A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  “I want to hunt,” Ted said. “And to follow the hell pigs and see what they’re up to.”

  Claire said, “I’d like meat too. I’d be happy with little animals, like squirrels or rabbits too. And that’s safer than hunting.”

  “You need to fish,” Dixie said, “don’t you?”

  “I’m happy to, but I can build snares too. If someone cast the net twice every day, we’d have meals. Then I wouldn’t need to fish. It’s a lot of time fishing with a pole to catch enough to feed ten people.”

  Bob said, “It’s a lot of time to make and set snares too. And I barely kept up with making cordage enough to build the cabin.”

  “True,” Claire said. “Deadfalls are easier. But once they’re set, they take care of themselves. Just check them twice a day, and you might have enough for dinner.”

  “I want a bigger animal than a rabbit,” Rex said, “if we can get one. Something that would last two days.”

  Zach said, “And plants. We need to get more plants.”

  “There’s the cashews,” Laina said. “We never did get a chance to try and figure that out. And the cashew fruit should be ripening soon. They’ll taste better once they start falling from the trees.”

  “Other fruit, especially berries, might be ripe,” Hannah said. “We need to explore and see if there are any.”

  Jodi said, “We can do that. Zach and I would volunteer, I mean. We’ll go around the whole lake tomorrow. I think it’ll only take a day.”

  They continued discussing their plans. Hannah got a fire started at both entrances, though it took some time, as the light rain and the new fire were at odds. The net team went out in the rain to cast for more fish, and an hour later they returned with dinner, fish cooked over still-hot coals and piled into the big pot. Everybody rinsed their hands and ate.

  They turned in early, still tired from too little sleep the night before. They were getting used to the sound of the dripping rain, and the roof muffled it, so everyone fell asleep quickly.

  * * *

  With the cabin built, they were able to slack off a little. Not much, for there was still a lot to do. But they took time with their meals, and they had even found a new herb. It was a little too pungent to enjoy on its own, but it passed the safety check. When Nari smelled it, she said it would be good in soup, and when she tried adding it, she was proved right. It changed the flavor of the herring, at least, which they all appreciated.

  Traps were set. A hunting party went out every other morning for a half-day. Though they caught nothing, Ted said they were learning about the animals’ behavior, so he thought it was worth the trip. She let Jodi and Zach explore around the lake, but she sent Dixie with them, as chaperone. She trusted Jodi’s promise, yes. But it was a full day’s trip, and she thought it was better not to give them that much time alone to talk themselves into having sex. None of the three of them were happy with her decision, but she stuck to it.

  Bob continued to chafe at being forced to sit all day long. She brought him some rocks of various types and asked him to try and learn to make spear points. For a few days, that distracted him from his unhappiness at being bedridden.

  The rain let up for two days, and then it began again in earnest just before noon. She stopped everyone’s other work and made them scurry around to collect grass to make thicker bedding for themselves. If this were the beginning of a wet season, they might not get another chance to collect dry bedding, and it might get colder as it rained more. They’d learned in their first weeks, back in the cave, that it took about eight inches of dry fluffy grass to pack down into a mattress not even two inches thick. But Hannah wanted even more—grass and dry leaves enough to burrow into, to use as both mattress and blanket.

  The chimney got built, torn down, and rebuilt into a better design. They kept a fire going all the time in it now. The smoke vented outside, and the hearth created warmth, light, and a place to cook if the rain was coming down so hard that a fire at lakeside couldn’t be used.

  The days passed. They didn’t forget Garreth, but they had learned to live without him. If Dixie was continuing to spread rumors about her, the rumors never reached Hannah’s ears. Nari never warmed back up to Dixie, who spent most of her time around Ted or Rex. Hannah wasn’t worried about Ted being swayed by any of Dixie’s lies—she suspected gossip went in one ear for him and then out the other. Rex might be more susceptible to the girl’s manipulations.

  But there was nothing Hannah could do about that. She made sure she was never alone with Dixie, but was always with at least one other person as witness.

  They fell into a routine, and Hannah had to make sure she rotated them through various tasks, not just the ones they were inclined to do by their own nature. She too made sure she took a turn at the net, at fishing with Claire’s pole, at spear-making, at gathering the cashew fruit and the edible berries they’d found, and at hunting.

  It was on one hunting trip with Claire and Ted, more than a week after the cabin had been completed, that they spotted the hell pigs again.

  Chapter 23

  It had been a while since she’d seen one, and Hannah had forgotten how big the hell pigs were. How ugly. How dangerous-looking. The predators were in a group, sunning themselves. The rain, when it came, waited until about noon. In the morning, the sun was usually out for a few hours before the clouds began to build, always in the west.

  Ted pointed to the animals and, with his first two fingers, made a motion of walking. He still wanted to follow them.

  Hannah studied the animal group. There were four—no, five of them. One was smaller, so maybe a juvenile. It didn’t look any less dangerous for that. She held up five fingers.

  Ted nodded.

  Hannah pointed behind herself to indicate the kids should follow her, and she crouched down as she walked away from the hell pigs toward a patch of medicine bush. She’d used the leaves for insect bites and a burn, and it had worked well as a numbing agent. Today, the bushes provided them cover.

  Still, when they were gathered behind the bushes, they spoke in voices barely above a whisper.

  “They might lead us to food. Either to fruit or to some sort of grazing animal herd,” Ted said.

  “They might,” she said.

  Claire said, “They don’t look inclined to move right now. They’re just sitting there.”

  Hannah said, “Maybe they just ate this morning.”

  Ted licked his finger and stuck it in the air. “Wind’s from the west. So we need to stay to the east of them and we’ll be fine.”

  “If we do it,” Hannah said, knowing he still wanted to trail them. Her inclination was to say no. The first deadly confrontation with an animal, when they lost M.J., had taught her the lesson that avoidance was better than confrontation, particularly if the animal was better equipped than they.

  Back in the modern world, a rifle gave humans the advantage. Even a bow made it possible to stay far away from animals that had their own natural defenses. But with nothing better than spears and clubs, any confrontation with an animal here was little better than a fight between any two animals. And every single animal out there was better equipped than humans. Teeth were sharper. Jaws were stronger. Claws were much more dangerous than fingernails broken to the quick from constant work. And in speed, there was no contest. Even Ted, the fastest of them, had better be no more than ten yards from a tree if the hell pigs came charging at him across a field of grass.

  That was the only saving grace with the hell pigs. They couldn’t climb trees, as the saber tooth had been able to. The only predators they’d seen here with tree-climbing ability were no bigger than house cats. A scratch or bite from one would still hurt a human, but pure mass was the human’s superior equipment in that case. And the small predators knew the people were too big to mess with. None of those climbing predators hunted in packs, and they all left the humans alone.

  She said to Ted, “I’m sorry. It might be interesting to see what they’re up to, but it’s
not necessary. And it’s a risk.”

  He looked away, out toward where the hell pigs had been, the longing clear in his expression.

  “And please don’t think of doing it on your own. Or drag anyone else into it.”

  He didn’t look at her, but his flushed neck told her she’d guessed his thinking right.

  “Ted, please. Promise me.”

  He sighed. “I’m craving red meat.”

  “Me too. Let’s climb a couple hills back this way and see if we can’t catch sight of a herd of something.”

  Claire said, “Or we might come across some fresh droppings.”

  Hannah hadn’t missed the point that Ted hadn’t given her a promise. She didn’t press for it right now because she didn’t want him to lie. It’d be better to be able to trust his promise than to force a false one out of him.

  It wasn’t the first time she had felt sympathy for what parents must go through, trying to raise a teenager.

  The problem was worse for her, because she had no hold over them. Not one of love, or genetic connection, or financial power, or granting of much-desired freedoms. They had to be functioning as independent adults most of the time, and she had no more power over them than she did over Bob. Less, perhaps, as logical arguments worked better on Bob.

  She’d get Ted alone later, and beg him, invoking how she felt about Garreth’s death. She still felt sick about it. And she liked Ted, and it’d tear her apart to lose him.

  After checking the hell pigs, which were far away and apparently unaware of them, they all relieved themselves, taking advantage of the privacy of the bush. Then they hiked up the hill to the south, to see what they might see.

  The grass was already greening up from all the rain. She had several bundles of the dried grass in her firewood lean-to, as well as dry wood. She had collected a dozen of the small plastic fossil bags and filled them with perfectly dry tinder wrapped around a dollop of pine sap, a fire starter they could rely on. While they kept the chimney fire going all the time, she never wanted to be without dry tinder again, no matter what world they visited and what climate.

  She stayed in the rear on the hike up the hill, checking behind herself to make sure the hell pigs weren’t coming this way. They weren’t. In the west, the daily clouds were beginning to build again. There had to be something over there—mountains, just under the horizon, or a big body of water—to create that, she figured. Sometimes the clouds dropped rain on them, sometimes not. When it rained, sometimes the storm was over by four in the afternoon, and sometimes it lasted until midnight. But inside the cabin, they stayed warm and dry.

  As he reached the hilltop, Ted said, “Cool!”

  Claire was up just after him. “Dinner,” she said.

  Hannah sped up to join them and see what had led to that comment. It was a herd of oreodonts, or part of a herd. They must be grazing over in the next valley too. She could only see about eighty of them, spread across the top of the next ridge.

  “Good placement,” Ted said. “If they’re moving off, that is, rather than toward us. All we need to do is wait until we can only see one or two, and we can sneak up on them if we’re careful.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said. “But aren’t we upwind of them?”

  He tested the wind again. “Yeah. But maybe because of the hill, they won’t smell us.”

  “Worth a try,” she said. “Let’s hang out here, out of their sight.”

  Ted said, “You both up for running when we need to?”

  “If I can drop the tool belt,” Claire said, glancing at Hannah, “I could run faster.”

  “We all could,” Hannah said.

  They still used the canvas belts, but they were loaded with different equipment now than when they’d been geared up for fossil hunting. They all carried tinder and kindling, broken rocks with a sharp edge for scraping hides, cordage they’d made, and very little from the modern world. One of a group took a rock hammer—because you never knew how it might come in useful—and today, Claire was carrying theirs, so she had the worst of the weight to bear. Hannah wore her backpack, and the first aid kit was in there, not that much was left in it. Antibiotic cream, plus a plastic bag of the numbing leaves from the medicine plant, the much-used elastic bandage, and the needle to sew up wounds. The most recent addition was an Altoids container full of the resin to close wounds after she’d sewed them.

  Ted wore one of the new basket backpacks, tied on with cords Bob had made. It was empty because they were planning to use it to collect something—meat, ideally, but whatever else they might find edible or of use.

  They sat and talked quietly, mostly Claire and Ted talking about fishing and what they’d learned since coming here. There were three functioning fishing poles now, and that was how most of their food was caught. Claire’s had a metal hook, but the rest of the fish were caught with thorns. They drifted to the topic of which fish tasted best. No one liked the herring by this point, but Hannah insisted they eat it once a week because the oil content was so high, she thought it was good for the calories and nutrition.

  Every five or ten minutes, Ted climbed up to the high spot and looked at the oreodonts again. He assured them that the animals were moving away, but not quickly.

  “We’ll be walking back in the rain,” Hannah said, looking up at the clouds.

  “I don’t care, if we have an oreodont with us,” Ted said.

  “Or two,” Claire said.

  “I doubt we could eat two,” Hannah said. “Not if they’re adults.”

  “We could smoke them, like fish.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t quite have that down yet,” Hannah said. “I wouldn’t trust meat we’d smoked for a long time. Not yet. Now if it were the dry season again, I might try to just sun-dry it.”

  “How?” Ted said. “Wouldn’t it just get eaten by predators?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “And if it were dry, maybe we could build a raft, and float it out on the lake. Insects would still go after it, is the problem. And raptors, maybe, if they guessed what it was, or could smell what it was. So what I’d love to have is a piece of netting to cover it.”

  Claire said, “I’m not sure we could make that.”

  “No,” Hannah said. “I wish I’d had one in my pack.”

  “No way you could have known you’d want something like that.”

  “But think how little it would have weighed. I have some rolled up in my sleeping bag, in fact, just a remnant of fabric I grabbed at a Walmart for seventy cents, to keep mosquitoes off my face. With that, we could sun-dry meat, and keep the insects off. Or dry meat and berries, and make pemmican.” She still had the commercial pemmican bar in the outer pocket of her backpack. She’d never felt a need to use it. Maybe she’d bring it out one day as a treat. For now, she dismissed it from her mind.

  Ted stood up again, looked out toward the herd, and came back. “Only two are visible.”

  “Let’s give it five minutes,” Claire said, “and let them move too, over the hill’s crest.” She stripped off her tool belt, looking to Hannah for permission. Hannah nodded and went through her things to see if she could lighten her load too. They all had spears and Hannah had her knife in her pocket, which had a duller blade by this point than the rocks Bob had broken for them. She kept her backpack on but took nearly everything out of it but the first aid kit and one of the hide-scrapers Bob had been making.

  When next they looked over the crest of the hill, the animals were out of sight. Ted broke into a loping jog, his long legs covering the distance in no time. Hannah and Claire followed the best they could. As he hit the uphill portion, he glanced back and saw them lagging, and he slowed his pace. They all slowed to a walk about thirty yards from the top, and then Ted held up his hand and went on alone, dropping to hands and knees, then to his belly to look over the top of the hill.

  He gave them a thumbs-up without looking back at them. Hannah caught her breath, realizing how quickly she was recovering f
rom exertion. Lighter, leaner, and used to physical work every day, her body had become a more efficient machine. Probably it didn’t hurt that her diet had been nothing but fish and fruit and a few vegetables for over a month. Except for all her healing injuries, she was as healthy as she could get.

  Ted slithered backward and drew up a simple plan. Claire and Hannah were to circle around to the right and try and drive some portion of the herd back this way. If the animals came over the hill this way again, Ted would be waiting. If they turned and ran, he might catch the slowest of them.

  They split up, and Hannah and Claire walked parallel to the hill top for a good while, two hundred yards or more, and then they agreed with a nod it was time to try. They crouched as they climbed the last bit of hill, and then Hannah counted down in a whisper, “Three, two, one. Go!”

  They sprang up and over the hill, thundering down the slope, spears raised, whooping.

  Hannah had a moment of sympathy for the startled oreodonts, their placid grazing interrupted by these two noisy monsters from the future, and then the herd began to move. Some tried to run downhill, but they were stopped by the bulk of the herd, which was slow to get itself into gear.

  Finding no escape that way, some peeled off to the right and some to the left toward Ted. Hannah, on the left, ran downhill at an angle and then turned in pursuit, trying to stay downhill and drive them up the hill and right toward Ted. None went over the hill, but two veered close to the top.

  Ted leaped up, literally two feet off the ground, and as he fell, he brought his spear down with all his might. Simultaneously, he shifted his trajectory somehow mid-air (how did he do these things?) and landed on an oreodont with both knees, knocking it over.

  It fell to its side and the spear came down on its neck. He must have driven the spear all the way through into the ground because, for a moment, he couldn’t pull it back out. Hannah sprinted for him, and as the oreodont thrashed and broke Ted’s spear, she was there, and she grabbed her spear two-handed and brought it down on the neck as well.