Killer Pack (Dawn of Mammals Book 4)

by Lou Cadle

  “Hannah!” came Nari’s distant voice. “I found a place. I’m climbing!”

  Hannah had no hope of killing this beast for dinner. This would take a hunting party to bring down. Its reach was far better than a human’s, and it must weigh four hundred pounds.

  Hannah found the spear and lunged again with it. Again, the animal swung its wicked curved claws at her.

  This time, the spear broke. She still had a hold of the longer piece, and she waved it around, an inept swordsman. “Enough!” she said to the animal. She could hear the desperation in her own voice.

  It put its claw down, knuckles first, and studied her. How much brain was behind the flat forehead?

  Keeping the broken spear in front of her, Hannah backed up slowly. The creature sat on heavy haunches, kicking up a cloud of dust. It was clearly a female. Luckily, it didn’t have young with it, or it’d be even more aggressive.

  “Look, you go your way,” Hannah said, at a normal pitch. “I’ll go mine. Right?” She backed up another step. Another.

  It yawned.

  “Sorry to bore,” Hannah said. “I’m just moseying on now. No harm, no foul. We’re all just mammals here together.” Another step back, another. It wasn’t following.

  So far.

  Her boot heel hit a rock wall, and she realized the path was curving again. She backed around the curve. The animal didn’t move.

  The last glimpse she had, it was biting the back of its hand as if trying to dig out a flea.

  When she was ten yards beyond the curve, she turned, dropped the spear handle, and ran for all she was worth. When Nari came into view she yelled, “Is it chasing me?”

  “No!”

  Hannah slowed to a walk. “Should we wait, or go, do you think?”

  “Go,” said Nari, turning to climb down the rock face. She was down in seconds. “Let’s run, in case it changes its mind.”

  Hannah motioned her to lead, and they sprinted along, retracing their path. Hannah glanced behind herself every few seconds, but they were not being chased. Didn’t mean they weren’t being slowly trailed, though. The animal had been moving this way, and there really wasn’t any other way out but to climb up a steep hill.

  They were panting and slowed to a fast walk by the time they broke out into the open.

  “I need food,” Nari said. “I’m feeling the lack of it.”

  “Maybe someone found something today. Small game. A stream with fish.” Those who had gone in a downhill direction had carried the net and fishing line in case they found water.

  “I hope. Here, you take my spear. You’re much better with it. I think we’re safe from that animal.”

  “I’ll feel better once we’re in the woods.”

  “I’m not sure how much that will help. It could follow our scent in.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not a carnivore. It didn’t want us to eat it, but I don’t think eating us was on its mind.”

  “I didn’t stick around long enough to analyze the teeth.”

  “Thank you for running when I asked you to.”

  “My preference anyway. I’m not as brave as the rest of you.”

  “I’m not brave.”

  Nari laughed. “Of course you are. Like Ted.”

  “Ted goes beyond brave,” Hannah said, “to reckless.”

  “It’s gotten us meals, though.” Nari was walking back toward the stand of trees.

  Hannah fell into step with her. “That’s so.”

  “And hides.”

  “I’m not disagreeing. I just worry about him.”

  “Are you, um, attracted to him?”

  “What? No!” Hannah said. He—and all of the younger people—still felt like kids in that sense to her. “Or rather, I can see he’s attractive, but I don’t take it personally. It’s more like admiring a pink frilly dress on someone else that I’d never ever wear.” She considered why Nari might have asked. “Why? Are you interested in him?”

  “No,” said Nari. “I look at Jodi and Zach and how happy they are, and it makes me feel a little left out. Lonely, I guess. But Ted’s not my type. Rex would be more so, but there’s no—you know.”

  “Spark?”

  “Sure, whatever. I’m not hot for him. But if we’re stuck here forever, I might have to be. I don’t want to die a virgin. Not if I can possibly help it.”

  “We might get back, you know. To our time.”

  “Without Laina? I don’t think so.” Nari sighed. “I wish she had been here. I was relying on it. Or not relying exactly. Hoping hard she’d get us back home.”

  “Me too.” Hannah glanced behind them. Still no knuckle-walker. “You know, even if we don’t make it back to where we started, we might make it back to a time of humans. Ten thousand years too early would still put us into a North America that had humans.”

  “We wouldn’t speak their language.”

  “That’s no biggie. We could learn.”

  “They might shoot us on sight.”

  “They might,” Hannah said. “Or they might look at our shoes or backpacks and think we’re magical beings, to have such things as Velcro and zippers.”

  Nari laughed. “Not that we could make more if they asked us to prove we had the magic.”

  “No.”

  “The solar flashlight. You’d be a goddess to them. Hannah, Bringer of Light.”

  “Well, that’s a long time ahead. Millions upon millions of years.”

  “Or two months, whichever comes first.”

  “Hang on, let’s go to that tree over there. It looks unusual.” They were approaching the edge of the woods. “I want to check it out.” The leaves at the top of the tree were turning yellow. She veered toward it. It had long serrated leaves. Golf-ball-sized green seed pods scattered on the ground beneath it had been opened by some animal. Nothing was in them, but she looked up and saw more in the tree. “I think these are nuts. Do you see any on the ground like this, with the nuts still in them?”

  Nari looked around and bent over to pick up an open pod. “Ow. These remind me of the balls that fell off a sweet gum tree in my aunt’s yard. Prickly. And empty.”

  “Yeah. Give me a boost up to that first branch.” Hannah shrugged off her pack and let it fall to the ground.

  “I’ll try,” Nari said.

  “On three,” Hannah said, resting her hand on Nari’s shoulder. Nari bent and cradled Hannah’s boot. “One, two,” Hannah said, and on “three,” Nari lifted and Hannah propelled herself off her other foot. But she didn’t come within a foot of the branch. When she landed, she fell, knocking Nari over too. “Sorry!”

  “I’m fine. Let’s try that again. I think I can learn how to do this.”

  The fourth time they tried it, they got the timing just right, and Hannah grasped the branch.

  “Hang on,” Nari said. “Let me stand under you. You can stand on my shoulders and gain a few more inches.”

  “I only need you for a second.” Hannah let the girl help her get her balance, and took a better grip on the tree, and then she used brute force to haul herself up. It wasn’t a pretty picture, she was sure, and she thought for a moment about how Ted would have swung himself up like a chimp in a second. But her ungainly effort eventually brought her elbows to the branch and, once there, she was able to swing her leg over it. “Did any nuts fall while I was wrestling around like a rhino up here?”

  “A few.”

  “Great.” Hannah scooted as far down as the limb would let her and set the limb to bouncing.

  “Yeah, that’s doing it.”

  Hannah stopped bouncing and leaned over the branch as far as she dared to shake the end of it from side to side.

  “Okay, there are about a hundred fallen now.”

  “Good enough to start with,” Hannah said. “Look out; I’m dropping down.” It was far easier getting down than up.

  Nari was already gathering nuts and stuffing them into Hannah’s pack. “What are they?”

  “I’m not sure. I�
�m going to grab a couple leaves and take them to Bob. He might know the tree. But we can try to eat one anyway, no matter what they are.”

  “It’s a pretty green coating on the pod,” Nari said, “but they keep stabbing me.”

  “Yeah, I guess that keeps animals from eating them too soon. Gives the nut a better chance to become a new tree”

  “Okay, I think we have them all.”

  “Great. Back to camp then.” It wasn’t long past noon, and Hannah thought they’d be the first back. But they’d found the nuts, and if they were edible, that helped a lot. And they’d figured out a possible type of campsite to look for. “We met a new animal. With a couple more hunters, we could probably take it down.”

  “I wonder if they’re loners, those things,” said Nari.

  “Well that one was alone. And a female.”

  “You checked?”

  “Couldn’t avoid seeing it,” Hannah said. “She spread her legs in a very unladylike manner. If a female is alone, it’s doubtful the males hang in packs. So despite the size, we could hunt a solitary one. Maybe even today, if people get back before dark, we can go back and try to find it.”

  Hannah felt better when she saw Bob was okay. He was alone at the fire, sitting back on his elbows.

  “You caught me goofing off,” he said. “You’re back early.”

  Nari told the story of their morning.

  “The animal might have been a chalicothere, from what you’ve said. Some of them walked on their knuckles, and that’s a pretty rare thing. Maybe if I see one I’ll know for sure. So anyway, show me these nuts.”

  “I have tree leaves too.” Hannah pulled them out.

  Bob examined them. He asked for a knife, and Hannah pulled out a stone blade. He slit a seedpod and peeled away the prickly green bits. A lovely brown nut appeared, squat, with one end that tapered to a point. Bob said, “I think this is a chestnut. A true chestnut. But I’ve never seen one. Only pictures of them.”

  “Like chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Those sort of chestnuts?” Nari asked.

  Bob nodded.

  Hannah said, “I can see why they call the hair color that. It’s really a pretty shade of brown.”

  “Are they rare?” Nari said.

  “They are now,” Bob said. “Or in our time, rather. There was a blight, I think about a hundred years ago. The trees died all over North America. When I built my house, it was impossible to buy chestnut wood for flooring, but I’ve seen some in old homes, and it’s a pretty wood.”

  “This tree wasn’t sick, was it, Hannah?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “I believe the blight was imported. One of the costs of international goods being shipped after the industrial revolution gave us steam power.”

  “The nut is edible, then?” Hannah said.

  “If I’m right about what it is. I think you shouldn’t entirely trust that. Take the same precautions you always do.”

  “I’m up next for food testing,” Nari said.

  While Bob fell asleep, Nari and Hannah made the shelters more comfortable, padding the ground more. Then they sat at the fire and worked at finishing the hide tunic. Nari insisted on doing nothing else with the biggest hides until they had many more. “You were right. I was cold when I woke up this morning, and I think we’ll want these as blankets. It’s only going to get colder, right?”

  That was so. Hannah had measured the night at 13 hours long, so between that and the yellowing trees, they were certainly in mid-October. The days would grow shorter and the nights colder.

  Rex and Claire were the next to come in, not long after Bob had woken from his nap. By that time, Hannah had chewed up and spit out her berry, and Nari had rubbed crushed nut on her lip. Neither of them were reacting badly to the foods, but the unripe berry was bitter. She thought that until they were ripe, they’d be inedible and likely cause diarrhea.

  Rex and Claire had taken an uphill route too and had found little of help. “We saw an animal at the top of a hill,” Claire said.

  “Something like a mountain goat,” Rex said. “Way too far up and way too nimble to chase.”

  Nari told Rex and Claire about their animal encounter and then about the shelf as a possible home site.

  Rex and Claire glanced at each other. “There might have been places like that?” Claire said.

  Rex said, “Maybe. I’d have to go back and look to be sure.”

  Bob said, “Until we know where we’re getting our water from, we shouldn’t commit to building anything elsewhere.”

  “True,” Claire said. “Let’s wait and see what the others found.”

  “Food, I hope,” said Rex, resting his hand on his belly.

  Jodi and Zach returned next. Jodi had clubbed a big rodent to death, and Zach had bottles of water.

  “It’s from a stream,” he said. “Not a very big one, but it might get bigger downstream. We found it after noon, so we had to turn back. We can explore where it goes tomorrow.”

  The animal was much like a prairie dog, though larger. It probably had six to eight pounds of meat on it: enough for a meal for everyone. They shared some of the water, saved a bottle for Dixie and Ted in case they came back thirsty, and used the rest to start a stew.

  Jodi and Zach had seen several large animals. “They were skittish, though,” Jodi said. “It might be that hunting will be harder here.”

  Claire said, pointing to the animal carcass Jodi had dropped by the fire, “But you bagged something.”

  “Some dumb luck there,” Jodi said. “It popped up right in front of me from a burrow.”

  “You were fast with the club,” Zach said. “Whack-a-moled it. Without two hands, I wasn’t any help, that’s for sure.”

  Bob said, “Tell us about the other animals you saw. Anything familiar?”

  “Things like deer. Big animals that might be rhinos. I mean, not anything like rhinos from the zoo, but built that way, really heavy, with thick legs.”

  Zach said, “No horn, but a bump on its nose. The head made you think of rhinos. The way it was shaped, I mean. And these weren’t very tall. The biggest one wasn’t much bigger than a cow.”

  Rex said, “Mr. O’Brien, when did rhinos go extinct here in North America?”

  “Not long ago, as I recall. Three million to five million years before our time.”

  “Why?” Rex said, twisting his head around so that his good ear was aimed at Bob.

  “I doubt that anyone knows for sure, but climate change, probably. It’s what drives most animals to extinction. Either a cold world grows hot, or vice-versa. Probably in this case, the cold did them in. That means certain foods disappear and the animals that relied on them starve. The world of the rhinos that we’re in will get colder soon. And that means grazing land shrinks. Winter feeding is a challenge. So evolution favors animals that can eat a bigger variety or can dig for food under snow, or that in lean times can reach for things beyond the reach of other animals. Like elephants can reach with their trunks.”

  Hannah hadn’t heard him drop into teacher’s lecture mode for a few weeks. She hoped it meant he was on the mend. That was good news and bad news. She’d need to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t push himself too hard. She was the medic, and trying to keep Bob alive was high on her list of priorities. If she had anything to say about it, Laina would be the last person they lost.

  “And,” he said, “there’s a possibility some of the rhinos were still around long enough for the bridging of South and North America. That was three million years before our time. When that happened, a big exchange of species took place, and it shook up the balance more, introducing competition for food, and it brought new predators into places that had no defenses against them. Who knows, maybe new diseases were introduced too.”

  Chapter 16

  After Bob’s lecture, Hannah and Jodi walked to the edge of the woods to collect rocks to heat in the fire. The first time they had boiled water that way, they’d had a few rocks explod
e on them. But experience had been the good teacher it always was, and now they knew the sort of rocks that stood up to the heat of a fire.

  Jodi said, “We need to find more clay if we’re going to build again.”

  “I know,” Hannah said. “I didn’t see any today, but after our animal encounter, I can’t say I was looking all that hard.”

  “I guess we’re okay in the woods for now. It’s not like I’m seeing a lot of animals in here.”

  “I’d feel better behind brick walls.”

  “There’s one,” Jodi said, and bent over to pick up a rock. “No, too big.” They needed rocks smaller than fist-size. The same sorts of rocks that didn’t crack in the heat of the fire were also rocks it was nearly impossible to crack into smaller pieces, so they had to be already the right size. The kind of rocks that cracked easily were the sort that exploded, but they also were the sort that made sharp axes and knives.

  “How’s Zach’s wrist? I should’ve asked him,” Hannah said.

  “About the same. It’s not killing him, but he said it hurt enough that he had a hard time getting to sleep.”

  “Maybe I’ll find a plant that kills pain this time.”

  “Willows do, right?”

  “Barely. There must be something stronger out there. Of course, anything that’s as strong as opium seeds might also be toxic. Or easy to overdose on.”

  “It’s too bad each time shift doesn’t come with a guidebook,” Jodi said. “Animals, plants, a convenient map.”

  “You have that right. A month isn’t long enough to learn much. You notice how much better we got at our skills with two months in the same place last time. It takes a month to get acclimated.”

  “I miss the cabin.”

  “Me too,” Hannah said. “We really rocked that.”

  “Oh my God, rocked. That’s retro.”

  “I’m ancient, remember?” But her mind was drifting from the conversation, circling back around to what she’d just said.

  If two months in one place was better—and it was, in many ways—maybe they shouldn’t jump a month from now. Instead, maybe they should stay where they were, if they had a solid, defensible home, water, and plentiful food.