Brien shrugged. Hannah shook her head. Only M.J. answered. “I don’t know, but that was some ride, wasn’t it?” He laughed, like it was all a great adventure.

  O’Brien seemed to shake himself out of his own shock and said, “I need to do a head count.” He began calling names, probably the way they were listed at school, alphabetical order by last name. “Zach.”

  One of the quietest of the kids answered, “Here.”

  “Nari.”

  “Here?” As if she weren’t quite sure.

  “Mimi.”

  No answer. Into the silence, Garreth said, “Her mom isn’t here, either.”

  Murmurs of concern.

  O’Brien kept on with his roll call. Laina, athletic Ted, Dixie, Garreth, all here. Jodi, the fossil finder, here. Claire, the stocky girl, here. Rex, the one who liked to answer questions, here. Two more kids’ names went by, unanswered. “So,” O’Brien said, “There are twelve of us. Nine students, me, M.J., and Hannah.”

  “And three missing,” said Garreth. “No, four, with Mimi’s mom.”

  “But where are they?” said Jodi.

  “Where are we?” Ted asked.

  “In a cave or maybe lava tube,” said M.J.

  “There’s one under the Badlands?” Jodi asked.

  “No,” said M.J., some of the hearty cheer leaving his voice. “No, there aren’t any in the park.”

  “Is there a way out?” asked Nari. She sounded nervous.

  Hannah hoped none of them had claustrophobia. “Before we do anything else,” she said, “I need to treat M.J. and Garreth’s injuries.” And to get it done before her solar-charged light failed.

  Chapter 6

  She noticed, as she wove her way through the pack of teens and over to Garreth, that four of them had their backpacks on. They all had their geologist’s belt on, except Dixie, but she had her designer backpack on. A few held on to half-empty water bottles. That might be important. “Wherever we are,” she said, above the murmured voices, “we might not be near water. So those of you with water, conserve it.” She had her pack, with almost a gallon of water still inside. But divided between twelve people, that wouldn’t last long.

  “Now I’m thirsty,” said one of the boys.

  “At least we’re not in that awful heat,” said Dixie.

  Garreth obediently stood still while she cleaned his scrapes with some of her precious water and dabbed antibiotic cream over them. The worst scrape, she wrapped with gauze. For his other cut, she put four little Band-Aids over it. It wasn’t a serious injury at all.

  Then she found M.J., tapping at the wall with his rock hammer, and made him sit down and take off his shirt. It was hard to tell in this light, but she thought she could see bruises all along his ribs. “You didn’t break a rib, did you?”

  “Don’t think so. I can breathe fine.”

  “Bet you a dollar they’re going to hurt tomorrow.”

  “That’s what pain meds are for.”

  “Hmm,” she said. She didn’t have but two aspirin, and if they were miles away from rescue, she couldn’t offer him much pain relief.

  His arm was sliced open. It was oozing blood in places, and in others it had started to close. “I wish I had rubbing alcohol.”

  “Make do with what you have.”

  She rinsed the wound with water and dried it with a gauze pad. Where it was still bleeding, she butterflied i
t. She wished her first aid kit had a tube of superglue. If they had to do any climbing, this would break open again and start to bleed.

  “Do you have an extra shirt?” she said. “Or t-shirt, even? To change into?”

  Garreth came up and said, “I have a windbreaker. My mom made me bring it.”

  “Thanks, son,” said M.J., “but I’m pretty sure it’d be too small for me. I’ll be fine. When we find water, I’ll rinse the blood out of this shirt.” He put it back on without buttoning it and stood. “I say we try to find our way out. What do you guys think?”

  A chorus of agreement rose. Hannah repacked her first aid kit and got ready to move.

  O’Brien said, “I don’t want to lose anyone else. We stick together. Make sure you can see the person in front of you and behind you.”

  Hannah said, “It might be too dark to see for the last few in line.”

  “If it is,” O’Brien said, “you should hang on to the next guy’s belt or backpack or shirt. Don’t get lost.” The worry was clear in his voice. And no wonder. He would be considered responsible for everyone on the field trip, and he had to be feeling bad that he’d lost four of them somehow. Hardly his fault, but still, he seemed like the type of guy who would feel that it was.

  “Hannah, come up here with your light,” said M.J. “I think the ground is rising in this direction.”

  They got themselves lined up, with O’Brien in the rear of the line, and M.J. led them along. After a few dozen steps, Hannah agreed, the slope did seem to be upward. A sudden thought struck her. What if there’s no exit from this thing?

  That thought led back to the first question, the real question. Where are we, and how did we get here? What was the curtain of light? Why did people pop out of nowhere into the cave?

  What is happening here?

  For now, what was happening was a steady march through the cave—a dry cave, she realized. If water had carved it from rock, that had been a long time ago. They walked for enough minutes that she was really starting to worry. Maybe this was Hell or something, and Hell ended up being an endless black cave to nowhere. She tried to clamp down on fanciful worries—there were real worries enough—but couldn’t. She wasn’t Catholic, but maybe they had it right, and this was a purgatory.

  “We’re out,” said M.J. He turned. “Everybody, the cave ends up ahead.”

  “Don’t run,” yelled O’Brien.

  Hannah did her best to keep any of the kids from getting ahead of her, but two squirted through. M.J. was climbing up a series of shallow natural steps, toward an opening barely lighter than the cave. As she began the climb, she looked up and realized what she was seeing was stars.

  It was night.

  What the hell? I mean, what the hell?

  She clambered to the surface of wherever they were, turned, and managed to keep her mind on the task of helping the kids up the last step.

  O’Brien came, did a headcount, and his sigh of relief was audible when all of the kids answered.

  “But where are we?” one asked.

  There was no moon, and the outdoors was barely lighter than the cave had been. There were clouds, she realized, drifting across the stars, making it darker than it would have been without them. She turned in a slow circle, looking for the telltale dome of light pollution from a city. But there was none.

  “Where are the cliffs?” she said. “Where are the rocks?” She could see just enough to know they weren’t in a canyon. The horizon was even all around. Flat.

  “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” said Garreth.

  “Or maybe we are. I’ve been to Kansas,” said Laina. “This is what it’s like. Flat.”

  “Let’s not panic,” said O’Brien. “Rex?” he said sharply.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Where are we on moon phase?”

  “It’s waxing.”

  “So it’ll rise when?”

  “I—I don’t know. I had good viewing about ten days ago, so two in the morning? Three in the morning?”

  “So it must be before that right now. You see, people, there’s no reason to panic. We all know science—and luckily, we have Rex here for his astronomy knowledge—and all we have to do is think things through. Stay calm. Use your brains.”

  Hannah agreed that this was, in general, great advice. But it didn’t apply here, because no matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t understand where they were. Or how they’d gotten here. Or anything. Moonrise time seemed a pretty insignificant detail when compared to the bigger WTF.

  Rex said, “But Mr. O’Brien?”

  “Yes, Rex?”

  “The stars are wrong.”

  Chapter 7

  “What do you mean?” O’Brien.

  “I mean, I was trying to find north. So I’m looking for the Big Dipper, right? And the pointer stars, to use to find the North Star.” His voice was getting higher with tension. “And they aren’t there. And neither is Arcturus or Vega. I should be able to see one of them. They should be bright right now and about there, and there at midnight.” He was probably pointing, but no one could see where he was pointing to.

  “You mean we’re on another planet?” said Dixie.

  “I mean.... I don’t know what I mean. Maybe we’re in the Southern Hemisphere. I don’t know anything about their stars. Except there’s a cross, the Southern Cross.”

  Everyone craned their heads, looking for such a thing in the sky. There were a couple possible groupings that might be a cross, but how often did constellations look like the thing they were supposed to look like?

  O’Brien said, “Look, we don’t need to worry until the sun rises. Then we can see a lot more. We might even see a road. Or a farm house.”

  “Or a twelve-foot alien with tentacles,” muttered Claire.

  “That’s bad for us,” Jodi said. “They always want the women first. For unspeakable things.”

  “Knock it off,” said Nari. She sounded really scared.

  O’Brien said with exaggerated patience, “We are not on another planet. We’ve talked about this. The chances of it being habitable for us? Is anyone passing out from not breathing?”

  “There’s grass,” said Zach. “I can feel it.”

  “There you go. We’re on Earth.”

  “What should we do?”

  Hannah said, “Stay together. Don’t panic. Sleep if we can. Wait for sunrise.” She had a thought. She dug into her backpack and came up with the GPS. She turned it on, and it went through its startup, looking for satellites. And it kept looking. And kept looking. Finally, she turned it off.

  “What’s that?” asked Ted.

  “Nothing,” she said, faintly. There were satellites all over the planet. It was a freaking traffic jam up there, almost. The least she’d ever seen on a GPS was two satellites, and that was in a deep canyon in the middle of nowhere. She’d gotten three just a couple hours ago.

  Wherever they were, it was not where they were an hour ago.

  “Cellphone, of course,” said Ted. “Anyone have theirs?”

  Two of the kids did, and they pulled them out. “No signal,” said one.

  “Me neither. And mine’s almost dead.”

  “So we know what?” asked O’Brien, still trying to keep them using their heads.

  “We aren’t near a tower.”

  “That’s right. And as much as you guys like to text all the time, far as I know, taking a break from it hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

  A snort of amusement greeted that.

  “So let’s all sit, right where we are, and wait for dawn. Even moonrise will help us see a little more.”

  “I’m keeping an eye out for headlights on the horizon,” said Garreth. “There has to be a highway somewhere.”

  “Good thinking,” said O’Brien.

  M.J. was quiet the whole time. Hannah turned around and tried to make out his form in the starlight. She picked him out and made her way over. She tugged at his hand and pulled him several steps away from the teenag
ers. “Any idea what’s going on?”

  “Only crazy ones.”

  “The GPS isn’t working. Zero satellites.”

  “No way.”

  She dug the device out again and handed it to him. He turned his back toward the others and ran it through its paces, finding exactly what she had. “Crazy.”

  “Been a crazy day,” she said.

  “But fun.”

  “You have a bizarre idea of fun.”

  “I like adventure.”

  “I like being within driving distance of a Burger King.”

  “Yeah, food. That’s a problem.”

  “And water.”

  “I can find water. That kid was right. There’s grass underfoot. So this isn’t a desert, and because it’s not, I can find water. I just need to see the geology and lay of the land first. Water is no problem.”

  “So our problems are down to a thousand minus one.”

  “All I have is the same advice that O’Brien gave the kids. Wait for dawn. Then we’ll see.” He handed her back the GPS unit.

  As the night wore on, several of the children managed to drift off to sleep. So did M.J. Hannah and O’Brien did not. They drew away from the others to have a whispered conversation.

  He said, “Are you doing okay? You sound stressed.”

  “I am stressed. Do you have the slightest idea what’s going on?”

  “Not a clue. But I need to keep it together for their sake. You know?”

  Hannah realized he was asking her to do the same. “I get it.”

  Just then, the howl of an animal drifted over the land. A wolf? Whatever it was, it made the hairs on her neck rise.

  Chapter 8

  When it had faded, she said, “Dawn can’t come soon enough for me.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Try to rest. I won’t sleep. I don’t need more than six hours on my worst day.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  She lay still, but she didn’t sleep. The moon didn’t rise either, she noticed.

  * * *

  When dawn began to fade the stars away, she had just about dozed off. Back home, it would have been eight at night, so it made sense that only now she was getting tired. She stood, brushed herself off, and went off to what they’d decided last night was the girls’ bathroom area. Get that done before she was visible. She had some toilet paper in her pack, but not much. They had better find civilization before another night had fallen for that reason too. She glanced at her watch—which was wrong—and set it to 5:00. At high noon, she’d reset it, and tell anyone else with a watch to do the same.