by Geoff North
Becky was ringing out the remainder of her cut-off jeans. They were faded white and as thin as tissue paper. The zipper no longer worked and the button had dropped off, forcing her to use strands of weaved grass as a belt. She should’ve discarded them months ago, but it was tough letting go of that last piece of the twenty-first century. The tee-shirts they had worn into this world were long gone. She stood beside Abe, completely naked. The teens had come to an unspoken agreement half a year earlier. It was too dangerous to expect privacy. Their small group had to stick closely together to guarantee safety, and if that meant showing more skin than their modesty wanted to allow, too bad. There had been attacks from lion prides, starving apes, and during the last few nights something entirely different had begun stalking them. Abe thought it might be hyenas, because of the high-pitched yips and frenzied barking sounds, but Becky had seen the outline of one in the light of the fire the evening before. It was bigger than any lion they had ever encountered—far too big for a hyena, or a jackal, or any other species of pack-foraging desert animal.
She laid the damp shorts over a rock Abe was sitting on. “How much longer will this take?” She asked.
“Not long.” He was watching the children bathe and play.
“The pyramids will probably be built over there.”
“Huh?” He wasn’t looking to where Becky was pointing. All of his attention was drawn to the boy in the water.
“Across the river. That’s where they’ll begin the Great Pyramid in a hundred thousand years or so… give or take a few millennia. We may be sitting on what will someday become Cairo.”
“What makes you so sure this is even the Nile?”
“Because we’ve been following it for months and thousands of miles. What other river could it be?”
“You’re the geography expert.”
“It’s the Nile, Abe, trust me. I may be off a few hundred miles south or north about Cairo, but it’s definitely the Nile.” Abe’s body tensed and Becky kept talking. “You have to admit it’s a pretty neat thought. Can’t you just imagine the Sphinx staring out at us over there? Ancient Egypt… the pyramids, the pharaohs… None of it’s happened yet. We were here before any of it.”
Abe was in the water before Becky could turn. He dove in head first, propelling his body towards Boo. He resurfaced seconds later, his arms and legs wrapped around the crocodile’s thrashing frame. Boo and Ann screamed and ran for dry ground. Abe’s legs tightened around the croc’s midsection as he forced the massive jaws apart. It attempted to bite them back together but the teen’s strength was greater. He continued to pull until there was a sickening crack. The crocodile thrashed harder but it no longer possessed the ability to do Abe much harm. He wrestled it to the sandy bank and put the reptile out of its misery with a rock to the head.
Becky stood over them, her hands placed on her hips. “I don’t appreciate you using the kids as bait. That was too close.”
“The children will have meat now, enough for weeks. And we can have crocodile skin boots.”
“Our skin’s tougher than that thing’s. We don’t need boots, and neither one of us knows how to make them.”
Abe was already cutting through the reptilian hide with a sharp-edged stone. “It was your idea to follow the river, to use its resources, to hunt and fish… I wanted to head east, to find the ocean and follow it north.”
“And instead of travelling only ten or twelve miles a day with the kids, we could run fifty or a hundred on our own—you’ve told me a hundred times.”
He was pulling the steaming innards out. “Boo and Ann have slowed us down, but I would never ditch them if that’s what you’re accusing me of.”
The children were on their hands and knees helping Abe scoop out guts. Becky was slipping back into her still wet cut-offs. “I’m not accusing. It’s going to take us years to find our way back home, Abe. That land bridge to North America might not even be there. Why push it? We’ll get there when we get there… if we get there.”
Abe finished with the crocodile while Boo and Ann ate. They followed the Nile for a few more miles; Becky carried Ann on her back, Abe carried Boo. The children were strong but the teens were stronger. When the younger bodies tired after five or six hours, the older ones took over. They made even better time carrying the children and running at the same time. Day after day it went on, weeks into months.
They made camp that evening at an outcrop of rocks a hundred yards from the river. Abe watched the sun set and wondered if the dust would ever truly settle. Some days were clearer than others, the sun could at least be seen at times, but the nights were long and depressing. They hadn’t seen a single star in the sky since leaving Kilimanjaro.
Becky sat next to him and took his hand. “Ann started to make a necklace out of the croc teeth, and I think we can make a decent water skin with its bladder.”
“I wasn’t mad at you earlier.” He tossed a bone with a bit of meat still clinging to it into the dirt at his feet. “It’s just… I sometimes wonder why we haven’t found any more people. As much as I care for Boo and Ann, I wish we could find someone that would take them in.”
“We’re living a long time in the past. There aren’t seven or eight billion people here. I’m betting there’s less than a hundred thousand. Maybe a lot less. The chances of coming across any more are pretty slim.”
“You want them to stay with us, don’t you?”
“They slow us down but I love them.”
“Me too.”
Long after the sun had set and the children were fast asleep, Abe and Becky made love. Even with their seemingly limitless reserves of strength and endurance, the young couple was usually too tired to do more than fall asleep in each other’s arms after the long days of walking and running. And very rarely did they fall asleep at the same time. One would always keep watch during the long dark hours when the starving creatures closed in.
Abe and Becky had both drifted off and the fire had sputtered down to a glow when the screams started. Abe rolled away from Becky and into the coals throwing up smoke and sparking embers. In those brief seconds he saw the beast that had Ann in its monstrous jaws. At first he thought it was a crocodile, the snout was too long and the curved fangs were too large to belong to anything else. But it was covered with hair instead of reptilian green skin, the eyes were set too close together, and it had long ears sloping back against its skull. Abe lunged at it and was brought down by a second creature from the side. Its teeth buried into the meat of his upper leg and wrestled him to the dirt. The fangs sunk in deeper, establishing an unbreakable hold, and the front claws went to work at his abdomen. Abe’s one arm became trapped beneath him and the animal’s weight made it impossible to work free.
He was growing dizzy, choking on dirt and smoke. There was no pain, only the dulled sensation of something tearing at his midsection and the feel of something cold and hard pushing up into his stomach. Abe’s head fell back and he saw a circle of yellow eyes closing in all around. There were dozens more. Now the yipping started. They howled and yelped and growled at the smell of fresh blood and the promise of four warm bodies to feast on.
Abe wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep. They had traveled far and had so much more ground to cover—and for what? Where had he hoped to take them? There was nothing here—nothing in ancient Africa, and even less in prehistoric North America. He deserved a rest.
Wake up! Your work is not done.
Abe’s eyes snapped open and painful reality returned. The sounds of animals thrashing and snarling filled his ears—and something else. Ann was still screaming. She was still alive.
He was too weak to wrestle the creature off him, his body was still pinned and he had lost too much blood. Abe only had one free arm to work with. He looked down and saw the bloodied snout buried into his gut. The animal stared back and Abe drove his thumb into a yellow eye, all the way up to the socket. There was an awful sucking sound as it reared its ugly head out of his midsection, but A
be kept the thumb planted inside. He twisted and gripped the side of the creature’s head with his fingers and twisted some more. His other arm came free and he grabbed the skull with both hands and squeezed with all of his remaining strength.
Bone broke open and the animal’s brains exploded over Abe’s chest and face. It thumped onto the ground beside him but Abe was still too weak to do much more than groan. He felt his body lifting, strong hands under his armpits dragging him up into the higher rocks. Abe’s head fell back and he saw Becky’s blood-smeared face. She was yelling at the children to climb. Go as high as you can. Higher. Keep going.
Abe reached up and stroked her cheek with fingers still clumped in smeared eyeball and brain matter. She’s so beautiful. Even like this. She’s so beautiful and she saved me.
His eyes closed again.
***
Something cold was working at his stomach but Abe felt no pain. The sky was grey. Not the grey of clouds but the grey of dust. It had a heavy yellow tint to it that made everything appear like an old photograph. It was the same dreary, dead sky Abe had awoken to for weeks. But the fact he could even see the dust meant they had made it through the night.
He felt with his fingers around his gut and found a small hand. Ann was cleaning the skin there with the remains of his tee-shirt. She rinsed the cloth out and dipped it into the animal skull Boo was holding filled with muddy water.
Abe touched the matted hair stuck to one side of her face. She turned and offered him a smile. Most of the hair on the other side of her head was missing. “You… You’re okay,” he croaked.
She applied the shirt to his cracked lips and he coughed as some of the water worked its way down his parched throat.
“Hair gone,” she answered. “Hair go back.”
“Your hair will grow back,” another voice corrected.
Becky was sitting on the other side of Abe. He reached for her and she took his hand. “Slow. Go slow…You lost a lot of blood and it wasn’t easy tucking your intestines back in. I wasn’t sure you’d ever wake up again.”
Abe braced himself and looked at his abdomen expecting to see a foot-wide hole of purple guts. The skin had healed over and all that remained to show an animal had started to devour his innards were a series of jagged white scars forming a crescent shape around and below his navel. “It shouldn’t… It couldn’t have healed up in just hours.”
“It didn’t. We’ve been up in the rocks for three days. Those things are still down there.”
Abe sat up with Becky and Ann’s help and saw the creatures twelve feet below. He looked around slowly and counted. There were thirteen of them left, all the same size and weight of a small car. He saw four big bloody patches in the dirt littered with bones and strips of hide where others had been killed and eaten. Two were feasting on the remains of a fifth animal closest to the rocks.
“I bashed that one’s skull in this morning with a rock,” Becky said. “I made a run to the river for water while Boo and Ann distracted them. Barely made it back in time.”
Abe had taken the soaked shirt from Ann and was rubbing his face and neck with it. “When I’m able…when I’m stronger, we’ll have to take them out one at a time. We can’t stay up here forever.” He looked at Ann again and studied the hairless side of her skull.
Becky patted the girl’s knee proudly. “She must have heard them coming at the last second. It only managed to get a grip on her hair and not her throat. I pulled her away but most of the hair stayed behind. Boo threw coals from the fire into its face before it could attack again.”
Abe looked at the boy’s hands. They were red and covered with blisters. “My God, Becky… They saved our lives.”
“You still think we should drop them off somewhere if we get the chance?”
“They’re more like us than their own people now. Maybe it wouldn’t be right to just drop them off somewhere.”
Boo crawled towards them—as if he could sense what they were talking about more than the meaning of the words—and touched Abe’s knee with his swollen pink fingers. “Stay.”
Stay as in up in the rocks and away from the creatures circling below, or stay together—as a family? Ann was nodding her head and the one-word confirmation she added settled it for them all. “Us.”
Becky stood and grabbed a fist-sized stone from a small pile she had accumulated during the last few days. She took aim at the animal closest to them and threw with all her strength. It struck the thing’s furry backside tearing off a piece of hide. The animal howled and trotted off to a safer distance. “They stay with us then. Now all we have to do is get down from these frigging rocks.”
Abe was standing beside her with a stone of his own. His other hand was cradling his still tender stomach. “You might throw two or three times faster than any pitcher in the Major Leagues, but you still aim like a girl. Let me try.”
He curled his arm back and Becky caught him by the wrist. “Don’t be stupid. You won’t look like such a big he-man if your guts spill back out all over our feet.”
He nodded reluctantly and sat back down. There was enough water collected in the skulls to last the children two or three days. But they would need more than just water to survive the coming days. Boo and Ann would have to eat, they would have to build up their strength in the event all four had to make a run.
They didn’t have long to wait before things changed. Two of the creatures trotted off to the north a few hours later. Abe and Becky watched in solemn anticipation, half-expecting the others to follow. All of the animals’ interests seemed to be piqued. They sniffed the air and made their horrible grunting sounds, moving away from the scraps of their last meal, and slowly towards the far edge of the rocks where the other two had run off.
Becky closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nostrils. “Something’s coming.”
“You can smell it?”
“Try it. Something’s out there.”
Abe sniffed the air. The first thing he smelled was dust. It was everywhere, all the time—an oppressive reminder of the distant, cataclysmic event that had re-shaped their new world. Then he smelled their more immediate surroundings—unwashed hair, dried blood and sweat, urine from a spot the kids had chosen to relieve themselves. Abe could smell death from the stripped carcasses below, the stench of animal feces, the sourness of regurgitated meals eaten too quickly and gobbled up by weaker animals waiting their turn. The wind shifted slightly and he caught the scent of river and plant life growing along its muddy banks.
And then Abe smelled something new. It had a familiar, unpleasant scent. Body odor. Human body odor.
“There!” Becky was pointing at a thick wall of reeds over three hundred yards to the north. The two animals had stopped short and were rooting at the wet ground with sharp hooves.
At first it appeared as if one of the bull-rushes had broken in two and shot out towards the animals on its own accord. There was a high-pitched squeal as a spear pierced the eye of one and shot out through the back of its skull. It was dead before its six-hundred pound body hit the muddy ground.
Humans erupted from the reeds, dozens of them, brandishing spears, axes, and vicious looking hammers. The second creature recoiled, preparing to flee, its back legs stuck into the mud. Two men leapt forward and buried their spears into the animal’s neck. A third came between them and went for the heart.
The creatures still circling the rocks charged the newcomers. They’d waited too long for the humans trapped above—resorted to cannibalism—to be denied any longer. Their instinct for survival was overcome by bloodlust, the insatiable need to feed on something fresh and warm. It was their undoing. All were cut down by a hail of spears and a rain of bashing hammers and swinging axes. Two of the humans were killed and partially devoured before the final beast died.
“They make it look easy,” Becky whispered.
“Strength in numbers,” Abe replied. He was already climbing down from the rocks.
“Wait a minute—are you
sure that’s a good idea?”
He shrugged and helped Boo along the way. “No sense staying up here. Those spears can reach us a lot faster than those animals could.”
Becky held her hand out to Ann and the girl hesitated. She didn’t appear as trusting of the strangers as Abe and Boo. “Come on, girl.” She tried reassuring. “We can’t stay up here forever.”
Still, Ann held back. She folded her dirty arms across her chest and shook her head. “No… Stay.”
Becky lifted the girl by the arm and dragged her along. Ann whimpered and Becky knelt to whisper in her ear. “Good people or bad… I won’t let them hurt you.”
Abe had stopped half-way across the remaining sand. Boo was tugging at his hand to go back. When Becky and Ann caught up, it was plain to see what had caused the boys to stop. Two men had gone to work at one of the dead animals, hacking and slicing at the thick hide, emptying the insides and draining blood into a collection of wooden bowls and skulls. Half a dozen more clustered around the second animal, tearing at its flesh with bare hands and eating the steaming organs within. The remainder of the hunting party was advancing on the four strangers. They had begun to spread out, flanking the smaller group.
“Oh shit,” Abe whispered. “They’re not human.”
Not quite, Becky thought. They walked on two feet and carried weapons like humans. Their bodies were covered in light furs—or so Becky first thought. They advanced further and she realized it was hair covering their powerful arms and legs. “Neanderthal, I think… maybe Cro-Magnon,” she whispered back.
Becky and Abe could fight their way out of this—human, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon—it didn’t matter which. The teenagers were ten to twenty times stronger than any bipedal race on earth from this time or any other. Better still, they could run. But whether they fought or fled, chances were that Ann and Boo wouldn’t survive the encounter.