Once Upon a Caveman

by Cassandra Gannon

  The Arden plunged further into the water, the whole ship turning onto its side.

  Shit.

  Lucy had time to lock eyes with Craig. She heard Taffi screech in panic and Warren bellow for help. She tried to find a handhold, but the exterior railing gave way. It was the end. Damn it, she’d known she’d never get out of high school alive.

  The very last thought in her head was of Rhawn.

  Then, Lucy was freefalling through the air and into the bottomless blue of a swirling abyss.

  Chapter Two

  The caveman comes up behind her, pulling her against his chest.

  Lucy tilts her head to stare at him, breathing hard. She’s never dreamed of the same person twice before. It seems like that must mean something. Lucy tries to think of what but her mind is buzzing. She can’t process anything except wanting him. He’s the handsomest guy she’s ever seen. And the biggest. And the gentlest.

  He clearly wasn’t expecting to see her again, either. His face is dazed and excited as he stares down at her. One of his hands comes up to touch her cheek in something like reverence. He says something in a strange language. Whatever it means, she’s guessing it’s good, because he sure seems happy to see her again.

  Lucy grins, hoping she doesn’t wake up for a really long time. “Hi, caveman. Wanna make out?”

  Lucy and Rhawn’s Dream- Fourteen Years Ago

  When Lucy opened her eyes, she realized she wasn’t dead. For a second, she wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that or not.

  She was lying on her stomach, generally feeling like hell. Powdery white sand clung to every bit of her body, from her eyelashes to her shoelaces. Pushing herself up onto her elbows, she swiped grit from her face and tried to swallow down the taste of seawater in her mouth. Her lower half was still partway in the very cold water. It took her a second to find the energy to pull herself fully onto the shore, although that wasn’t so toasty warm, either.

  As far as Lucy could tell, she was on a beach.

  Some kind of bizarre genetic mishmash of evergreens and palm trees swayed overhead, growing right up to the edge of the icy grey ocean. Growing in the ocean, in fact. As if the dark water was swallowing them, inch by inch. Wherever the hell she was, it sure didn’t look like tropical blue waves of the Caribbean. These seemed like the kind of dark and dangerous seas Vikings had sailed on, carving dragons on their ships to protect them from the monsters beneath the murky surface. This ocean was menacing.

  …But not as menacing as the volcano.

  The damn thing loomed up from a jagged line of mountains, spewing smoke into the overcast sky. Lucy had never seen a volcano before. Well, she’d seen that movie with Pierce Brosnan and the mom from Terminator, but she’d never seen an actual volcano. It was --she was absolutely positive-- not part of the cruise’s scheduled sightseeing tour.

  Where was the cruise?

  The last thing Lucy remembered was the final deadly roll of the hull and plunging overboard. She’d hit the water like it was a brick wall. Everything after that was a blank. Lucy didn’t even know what day it was. How had she gotten here? Did she swim? Float? Did someone bring her to shore? If so, where were they? Shouldn’t she be at a hospital or something? She was just in a damn boat crash! Where were the doctors?

  Lucy looked around. No ship. No people. No helicopters searching for survivors. No houses or buildings. No news trucks. No ambulance waiting to take victims to the hospital. No lawyers shoving business cards at her and promising to sue the cruise line for every last oar.

  No… anything.

  The chill that went through her had nothing to do with the weather.

  “Hello?! Hello? Is anyone there?” A male voice called out.

  It was a sad commentary on how scared Lucy felt that she actually breathed a huge sigh of relief at the sound of Warren’s panicked cries.

  “I’m here!” She struggled to her feet and instantly doubled over in a coughing fit.

  It felt like she’d swallowed half the ocean. Lucy braced her hands on the knees of her wet jeans. There was still a strand of green Mardi Gras beads around her neck and they swung forward. She batted them aside. Aside from aching all over and the burning in her lungs, though, she seemed physically okay. Nothing broken or bleeding. Apparently, she’d live long enough to be interviewed on a very special episode of Dateline.

  Class Reunion Castaway: The Lucy Meadowcroft Story.

  “Moose-y! You’re alive!” Warren came racing towards her. He was waterlogged and sandy, but otherwise unharmed. Even his slicked down hair had survived the sinking. Science class had been right: Oil and water really didn’t mix. “What happened?” He demanded, his blue eyes huge in his pale face.

  “We went overboard.” She straightened, still wiping at the grit covering her. “Have you seen anyone else?”

  He shook his head. “Just you. Where are we?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You’re supposed to have a million point IQ! How can you not know, ya know?”

  “Because I’m not a fucking cartographer, that’s how.” Snapping at Warren made her feel better, but it wasn’t really helping. Lucy needed to figure out what to do.

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Warren demanded on cue.

  Oh good. They were a “we,” now.

  Lucy rolled her eyes and didn’t bother to argue the point. He’d just follow her if she didn’t let him come along. “We start walking.” She decided and headed off down the beach. Since they had no flare gun, phone or taxi available, it was really only choice.

  Trudging through the sand was just exactly as fun as she’d imagined it would be. All the pointlessness of P.E. combined with a growing certainty that she was in deep, deep trouble. Plus, Warren was there to add his stimulating observations to their ongoing disaster.

  “Is that mountain supposed to be smoking like that?” He asked, pointing at the volcano. “It seems like kind of a bad sign, ya know?”

  “I don’t think our signs can get much worse, actually.” Lucy was keeping track of the sun’s position in the sky. They’d been walking for a long time, but it seemed like they were going in a circle. Only she was sticking right by the shoreline, which meant that this was indeed an island and they were headed right back to where they’d started.

  “If it comes down to it Warren, I’m going to have to kill and eat you. Nothing personal.”

  “I have a green belt in karate.” He informed her seriously. “I can totally take you in a…” His boast trailed off in a panicked scream as the ground started shaking.

  The earthquake felt just like it had in her dream about Rhawn. Sort of a low-grade rumble. It didn’t knock them off their feet, but it was enough to send trees swaying and sand shifting. Above them, the volcano’s cloud of smoke grew darker in response.

  Angrier.

  “Oh shit.” Lucy whispered. Anyone who’d ever seen a documentary on Mount St. Helens knew this was bad.

  “What’s going on?” Warren demanded. Apparently, he didn’t watch PBS.

  “That volcano is going to erupt soon.”

  “Oh shit.” Warren agreed in an octave so high that even bats would have cringed. “We have to get out of here!” He started for the ocean, close to hysteria. “I’ll take my chances with water over goddamn lava, ya know?”

  “We need think for a minute before we start freaking out.”

  “You think all you want. I’m dogpaddling outta here.”

  “That water has to be close to freezing. You’re going to get hypothermic.” Neither of them was dressed for the frigid climate of this island. The sun was still out and Lucy could already feel the cold biting through her shirt. God only know what kind of temperatures night would bring. “We need to dry out, not get even wetter.”

  He didn’t slow his desperate flight into the icy sea.

  “Warren…” Lucy sighed in annoyance as he floundered out into the waves. A big part of her wanted to leave him, but she c
ouldn’t quite bring herself to walk away. Still, he clearly wouldn’t listen to logic. Maybe she needed to persuade him with something even more frightening that freezing to death or erupting volcanoes. She thought for beat. “There are probably sharks out there, you know.”

  He came splashing back out of the ocean even faster than he’d waded in. “Jesus, what is with this place?” Dashing up the sand, he stood by the line of trees, breathing hard and eyeing the shoreline. Apparently, he was waiting for a Great White to evolve legs and creep up onto the beach after him. “This is your fault!” He jabbed a finger at her. “You’re the one who insisted we leave the gift shop.”

  “Because the ship was sinking!”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t even know for sure the Arden went down, at all. Maybe it’s fine. Maybe it’s just floating on its side, ya know? Maybe everyone’s headed back to New York by now, except us. All we know for sure is that we’re stuck here in Lord of the Flies, all thanks to you.”

  Back in high school, Lucy had been smitten with Teddy O’Connell, president of the senior class and co-founder of the computer club. She’d always had a weakness for smart guys. Teddy, the kind-of-nerdy hunk, had gone on to make billions with some internet whatsit. Of course, he couldn’t be stuck on this island with her. Oh, no. It had to be this asshole.

  “Warren, if you keep it up, I will personally hold you under the water and you can see for yourself if the ship is down at the bottom of…” Lucy stopped short.

  A sabretooth tiger was staring at them.

  For real.

  It was a sabretooth fucking tiger.

  Lucy’s master’s degree in paleontology couldn’t land her any job beyond retail book sales, but it made it simple for her to identify extinct Ice Age mammals when they came prowling down the beach in front of her.

  In a state of shock, her mind instinctively started pulling facts from the endless college courses she’d taken. Sabretooth cat would actually be the correct term for the animal. From the extinct genus of smilodon. It wasn’t really related to tigers, although its coat had a shaded pattern of streaks and spots to help it blend in with the surroundings. Approximately seven hundred pounds. Short-ish tail. Built more like a bear than a modern lion. Thought to use their massive fangs to pierce the skin of their prey, so they’d bleed to death…

  Warren gave a supersonic scream of pent up terror, interrupting her mental checklist of facts. Before Lucy could warn him not to move, he took off running into the forest.

  The cat took off after him.

  “Warren! Damn it!” Against her better judgment, Lucy headed into the forest. “If you run, you’re going to make yourself prey!”

  Except, he already was prey.

  They both were.

  God, what the hell was happening here? Even a polar bear would’ve made more sense. Sabretooth cats had been extinct for about nine thousand years. There couldn’t possibly be an actual living specimen on this island.

  It was hard to misidentify the eight inch long fangs jutting down from the animal’s upper jaw, though. What the hell else could it possibly be? Lucy’s mind was racing, trying to come up with a halfway reasonable explanation. Maybe it was some kind of genetic experiment. Maybe this whole place was like the Island of Dr. Moreau or something.

  “Warren!” She’d lost sight of him in the woods. “Warren, if you can hear me, try to get up a tree!” The mountains in the middle of the island grew bigger as she pressed forward. Perfect. She was headed towards a smoldering volcano to find a guy who’d tormented her throughout her teenage existence. That made even less sense than the sabretooth. At least, she wanted to see the cat, again. The animal was a legitimate miracle. She hoped to God Warren didn’t hurt it.

  “Helllllp!”

  His voice sounded like it was coming from her left. Lucy switched direction, even though she had no clue what she was going to do once she found him. How was she going to stop a gigantic carnivore from devouring that moron? She didn’t want to harm the cat, but she couldn’t let Warren die.

  Well, theoretically anyhow.

  Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to choose between them, because it would be a tough decision. First off, she was a vegetarian, so killing animals was kinda a no-no. Secondly, the sabretooth really would contribute more to the world than Warren. Even his eternally disappointed parents would’ve agreed with that. The Pleses had never gotten over Warren’s failure at that damn homecoming game. Maybe she could just scare the cat away.

  Scanning around for some kind of weapon, Lucy finally decided on a fallen branch from one of the bizarre piney-palm trees. It was sturdy and thick… and would do absolutely nothing to stop a hungry tiger. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t scare this thing even if she wanted to.

  “Moose-y!”

  “I should just leave him to be cat food.” Lucy muttered, ducking through the dense foliage.

  She could hear a river somewhere off to her right. Water sources would attract all sorts of animals. Every muscle in her body was tensed against possible attack. As much as the sabretooth fascinated her, there was no getting around the fact that it was an apex predator. Where it came from seemed a lot less important than it being here now.

  The damn things hunted in packs. In fact, Lucy had written her thesis on sabretooths’ social behavior, so she was kind of an expert on just how effective they were at killing in groups. More could be stalking her, right now. She swore she could feel yellow eyes watching her as she closed in on Warren’s position.

  Turns out, she was right. Sort of. Both Warren and the sabretooth were staring at her when she made it to the clearing.

  …And both of them were ankle-deep in a sticky black swamp.

  The tar pit was a wide asymmetrical stain seeping up from the ground. There was a thin layer of water and dead leaves collected on top of it, unable to drain through the gooey asphalt. Animals (and Warrens) could easily lumber into it, thinking it was a nothing but a shallow puddle, and stay there until some museum team excavated their bones a few millennia later.

  “I’m stuck.” Warren said weakly.

  “You idiot.” Two inches of black sludge could incapacitate a cow and he’d somehow waded out into the middle of it.

  The sabretooth gave a roar of fury and fear. It seemed like it must have leapt at Warren after he was trapped and landed in the tar itself. The cat was lodged in the pit about ten feet away from him, black gunk in its beautiful golden fur.

  Lucy felt a lot worse about the sabretooth being imprisoned than Warren. It was an extraordinary survivor of another age. A paleontological marvel. Just finding it guaranteed that colleges would be lining up to give her a Ph.D. More importantly, this majestic creature could add so much to their body of knowledge. Studying its behavior would revolutionize everything they knew about the Ice Age. It was the most important scientific discovery of the century.

  Already, she was thinking of ways to save it.

  “You have to get me out of here!” Warren ordered when Lucy kept staring at the cat.

  “Do you understand what this is?” She whispered in awe.

  “Yeah! It’s a goddamn lion.”

  It was the size of a large lion and had a tawny-colored coat, but even Warren should’ve been able to see that this was no ordinary animal. “This is a sabretooth! Look at its teeth.”

  “Who cares what it is? Just find a rope or something!”

  “Moron.” She muttered again and tried to focus on saving his worthless ass. The rope wasn’t happening, unless she weaved one out of vines, so she extended the branch to him. It was too short. Lucy let out a frustrated sigh. “How did you even get out there?”

  “I don’t know! I was just running and then I was caught. Do something.”

  “Can you really not understand how important this animal is?” Lucy demanded as she hunted around for a longer stick. “Sabretooth cats lived during the Ice Age. The Ice Age, Warren! It’s like finding a wooly mammoth wandering around.”

  “I. Don�
��t. Care.” He shouted, spacing out each word for emphasis. “All I care about is getting free and going home. Away from cruise ships and volcanoes and lions and sharks and…” His rant ended in a wheeze. “Guys with spears.”

  “Guys with spears?” Lucy echoed. “What the hell are you…?” She stopped short as guys with spears stepped into the clearing and surrounded them.

  There were six of them, decked out in loincloths and necklaces made from teeth. All of them were blond and built like MMA fighters. Maybe it was the sabretooth sighting talking, but they looked a hell of a lot like… cavemen.

  Lucy gaped at them.

  They gaped back.

  For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the sabretooth thrashing to get free of the tar and the howl of the wind through the mutant trees.

  Then, in some kind of cult-y unison, all six of the men fell to their knees and started praying towards the sky. And the volcano. And Lucy and Warren. Insanely enough, she recognized some of the words they were spouting from her dreams with Rhawn. What was happening here?

  “What… the… fuck?” Warren asked blankly.

  “I don’t know.” Lucy swallowed, trying to wrap her mind around this craziness. “I think… They might believe we’re --like-- deities.”

  Warren’s eyebrows soared. “For real?”

  “I think so.” Thinking was all she could do at the moment, but none of her thoughts made much sense. Try as she might, Lucy just couldn’t get the facts to form any kind of logical picture. “I’ll try to explain we’re not, but I’m not really sure how to…”

  “Are you crazy?” He interrupted, his face suddenly alive with crafty ideas. “Didn’t you see Ghostbusters? When someone asks if you’re a god, you say yes.”

  “You want to impersonate the gods of these heavily-armed men? You really think that’s a good idea?”

  “You got a better one?” Warren didn’t bother to wait for an answer. “Hey you.” He pointed at the largest man, who gazed up at him in something like awe. The guy seemed to be the leader, with long blond dreadlocks and the biggest necklace of all. It looked like a giant tooth. “That’s right. You, Conan. Go find me a rope before I zap you with a lightning bolt, ya know?”