by Lou Cadle
“You’re coming back, though.”
She knew the answer before she asked, but his shake of his head still tore at her. “Take me.”
“I can’t. I can’t, honey.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said.
Years later, she appreciated that he hadn’t said, “You won’t be alone,” or “You have your mom and sister.” He hadn’t lied to her. He knew he was leaving her alone—or worse than alone. He simply looked miserable as he nodded.
Then he kissed her forehead and stood up, and he got in the car. He had driven away. She had stood on the sidewalk, watching the car stop at the end of the block. It made a left-hand turn and disappeared. Long after the car had gone, she had stood on the sidewalk, watching, hoping against hope she’d see it again.
But she never had. It had been six years before she had seen her father again, and by then he had a different car. And a different wife. And a new kid, a three-year-old boy, who had replaced Hannah. He had approached her outside of school one afternoon and had taken her for a drive. A month later, on a Saturday, he had brought his family into town and she had met them. She could see he was happy. But there had been no room for Hannah in that happy little family. She had walked out on them in the middle of lunch, pretending to need to use the restroom, and hitchhiked to the mall and spent the rest of the day there, at the dollar theater, watching a movie she’d seen before.
Lying here now, in the Eocene night, listening to the distant, unfamiliar sounds of animals hunting for prey, she still wondered why he had bothered to come back at all. She hadn’t seen him again, not ever, though she had received cards and generous checks on her high school and university graduation. She had cashed them, as it helped buy her freedom.
Chapter 2
Hannah was on last watch, so she sat back to back with Jodi as the day dawned.
Birds began to call out when the sky was still gray. They weren’t singing like songbirds yet, not exactly, but more like crows and hawks. She hoped all the giant predator birds were gone. If not, she’d make it her mission to hunt them to extinction, for the part the terror crane had played in Garreth’s death.
The kids had been restless all night. She hadn’t slept a wink, so she had heard more than one sniffling, more than one tossing and turning. She knew she should be doing something to help them, but her own pain was too great. It was impossible to even feel empathy for their sadness, much less begin to address it.
She was not looking forward to full light and the first time she had to meet Dixie’s eyes. Their relationship had never been easy. Now with Hannah having slapped and punched her and yelled God knows what into her face, it was going to be broken. And she should feel terrible about that, and she would, as soon as she got done feeling terrible about Garreth. There just wasn’t room in her heart yet to feel anything about Dixie, beyond a vague desire to avoid her.
When it was light enough, she put her tool belt back on and looked around. She spotted her own backpack and went over to check on it. The big bottles of water were in there, one empty, one two-thirds empty. Her first aid kit had been taken out and repacked badly. Both of the last alcohol wipes were gone, used on Dixie or someone else who had been hurt when they tried to fight off the terror crane.
So be it. She knew they wouldn’t last forever. The elastic bandage was bloodstained and starting to get that stretched-out look. Even once all the elastic was spent, it would still wrap a twisted ankle or knee. She had some butterfly strips left, a few Band-Aids, half a tube of antibiotic cream, tweezers, tiny scissors, moleskins, one little packet of aspirin, and the one needle they had, for stitching wounds and clothes both. It was dull and bent into a curve.
She repacked the paltry first aid supplies to her own satisfaction, made sure her bandana was still in there. It was, though it was looking pretty worn and faded after a month’s use as a water filter. Jodi stood up and silently handed her the solar flashlight, which she had held on to for their shared watch period, having flipped it on only once to check out a soft noise in the grass. Hannah nodded her thanks and clipped it on her pack.
Jodi whispered, “I need to pee.”
Hannah nodded. She had trained them to go in pairs or trios, with one person watching for danger at all times. She and Jodi went out to beyond the patch of bushes and, one at a time, the other keeping watch, they relieved themselves.
She took a minute to look at her damaged hand. She had felt bones snapping when she had been punching Dixie. One of her fingers was crooked. She grabbed the knuckle and pulled slowly and steadily. It hurt, but no more than she deserved. Holding the hand up, she decided she had the bones as aligned as she could get them, absent x-ray machines. She’d splint it later, with a dental pick or two to add structure until she could find a piece of wood.
As she was walking back toward the others, now stirring, sitting up, rubbing their eyes, or stretching out the night’s kinks, Jodi touched her arm. “We all miss Garreth,” she said.
Hannah could only manage a nod. If she tried to force a word out, she knew she’d start crying again.
“But I think it’s too soon for a memorial service, don’t you?”
Hannah nodded again.
“It’ll be okay,” Jodi said. Her tone made it something between a statement and a question.
Hannah tried for a smile, and failed. She looked at the ground, then up and into Jodi’s eyes. And she shrugged. She honestly didn’t think it would be, and she didn’t want to lie to the girl.
“So it’s shelter first, water second?” Jodi said, and she began to walk back to the others.
“Right,” Hannah said, her voice gravelly. She was glad the kids were learning the rules of survival.
Jodi went back to the group and sat behind Claire, helping the other girl finger-comb her hair. They didn’t have much in the way of grooming tools. Bob had a full beard by now, and Ted had a lighter-colored and less dense one. Everybody’s hair was past their collars. Hems had been sacrificed so that thread could be used to stitch wounds, and most everyone looked a bit bedraggled for that alone.
Everyone’s skin had darkened, Rex’s most of all. Some tans had a reddish tinge, like Ted’s and Claire’s. Laina’s skin had turned a beautiful shade Hannah had no name for, the color of some rich, rare wood. Jodi had peeled more than once from sunburn, but she seemed to have adjusted now—or was taking more care to stay in the shade, perhaps. Or maybe others had donated their sunscreen to her. Hannah had not been paying strict attention.
Once everyone had relieved him or herself, straightened clothes, and stretched out the worst of the soreness from sleeping on the bare ground overnight, Bob insisted that they share out the remainder of the water. Hannah took a few sips from hers and handed it off to Rex. Then she backed away from the circle. She didn’t feel part of it. She wanted to be out here, alone, shut off.
She didn’t want anyone relying on her. Because she couldn’t bear to fail someone else.
Bob stared at her for a full minute. Then he did some little thing with his eyebrows, conveying a message she couldn’t—and didn’t want—to read. When she bent down to tie her boots, which didn’t need retying, he cleared his throat and spoke.
“Okay, so we need water and we need shelter. We have ten people. Let’s break up into three groups.”
“Four,” Hannah said. “I’ll go alone.”
“Hannah,” he said.
“I’ll go by myself,” she said, her tone saying she wouldn’t budge.
Ted said, “I’ll take a group.”
Zach said, “So will I.”
“Okay,” said Bob, still glancing sidelong at Hannah. “So that leaves me with the third.”
Jodi had gone to Zach’s side, with Claire stepping over too.
Bob said, “Laina, you’re with me.” The girl had been so distracted while she worked out her theories of the timegate, Hannah understood why he wanted to keep an eye on her.
Nari also walked over to stand by Bob.
&
nbsp; It took Hannah a second to see what that meant. She was distancing herself from Dixie. Rather than clinging close to the girl, she was making a public statement. So Hannah wasn’t the only one blaming Dixie for what had happened, it seemed.
Ted said, “So Dixie, you’re with me. And Rex.”
Two days ago, Hannah would have pointed out that put the three tallest people together, not the best use of human resources, but today? She honestly didn’t care.
“Let’s walk out in four directions, since we have four teams,” Bob said, giving another look to Hannah that said how unhappy he was with her choice to be alone, in violation of her own rules about that. “Divide out the empty water bottles, so every group can get a half-gallon if they find water. Does anybody have a watch or a cellphone with any charge left to tell time?”
After five minutes of passing the only functioning phone and two watches back and forth, they were ready. Hannah had her own watch, but she had grown skilled at telling time by the sun.
Bob said, “Two hours out, two back, so back here by ten a.m. I want us to rest in the heat of the day.”
Claire said, “It doesn’t feel as hot. As the last place, I mean.”
“No,” Bob said. “It wouldn’t be. We’ll talk later about where we are. For now, let’s find water. And if you find a protected site for base camp, so much the better.”
They went out in the cardinal directions, Hannah taking south. The kids had enough orienteering instruction that they’d be able to keep to their directions, as well as look behind themselves periodically to memorize landmarks to help guide them back.
Two days ago, she would have reminded them of the basics. Two days ago, she wouldn’t be walking away from the safety of the group alone. Two days ago, Garreth was alive. That he was not today made all the difference.
She walked up a rise in the land, through dried grasses, and found herself at the top of a short hill, looking out over a landscape of rolling hills. There were herds of animals—possibly oreodonts again, though of course it’d be a different species than had existed in the Oligocene—grazing in the lowlands, where the grass was marginally greener.
She reached down and felt the grass at its base, seeing if any dew at all remained. But the grass was bone dry. She scouted the land again and aimed for a low spot where a patch of bushes was growing. Maybe they were tapping into a groundwater source. A small group of grazing animals was munching at their edges. To her eye, from this distance, they looked a little like dogs. But even extinct dogs must have been meat eaters, not leaf eaters, so these were going to be something new and weird.
Old and weird, rather. Without M.J., identifying them was going to be difficult. But did it matter? Not really. She checked the sun and her shadow and saw she was going to be aiming west of due south to reach the bushes. Then she turned around and memorized what she saw from this high spot. The signs of her path through the grass were subtle but obvious, and she should be able to find her way back to the group. One more check of her watch, and she was ready to go.
The patch of bushes took almost forty minutes to reach. The animals saw her coming long before she arrived. They took no aggressive action, just walked away, never letting her get nearer than a hundred fifty yards. She carried a spear, like all of them did now, except Jodi, who had grown fond of her cavewoman club. The animals weren’t near enough to spear to death. Alone, Hannah had no way of driving one toward her to have a chance to kill it anyway. She glanced over to them, memorizing their appearance.
They didn’t look terribly different than dogs, except their spines had a strange curve to them. Their muzzles were almost square, the cube shape broken up by a rounded lump. There was a dog that looked a little like this—bull terrier, maybe? Something that made her think of English people and their dogs, at any rate. The animals stood flat on their feet. There was a term for that, which she completely forgot. A lot of animals stood on their toes, but not these. And even from this distance, it looked like they had toes and claws, not hooves. They looked wary of her, so she felt no compunction to feel wary of them.
She looked closely at the bushes, which had very few leaves. The leaves remaining were gray, and they were tilted. Hannah glanced at the sun and realized the leaves were showing an edge to the southern sky. Some sort of drought-resistant adaptation, probably, where they tried to prevent evaporation by exposing the thinnest possible face to the noon sun.
So the dry conditions she was seeing had been here for tens of thousands of years, at minimum. Evolution wasn’t that fast, and natural selection for this kind of useful defense against drought would take a while to happen. The grass itself was no doubt adapted too, going through a dormant period, perhaps, awaiting a rainy season.
The animals had been eating these leaves, so Hannah plucked a couple of the plumpest ones, thinking to test them as food. She brought them to her nose, squeezed them, and got a whiff of something. Some chemical. Not creosote. She knew creosote bushes from her summer in central Arizona at an Indian ruins park. But something like that. It wouldn’t be edible. But it might burn well. She rubbed the oils against her hand.
At least getting a fire started wasn’t going to be the problem it had been in the wet jungle world of the Paleocene. Small favors. But finding water and food was going to be. And sufficient fuel for fires looked to be a problem too.
What they needed to find was a river. Along the river, there would be trees, reeds, and maybe edible tubers. Fruit trees and nut trees were even a possibility.
On a whim, she crushed the leaves and rubbed them onto the back of her hand, just as she’d usually begin a test of edible plants.
On her hands and knees, she checked the ground. In the shade of the bushes, it was cool, but dry to the touch. She stood and crept around the bushes, spotting a broken branch, maybe that one of the animals had brushed too hard against. She finished snapping it off and used it to dig in the dirt, hoping to form a seep. But she dug down six inches, and while the soil was feeling less dusty, it wasn’t wet, and there was no hint of water.
Her watch told her she had only another thirty-six minutes to explore. So she’d do that, come back here on her way back, check the hole she’d dug again, and see if she’d lucked out with a water seep.
She had just stepped toward the taller patch of grass when she glanced down and saw a snake, disappearing back into the grass.
Venomous? Instead of what she should have felt—a shot of adrenaline and fear—she felt nothing. As far as she was concerned, a deadly snakebite would be welcome. Or not welcome, for the death might be long and terrible. But the end of it would be relief from her grief and guilt.
Then why not kill yourself right now?
It was a reasonable question. Why not? She could, instead of turning around, keep walking south. Just keep walking and walking and walking, all day, and into the night. Walk until a predator found her. Walk until she dropped from thirst. Walk until she was too far for the others to find.
That was why not. Because they would come after her, and she’d make them spend calories and moisture they didn’t have to spare on that search. She might be wallowing in her own emotions, but she still had enough of a sense of other people and their safety to think of that. Also, they’d be devastated by another death so quickly on the heels of Garreth’s.
Even yours?
Yeah, even mine, I think.
So south she walked, scanning around herself for any sign of water, or even a hint of deeper green. The only greens she saw looked gray. She detoured to one patch of a different color and found a plant that might be sage, or sage’s great-great-grandmother. She pulled a few leaves to test later and checked the first food test.
It wasn’t red, swollen, or showing any sort of eruptions that suggested an allergic reaction. But when she touched the spot, she realized it was numb.
She scratched it with a fingernail. Still no feeling beyond a vague sense of pressure.
For the first time in hours, she felt a spark of somet
hing inside her, breaking through her weary sadness. Might she have found something that would work as a local anesthetic? It would make stitching wounds less painful for people. A burn, an insect sting—either could be soothed by such a substance.
But wait, wait, don’t get ahead of yourself. With that funky smell, it might still be toxic for anyone with an open wound.
It was time to turn around. Her steps were quicker as she headed back to the medicine bush. Again, the animals left their grazing to leave her in privacy to check both her seep—still dry—and the bushes. She stripped several more leaves from the center of a bush, leaving the outer ones for the animals to eat. She dug out one of the fossil specimen bags, a small zippered plastic bag, and shoved all but two of the leaves into it. Sealing it, she tucked it away.
Then she took out her knife. It was getting dull. She had tried to hone it on fine-grained rocks, but she feared she had done more harm than good. The smaller of the two blades was sharpest. She flipped it out, held her hand out, and pressed the tip of her knife between the two protruding veins on the back of her hand.
Bizarre how hard it was to hurt yourself. She gritted her teeth and pressed harder, almost relishing the moment of pain as the blade sunk in. Physical pain was easier than emotional pain. She had a sudden blast of empathy for the girls she knew who had been cutters, back in college. She understood them, belatedly. She’d rather stab herself with a knife a hundred times than feel what she felt about Garreth.
Blood welled out in one fat drop. She wiped it on her shirt, let it well again, and wiped it up a second time. Her body was already sending chemicals to the site to make it swell a little, to stop the bleeding. She crushed her two leaves and rubbed them on the wound. If it was toxic, she’d know soon enough.
If not, she may have found her first medicinal plant. In her mind, she named the bushes “medicine bush,” and gave them a final pat. Making sure she hadn’t dropped anything, she pocketed her knife and turned to aim herself at the high spot of ground.