Hell Pig (Dawn of Mammals Book 3)
Page 17
Ted pointed to the animals and, with his first two fingers, make a motion of walking. He still wanted to follow them.
Hannah studied the animal group. There were four—no, five of them. One was smaller, so maybe a juvenile. It didn’t look any less dangerous for that. She held up five fingers.
Ted nodded.
Hannah pointed behind herself to indicate the kids should follow her, and she crouched down as she walked away from the hell pigs toward a patch of medicine bush. She’d used the leaves for insect bites and a burn, and it had worked well as a numbing agent. Today, the bushes provided them cover.
Still, when they were gathered behind the bushes, they spoke in voices barely above a whisper.
“They might lead us to food. Either to fruit or to some sort of grazing animal herd,” Ted said.
“They might,” she said.
Claire said, “They don’t look inclined to move right now. They’re just sitting there.”
Hannah said, “Maybe they just ate this morning.”
Ted licked his finger and stuck it in the air. “Wind’s from the west. So we need to stay to the east of them and we’ll be fine.”
“If we do it,” Hannah said, knowing he still wanted to trail them. Her inclination was to say no. The first deadly confrontation with an animal, when they lost M.J., had taught her the lesson that avoidance was better than confrontation, particularly if the animal was better equipped than they.
Back in the modern world, a rifle gave humans the advantage. Even a bow made it possible to stay far away from animals that had their own natural defenses. But with nothing better than spears and clubs, any confrontation with an animal here was little better than a fight between any two animals. And every single animal out there was better equipped than humans. Teeth were sharper. Jaws were stronger. Claws were much more dangerous than fingernails broken to the quick from constant work. And in speed, there was no contest. Even Ted, the fastest of them, had better be no more than ten yards from a tree if the hell pigs came charging at him across a field of grass.
That was the only saving grace with the hell pigs. They couldn’t climb trees, as the saber tooth had been able to. The only predators they’d seen here with tree-climbing ability were no bigger than house cats. A scratch or bite from one would still hurt a human, but pure mass was the human’s superior equipment in that case. And the small predators knew the people were too big to mess with. None of those climbing predators hunted in packs, and they all left the humans alone.
She said to Ted, “I’m sorry. It might be interesting to see what they’re up to, but it’s not necessary. And it’s a risk.”
He looked away, out toward where the hell pigs had been, the longing clear in his expression.
“And please don’t think of doing it on your own. Or drag anyone else into it.”
He didn’t look at her, but his flushed neck told her she’d guessed his thinking right.
“Ted, please. Promise me.”
He sighed. “I’m craving red meat.”
“Me too. Let’s climb a couple hills back this way and see if we can’t catch site of a herd of something.”
Claire said, “Or we might come across some fresh droppings.”
Hannah hadn’t missed the point that Ted hadn’t given her a promise. She didn’t press for it right now because she didn’t want him to lie. It’d be better to be able to trust his promise than to force a false one out of him.
It wasn’t the first time she had felt sympathy for what parents must go through, trying to raise a teenager.
The problem was worse for her, because she had no hold over them. Not one of love, or genetic connection, or financial power, or granting of much-desired freedoms. They had to be functioning as independent adults most of the time, and she had no more power over them than she did over Bob. Less, perhaps, as logical arguments worked better on Bob.
She’d get Ted alone later, and beg him, invoking how she felt about Garreth’s death. She still felt sick about it. And she liked Ted, and it’d tear her apart to lose him.
After checking the hell pigs, which were far away and apparently unaware of them, they all relieved themselves, taking advantage of the privacy of the bush. Then they hiked up the hill to the south, to see what they might see.
The grass was already greening up from all the rain. She had several bundles of the dried grass in her firewood lean-to, as well as dry wood. She had collected a dozen of the small plastic fossil bags and filled them with perfectly dry tinder wrapped around a dollop of pine sap, a fire starter they could rely on. While they kept the chimney fire going all the time, she never wanted to be without dry tinder again, no matter what world they visited and what climate.
She stayed in the rear on the hike up the hill, checking behind herself to make sure the hell pigs weren’t coming this way. They weren’t. In the west, the daily clouds were beginning to build again. There had to be something over there—mountains, just under the horizon, or a big body of water—to create that, she figured. Sometimes the clouds dropped rain on them, sometimes not. When it rained, sometimes the storm was over by four in the afternoon, and sometimes it lasted until midnight. But inside the cabin, they stayed warm and dry.
As he reached the hilltop, Ted said, “Cool!”
Claire was up just after him. “Dinner,” she said.
Hannah sped up to join them and see what had led to that comment. It was a herd of oreodonts, or part of a herd. They must be grazing over in the next valley, too. She could only see about eighty of them, spread across the top of the next ridge.
“Good placement,” Ted said. “If they’re moving off, that is, rather than toward us. All we need to do is wait until we can only see one or two, and we can sneak up on them if we’re careful.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said. “But aren’t we upwind of them?”
He tested the wind again. “Yeah. But maybe because of the hill, they won’t smell us.”
“Worth a try,” she said. “Let’s hang out here, out of their sight.”
Ted said, “You both up for running when we need to?”
“If I can drop the tool belt,” Claire said, glancing at Hannah, “I could run faster.”
“We all could,” Hannah said.
They still used the canvas belts, but they were loaded with different equipment now than when they’d been geared up for fossil hunting. They all carried tinder and kindling, broken rocks with a sharp edge for scraping hides, cordage they’d made, and very little from the modern world. One of a group took a rock hammer—because you never knew how it might come in useful—and today, Claire was carrying theirs, so she had the worst of the weight to bear. Hannah wore her backpack, and the first-aid kit was in there, not that much was left in it. Antibiotic cream, plus a plastic bag of the numbing leaves from the medicine plant, the much-used elastic bandage, and the needle to sew up wounds. The most recent addition was an Altoids container full of the resin to close wounds after she’d sewed them.
Ted wore one of the new basket backpacks, tied on with cords Bob had made. It was empty because they were planning to use it to collect something—meat, ideally, but whatever else they might find edible or of use.
They sat and talked quietly, mostly Claire and Ted talking about fishing and what they’d learned since coming here. There were three functioning fishing poles now, and that’s how most of their food was caught. Claire’s had a metal hook, but the rest of the fish were caught with thorns. They drifted to the topic of which fish tasted best. No one liked the herring by this point, but Hannah insisted they eat it once a week because the oil content was so high, she thought it was good for the calories and nutrition.
Every five or ten minutes, Ted climbed up to the high spot and looked at the oreodonts again. He assured them that the animals were moving away, but not quickly.
“We’ll be walking back in the rain,” Hannah said, looking up at the clouds.
“I don’t care, if we have an oreodont with us,�
�� Ted said.
“Or two,” Claire said.
“I doubt we could eat two,” Hannah said. “Not if they’re adults.”
“We could smoke them, like fish.”
“Yeah, but we don’t quite have that down yet,” Hannah said. “I wouldn’t trust meat we’d smoked for a long time. Not yet. Now, if it were the dry season again, I might try to just sun-dry it.”
“How?” Ted said. “Wouldn’t it just get eaten by predators?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “And if it were dry, maybe we could build a raft, and float it out on the lake. Insects would still go after it, is the problem. And raptors, maybe, if they guessed what it was, or could smell what it was. So what I’d love to have is a piece of netting to cover it.”
Claire said, “I’m not sure we could make that.”
“No,” Hannah said. “I wish I’d had one in my pack.”
“No way you could have known you’d want something like that.”
“But think how little it would have weighed. I have some rolled up in my sleeping bag, in fact, just a remnant of fabric I grabbed at a Walmart for seventy cents, to keep mosquitoes off my face. With that, we could sun-dry meat, and keep the insects off. Or dry meat and berries, and make pemmican.” She still had the commercial pemmican bar in the outer pocket of her backpack. She’d never felt a need to use it. Maybe she’d bring it out one day as a treat. For now, she dismissed it from her mind.
Ted stood up again, looked out toward the herd, and came back. “Only two are visible.”
“Let’s give it five minutes,” Claire said, “And let them move, too, over the hill’s crest.” She stripped off her tool belt, looking to Hannah for permission. Hannah nodded and went through her things to see if she could lighten her load, too. They all had spears and Hannah had her knife in her pocket, which had a duller blade by this point than the rocks Bob had broken for them. She kept her backpack on but took nearly everything out of it but the first-aid kit and one of the hide scrapers Bob had been making.
When next they looked over the crest of the hill, the animals were out of sight. Ted broke into a loping jog, his long legs covering the distance in no time. Hannah and Claire followed the best they could. As he hit the uphill portion, he glanced back and saw them lagging, and he slowed his pace. They all slowed to a walk about thirty yards from the top, and then Ted held up his hand and went on alone, dropping to hands and knees, then to his belly to look over the top of the hill.
He gave them a thumb’s-up without looking back at them. Hannah caught her breath, realizing how quickly she was recovering from exertion. Lighter, leaner, and used to physical work every day, her body had become a more efficient machine. Probably it didn’t hurt that her diet had been nothing but fish and fruit and a few vegetables for over a month. Except for all her healing injuries, she was as healthy as she could get.
Ted slithered backward and drew up a simple plan. Claire and Hannah were to circle around to the right and try and drive some portion of the herd back this way. If the animals came over the hill this way again, Ted would be waiting. If they turned and ran, he might catch the slowest of them.
They split up, and Hannah and Claire walked parallel to the hill top for a good while, two hundred yards or more, and then they agreed with a nod it was time to try. They crouched as they climbed the last bit of hill, and then Hannah counted down in a whisper. “Three, two, one. Go!”
They sprang up and over the hill, thundering down the slope, spears raised, whooping.
Hannah had a moment of sympathy for the startled oreodonts, their placid grazing interrupted by these two noisy monsters from the future, and then the herd began to move. Some tried to run downhill, but they were stopped by the bulk of the herd, which was slow to get itself into gear.
Finding no escape that way, some peeled off to the right and some to the left toward Ted. Hannah, on the left, ran downhill at an angle and then turned in pursuit, trying to stay downhill and drive them up the hill and right toward Ted. None went over the hill, but two veered close to the top.
Ted leaped up, literally two feet off the ground, and as he fell, he brought his spear down with all his might. Simultaneously, he shifted his trajectory somehow mid-air (how did he do these things?) and landed on an oreodont with both knees, knocking it over.
It fell to its side and the spear came down on its neck. He must have driven the spear all the way through into the ground because, for a moment, he couldn’t pull it back out. Hannah sprinted for him, and as the oreodont thrashed and broke Ted’s spear, she was there, and she grabbed her spear two-handed and brought it down on the neck as well.
Blood sprayed out.
“Gusher!” Ted said. “Good hit!”
Hannah twisted the spear. It seemed she had hit the jugular vein, but it had been pure dumb luck. The animal’s heart pumped its blood out. Hannah let go of the spear and yanked her knife out of her pocket. She stabbed the neck again, and tried to cut more of the blood vessels. Ted hung on to the animal, and its struggles began to weaken after a minute. It took another minute and a half for it to bleed out, for its heart beat to fade to nothing. One of Ted’s jean legs was soaked with blood, and her hands were slick with it.
She yanked her knife back and wiped it on the grass.
“It’s a good-sized one,” Ted said.
Hannah wiped her hands on the grass, trying to get the slick hot blood off so she could start the gutting of the animal. She’d be bloody again in a second, but she needed to be able to grip the knife to make the first cut.
“Where’s Claire?” Ted said.
Hannah glanced around. The herd had ran down the hill and halfway up the next by now. Claire was nowhere to be seen.
“Claire!” Ted said, jumping to his feet, sounding worried.
“Here!” came the girl’s voice, from over the hill far behind them.
Ted started for Claire but stopped himself. “You sure it’s dead?”
Hannah checked. “It’s dead.”
Ted ran off toward Claire’s voice and Hannah flipped the oreodont and began the preparation of the meat. She had finally found a honing stone for her knife, but it was nowhere near as sharp as it had been. It was good enough for this job.
She had the intestines out and was taking out the liver to set aside when Claire and Ted came over the hill, laughing. Hannah glanced back. Claire had a small animal, an oreodont young, slung over her shoulder.
It was a lot of meat. They’d have to stuff themselves this next thirty-six hours.
We need to find a salt source.
She pushed the thought out of her mind and went back to dressing out the kill. They saved heart and liver, and Hannah would try to make sure everyone had a little of each for the nutrients they contained, though she still hadn’t convinced Nari to eat organs. They saved the head, to use the brains for the second stage of curing the hide, the first stage being urinating on it. In fact, she meant to make another big clay bowl for use for just that—soaking it in urine. The smell wouldn’t be nice, nor was the smell of decomposing brains, as they’d learned back in the Oligocene, but it would be worth it to have a big skin like this one.
“Good job,” she said to Claire, when the girl tossed down her dead animal next to Hannah’s. “Why don’t you two see if you can clean it yourselves?”
“I’m not sure I can,” said Ted.
“I can.” Claire had seen her father clean game and had helped Hannah learn how.
“Then Ted, why don’t you do it to get the practice.” Hannah had the larger animal almost skinned. Once she did, she handed over her knife. Then she dug through her supplies until she found the little scraper Bob had been making. She had been worried that banging rocks together was too much work for him, but he didn’t complain of pain. In fact, he was looking so recovered she thought he should start walking short distances to get back into shape, so he could manage the hike back to the timegate.
She used the scrapers to remove flesh
and fat from the hide. It was messy work, and the lack of a handle meant her hand was always slick with blood or fat, so she kept wiping her hands and scraper on the grass to clean them. She pulled the carcass along with her, as she moved to a patch of cleaner grass every few minutes.
Claire was coaching Ted through cleaning the lamb. It was about the first thing she’d ever seen him not master in minutes. She couldn’t tell if he was squeamish, or what, but it took him so long she had the skin of the big oreodont mostly clean by the time he was done. Claire had picked out the liver and heart of the smaller kill. “You want me to skin it?” she asked Hannah.
“No, we have a walk ahead of us. Let’s get it back to the campsite as soon as possible. Just stick the organs back in it and tie it with twine. I’ll carry it.” Her backpack had some waterproofing, so she probably wouldn’t even get bloody. “I’m afraid you’ll have to carry this big one’s meat, Ted.” In the woven basket backpack, blood would be dripping from the bloody meat and onto him.
“That’s fine,” he said, wiping his hands on the grass to clean them. “Maybe it’ll rain and wash the blood off me.”
She set about slicing big roasts off the animal. The leg bones would make great soup, but it was big enough they could afford to leave some of it behind. When she was done with her rough butchering job, she glanced up. There was still sun in the sky, but the clouds were headed this way. It looked like they’d cover the sun just before noon.
Claire said, “The oreodonts are back to grazing.”
They hadn’t even entirely vacated this valley. Spread over the upslope to the next hill and beyond, they had taken the deaths in stride and were calmly grazing, as if it had never happened.
She helped Ted get the meat arranged for transport, and then walked back to where they had left their heavier gear.
“We’re still an hour from the lake,” Ted said.
“And what about the hell pigs?” said Claire.