by Lou Cadle
“Monster” did not seem much of an exaggeration as the thing came Hannah’s way. Not until it was this close had she noticed it had bizarre flanges on its neck, jutting bone that made its face even uglier than it had seemed from a distance. She made ready with her spear, but as it came at her, it decided to veer away. Maybe it feared another crack on the head like Jodi had given it.
“Four!” called Zach. “There are four of them!”
Hannah made sure the animal was still moving away from the group before turning to see what was happening behind her. Zach was just finishing spearing one of them in the flank. It kept running and snatched the spear out of Zach’s hands, and kept going, not slowed at all, but now sporting what looked like a second tail.
The next two decided to bypass the group, swerving off toward the north, just under the crest of the hill on this side.
Hannah had just begun to relax, willing her pounding heart to slow, when over the hill came the biggest animal she had ever seen outside of a zoo.
“Uintathere,” yelled Bob. “It’s not a hunter.”
Who the hell cared if it was a hunter or not? It was the size of an elephant, or bigger, and she could feel the ground shake as it ran after the fleeing—whatever they were. Humpy-flangy things.
This creature was no more lovely than they. Uglier, if that was possible. It had six—no, eight—horns on its head. Tiny eyes. Otherwise, it looked very much like a hippo, but the head design was out of some nightmare. It was the kind of thing the really weird boy in junior high would draw in his notebook, seeing how many different kinds of horns he could stick on one head.
The horns were all blunt, but still, with the force of that mass behind them, they could easily crush the skull of any of the kids.
“Stay away from it!” she yelled.
“No shit!” said Jodi.
The kids were scrambling around to the left, out of the way of the animals. Ted had reached the crest of the hill.
He turned around and said, “It has a baby. I mean, it’s a big baby, but that must be the mom.”
“Stay away from it!” Hannah had a horrible image of the kids, curious, getting between a raging half-ton mother and its young. “Everybody, run that way!” She pointed and began trotting to the south herself, hoping to set a good example.
The angry mother seemed to be satisfied it had driven off the hunting group of four animals, and it wheeled. It charged at the kids, and Hannah swung around, speeding up, running to cut it off, but with no idea at all what she could do to help when she got there. Get trampled to death, she supposed. She could feel each of the big animal’s footfalls in her body, rattling her leg bones.
But when it saw they were all moving away but Hannah—and pretty darned fast too—it seemed to be satisfied with one feint. It went back over the crest of the hill.
Ted was still up there, though he had backpedaled well to the south. “It’s sniffing the baby, making sure it’s okay.”
Dixie ran up the slope to join him. “It’s almost cute,” she said, “in a hideous sort of way.”
Ted said, “To them, we’re probably ugly.”
“You, maybe,” Dixie said, with a theatrical, disdainful look down Ted’s tall form.
Ted wasn’t Garreth, though. He was a good-looking kid who knew it, and Dixie’s disdain touched him not at all. He just gave her a grin and loped back to join the others.
Hannah waved them to keep going south. She wanted to get away from both the big ugly animal and the small ugly animals.
“Wow, so you knew about that big one, Mr. O’Brien?” Zach said. “And everybody keep an eye out for a good tall sapling. I need a new spear.”
“I knew about both of them,” Bob said. “I forgot to mention the others.”
“They’re hunters, then? Predators?” asked Claire.
“The smaller ones are, and good scavengers too, we think. Those are called entelodonts.”
“‘Dont’ is ‘tooth,’ I get that,” said Rex. “What’s the other part mean?”
“Perfect. Or complete.”
“Perfect-tooth,” said Rex. “So, like, the most efficient predator ever?”
“Maybe not the most,” Bob said. “But close.”
“I can’t memorize all these names,” Jodi said. “Especially not if we’re going to change entire ecosystems every four weeks. Do they have nicknames?”
Bob said, “Not the uintatheres, not that I know of. But the entelodonts, yeah.”
Jodi said, “What’s the nickname?”
“Terminator pig,” Bob said. “Or hell pig.”
“Hell pig,” said Jodi. “That’s just terrific.”
Chapter 5
Hannah had crossed the line of the group to meet with Ted up at the crest of the hill. She looked back to the north, on both sides. The hell pigs were nowhere to be seen. The uin—whatever (Jodi was right; they needed a nickname) and her young were slowly making their way down the hill to the west.
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 groundwater.
“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, he 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 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 the 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, was 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 Hannah 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.