A Dawn of Mammals Collection Read online

  Bob kept up a distracting patter. Hannah tuned them both out as she worked. With every stitch, she improved her technique a little. By the time she had the first wound nearly closed, she was feeling more confident.

  She only wished she’d gotten the fire started first. She could have boiled the needle and thread. Or maybe there wasn’t enough time to do that. She glanced at Jodi’s face and saw that beads of sweat had broken out. More shock symptoms. Yeah, the bleeding had to be stopped fast. She just hoped she hadn’t traded speed to stop the bleeding for infection later on.

  One crisis at a time, Hannah.

  Chapter 16

  Ted came running up with the windbreaker. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Sorry, it took me a minute to find it.”

  “It’s okay.” Laina handed her another thread, and Hannah nodded her thanks. “Ted, we need to keep her protected tonight. And with the smell of blood, we need to all have some protection.”

  “You want the stockade finished,” Ted said.

  “It’s crucial. So is fire, which will give us a chance against predators’ better night vision and maybe scare them away. They don’t know humans. Campfires, to them, will look like the start of a wildfire, and a reason to stay away. So make sure everyone who was gathering fuel gets that back to the camp. If they dropped it when they ran over here, they need to find it again. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Stay strong, Jodi.” Then he left.

  Jodi seemed out of it. The sweat on her face too said, “shock.”

  “Laina,” Hannah said. “I need you to go to Jodi’s feet and raise them onto your legs, okay? Higher than they are now on that backpack.”

  Laina moved to do that and Hannah worked at threading the bloody needle.

  “I can do that for you,” said Laina.

  “I have it,” Hannah said. Again, she wiped down the needle and thread with alcohol, and began to stitch. The second wound’s repair went faster, now that she had some idea of what she was doing. Later, she’d think it through, try to plan out a better method still.

  Because this wouldn’t be the only time someone needed stitches. If they were stuck here, there would be many injuries.

  “Jodi?” she said, as she tied off the last stitch. “You okay?”

  “You’re done?” Jodi said.

  Hannah was relieved the girl was responsive. It meant the shock might not kill her. Now that the bleeding was contained, shock was the issue to worry about until infection became the main concern in a few days.

  As she cleaned up the third scratch, she thought about how seriously this one injury had depleted her supplies. They were in trouble, in so many ways. She needed to think about testing plants for healing properties too. As soon as shelter, fire, and food were solved problems, as soon as the kids all knew basic orienteering, she’d work on that. There must be plants that could serve as bandage material. But disinfecting? That was going to be a real problem. Were there willows in this world?

  She checked her kit, quickly counting supplies. There were eight alcohol wipes left. A tube of antibiotic cream. Some bandages and sterile gauze. Swabs. Salt pills. Suction syringe. Moleskin. A single packet of two aspirin. That was it.

  The best thing for all concerned, including Jodi, would be if they could get home.

  But that was the last thing within their control.

  It was just the three of them around Jodi now, Laina, Bob, and herself. The rest had gone off to finish the other crucial tasks of the afternoon. Hannah said, “Bob, would you take a look around, make sure we aren’t going to have any more unwanted visitors?”

  “Right,” he said, getting up with a crack of his knees.

  Hannah stood up too, to ease her tense muscles. The oreodont herd had moved off, and was nothing more than a blur on the horizon. Why hadn’t the saber-toothed nimravid gone after one of them?

  They didn’t travel alone; maybe that was the reason. And so neither should the humans. They had to be more careful about letting a line of hikers drift apart, or going out in twos. Threes would be better, or fours. And if they had buddies, they needed to be reassigned by height or size, so that one looked more intimidating to predators. Or by personality, maybe. One of every team had to have an aggression in them, the ability—and the will—to fight.

  She made a promise to herself to get Bob alone tomorrow and talk about it. He knew his students. He’d know their strengths best.

  Ted was fast and had good balance. Laina seemed to have an inner toughness. Dixie, she still didn’t like, but she had noticed the girl’s eyes were good, that she could see a distant landmark more sharply than Hannah could. Everyone had a strength or two. A good leader would take advantage of that.

  Hannah didn’t think of herself as a good leader, nor even a willing leader, but somehow here she was, leading. So she had darned well better get good at it, and fast. They couldn’t afford another disaster like Jodi’s injury.

  Jodi herself might not survive this one.

  Chapter 17

  “I’ll stay with her,” she told the other two. “I need you two to devise a travois for me. You know what I mean?”

  “A stretcher, you mean,” Bob said.

  “I don’t know what we’ll use for the blanket—this thin Mylar won’t hold her—but maybe cannibalize some of the belts for strapping? Whatever you can figure out. We need to get her back to the shelter, and I’d rather not make her walk.”

  Bob said, “You sure you’re going to be okay alone?”

  Hannah shrugged. No, she wasn’t sure, and she was afraid the smell of blood would draw opportunistic animals, the clever scavengers of the world. “The sooner the better,” was all she said.

  Bob gave a sharp nod and led Laina away. Hannah was happy to see them stick close together as they headed back to the campsite. Bob’s head swiveled to watch for predators. Jodi’s injury was a hard lesson. But it was a powerful one too.

  “I’m thirsty,” Jodi said.

  “I’m not surprised. You lost some blood.”

  “Do you have water?”

  “I’m sorry, no. We’ll get you some soon.”

  “My arms really hurt.”

  “I know they do.” If the two pain pills were anything other than aspirin, she might hand them over. But the blood-thinning properties of aspirin weren’t what Jodi needed right now. “You said your back hurt too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Roll over—careful, now—and let me take a look.” She reached out to unbutton the girl’s blouse.

  “Can anyone see? I don’t have a bra on.”

  “No. We’re alone.” She worked the blouse loose and helped Jodie roll to her side. Hannah took a look. There were deep puncture marks just under her shoulder. Claw wounds, she thought, though those long saber fangs could be the culprit too. The wounds weren’t bleeding because the tissue around them had swollen and shut off the blood flow. “It’s not bad at all,” she said, but again she worried about infection.

  Tetanus. Rabies. Parasites. Or maybe tetanus and rabies were newer than thirty million years old, but it’d be some terrible disease that went extinct ten or twenty million years ago, and not all the medical libraries in the world she had left behind could predict it. Disease organisms wouldn’t fossilize. The results of them might, if they changed bones or teeth, but otherwise the diseases of this world were mysteries to her—and to every human who would ever walk the Earth.

  She looked at the wound again. If the nimravid had aimed a little higher, it might have broken Jodi’s neck. That was probably how it hunted. “Jodi, did you hear it coming?”

  “No. Not at all. I was just bending down to pick up some dried dung, and bam.” She sniffled. “I didn’t know what was going on. I was on the ground, and then I smelled its breath, and then it started growling.” She shuddered.

  “It’s over now. And it was growling because M.J. was throwing stuff at it. In fact, I’d better look around for anything he dropped.” They couldn’t affo
rd to lose any of their tools. The sewing needle was tucked safely in the first aid kit. But even the dental picks they all carried on their belts would be useful for something. She didn’t know what yet, but something.

  Every few seconds, she stood to her full height and looked around, staring not only for animals, but for telltale patterns in the grass that suggested something was sneaking up on them. Nothing was, but overhead, a pair of raptors—or maybe not raptors, but something with wings—were circling. Hannah stood up and waved her arms, trying to show them she wasn’t carrion. She wondered if they could smell the blood from up there. Or see it. Or maybe they followed the saber tooth, waiting for its leftovers.

  She shuddered. Not from cold; it was a hot June afternoon, not all that different than the day they had left. She shuddered because the world was so strange, and terrifying, and filled with creatures who wanted to hurt them, from the largest down to the microscopic.

  The sun was sinking toward the west. As she looked to the camp, she saw a wisp of smoke from the fire. Good. They’d made that without her help. Dixie’s lighter must have done the trick. She hoped the stockade was built. And where was Bob with the travois?

  A half-hour later, she saw Bob, Ted, M.J., and Rex coming. They were all shirtless. As they got closer, she saw they had a stretcher made of straps from their gear, and their shirts, and a pair of saplings.

  They got Jodi onto it, though she protested she could walk. “My legs aren’t hurt,” she said.

  “I want you to rest, though,” Hannah said. She insisted they try lifting Hannah in the stretcher first. If it were to break, better with Hannah in it than the injured girl. It was solid enough, and she convinced Jodi to scoot on. The four men squatted, grabbed the four ends of the sapling, and lifted on her count. The five of them walked slowly back to the fire.

  “I don’t know that we have enough fuel to last the night,” M.J. said.

  “We have some light left. We need to get enough.”

  “If we had an axe,” he said, “I could cut up more of that metasequoia.”

  And if pigs flew, I’d carry an umbrella all the time.

  Maybe in this world, pigs did fly. If they did, she wouldn’t be shocked to see it. “Did you notice the birds, circling, like vultures?”

  “No. What did they look like?”

  “Big. Dark feathers. A little lighter under the head.”

  “Wings like vultures, or condors, or hawks?”

  “I wasn’t really paying that much attention,” she said.

  “We have almost no bird fossils from the Oligocene,” he said. “Not in North America, anyway. Almost all the birds we know about are from Australia, and half of those are penguin species.”

  Bob said, “I heard a songbird, in the trees.”

  “Really?” M.J. said. He craned his head to look overhead, and the stretcher tipped to one side.

  “Hey, watch it,” she said. “M.J., let’s get Jodi back in one piece, and then you can look up at birds all you want.”

  “Sure. It’s just so fascinating.”

  That was one thing it was. She would have said “terrifying,” but whatever. Whatever? Where had that come from? She was changing back into a teenager. And that would not do.

  Chapter 18

  Once they had Jodi back, they disassembled the stretcher and the men put on their shirts, a little worse for wear.

  Once she had Jodi comfortable, she checked out the stockade. It was almost done. “Looks great. Don’t forget to leave one branch out, so we can get in there,” she said.

  “How’s Jodi?” Garreth asked.

  “In pain.”

  “That was freaky, man. It happened so fast.”

  “Something we all need to remember.”

  She went out with a team of three, back up to the stand of trees where she’d failed to bring down the squirrel, to gather more fuel. There was plenty of deadfall.

  While they worked, she quizzed them on their backgrounds. Had any of them camped? Done macramé or weaving? Made baskets? Pots? Camped? Hunted? Fished? Taken an orienteering course? Geocached?

  With the exception of two very occasional campers, she came up blank.

  Rex said, as they walked back with armloads of branches, “I knew astronomy. But that first night? I didn’t recognize a thing up there. I’ll look again tonight.”

  When they got back to camp, he said, “Mr. O’Brien?”

  The teacher was back at his lookout job, along with Nari, who also straddled the log, facing the opposite direction. “Yes?”

  “Do you have any idea why the stars were weird? Is it possible we’re not on Earth? Or are south of the equator?”

  “Let me think about it for a minute,” said Bob.

  Hannah checked in with Laina, asking her if she was sick or felt bad from the grass.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. Hey, everyone, listen up.” She waited until conversations trailed off, then explained what she was doing with testing food. “It is crucial not to just put any old thing into your mouth. Not until you’ve gone through that testing. I’m ready to take the next step with this tuber. And Laina is going to chew some of this grass, and swallow the juices, and we’ll see how both of us do.”

  “What if it kills her?”

  “It shouldn’t,” Hannah said. “Because we’ve tested for bad reactions on the hand or arm, on the lip, and by chewing and spitting out first, we have nearly eliminated the possibility that swallowing it will kill us.”

  Everyone watched Laina chew up the grass.

  “Get all the juice you can.”

  Laina nodded as she chewed. She spit out the inedible stalks, and swallowed. “Okay if I have water?”

  “Sure. It doesn’t taste bad?”

  “No, it’s sweet. Fairly pleasant-tasting. I just feel like I have grass stuck in my teeth.”

  Hannah showed them how she rubbed the tuber juice on her lip. “And now I need one other person to volunteer as food tester. Just one. It’s a risk, so think before you offer.”

  Bob said, “Then it needs to be me.”

  She shook her head. “It has to be one of your students. One adult has to survive.”

  Dixie said, “But we’re not that important?”

  “That’s not what I meant. All three of us have more camping experience, more perspective. M.J. knows the world we’re in. I have some first aid training and everything being a ranger has taught me. Bob is a resource with all the experience fifty-odd years can give a person.”

  “We know things,” Dixie said.

  “Great. And the more things you can remember that help us survive in this world, the better. I’m not trying to kill one of you off. I’m not trying to kill anyone. But food testing does carry a risk—of illness, diarrhea, vomiting, rash. I need you to know that before you volunteer.”

  Zach raised his hand. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He looked into her eyes. “I am.”

  “Hope you like onions, then.” She pulled out one of the onion plants she had stowed in her backpack and watched as he crushed it and rubbed it on his hand. “That’s it. Until morning.”

  Next she checked Jodi again, and then she gave everyone their first orienteering lesson. At the end of it, she asked if anyone had anything else to discuss. Anything they’d noticed. Anything of use at all.

  Bob cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about Rex’s question. About the stars. And I think I have the answer.”

  She nodded for him to go on.

  He picked up a piece of their firewood, a stick about as big as his arm. In the sand at the edge of the stream, he drew a series of curves, all touching in the center. “This is the Milky Way galaxy,” he said. “And here we are.” He poked the stick at one of the curves, most of the way out toward the edge. “The whole thing spins.” The stick went around in a circle over the drawing. “So here we are today.” A poke. “And here we will be thirty million years from now.” A poke partway around
the circle.

  “But shouldn’t everything around us still be the same arm of the galaxy?” Rex asked. “Our neighbors are the same. Only the more distant stars would change.”

  “And every star is moving in a different direction, and at a slightly different speed,” Bob said.

  “That’s so,” said Rex. “There are really fast stars, like Barnard’s Star.”

  “And the perspective on yet others will be different because of this movement,” Bob said. “So that’s why. They are the same stars. Polaris is probably up there, Rex. It’s just not the Northern Star.”

  “Wow,” said Rex, looking up, though of course no stars were visible. Then he smiled. “Hey, everybody. That means we get to invent our own constellations.”

  Hannah was happy that someone had found a silver lining to all this.

  Chapter 19

  By the time twilight had fallen, they had all eaten as much grass juice as they had collected.

  Ted said, “It’s almost worse than not eating at all. It reminded my stomach what eating was.”

  “No wonder cows have to stand there and chew all day long,” Garreth said.

  “Or oreodonts,” M.J. said.

  “M.J., can’t you use the nicknames for the animals?” said Jodi. “I’m getting confused with all this Latin or Greek or whatever.”

  “I’ll try. But oreodonts don’t really have a nickname, despite that they are the most common mammal in North America—and were, for millions upon millions of years.”

  “What killed them?” Nari asked. “And what killed off the thing that attacked Jodi?”

  “The climate changes. That’s almost always why a species goes extinct.”

  “But what about dinosaurs?” Dixie asked. “Didn’t an asteroid kill them?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just a hypothesis, and there’s plenty of evidence it’s wrong, though in the popular imagination, it’s going to be hard to overturn. I don’t mean it’s wrong that there was a big asteroid. There was. But too many species survived for that to be the likely—or the only—answer to dinosaur extinction. It might have been massive lava flows. And the sea levels changed drastically at about that time. And maybe something happened that we won’t ever be able to identify, like a disease. But in most possible causes I cited, they change the climate. And animals can’t adapt. Species adapt, remember, not individuals, and it takes time for genetic change to catch up to external changes. So some species make it through the climate change. Some don’t.”