by Lou Cadle
“That makes sense with the tracks being half-covered,” Jodi said.
Ted walked up. “What?”
“Animal sign. Fifteen hours old, I’m guessing.”
“Fifteen hours old is a lot better than nothing at all.”
“Let’s look around, see if we can find more. Or wait, let’s follow the tracks, but spaced out. I want to see if it’s one animal or more than one.”
“You guys get ahead of me. I still need to go,” Jodi said.
Ted took the tracks, and Hannah ranged out to his right. A few minutes later Jodi came trotting up on his left side. Ten minutes after that, Hannah said, “I think it’s just the one animal. I’m not seeing any other tracks at all. Jodi?”
“Nada,” she said.
“Okay, one animal is good,” Ted said. “We can hunt one.”
“We have to,” Jodi said. “I’m hungry, and Zach is sick, and we can’t fail.”
“Let’s run,” Ted said. “Try and catch up to it.”
“I don’t know if I can in this snow,” Hannah said, “but I’ll try.”
She had to stop them after five minutes of jogging in the deep snow. “If I had more fuel in me, maybe. Sorry, but we’re going to have to hold it to a fast walk.”
Ted said, “What about if you need to run down the animal?”
“I’ll find it in me to run then. But right now, I need to conserve my energy. Sorry.” It flashed through her mind that her exhaustion might not be from hunger, that she might be catching whatever Zach had, but she pushed the thought aside. True or not, she had to keep going while she could. Her work wasn’t like an office job, where you could call in sick if you were feeling vaguely out of sorts. In their situation, you worked if you possibly could.
Through mid-afternoon, they trailed the hoofed animal. They found the place it had slept last night. With every step through the snow, the calorie calculator running in Hannah’s head told her the cost of this hunt. If the animal was small, the real beneficiaries to it would be Zach and Bob and Nari. But the hoof prints, clearer now, suggested to her that it wasn’t small, that they could eat several days from it—if they could catch it.
With the sun halfway down the sky, they caught sight of it, a big creature with a full rack of antlers, probably a male. And nothing exactly like they’d seen before; the antlers were a bizarre shape, but it was otherwise similar to antelope or elk. There was a taste of comfort in that familiarity, proof—along with the elephant-cousin mammoths—that they had time-jumped nearer to home.
And, even better, their long, steady effort today had been rewarded by a bit of luck.
Ted said, “We can pen it against those rocks.”
Chapter 10
“It might be able to climb,” Jodi said. “Mountain goats do.”
“I’ll bet you not,” Ted said. “It’s big, and its antlers are a burden. Anyway, it’s our only chance. So here’s what we’re going to do.” And he went on to describe what Hannah agreed was their best option, splitting up and trying to keep the thing—Hannah considered it an antelope for lack of a better word—confined. “I’m taking the center position.”
“Fine by me,” Hannah said.
“Let’s get this done,” Jodi said, patting her club.
They split up and ranged far out from where the animal was browsing in the cul-de-sac formed by a rocky hill. When they were in position, Ted gave the signal to move in. Jodi and Hannah walked steadily toward the creature, weapons at the ready. For a few minutes, it continued to feed, pawing at the ground with its hoof to get to plants under the snow, and then lowering its head to eat. The moment it thought they might be a danger was clear. It raised its head and glanced at Hannah. She was committed now. She sped her pace as much as she could manage through a snow drift.
The animal turned away as if to flee, but it caught sight of Jodi, who swung her club in a big circle, making the antelope reconsider that move. It turned back to Hannah, then split the difference between these two unknown creatures moving in on its space, and turned to escape toward Ted.
But when Ted yelled and waved his hands, it decided that wasn’t the wisest move either. It turned and headed up the hill. Ted broke into a run, and Hannah made her weary legs move faster too. Each footfall punched a hole into the snow, but the snow was growing less as she neared the hill, and she picked up speed. Jodi was closing in too. Ted had already reached the spot where the antelope had been browsing when it caught sight of them.
The antelope was halfway up the hill but having a hard time of climbing a steep patch. It backed up and took a running leap, found a new ledge, and gained its balance. Its hooves rang against the rocks. By the time it had found its balance, Ted had halved the distance between them. Hannah and Jodi converged at the bottom of the hill and climbed after him.
The antelope sought its next step, and it had only one reasonable choice, a move to the right. To its left, there was a vertical patch of rocks. It took a standing jump and landed. But one of its rear legs must have landed on an icy patch, for it slid out, and the animal had to take the strain with its front legs to keep its balance.
The delay was all Ted needed. He climbed up behind the creature and plunged his spear into the meat of its stable back leg. He had been carrying a second spear that he let drop away. It clattered down the hillside just as the antelope’s fourth leg landed on a rock.
The antelope panicked, yanking its leg away, with Ted still holding his embedded spear. The other back leg skittered along the rock. Without three solid points of contact, the animal slid back, off-balance. Ted wrenched the spear out and pivoted easily, avoiding a flailing rear hoof, and thrust the spear again with all of his strength, burying it in the animal’s side, aiming for the heart.
He must have missed that organ, for the animal kept struggling, trying to get its rear feet planted under it. Ted lunged for his spear to pull it out, but the animal got one rear foot planted and twisted away.
Jodi was ahead of Hannah, going faster by using the club as a walking stick. Hannah yelled her name and tossed her spear. Jodi snatched it one-handed, took another few steps up, and then called for Ted. When he turned, she lobbed the spear to him. Ted plucked it out of its flight and ran up after the antelope, now on a clearer patch of the hillside and gathering speed.
But it was no match for Ted’s determination. When Ted came alongside it, it turned its head and lowered it. The rack of antlers swung toward Ted.
He stood his ground long enough to drive Hannah’s spear into the animal’s side, into a spot ahead of the first spear thrust. The antlers hit Ted a glancing blow as he was leaning away, and he overbalanced and tumbled down the hillside.
Jodi had reached Ted’s other dropped spear and bent to grab it. She dropped her club and climbed to the animal, which was struggling now, perhaps mortally wounded by the two spear thrusts, but still able to climb. Jodi caught up with it, and it didn’t turn to butt at her. It was intent on climbing, on getting away, on surviving.
Jodi made sure it did not. She took the spear two-handed, aimed carefully, and drove the spear home. The antelope stumbled, fell to its knees, and collapsed onto its side. Blood dribbled from its mouth and then it became a foamy red stream.
Hannah had reached Ted, who was struggling to sit up. “You okay?”
“Just knocked the wind out of me,” he managed to say.
“Are you bleeding?”
He stuck his hand up under his hide cape and felt himself, pulling his bare hand back out and looking at it. “No blood. I think the hide saved me from that. I’ll have a bruise is all.”
Hannah hurried to where Jodi’s club had fallen, picked it up, and made her way to where Jodi was standing, clear of any flailing hooves. She passed her the club and Jodi said, “The antlers are in the way, or I’d crack its skull.”
“It’s dying.”
“Yeah, but I hate to make it die slow.”
“Hold it by the antlers if you can,” Hannah said, tearing her pack off and digg
ing in it for a knife.
Jodi cautiously moved forward until she could grasp the rack by both hands. She got a solid grip and nodded. “Go.”
Hannah moved up, pushed the antelope’s chin up with her boot tip while Jodi pulled, and Hannah slit the creature’s throat. More foamy blood spilled out. In another half-minute, the antelope was still.
She and Jodi wrestled it around until it was head down and moved out of the way while blood drained away down the hillside.
Jodi licked blood from her fingers. “I’m so hungry, I’d drink it like a glass of pop,” she said.
“Me too.”
Ted said, “It’s too heavy to carry. Let’s rope it up and get it downhill.”
Hannah let Ted do that, watching how he was moving. He was slower than normal and seemed careful about his belly where the antlers had hit him. She hoped he hadn’t sustained any internal damage, like a ruptured spleen, but surely he would be in more pain if he had. Had the animal been on level ground, balanced and in possession of all its power, it could have easily killed him with the antlers.
“We’ve been lucky,” she said, as Ted eased the two spears out of the animal and lay them to the side.
“And now everybody gets to be,” Jodi said, catching the end of the rope that Ted tossed to her. “We’ll be eating well tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we needed this,” Hannah said. She was relieved they wouldn’t have to go after a mammoth.
Jodi pulled the front end of the antelope down. Ted had tied the second rope high around the back legs and, whenever the animal hung up on a bit of rock, he briefly lifted the weight so that Jodi could ease it downhill.
Hannah stood to the side until they were past her then retrieved the spears. One had broken near the tip, but it could be sharpened again and remain useful. In a world without trees, they couldn’t make more, so she was happy to see that the other two spears had survived unharmed. Jodi had picked up her club already.
They stopped near the bottom of the hill, the antelope’s rear half still uphill of the front half, and they sat to watch its blood drain. When it had slowed to hardly a trickle, Hannah had the other two turn it belly-up, and she ran her knife down its chest and belly, cutting around the anus, opening it up. It was a male.
“Warmth feels good,” Jodi said.
“Remember that scene in the Star Wars movie where they crawl inside a dead animal to keep warm?” Ted said.
“Yeah. I think it’d be a tight fit for three of us inside this one.”
“And wet and disgusting,” Ted said. “In the movie, they wake up in the morning not covered with guts and goo, as I recall.”
“Things always go better in the movies,” Jodi said. “And right after the kill, they’d cut to a campfire and people eating roasted meat. Nobody ever shows this stuff.”
Hannah said, “Hang on,” and she lifted the intestines out, setting them to the side. Then she detached the lower intestines carefully.
“The lung was hit,” Jodi said. “Here.” When she pointed, the animal began to flop over her way. “Oops, sorry,” she said, and used both hands to push it back.
Hannah cut out the liver, which was huge, and set it aside. Lots of nutrition there. The heart was next. She was barehanded for this job and said, “You know where your mittens are, Ted?”
“Right over there.”
“Good.” She piled snow into the body cavity and scrubbed at the deer, feeling the lines of its ribs under her fingers.
“Not too skinny,” Jodi said.
“Probably would have been in another two months,” Hannah said, scooping out the bloody snow. “Good enough. Unless either of you saw a sign of bile or anything else bad on the meat?”
“I think it was a pretty clean kill,” Ted said.
“Yeah, good job, Ted, especially considering the awkward position you had,” Jodi said. Hannah noticed she took none of the credit for herself.
“Ended up to my advantage, not his.”
“We should take everything edible,” Jodi said. “Lungs, testicles, all of it.”
Hannah pushed her hair back with the back of her hand. “If we can carry it all.”
“We can pull it, with ropes,” Jodi said. “We can manage more weight that way.”
“Until the ropes break,” Ted said.
“If we can get it halfway back, it would help. Others could run out and retrieve it.”
“We’re not going to be able to get back ourselves until tomorrow,” Hannah said. “It’s late, we have to finish this job, and we’ll build ourselves a shelter for overnight.”
“An igloo?”
Hannah shook her head. “More like a snow fort, I think. Or a snow cave. Or half and half. Roll snowballs for walls, dig, get ourselves enough space to sleep in. Figure out how to roof it. Let the meat finish cooling off overnight outside.”
“I wish we had wood,” Jodi said, “to cook this.”
“Let’s get it skinned, and then we can eat,” Hannah said.
“Eat it uncooked?”
“Heck yeah,” Hannah said. “We burned a lot of calories following it. We need to pay ourselves back.”
“Is it unfair to the others?”
“There’s plenty to go around,” Ted said, “and I’m hungry enough to eat raw meat.”
“If you don’t mind, I want to save the liver for Zach and Bob and Nari and Dixie,” Hannah said.
“Dixie’s not hurt,” Ted said.
Hannah shot him a look.
Jodi said, “Because she’s pregnant, Ted.”
Hannah said, “Yeah. Without fresh vegetables, and absent pre-natal vitamins, I’d like to get her all the nutrients I can.”
Jodi said, “Makes sense to me.”
“Let’s flip him,” Hannah said. All three of them worked to get the hide off the animal. Then Hannah cut strips of meat from next to the spine and handed them around. “Should be the most tender.”
“I still need to cut this up more,” Jodi said, after chewing an end of her strip and having to spit it back out.
Hannah said, “Grab a couple more knives from my pack.”
They squatted around the animal as if it were a campfire—and it did continue to radiate heat like one—and ate about a pound of raw flesh each, chunk by bloody chunk.
“More?” Hannah said, her hand gripping the knife hovering over the back of the antelope.
“Maybe in a few hours,” Jodi said. “I’m going to lay out the hide over there where it’s flat.” She stretched the hide flat on a clean patch of snow to let it cool out. “I guess we should crack the skull and start to tan it while it’s still pliable. Ted?”
Ted opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get a word out, they all started at a sound that Hannah had hoped to never hear again.
It was the snarl of a predator.
Chapter 11
Hannah turned toward the sound, which had come from up the hill. There, at the point of the kill, was the biggest cat Hannah had ever seen. She didn’t need a paleontologist to identify it for her. Even she knew this one, the saber-toothed cat, Smilodon, alpha predator of the ice age.
Her mind compared it to the saber tooth nimravid, and she could see the subtle differences. This was leaner, more like a tiger or a snow leopard. Its fur was still turning from russet to white and pale blond, a color to give it an advantage in the snow.
Like it needed any more advantage than its size.
It had to be twice the size of any big cat she had ever seen in a zoo. Half a ton of muscle and bone. And there were the famous saber fangs, curving far below its chin.
It had its golden eyes trained right on them.
Jodi breathed a curse and Ted jumped up, reaching for the spears.
“We’re dead,” Jodi said.
“We can defend ourselves,” Ted said. “Hannah, here, take one.” He thrust a spear at her.
The tiger sniffed the ground and, before she had a chance to reach for the spear, it leapt. Stretched out, it had to be fifteen fe
et from nose to base of tail. The tail was another six feet long, giving it perfect balance.
Hannah was up and backing off before she had made any conscious decision to move. Jodi was up with her club, letting out a steady stream of curses. Ted gripped the spears.
Hannah kept backing away. “Move!” she said, as the tiger eyed Jodi and then Ted.
“I can take it,” Ted said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “You can’t. Back away. It wants our kill.”
Jodi obeyed, and would have done it without Hannah’s urging, but Ted held his ground.
That is, he held it right up until the tiger leapt a second time, covering the whole distance between where it was and where Jodi had just been standing. Jodi broke into a run, and Hannah turned and did the same. Again, it wasn’t really an act of will that made her legs move. It was survival instinct, pure and irresistible.
She heard Ted yip, but her terror didn’t let her turn and see what was happening to him. She ran, her heart in her throat, ran and ran until her will, her sense of responsibility, was able to overcome her instinctual fear. Forcing herself to turn and check on the others, she saw Jodi was safe for now, having run along the base of the hill off to the right. Ted was alive, but too close to the tiger for comfort. One more lazy jump, and it’d have him. About three bites, and it’d kill him. “Ted,” she screamed. “Get out of there.”
“It’s stealing our kill!” he yelled.
“Let it!” She could hear the terror in her own voice, pitched several notes above where it usually was.
“If you guys would help, we could drive it off!”
Jodi stopped, turned around, and took in the scene. “Are you totally crazy out of your mind insane? Get away, or tomorrow it’s going to be pooping Ted turds all day long.”
Crude, but true.
Jodi jogged backward. Hannah ran at an angle to intercept her. With the tiger’s speed, splitting up wasn’t really going to help them. Better they make a stand together if it came for them.