by Perrin Briar
Bryan hesitated before sitting back down. Aaron peered out at the village. No one appeared to have noticed Bryan.
The apemen tossed Zoe and Cassie into one of the caves. A grated door slid down and slammed into place.
“We need to come up with an idea of how to rescue them,” Bryan said. “Some way of springing them free from the village without any of the apemen knowing.”
“My dad would know what to do,” Aaron said.
“Unfortunately he’s not here,” Bryan said. “It’s just you and me. We could cause a distraction, then run in and break them free. But it would need to be something big to keep them all busy.”
The words froze on his tongue, his eyes glazing over with thought.
“You’ve got an idea?” Aaron said.
“Part of one,” Bryan said. “But we’ll have to wait until nightfall before we can execute it effectively.”
“What do we do until then?” Aaron said.
“We wait,” Bryan said.
55
THEIR COLD LEATHERY HANDS gripped tight and made red marks on Cassie and Zoe’s soft skin. Their rough fur made them itch. The foliage slapped them across the face, leaving dark welts. Disorientated and out of breath, they were tossed to the ground before a large gang of apemen. They screamed and yelled, flashing out and smacking Zoe and Cassie across the body and legs. Their escorts halfheartedly kept the aggressors at bay before tossing Zoe and Cassie into a cell. The grated door slammed into place.
The apemen and women became quiet almost immediately, and returned to their previous chores, hobbling on awkward bowed legs.
Zoe hugged Cassie close.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“I’ve been better,” Cassie said.
She smiled, causing her to flinch. She had a cut across one cheek. Zoe unshouldered her backpack and took out some water. She began to clean Cassie’s face.
“I’m sorry for all this,” Zoe said. “If I hadn’t been determined to take photos, the stampede wouldn’t have happened, we wouldn’t have gotten split up, and we wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cassie said.
She hissed between her teeth as Zoe dabbed at her face.
“During all this we never really got to talk, did we?” Cassie said.
“With your face swollen like this, I don’t think you’ll be able to,” Zoe said.
“I’ll be all right,” Cassie said. “How did you and Dad meet?”
“Are you sure you’re going to listen to me this time?” Zoe said. “Last time you asked me that question you were busy painting your face with food.”
“Sorry about that,” Cassie said.
“I can understand why it’s difficult for you to see your father getting close to another woman,” Zoe said. “I get it. But you should get to know me a little. I’m not so bad.”
Cassie shrugged.
“We met at work,” Zoe said. “Your father needed research done on a series of potential new fracking sites. I was called in.”
“Did you get on well right away?” Cassie said.
“No,” Zoe said. “He represented the Man. I was determined for us not to get on well. It was a business relationship.”
“When did you start liking him?” Cassie said.
“When he started opening up to me,” Zoe said. “When he dropped his persona and showed me who he really was.”
Cassie nodded, intrigued.
“I’ve heard about your mother from your father,” Zoe said. “She was an amazing lady, going on all those trips by herself. I’m not sure I have the courage to do that. But you can talk to me, if you want. About womanly things – things you might not want to speak with your father about.”
“I’ve got nothing to say,” Cassie said.
“The offer’s there,” Zoe said.
She patted Cassie’s face dry and added cream to her skin.
“I suppose there’s one thing,” Cassie said. “There’s this boy I like. Clint. But I don’t know if he really cares about me.”
“Oh dear, boy trouble,” Zoe said.
“Do you know much about it?” Cassie said.
“I think every woman knows a little about it,” Zoe said. “We all make mistakes when we’re young. But that’s the fun part of life. Don’t tell your dad I said that.”
Cassie smiled.
“Make mistakes,” Zoe said. “Just do your best not to make great big ones that you have to live with for the rest of your life. Go out with this boy, take it easy, and if you find you don’t like him, dump him and move on.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” Cassie said.
“Why isn’t it?” Zoe said. “You’re the woman. You’re the one in control. Never forget that. You only lose some control later when you decide to take the next step with a man. Then you share control, but you never surrender it. Those relationships where the man is in control are doomed to fail, and long in the past, thank God. Men were always the hunter-gatherers, not the decision makers. It was the women who made all the decisions.”
Cassie nodded to the apemen outside.
“Like them?” she said.
“No, not like them,” Zoe said.
“My mom was in control at home,” Cassie said.
“You see?” Zoe said. “It was the same in our house, though Aaron formed a stronger connection to his father than to me. You know, Aaron will probably kill me for telling you this, but he used to sit on the curb outside every night waiting for his father to return. It still makes me sad to think about that. A little boy waiting for his father to come home, only he never would. Then he has a chance to have a new father – yours – but he does everything he can to prevent it.”
“A lot of that is my fault,” Cassie said.
“Aaron’s old enough to make his own decisions,” Zoe said. “It was never just you. I never meant to replace your mother, you know. I just wanted to be a part of your life.”
Cassie didn’t say anything. The moment was charged. And yet she felt comfortable in Zoe’s presence, in a way she never was with her own mother or father.
“I was always lonely when Mom was away,” Cassie said. “Dad was busy at work. And though he tried to get back early to be with me, something always cropped up. Dad works hard for our benefit, I know. But I wish he could have been with me more when I was alone.”
“That’s not an excuse not to spend more time with you,” Zoe said. “He should know that. Especially when he’s the only parent.”
“The worst thing is not knowing,” Cassie said. “Not knowing if she was still alive or not, not knowing if she was safe. It’s so easy to fall over or get in trouble, and not be able to get back up.”
“Aaron feels the same about his father,” Zoe said. “He still believes he’s out there somewhere.”
“But you don’t think he is?” Cassie said.
“No,” Zoe said. “He’s gone and he’s never coming back.”
“I sometimes saw a tall woman, a shopper in a supermarket, or someone outside the school gates, with tawny brown hair, and I would think maybe… Maybe if she turns around it will be my mom,” Cassie said. “But it never was. Dad never saw anyone else for a long time. At least, I thought he didn’t. I thought he was going to end up being alone forever. I didn’t mind that he was seeing someone else, someone new. Actually, I was glad of it. But I didn’t like not being a part of his decision. I’m a part of his life too.”
“You are a part of it,” Zoe said. “The biggest part. If we couldn’t work things out with you kids on this trip we wouldn’t have continued with the relationship. We pretended to think we would have, but we both know the truth. It would have ended. It has ended.”
Cassie reached into her bag and took something out. It was a book.
“I keep one of her books with me at all times,” Cassie said.
“Can I take a look?” Zoe said.
The book was beaten, creased and worn, the pages a wonderful shade of yellow-brown. The fr
ont cover showed an image of a mother and daughter standing on the edge of a giant hole in the ground.
“It’s my favorite of my mom’s books,” Cassie said. “I always thought it would be me and her there, like on the front cover, on an adventure together.”
“Is it a sinkhole?” Zoe said.
“No,” Cassie said. “But it does look like one. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel, where a meteorite crashes into the earth and they have to work together to piece the world back together again.”
“Sounds exciting,” Zoe said.
“It is,” Cassie said. “I must have read it a dozen times. Mom would have loved this place. She would have loved all the dinosaurs, the jungle and even those monster apemen. I thought one day she might take me with her on one of her adventures. But that was just a pipe dream. The reason she went on her trips was to get away from me. To explore and do something exciting. She got itchy feet, Dad said. And when she came back she was always super excited. She brought the energy home, but after a few days, she would be sad again. I don’t think she ever wanted me. Not really. That’s why she ran away.”
“Don’t think like that,” Zoe said. “Of course she never felt that way.”
“Then why did she run away?” Cassie said.
“You don’t know what happened to her,” Zoe said. “She might have fallen over, hit her head and lost all her memories. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“She’s famous,” Cassie said. “Someone would have recognized her from one of the pictures in her books. She was on TV sometimes. Someone would have known who she was. I spent years looking for her online, sending out messages, asking if someone recognized her, but no one ever did.”
Zoe placed her hand on Cassie’s shoulder.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Except out of this cell, if I get the chance.”
Outside, the apemen leader lay down with a pair of females picking through his fur. He dozed in the evening sun. One kept looking up at the metal shard protruding from his head. She reached up, hesitated, and then touched it. The leader’s eyes flashed open and he smacked the apeman aside, sending her sprawling across the ground. He beat her again and again. She screamed, but the other apemen only watched, keeping their eyes firmly fixed on their activities.
“So much for my theory that they must be smart peaceful creatures,” Zoe said.
“The good news is, the shard is killing him,” a voice said.
Zoe and Cassie shot to their feet and shuffled back, peering into the darkness. They picked up rocks from the floor.
A figure stepped from the shadows.
56
“I AM SORRY,” the boy said. “I did not mean to scare you.”
“Who are you?” Zoe said.
“I am Cawing Crow,” the boy said. “From the Lakota tribe.”
“Lakota?” Zoe said. “You’re a Native American Indian?”
“They are my ancestors, yes,” Cawing Crow said.
“Where are you from?” Zoe said.
“I am from a tribe in the jungle,” Cawing Crow said. “We were captured. Just like you.”
“‘We’?” Zoe said.
Cawing Crow gestured to the darkness behind him. A group of men stepped out of it, eyes on the floor. They were shaped like modern men. They were hairless, with broad chests and handsome bronze skin. Their hair was uniformly black and long, tied up into bobs at the nape of the neck. They had feathers in their hair.
“We mean you no harm,” Cawing Crow said.
“Why are you here?” Zoe said.
“We were out hunting when they caught us,” Cawing Crow said. “The jungle is becoming a hard place to find food. We must hunt farther. We keep trying to farm animals so there will always be enough food for everyone, but the apemen, they come and break our fences, take our food.”
“Why don’t you stop them?” Zoe said.
“We try,” Cawing Crow said. “But they are many more than us.”
“What will they do to us?” Zoe said, her voice shaking.
“They will take us to the rock on high and lay our heads down and smash in our skulls with a lump of wood,” Cawing Crow said. “If we are lucky.”
“And if we’re unlucky?” Zoe said.
“Fire,” Cawing Crow said. “And then they will cheer and hoot and scream. They are worse than the creatures in the jungle. Animals fight and kill to survive. These apemen fight for sport.”
Cawing Crow moved to the door, thereby moving closer to Zoe and Cassie. They shied back, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pointed through the grating at the apeman leader.
“He is Shard,” Cawing Crow said. “He is worse than the others. He enjoys killing us. Killing a dumb animal is no challenge. But fighting a man… That’s different. It requires intelligence and strength, and the apemen are very aggressive. The metal in Shard’s head lessens his ability to feel pain, and he seems stronger than the others, but he’s not. He just doesn’t feel the pain. But it will kill him. Eventually.”
“How did it get lodged in his head in the first place?” Zoe said.
“We had a battle with them, and it got stuck in his head,” Cawing Crow said. “Despite their appearance, they are smart. Too smart, sometimes. Too smart for me. We built these caves. But they came and took them from us.”
English was clearly Cawing Crow’s second language, and Zoe found him hard to follow.
“Could you take us to the far wall?” Zoe said.
“The far wall?” Cawing Crow said, frowning.
“In the north,” Zoe said, touching the cell’s stony wall and pointing.
“Yes,” Cawing Crow said. “We can take you. But how? We are in here.”
“We have something that will make these Stone Age critters more scared than they have ever been before,” Zoe said.
Cawing Crow beamed, and then turned to speak to his other tribe members.
“What are you doing?” Cassie said. “You don’t have anything to make them afraid.”
“I don’t,” Zoe said. “But you do.”
57
BRYAN DIDN’T TAKE his eyes off the prison where Zoe and Cassie were kept. Aaron weaved reeds together into a long chain. They’d sat in silence for over an hour. Each time Bryan tried to speak something seemed to interrupt him. Really, it was only his nerves stopping him.
“I never wanted to replace your father, you know,” Bryan said. “From what I hear about him, he was-”
“Is,” Aaron said.
“-is a decent guy, interesting to be around,” Bryan said. “I’m not like him. I don’t pretend to be. I can never – and would never – attempt to replace him. I just wanted to be someone you can talk to from time to time about things, if you wanted. Your father and I aren’t similar, but we do have one thing in common: a love for your mother. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. You’re her son and I would have loved you too. I know it wouldn’t have been easy, but we would have been a family.”
Bryan let out a sigh. It sounded rehearsed. It was rehearsed. And now he’d said it he wasn’t sure he was glad he had.
“You’re not in love with Mom any more?” Aaron said.
Bryan looked toward the apemen’s caves, where he knew Zoe to be.
“I love her more than I can express,” Bryan said.
“Why?” Aaron said. “Are you bad with words?”
“What?” Bryan said. “No. It’s just an expression. I don’t know how Zoe feels about me any more, that’s all. I don’t want to love someone who doesn’t love me. Not again.”
“I’m sorry we tried to break you up,” Aaron said. “Cassie…”
He shook his head.
“We thought you would both be better off without each other,” Aaron said. “Without us.”
“Cassie can be a force of nature sometimes,” Bryan said. “I get that. But in a few minutes we’re going to attempt a rescue of Cassie and Zoe, and I don’t know how it’s going to go. That’s why I said what I did before. Just in case
.”
Aaron didn’t need to ask what he meant. He understood. A pause filled the void between them.
“How did you start your business?” Aaron said.
“Oh, the usual way,” Bryan said. “I saw an opportunity and took it.”
“What opportunity?” Aaron said.
“A lucrative one,” Bryan said. “In oil. After that, I diversified and never stopped growing.”
“Must take some balls,” Aaron said. “Doing something like that.”
“It’s no different than what we’re going to do tonight,” Bryan said. “It’s a calculated risk. Once you’ve done the risk assessment, come up with a plan of attack, all you can do then is pull the trigger. What about you? What’s your dream?”
“My dream?” Aaron said, cheeks coloring. “I don’t really have any.”
“Sure you do,” Bryan said. “Everyone has a dream, even if they’re not quite sure what it is yet.”
Aaron looked at Bryan, weighing him up.
“I want to be a scientist,” he said.
“A scientist?” Bryan said. “What’s wrong with that? Some of the greatest people in history were scientists.”
“I know,” Aaron said. “But it’s not a cool job like being a singer or actor.”
“Listen to me,” Bryan said. “Being a scientist, helping people and making the world a better place, is ten times better than prancing around on a stage for a living. Or being in board meetings all day.”
Aaron smiled.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s the truth,” Bryan said.
There was activity in the apemen village. The children had been put away and a group were piling up wood.
“Looks like they’re about to do something,” Bryan said. “We’d better get going.”
Bryan felt nervous. This was the most dangerous thing he had ever done. He wiped his hands on his pants. He pulled down some vines from a tree and wound it around into a wide circle.
58
NIGHT HAD DRAPED over the apemen village when they came to the cell. It took a dozen apemen to lift the door up. The Native American Indians were under Cawing Crow’s orders not to struggle, and they obliged, though they glared at the apemen and pulled away their arms when touched.