A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  Claire shrugged.

  Hannah turned and said, “I guess once you make sure the fire is out, and build me a campfire, you should all try and get some more sleep. Dixie, you can go back with Laina and take my place in our shelter.”

  “No way,” said the girl. “I’ll climb up a tree and sleep there, if I need to.”

  “They’re probably in the trees,” Rex said. “The snakes, I mean.”

  Dixie ducked down, looking at the trees as if expecting a rain of snakes any second.

  Bob said, “It’s the first we’ve seen.”

  It struck Hannah that while of course an attack by an eighteen-foot boa would put anyone off snakes for a while, that Dixie was previously phobic. Then she remembered the girl’s worry about a spider bite. And her fear of heights, which had led directly to Garreth’s death.

  Before, she thought the girl had been being melodramatic about that, just wanting attention. But now, seeing how incredibly freaked out she was, it dawned on Hannah that she actually was phobic. Multiple phobias. That had to mean something.

  Not for the first time, Hannah wished to be back in a world of Google and instant knowledge. Maybe all those phobias were a sign of something deeper, maybe even a childhood trauma. If she could find some sympathy for Dixie, she could more easily bring herself to apologize. She wasn’t sure if she would ever like the girl—she was too much like the snotty high school girls who had made Hannah’s own teenaged life such a misery. But she might be able to work up an ounce of pity for someone hounded by many irrational fears.

  Not that fear of an eighteen-foot boa was irrational. That went under the category “Sensible Fears.”

  Dixie was pretty pitiable right now, though, looking up at the trees with a look of terror on her face.

  “Dixie,” Hannah said. “I need you to do something for me. For Claire, rather.”

  Dixie glanced her way, then back at the tree canopy.

  “Can you sit with Claire for a minute while I check the fire? I need you to actually watch her, not the trees.”

  “What about the snakes?”

  “I’ll keep my eye peeled for a snake. I won’t let one get you.” She looked around at all the other kids, who were just watching. “Really, you all need to get some rest. We have a big day of work ahead of us, starting the house. Probably we’ll need a lot of cordage too. And Rex, you’ll need to direct the fishing and make sure we get fed.”

  Two by two, the others began to wander away from the fire.

  She worried about them getting lost on the way back in the dark. But Dixie’s cellphone was finally out of power, and her own flashlight was dimmed down to nothing. She needed to find a way to provide light at night. Torches or something. Plant-wax candles?

  She worked at building the fire up to sufficient to see by. She tossed some more soil onto what had been the debris hut. I have to keep checking that all night, make sure it doesn’t flare up.

  Once she had everything arranged to her satisfaction, she sat by Claire and Dixie. “We need to really put that fire out well tomorrow morning. Drag the log down to the lake. It won’t be entirely out until we do.”

  “You checked for snakes?” Dixie said.

  “I did. I think the fire will keep them away.”

  “Can we have a fire at the house when it’s built? I mean all the time?”

  “That’s a good idea. We’ll think through how to design it for that. Maybe a fireplace and chimney at one edge. It might make predators think twice.”

  Claire reached up to touch her throat.

  “Leave it alone if you can, Claire,” Hannah said.

  After a time, Claire shut her eyes. Hannah didn’t know if she was asleep or just resting.

  Now or never, I guess.

  “Dixie, I’d like to apologize.”

  “What?” The girl was still distracted by her fear of snakes, looking nervously around herself.

  “I want to tell you I’m sorry. For going off on you. And hitting you. When Garreth died.”

  Dixie quit fidgeting and said nothing, looking down at her hands.

  “I don’t think I appreciated then how afraid of heights you were. But no matter, it wasn’t your choice for Garreth to stay and protect you.”

  “I didn’t ask him to.”

  “I know. It was his choice. I wish to God he’d made a different one, but he didn’t.”

  “So you wouldn’t have minded if I died?”

  “I’d have done my best to prevent it. I think you know that, deep down. And better the bird would have thrown me over the cliff than Garreth.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Hannah jerked in surprise. “I do mean that.”

  “Everybody is out for himself. You want to live. I want to live. We defend ourselves first.”

  “Garreth didn’t think that way,” Hannah said, feeling tears welling again.

  “You went crazy.”

  Hannah thought about that. She was feeling less than at her optimal mental health, that was for sure. “At that moment, when I attacked you, yes. I was crazy.”

  “So you could go crazy again. Right now, you could reach over and choke me to death.”

  “Not right now,” Hannah said. “There’s no reason to be angry.”

  “There was no reason to be angry then, either. And you hit me!” Her sullenness was turning to anger.

  “And I’m sorry I did.”

  “Well, that won’t cut it.”

  Hannah was feeling a little sorry she’d started this. But in for a penny.... “What will cut it, then?”

  “Nothing.”

  Hannah nodded. “I understand. You don’t have to forgive me, not ever. We do need to work together to keep everyone safe and fed, though. You understand that?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, you’re not stupid.” A teenager of exactly the sort Hannah liked least—self-involved. Shallow. Defensive. Cruel. And phobic, it seemed. But not stupid.

  “I don’t want to talk about this any more. Leave me alone.”

  Hannah nodded again. She didn’t want to talk about it either. She had already gone further than she felt like going, in her heart of hearts. It was hard to try and understand your enemies, and easier to just hate them.

  Was Dixie an enemy? Maybe not. She certainly wasn’t a friend, but whatever else she was, she was one of the eight kids Hannah was obligated to help, to lead, and to protect. Remember that.

  Chapter 11

  The morning came too slowly. Dixie had fallen asleep, despite her fear of snakes, and Hannah had tended the campfire, made sure the debris hut fire didn’t re-ignite, and talked softly to Claire, who seemed to be in too much pain to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. As the gray light began to filter through the forest canopy, she willed it to hurry, so she could get a better look at the girl’s neck.

  Bob and Zach came first, Zach rubbing his eyes. Hannah pointed to the sleeping Dixie and put her finger to her mouth for quiet.

  Bob pointed at Claire, eyebrows raised. Hannah shrugged. She didn’t know anything more than she did last night, but the girl had survived. If she leaned closer, she could still hear the rasp in her breath.

  Bob squatted down and took Hannah’s hand and looked it over. “Swollen,” he said.

  She nodded. The snakebites hadn’t had venom—not like cobra or rattlesnake venom—but her body obviously did not like them. The swelling was a sign of an autoimmune reaction. Hannah would spare herself a small dab of antibiotic cream, but she doubted it was going to do much good. She’d just have to wait for a few days and the swelling would probably subside. If worse happened, she’d deal with it when it did.

  Claire woke and struggled up to her elbows. Hannah had explained to her more than once last night that she needed to rest her voice. So by pantomime, she expressed her desire to relieve herself.

  Hannah helped her up. She glanced at Dixie, who was still asleep, but she couldn’t let that last. She had to get the house built. Ever
ybody would benefit from that, even Dixie. Maybe Dixie especially. “Zach,” she said, “could you make sure the fire is really out? You might have to drag the log to the lake, with someone coming after you and stamping out any sparks. Or take the lake to the log, a bottle at a time, whichever works. There’s one of the big bottles in my pack, back at my own hut.”

  Bob said, “I’ll help.”

  Hannah went with Claire to behind a patch of bushes, but the girl waved off any more help. So Hannah politely turned her back. Overhead, an animal chattered at her, and farther off, birds were waking and calling. They weren’t songbirds, but they had morning calls, just as the gastornis had. She glanced up and saw one of the primates—very lemur-like, down to tail fur with rings—skipping along a branch, using three of its feet.

  Claire came up alongside. Hannah said, “We need to get to work. I’m hoping you can nap while we do.”

  Claire shook her head and mimed fishing.

  Hannah said, “You should rest.”

  Adamantly, Claire shook her head and made the fishing gesture again.

  Hannah relented. “If you’re sure you’re up to it. But please don’t overdo.”

  Back at the former debris hut of the two girls, everyone was chipping in and making sure the fire was entirely out. Bob had them turning over duff and hunting down any sign of fire. “We should come back in two hours and make sure,” he said.

  “Good idea,” Hannah said. “Maybe Rex and Ted, when you’re done with fishing this morning, you could do that.”

  Ted said, “Will do. How are you, Claire?”

  She held up a hand and made the gesture that said “so-so.”

  Rex had gathered up the snake. “Could have been roasting it all night.”

  “Not enough light to clean it,” Hannah said. “Besides, Laina and Claire are our best game prep people.”

  “I’ve never seen inside a snake,” Laina said, sounding interested.

  Bob said, “I’ll walk you through it. We should do it now, though, before the meat spoils.”

  Dixie was up and looking grumpy. “I’m not going to eat it. Gross.”

  Bob said, “You don’t have to. There will be fish soon enough, I imagine.”

  As the woods lit up with dawn, Hannah examined Claire’s neck, trying to not put any pressure on it. It was already bruised, and the bruises would deepen over the course of the day. There was swelling, and she thought they were damned lucky that it wasn’t so bad it had stopped her breathing.

  Hannah gave Claire a water bottle to drink from, and the girl winced as she tried her first swallow. She handed the bottle back, shaking her head.

  She wouldn’t die of thirst in a day. Let it heal, Hannah figured, and maybe by tonight she could take small sips. Food would have to wait at least a day, and more likely two or three.

  They walked through the woods toward the spot where they’d originally fished, where a game trail cut through the trees to a clearing.

  When she heard the sound of an animal breathing hard, Hannah shushed them all and held up a hand.

  She eased forward, taking care to put her feet down slowly, trying to avoid making a noise. She craned her neck around the trunk of a tree and saw them.

  Hell pigs. Entelodonts. Four of them, each of them the size of a yearling calf, but with snouts longer than a wolf’s. They had brought down an animal again.

  A big animal.

  She could no longer see what the animal had been. The long snouts of the hell pigs had already ripped the thing to shreds. They were coming to the end of their meal. Whatever it was, it was a thousand pounds of meat, easy. One of the hell pigs leaned over, pushed its snout down, and she could hear the wet crack of breaking bones.

  She felt a touch on her back that made her start.

  Ted was leaning over her shoulder. She pushed him back and motioned for everyone to retreat. She didn’t want to bother the hell pigs. They obviously could kill any one of the humans with hardly any effort. One of them could. Four of them together?

  At least such a death would be quick.

  Though something she had learned already, here in the wild world of the early Cenozoic, was that animals did not practice the politeness of killing their prey first. They just set to feeding. Sometimes the suffering went on. Becoming food was usually not a painless process.

  When they did bother to kill first, it was because they wanted to make things easier for themselves. Only humans gave a thought to kindness, to avoiding torturing what they ate.

  Animals? They couldn’t give a fraction of a damn about that. They just fed. She’d heard an animal screaming in pain for more than five minutes as it was eaten.

  Bob led the way back to her and Laina’s debris hut.

  “We need to circle around,” Hannah said, still keeping her voice quiet. “Claire, you doing okay?”

  The girl gave her a thumbs-up.

  “We could fish over here,” Rex said.

  Hannah shook her head. “I want us all together. And we need to get that house built.”

  It took them ten minutes to walk out of the trees. When they could see the open grassland, they could see several animals, most of them walking away from the lake. Some had stopped to graze.

  “We could hunt,” Ted said, unconsciously shifting his grip on his spear.

  “Another day,” Hannah said. “Let’s build a good shelter first. We can eat fish until that’s done.”

  A half-hour later, they were back at the home site, managing to avoid the feeding hell pigs or any other large predators. Bob and Laina took the snake to the lake to clean it. Four of them would go along to fish. She pulled Ted aside before he left. “Keep an eye on Claire, would you? Run back and get me if there’s any sign she’s getting worse. Don’t let her help on the net, or exercise in any way.”

  That left Jodi, Zach, Nari, and Hannah to start the work on brick-making. She sent Nari and Zach out to gather grass, and she and Jodi went to fill the bottles with water to mix the mud.

  “It’s like making mud pies as a kid,” said Jodi, as they sat and started mixing water into dirt.

  “A little.”

  “Except I’m learning how to make these just right. So they hold together, I mean.”

  “Trial and error.”

  “I guess that makes us different than animals,” Jodi said.

  Hannah wasn’t so sure about that. Animals must experiment and learn too. But a thought struck her. “There probably aren’t any intelligent land animals now. I mean, those lemur-things, whatever they’re called, maybe.”

  “Notho-something, Mr. O’Brien said.”

  “They might have some smarts. But if you look at the hell pigs’ heads, there isn’t much space for a brain. Wolves don’t exist yet. In our time, parrots are smart, dolphins, us. In this time, it might be a bird or a sea creature that has the top spot in smarts.”

  “The highest IQ.”

  “Though I’m not sure how you’d measure that. They aren’t smart enough to take tests. In a way, the IQ test is if it survives or not.”

  “Or that it survives long enough to evolve into an animal we knew?” Jodi was kneading the mud with her hands. “Is that a fair way to judge intelligence?”

  “M.J. said that it was all about climate, what lived, and what didn’t. I don’t know, though. Intelligence must count for something.”

  They fell into silence as they worked up a big patch of clay into mud.

  Zach and Nari came back with grass, and they all tore it into short pieces, except Jodi, who seemed to be content stirring up the muddy concoction with her hands. There was a smear of mud on her cheek.

  Bob and Laina came back with the big cooking pot. “Snake fritters,” Bob said. “Get ‘em while they’re hot.”

  They had cooked up the snake quickly. Laina held the pot in front of her, offering a piece, but Hannah held her hands up. “I need to wash them first.”

  Zach and Nari—Nari looking a bit ill at the idea—weren’t muddy, so each took a squa
re of meat.

  “Chewy,” Zach said. “But not bad-tasting.” He took another piece and walked it over to Jodi. “Open wide,” he said, and when she did, he fed her the meat.

  Hmmm. Hannah looked from one to the other. It was such an intimate gesture. And when Jodi looked up at Zach with a fond smile, Hannah thought, uh-oh. I never did have that birth control and pregnancy talk with the girls.

  At one level, this was sort of sweet. She liked Zach and Jodi, and they were well-matched. But she’d bet a hundred dollars—well, hell, make it a billion, since dollars meant nothing here—that no one had any birth control devices in the group. Even a single condom tucked inside a wallet—that would have surely been mentioned during one of their periodic supply inventories, when they tried to come up with new ways to use what tools they had. Or she hoped it would have been. A condom can be used to carry water.

  Everything they could use for some use other than its intended one had been used for that.

  An Altoid can lid had been cannibalized into “spoons” for Claire’s fishing line. A safety pin was part of her fishing pole too. The dental picks had been used for fine work in the net-making. They might have made good fishhooks as well, but the tempered steel was so hard and well-made, there was no way to remove the tip to form one. It’d be millions of years before the technology for steel was created.

  They all had their tool belts when the first time jump had happened. They had lost M.J.’s belt to the saber tooth attack, and that was a hard loss, for he had some unusual items in his, as the paleontologist had had many years to adapt his own tools to his experience and taste.

  Dixie’s cellphone, dead now, and the stand-alone GPS device Hannah had, she had set aside for consideration for later use. Part of her wanted to save the GPS, in case they popped back into modern times. But there might be something in the guts of it that could be adapted for a survival purpose.

  Her mind had wandered, but her hands had kept busy, using one of the Mylar blankets to form brick after brick. Bob and Laina used the other blanket to carry the bricks out to the beach. When the fire there was hot enough and had burned to coals, they’d bury the bricks with coals under them and over them and bake them to hardness.