Hell Pig (Dawn of Mammals Book 3) Read online

  It seemed safe for a moment. She stopped and shaded her eyes, looking out to the western horizon. Another hill.

  Ted said, “No water.”

  She believed him, but she did her own survey. “No.” There wasn’t even a hint of green that suggested ground water.

  “How long can we live without?”

  “Another day,” she said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if we were already experiencing problems today.”

  “Like what?” Ted said.

  “Confused thinking. Headaches. Let me look at your eyes.”

  He leaned down.

  She looked into his eyes and tried to decide if they looked sunken, as if they were losing fluid. “No, nothing yet.”

  “I might be getting a headache,” he said. “Now that you mention it.”

  “I hope my saying it didn’t talk you into one.”

  “No. My head kinda hurt before. I just don’t complain. Coaches hate when you complain about the little stuff.”

  “Dehydration is not little stuff.”

  He lowered his voice. “So what are we going to do?”

  “Find water,” she said, trying to instill some confidence in her voice. “We just need to keep walking and find it.”

  “Maybe it’ll rain.” He pointed to the clouds, which were thicker.

  “I hope.”

  They waited until the uintathere was well away before turning west again, down the slope of the hill. It appeared that the hills were in lines, running about north-south. The next crest looked lower than this. If Hannah could detect any general trend in the land—that it was falling off to one direction or another—a draw—she’d go that way. But everything looked the same, north to south. And the view from hilltops still seemed their best chance of finding water.

  They walked toward the next one until Nari said, “It’s raining.”

  Hannah stopped and looked up. So did everyone else, holding out open hands, hoping to feel rain.

  “I can’t feel a thing,” Zach said.

  “Me neither,” Jodi said.

  Hannah glanced down at her shirt and saw there was a dark circle, a wet drop. Not very big, but when the second one appeared, she said, “It is raining.”

  “What do we do?” Nari asked.

  Zach had his held tilted back, his mouth open.

  “Zach,” Hannah said, “Sorry, but that’s not going to do it. We need to take off our shirts and lay them out flat on the grass.”

  “I don’t have a bra on,” said Dixie.

  That was no secret. But neither did Claire. Hannah said. “Face away from the group. Guys, be polite, please. But it’s no time to be shy. Lay your shirt out to catch the most possible rain.”

  Jodi said. “So we have to suck it out of the material of our shirt? Mine is filthy.” Her bra was far too big on her now, and though she had it on the tightest hook, it still hung on her.

  Hannah dug through her pack for the bandana, and the Mylar blankets, and laid them all out on the ground. She began to pull grass, trying to create a space at the center of the Mylar that was lower, so the rain would run into the depression. Ted was still closest to her, and when he saw what she was doing, dropped to his knees to help.

  The rain only lasted fifteen minutes, and it didn’t amount to much. And Jodi had been right. There was enough dust in the material of their shirts to turn the water they were sucking out of them into thin mud, but better some moisture than none.

  The Mylar blankets had each collected about a quarter-cup of water.

  Ted said, “Save it?”

  “No,” she said. “Safest place for limited supply water is always in the human body. I’m just trying to remember if the smallest person needs it more or the largest person—which would be you, Ted. Male or female might matter. But I’m having a hard time remembering.”

  “Is that a symptom of dehydration, too?”

  “It is,” she admitted.

  “And my headache is getting worse.”

  “You and Rex,” she decided. “Rex, get over here.”

  When Dixie saw what was happening, she said, “Why them?”

  “Because they are the two biggest males. Bob would be my third choice. Women actually do retain water better. So these two.”

  Rex said, “I’d feel funny having more than my share.”

  “Do you have a headache?” she said.

  He looked surprised that she had guessed. “I do. Kind of a bad one, too. How did you know?”

  “Drink the damned water, Rex. I’m not going to fight about it. Just do it.”

  Neither Ted nor Rex looked particularly comfortable at being singled out, but she pointed at the pools of water, and they drank.

  Jodi said, “Don’t spill any, or I’ll murder you for wasting it.” She was trying to make a joke, but the boys took the advice to heart.

  They went on and made it down the slope to the lowest point between the two hills before they began to lose light. She explained the concept of water gathering via solar still, and the costs of that. They’d have to sit in one place for a day. They’d lose some water via sweat by digging. It might not yield all that much, but it would probably yield more right now, after the rain, than any other time.

  She let them debate the topic, saying she’d go with the group decision. Making decisions for everyone else did not sit well with her right now.

  But you decided to let Ted and Rex have the extra water earlier.

  Shut up, she told the voice. I don’t want to be the leader any longer. Let Bob have it. He knows the animals here, and I don’t.

  The voice said nothing back to her. It didn’t have to. The voice was hers, and she knew what it would say: But you have the better survival skills. You know more.

  If she didn’t want to risk losing more kids, she had to get it together. Bob had been right. The voice was right. She might not want it, but leadership of the group was going to fall back on her shoulders, no matter what her wishes were.

  Having decided by consensus not to dig the still, they set the first watch and lay down.

  Before drifting off, Jodi said, “I hope one of those huge animals doesn’t stumble across us while we sleep. It could squish four of us with those feet. Maybe eight of us.”

  Hannah was more worried about night predators. Or even the hell pigs, if they were able to hunt at night. Who was to say they hadn’t followed the scent trail of the humans and were out there right now, waiting for silence to attack with their perfect teeth?

  With that thought still in her mind, when she fell asleep, it wasn’t very deeply.

  So she was the first one awake when Laina began to scream.

  Chapter 6

  Hannah was on her feet, flashlight in hand, making her way over to the girl. In the dim light of her solar light, she saw that Bob had been on watch, and was headed there too.

  “Oh, shit!” Laina said. “Oh. Oh. Oh.” She was panting out the words.

  “What’s wrong?” Bob asked, getting there first.

  “Cramps. My legs.”

  Hannah came up and kneeled beside the girl. “It’s the dehydration, Laina.”

  “Gahhh!” she said and reached for her leg.

  Everyone was up by now. Someone went over to toss the rest of the paltry fuel they had gathered onto the fire, lighting the scene a little better. The familiar scent of burning dung drifted past Hannah. “Here, Laina,” she said. “Let me massage it for you.”

  “Will that help?” Bob said.

  “Yes,” she said. Hannah had leg cramps in early adolescence, growing pains, she supposed, and she still remembered how badly they had hurt.

  She grabbed one leg and started to rub the calf.

  “Oh shit, that hurts even more,” Laina said.

  “I know. It’ll get better,” Hannah said. “Bear the pain for just one minute. Count it off.”

  “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Missishitshitshit,” she said.

  Bob took up the count while Hannah gently rubbed t
he girl’s calf. As Bob hit thirty, she gave it a little more pressure and heard Laina suck in air, obviously pained by the extra force. She kept it up until Bob had hit sixty and said, “Any better?”

  “No,” said Laina.

  “Try this. Lie on your back and push your heels down and your toes up, toward your head. Try to stretch it out yourself.”

  “Okay,” Laina said. Obviously, she was willing to try anything to stop the pain.

  In a few minutes, Hannah could hear her take a deep breath and let it out. She could tell by the sound that the cramps were easing.

  “Still hurts,” Laina said, a minute later. “But I’ll live.”

  Bob said, “Maybe we should dig that solar water collector, as soon as it’s light outside.”

  “Maybe,” Hannah said. What she worried about, though, is that no water collector they could build with two Mylar blankets, in this environment, would collect enough to keep them alive. She asked Bob, “Who was on watch with you?”

  “Claire.”

  “Claire,” Hannah said, checking her watch. “Go on to sleep. I’m starting my watch a few minutes early.”

  “You sure?” Claire said.

  “Positive, thanks. Try and rest.”

  “Okay. If I can. My head is really hurting.”

  More dehydration symptoms. Hannah’s own tongue felt swollen. She put a finger in her mouth and felt how dry her gums were. Her lips were cracked. It was hard to swallow, and harder now that she was thinking about how hard it was.

  They needed water. And fast. Twenty-four hours from now would be too late. By then, they wouldn’t be able to move to any water they spotted. She could hope for rain, but that wouldn’t do any good.

  If her hoping could make a thing so, she’d hope for Garreth to still be alive.

  What, so he could die of thirst, too?

  She was getting tired of that voice. She realized she had worried that Laina was turning into a schizophrenic before her eyes, when all that had been happening was the girl was lost in her mathematical analysis of the timegate’s function. And now Hannah herself was hearing voices. Wasn’t that ironic? To Laina she said, “Pain easing up?”

  “Yeah, though now it feels like someone kicked me there. It’s not like a cramp, but they’re—I don’t know. Bruised or something.”

  “It may happen again. But try and get some sleep if you can, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” she said doubtfully.

  Ninety minutes later, Hannah passed the watch over to Rex and Nari for their turn as lookouts, but she didn’t go back to sleep. She lay on her back and worried about water, about the cost of making a solar still, about what they’d dig with, if the roots of the grass were an impenetrable mass or not, and about how they’d survive another day.

  It didn’t seem hopeful at all that, as she watched, the clouds dissipated, leaving a field of stars overhead. Five thousand tiny dots of light appeared. And as dawn approached, the dimmest ones faded, until only one remained. A planet, she imagined, not a star at all. But she wished on it. She wished for water.

  Chapter 7

  Dawn had come. Everyone was stirring. A few had walked out to relieve themselves, but Hannah felt no urge to go herself—too dehydrated. Still lying there eyes opened, staring up, she was just thinking through a plan about sending half of the kids and Bob out to the top of the next hill while she and the other half of the kids dug a solar still here.

  A pair of birds—black ones, the same species she had noticed yesterday—were flying overhead. Straight and true, along the valley, without making any dips. So not the same species, then, with the different flight pattern.

  Wait.

  She remembered something then, pulled from the recesses of her mind, about birds and mornings and water.

  She sat up. “I know where there’s water,” she said.

  “What?” Laina said.

  “How?” Bob said, standing up.

  “How can you possibly know?” Dixie asked.

  “The birds told me,” she said.

  “Uh-oh,” said Ted. “Confusion is a symptom of dehydration, you said.”

  “It is,” she said, popping up to brush herself off. “But I’m not confused. There’s water that way. She pointed after the birds. Come on, everybody get up. We need to get there as soon as possible.”

  Rex moaned. “My head is hurting worse today.”

  “Water will solve that.”

  Laina got to her feet gingerly. “I guess I can walk. But my legs hurt.”

  “Water will solve that, too,” Hannah said. “Come on, everyone, get your gear. I’ll explain as we walk.”

  Someone kicked dust over the remains of the fire while the others gathered up their gear. Everyone still had the belt they had worn to collect fossils. Rex had the fishing net. Most had spears, and Jodi had her club. Zach was wearing Garreth’s old backpack, and she felt a twinge when she noticed. She checked inside her own pack first, making sure none of her gear was missing, before she started off.

  Within minutes, she was leading them to the south. “Birds fly to water in the mornings,” she said, past a dry throat.

  “What? I can’t hear you,” Rex said, from near the rear of the group.

  Someone halfway back in the line repeated it for him.

  The way ahead was clear. Hannah turned and walked backwards so everyone could hear her. “I saw birds flying straight this way this morning.”

  “If it’s August,” Nari said, “maybe they’re migrating already.”

  “Nope,” Hannah said, feeling as near to optimistic as she’d felt since Garreth’s death. “I saw the same birds—or the same kind—yesterday, and they were weighted down with water.”

  Jodi said, cheerfully. “Bird psychic?”

  Hannah said, “No, though that would be handy. I was just lucky enough to see it.” She faced south again, walked forward, and picked up the pace. Fast, slow, didn’t matter. The cost of faster was more sweating, if they had any moisture in their tissues to sweat out. But the cost of dawdling was still being out here when it was hot. So she went fast. She was thirsty, and she wanted that drink.

  She just hoped she would get it today. Surely the birds wouldn’t choose a nesting or hunting territory more than a couple hours from water, though, would they? That answer, she wasn’t as confident about. But the bouncing, swooping flight yesterday, the need to rest in a bush: that was what told her that yesterday’s bird, flying from left to right, had been weighed down with water. This morning, at dawn, they had been flying high and straight, to the source of it. The flight different because they were dehydrated, too, and lighter from the lack of moisture.

  There was a rise ahead, and she hoped when she reached it, she’d see the water.

  But before she got there, the birds—either the same two, or ones very much like them—flew over her head. Lower, with that same dip to their flight.

  Yes! She smiled before she could stop herself.

  Garreth’s face flashed into her mind, and her smile faded as she remembered why she shouldn’t be happy. But she was not going to lose another one of them. Not to thirst, at least. Not today.

  The rise came closer, and her heart beat faster from anticipation. Or maybe it was from the dehydration, come to think of it. But she trotted anyway, to the rise.

  And there it was. A mile and a half away, she guessed, but that was no more than a half-hour’s walk, forty minutes at the outside. She checked her watch. It was 9:18. Before 10:00, they’d be drinking their fill.

  She waited for the others to catch up to her. Laina was limping. But that would be better by tomorrow. Rex was massaging his forehead. Ahead, she had the cure for his headache, too.

  Ted reached her first. He whooped and offered her a palm in a high five.

  The rest all ran, then, up the last bit of slope, until they were all standing there looking at the sight.

  There was a lake, and it was a big one. All around it grew healthy green trees, mostly deciduous, but a few e
vergreens, too. At its near edge, where she could spy the shore through the trees, there was a stand of reeds.

  The entire area was lowlying, in a bowl in the landscape. The trees extended out from the lake for quite a distance, suggesting a high water table or underground water source.

  It struck Hannah for the first time, that if the timegate was appearing in exactly the same spot, that she was watching the geology of the area transform, over millions of years, like a time-lapse movie of geologic processes. If she understood more about how and why the landscape transformed itself, she might know why the lake was here—or have been able to anticipate its appearance. The next jump—

  The timegate. Uh-oh.

  “People?” she said, over the excited voices. Everyone had stopped at the crest of the hill, waiting to catch their breath, and taking a moment to appreciate the sight of their salvation.

  “Yes?” Bob said.

  “Does anybody think they can find the timegate again?”

  As one, they all turned to look behind them.

  “Maybe?” Claire said, but the doubt was clear in her voice.

  “I was thinking more of water,” Ted said.

  Bob said, “How long were we walking?”

  Hannah checked her watch. “Anybody have pencil and paper still?”

  “There’s some in Garreth’s backpack,” Zach said.

  “Will you take notes, please? It’s fifteen after now,” she said, once he had pencil and paper in hand. “And we made the turn at what time along the ridge yesterday?”

  “Maybe four hours’ travel ago?” Rex said. “I’m trying to remember what the shadows looked like.”

  Dixie said, “I’m thirsty. Can’t we do this while we walk?”

  Bob said, “Let’s try to do it now, while it’s fresh in our heads. Five minutes’ more wait for water won’t kill us.”

  They talked about their memories, counted the hills, and Zach wrote down the times and distances, as best as they could recall. There weren’t many landmarks to remember. One patch of dry bushes looked the same as the next.

  Rex said, “Are we assuming we’ll walk as quickly later as we did this time?”