by Lou Cadle
For a second, she didn’t understand what she was looking at. Then she realized it was brain matter. That smart, kind, generous brain. Now just...this. She coughed, sickened, and wiped her hand on her shirt, fighting against nausea.
“We can’t bury you,” she said. “We have to go, honey. I’m sorry.”
And she was sorrier still for what she had to do next. He had on a backpack, and they needed it. It had two full water bottles in it, and they needed those. She rolled him and stripped it off him.
She peeled off his tool belt too, and dropped it in his pack. Then she realized that his clothes would be of use.
Heartsick, disgusted with the corner of her mind that could be practical at such a time, she quickly stripped off boots and jeans. With her knife, she cut off the front of his shirt and stuffed it in too. Bandage material.
He looked so small there, half-naked, broken, his face no longer animated by his good mind and good heart. Another sob shook her, and she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Goodnight, sweet boy,” she whispered, and then she turned her back on the very best of them. She pulled on his pack and eyed the cliff.
It had been a miracle she had gotten down here without falling. But she could see a route up. It’d be close in time, but she could go fast.
At this moment, she honestly did not give a crap one way or the other if she missed a hold and the weight of the pack pulled her off the cliff. She didn’t want to live. Not with the lump of guilt in her chest. Not with the grief. She’d move fast, and maybe Fate would be kind to her on the trip up, peel her off the cliff, and let her die.
Apparently it was to be her day of terrible luck. Not as terrible as Garreth’s, but bad enough. She made the climb in good time. And she lived through it.
She got up and looked at the faces, shook her head, and watched as the little bit of hope that a few of the faces had held was dashed.
Jodi sat down and said, “Oh God, Garreth,” and she buried her face in her hands.
Hannah looked at the familiar faces, choked out, “I’m sorry.”
But when her gaze fell on Dixie, she saw the girl was dry-eyed. Just like that, her grief and horror and guilt all spun together into a storm, a cyclone, of rage. Before she knew she had moved, she was in the girl’s face, snarling.
“He died for you.”
“The bird killed him. I didn’t!”
The whiny, defensive tone spun Hannah’s anger up farther. She lost her peripheral vision. She had never understood the term “see red” before, but she saw it now. There was a reddish haze over her vision, the color of dried blood, and all she could see was Dixie’s hated face, through that wash of dark color. “He loved you, you worthless little piece of shit. He could have been down the cliff. He could have been safe! He died to protect you!” With every sentence, she shoved Dixie in the chest. “See this smear on my shirt? Those are his goddamned brains!”
Dixie stepped back. “You’re crazy.”
“You.” Push. “Worthless.” Push. “Piece.” Push. “Of.” Push. “Shit!”
Dixie took two big steps back. “Get away from me!”
Hannah had no idea she was going to do it until she did, but she launched herself at the girl, hitting her hard. The two of them fell to the ground, Hannah on top. Hannah tangled her right hand in Dixie’s hair and pinned her head against the rock. “He loved you!” And she hauled back her left arm and punched her, and punched her again.
She felt a bone in her hand give, and when she saw blood on Dixie’s nose, it gave her a thrill of power and righteous justification that dimmed her vision further. “It should have been you. Nobody gives a shit about you. I wish it were you!” She got one more punch in before she felt a hand grab her wrist. Then other hands were pulling at her, hauling her off the horrible girl.
She fought, a crazed animal, wanting to—needing to—get back to Dixie and inflict more damage. She understood there were voices speaking, but she couldn’t make any sense of the words. All her focus was still on the shallow, useless girl, who had so undeservedly had Garreth’s love and loyalty.
“It’s time,” Laina said. “We have to go now.”
Those were the first words that penetrated Hannah’s rage-soaked brain. She felt herself droop, and one pair of arms let go of her.
She recognized Bob’s voice. “Get a hold of yourself. God, Hannah.”
Nari was helping Dixie to her feet. Blood was gushing out of Dixie’s nose. Her lip was cut too. Hannah’s hand was pounding, and she knew it’d hurt for awhile. She might have broken more than one bone in there.
It was worth it. That was one voice inside of her. The other voice had no words, just a sound of shame. She had physically attacked a teenage girl, someone half her age. Someone she was supposed to protect. She had done her more physical harm than any predator had done to her in two months.
Good. The first voice again. She deserved it. Remember Garreth.
A sob burst from Hannah and she gasped for breath. The timegate was a dozen steps away. She made for it.
“Wait!” Bob said. “Everybody, grab all the stuff! Zach, get Hannah’s pack!”
Hannah barely registered the words. She no longer worried that Laina might be wrong about the timegate. She no longer cared where it took her. As far as she was concerned, it could take her back four and a half billion years, to when the earth was nothing more than hot rocks bouncing into each other in the vacuum of space. They could batter her to death. The lack of oxygen could starve her brain.
At least then the image of Garreth’s broken body would be gone.
His name was in her heart, carved there, forever. She whispered it and took that last step.
She felt the jolt as she stepped into the gate and it took her away.
Falling. Falling....
HELL PIG
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Also by Lou Cadle
Chapter 1
Hannah did not pay attention to how long she fell through the timegate. Her mind was too filled with the horror and grief about Garreth. And with guilt.
At some level, she knew she should also feel guilty about punching Dixie, but she did not. She had never liked the girl, and now she liked her less. The only relief for her own guilt about Garreth—sweet Garreth!—was to focus on Dixie’s responsibility for it.
She was first through the timegate and so first to land. She landed on a patch of low-lying bushes. It was twilight here, though it had been mid-morning when they left the Paleocene. Quickly, she rolled off to leave room for the others.
Just in time, for here came Zach, popping out of nowhere, two feet off the ground. He landed, scrambled back, and glanced over at her. His face was streaked with tears too. Then Laina, who had correctly predicted the appearance of the timegate. Nari came next, the smallest of the teens. Then Jodi, with her cavewoman club. Ted, the athlete. Rex, the would-be astronomer. Claire, their fishing expert. Last of the kids was Dixie, her lip split and nose bleeding from Hannah’s punches. Finally came Bob O’Brien, the teacher who had brought a dozen teenagers on a school field trip that had ended up stranding them in the distant past. He was cradling the big clay cooking pot and held it up in the air as he landed, guaranteeing its survival.
Eight children now, without Garreth. Hannah’s heart twisted in
her chest. She turned her back on the rest and looked out over a field of dry grass turned orange by a sunset.
“Where are we?” Nari asked.
“When are we?” Zach said.
Bob said, “I’m not sure.”
Laina said, “We’re in the same place, exactly. And twenty million years forward, give or take.”
Jodi said, “Is this sunrise, or sunset?”
Hannah knew it was sunset. She was looking straight west, at the setting sun. Despite there being few clouds, it cast an orange light all around it. Something in the air, then. Dust.
It was definitely dry here, so that wouldn’t be a surprise. The month of living in a near-jungle had left her sticky or sweaty or oily all the time. Here, in only a few minutes, she could feel the moisture being drawn from her body.
There was a gallon of water in her backpack. But important as it was, she couldn’t stir herself to care enough to make sure that all the water had arrived in this new epoch. Her mind and her heart were consumed by Garreth. If someone hadn’t brought her pack, and the precious water bottles, and she died from thirst, at least it would be relief from the horror and guilt she felt.
She would forever see the picture she had seen from the top of the plateau, his body, crumpled and still, lying on the ledge of rocks. Then was the memory of her climb down the cliff and the horrible work of stripping his boots and jeans. They, along with part of his shirt she had cut free for bandage material, were in his pack. It was on her back now. She looked down at herself and could see the spot of drying brain matter on her shirt and some of his blood on the knees of her pants.
I killed him. She hadn’t done so directly, but she had been their leader. She had watched him refuse to climb down to safety, to protect that useless little snot Dixie instead. She had watched, helpless, as the terror crane snatched him up in its beak and bit down.
The sound of breaking bones was still clear in her memory. She feared it would never leave her. Why hadn’t she slipped off the cliff on her climb down to him? It would be so much easier to be dead, to not have to feel what she felt right now.
Garreth had been, without a doubt, the best of them. Not the smartest, and not the strongest, but the kindest and most generous. Even the wild animal he had tamed knew that. It had died. Garreth had died.
And before that, Chief Paleontologist M.J. Hill had died, in a battle Hannah had asked be fought.
The job of leader had fallen to her when they had come through time, and she had taken it on, but look what it had brought them to. Two dead. A dozen serious injuries. Jodi had physical scars that would never heal. They all had emotional scars. Hannah had completely and utterly failed. She hated Dixie—yes, go ahead and use the word, for it was what she felt. But the hatred for the girl was nothing compared to the hatred Hannah felt toward herself.
It’s your fault; it’s your fault. The words repeated in her mind. She sank down and sat, her head folded over her knees, and let the words batter her from the inside.
Her outsides were battered too, but it was no less than she deserved.
They’d have been better off if I’d never have come.
It was only then she realized that the voice telling her it was her fault was not her own. It was her mother’s. Her mind tried to drag her back, back almost twenty years, but she did not let it.
She didn’t want to remember her childhood. She didn’t want to remember Garreth. She tried to blank her mind of all thought, all memory. Instead, she began counting, by sevens, forcing her mind into an activity that left it too busy to alight on any painful piece of the past, near past or distant past, either one.
* * *
“Hannah.”
12873. 12880. 12887.
“Hannah!”
Twelve thousand.... Damn, she’d lost her place.
A hand grabbed her shoulder and shook her lightly. “Hannah, you have to get yourself together.”
She looked up. The sun had set, but she could see the face in a bluish light. Bob. Bob was holding her solar flashlight, and it was illuminating his face.
“Bob,” she said.
He handed her a twenty-ounce bottle of water. “Drink.”
Obediently, she drank.
“You with me?”
She nodded. She didn’t want to be, but she was.
“We’re setting up watches for the night. Not enough time to find a shelter. Or to build one—not that there’s anything to build with.”
“How bad?” she said, her voice hardly a croak. She was dehydrated. She took another sip of water and capped the bottle.
“How bad what?”
“Danger?”
“No idea. There wasn’t enough light to see much before the sun set. If Laina is right in her computations, we’re in the middle to upper Paleocene.”
“Predators?” She knew Bob would know at least some of them.
“There are lots. There has been plenty of time since the K/T extinction for mammals to expand, to fill every niche. You’ll have predators for the night, ones for the day. Pack hunters, solitary hunters. Lots and lots of predators.”
“You know much about this time?”
“A good deal. The earliest fossils at the park start about forty million years ago, and they go up to about twenty-five. So the upper Paleocene and Oligocene are the times I do know something about.”
Her brain was starting to work again. “Watches, you said? We’re setting watches?”
“Pairs of people on ninety-minute watches.”
“Okay.”
“You’re on the last watch. Give you time to get yourself together.”
“Sure,” she said, not caring at all which assignment they gave her.
“Come over to the group. We’re all bedded down here. Okay?”
She shrugged.
“Hannah. You need to get yourself together. Not just for your sake.”
“Okay.”
“You want to know how Dixie is?”
She looked at him.
“She’ll be okay, but her nose might be broken.”
Hannah had broken at least one bone in her hand punching the girl, but she saw no reason to mention it. She saw no reason for anything, really.
“We need to get up at dawn and work on shelter and water. If there’s dew, we should soak it up.”
Hannah doubted there would be. It felt too dry for there to be a big dew harvest tomorrow. And who cared, anyway. They were all doomed. As the group got smaller, they’d be able to protect themselves less well. This next month, stuck here, they might well lose two people, not just one.
If fate smiled on her, one of them would be her.
“Come on. Snap out of it.”
She nodded, though she didn’t feel capable of snapping herself out of anything. But when Bob offered a hand, she took it and stood.
He led her over to the group, and she lay down at the edge of it. There were stars out. Unfamiliar stars—or, rather, as Bob had explained long ago, familiar stars but moved just enough that the patterns were unfamiliar.
She could hear someone crying—not sobbing aloud, but the rough, broken sound of the inhalations of someone who did not want anyone to hear them crying. It made more tears leak out of her eyes too. She had let M.J. die. She had let Garreth die. And everyone was paying for it.
Sleep did not come to her that night. When the memories of Garreth, and of his final moments on the plateau, plagued her so that she was afraid she might start screaming, she forced herself to replace them with other bad memories.
Like the day her father had left. It had been a Saturday, and she had been engaged in watching cartoons. Her sister was there, but she tuned out her bizarre honking laugh noises, which came at the wrong places in the cartoons anyway. Her father had been up and down the stairs several times, but it had barely registered until she turned to see him carrying a stack of boxes.
“Are you taking things down to the basement?” she had said.
He spared a glance for her but sai
d nothing, just walked through to the kitchen. She heard the door bang shut. When a commercial came on, she handed Milli the remote control, which she knew would keep her distracted for a few minutes, and went out to the kitchen.
Through the screen door, she could see her father, putting boxes into the trunk of his car. There was a suitcase too, the old blue hard one with scratches on it, sitting by the open back door. She watched him adjust the boxes, then close the trunk lid carefully, bending to watch it shut as it came down all the way. Then he hauled up the suitcase and swung it into the back seat. He turned to look at the kitchen door.
Did he see or not? She heard her mother come into the kitchen. “I’m going to fix you girls a snack. Would you like that?”
“Is Daddy taking a trip? For work?” He had once before.
“Your father is a coward. He’s running away.”
Hannah had known that her father wasn’t a coward. Even then, at eight, she had known that something else was wrong with him, something that made him sad. Really sad, with a hint, like flavoring, of something else. As an adult she had put a name to that: hopelessness. A man worn down, a man who had tried everything he could think of to fix things and who had failed repeatedly.
That man looked at her through the screen door. Hannah had pushed through it, walking slowly, not wanting to go out, but not wanting to stay inside. It had been her father and her on one side, and her mother and Milli on the other. She had known that much too.
“Daddy?” she had said.
He had gotten to his knees and held out his arms, and she had run to him. He had cried then, cried on her shoulder, and she had been afraid. He didn’t cry. He never cried. Her mother cried. She cried. Milli cried. But Daddy never did. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
“What’s wrong?” she had asked.
He had pushed her away to look at her with his wet eyes. “I have to go. I know you won’t understand, but I can’t. I just can’t stay here. I’m so unhappy. I know it’s selfish, but....” And he had shaken his head. “I’m selfish. Your mom is right about that. But I have to go.”