by Chad Oliver
Mark’s mind blanked out. He kept walking somehow, but he was not conscious of it. His body went on functioning, his legs kept moving, but his body seemed to be something utterly apart from him. He was somewhere else, numb, floating through colorless emptiness.
The hills widened into a valley and then into a mountain pass. The hushed light of false dawn was just lighting up the world and Mark sensed, rather than saw, snow-capped mountains all around him. The half-men that he refused to see led him up a tortuous, rocky trail from the valley and then suddenly it was dark again.
Mark realized dimly that they were in a cave. Ahead of them, orange light danced and flickered on the damp walls. Fires. Sensing warmth, Mark’s body moved forward more rapidly. The shadows played grotesque nightmare games on the cold cave walls.
Growls and mutterings greeted their appearance and Mark found himself in the light. A faraway corner of his mind was grateful that his shocked senses could not properly respond, that he could not see clearly. As it was, he saw—too much.
The things were terrible enough in the shadows of the night. Here, around the fires, they were monstrous. They did not look like apes at all—that wouldn’t have been so bad. Apes were amusing, comical, in their happy imitation of men. There was nothing comical about these things, and the worst part of it was that they were clearly and unmistakably men.
Their legs were bent at the thighs and at the knees, giving them a perpetual stooping posture, almost like a gorilla. They had broad, massive shoulders and barrel chests. They had huge bones, heavily muscled, and their lower legs and forearms were short and powerful. From their bull-like necks, their great heads hung forward horribly. Deep-set, beady eyes peered out from under heavy eyebrow ridges and a large, projecting mouth faded back into a receding chin. They were bearded, and dirty hair grew down over their low foreheads. They were dressed in crude skins, and their hair showed around them almost like an animal pelt.
The cave was dirty. Old bones and decaying flesh littered the floor, and the smell was overpowering. Insects hovered around the creatures, like fleas around a dog. From time to time, the half-men made spasmodic attempts to brush the flies away, their brute mouths hanging open, revealing sharp white teeth.
The human brain and nervous system is equipped with many defense mechanisms. When shock becomes too great, when fear becomes too intense, something happens and nothing seems to matter any more. Mark had reached that state, and more. In the midst of horror, he had but one thought—get to the fire. His body was cold, numb, and the warmth from the blaze was like a breath of life.
Mark staggered forward, and fell toward the fire. But one of the half-men caught him and jerked him back. The things grunted at each other and Mark felt himself seized and shoved up a narrow trail inside the cave. He was thrown into a dank, wet cavern and collapsed on the rocks. Faintly, he was aware of the half-men shoving a great boulder across the small cavern entrance, cutting off the light.
Mark was sealed in. Cold and hungry, he gasped for breath on the wet floor of the cavern. He knew with cold certainty what had happened to him. Those half-men were unmistakable.
He was in the hands of the Neanderthals.
That was all. Mark could stand no more. A white pain lanced along his nerves, up through his chest, and exploded with a cloudy puff in his brain. With a hopeless gasp, he lost consciousness.
Chapter 6 Escape
When Mark came back to awareness again, he lay very still and looked at the damp rocks before his eyes. He felt a little better and his mind was cool and clear. He did not bother to pinch himself, for he knew all too well that what had happened to him was no dream.
He was lucky to be alive; he had not really expected to wake up again, ever. He wasted no time on idle regrets, but went right to work analyzing the situation. As long as life was left in him, he would go on trying. That was what it meant to be a man.
First of all, what kind of shape was he in? Mark got gingerly to his feet and braced himself against the wall of the little cavern until the dizziness passed. He was very weak, but his hunger had subsided to a dull ache. His mouth was dry and he was thirsty. His throat was beginning to be sore, but by some miracle he had no fever as yet. He knew that if he came down with pneumonia he was through, and he had no way to take care of himself. Why was it, he wondered, that in books of fiction the hero never seemed to be troubled with colds or illness, but felt wonderful all the time, even after a rifle bullet through the chest? He smiled ruefully. It was different when you were real.
Mark moved silently through the gloom to the mouth of the sealed cavern. The big boulder did not fit flush with the sides of the cave opening, and he could see through the cracks. He looked out into the big cave of the Neanderthals and examined the entrance to their cavern. The light outside was gray, and he judged that it must be getting on toward evening. He had slept some twelve hours, then.
What could he do? He tried to move the boulder, but it did not budge. He did not waste his remaining strength, but stretched out again on the floor of the cave. There was a little moisture oozing out of the dank rocks, and Mark licked at it with his tongue to relieve the parched dryness in his mouth. Then he glued his eyes to the crack in the rock and determined to learn what he could, in the hope that some method of escape would present itself to him. He told himself that he was certainly smarter than his captors, and he still had his .45, and thus he bolstered his courage.
Mark counted twenty Neanderthals in the cave, many of them women and children. They were grouped around a central fire. At first, they seemed to be simply a pack of savages, moving around without aim or purpose. But as Mark watched he began to detect certain patterns that brought some semblance of order out of the seeming chaos.
The Neanderthals were still hideously ugly, even startlingly so, but they were somehow less revolting to Mark than they had been the night before. Perhaps it was because he was more used to them now, or possibly it was due to the fact that he had had some sleep and his jangled nerves were more settled. Probably though, Mark reasoned, it was due to their actions. For all their grotesque appearance, they were doing things that were unmistakably human.
Several of the Neanderthal women were engaged in building up the fire, taking dead branches, ferns, and moss from a pile in one corner of the cave and piling it on the crackling blaze. The little children, for all their ghastly looks, were almost comic as they tottered around after their elders, trying to drag branches to the fire. Mark spotted another woman scraping the flesh from a bison hide with a sharp stone scraper. The scraper was very crude and seemed to be too large for its purpose, but it was getting the job done.
There were no animals of any sort around. At the mouth of the cave, a Neanderthal man, who might have been a lookout, squatted on his haunches, flaking a chunk of rock with a hammerstone. By his side lay a short wooden spear tipped with a stone spearhead.
There were some animal skins scattered about, evidently for sleeping purposes. Behind the fire, there was a curious arrangement of bones and stones that could hardly have been accidental. Mark judged that the pattern had some sort of ceremonial significance. He noticed, too, that the bones were placed in distinct groups of four. Evidently the symbolism of a lucky number had made an early appearance in human society.
As Mark watched, there was a call from the man at the mouth of the cave and shortly five more men came in. They were burdened down with the carcasses of several small bison, and one of them carried a pile of roots and berries. All the men were armed with spears, and Mark was relieved to see that they had no bows. They dumped the meat in front of the women and snarled at each other. Mark could not catch any distinct words, but the half-men obviously had a language. From their gestures, Mark judged that they were arguing about the division of the meat. One of the men became angry and grabbed at a bison leg for himself, but two others instantly shoved him roughly away. Except for three men, the Neanderthals then split into several family groups and retired to separate parts of the cave
.
The three men grunted at each other and one of them pointed toward the cavern in which Mark was imprisoned. They started toward him. Mark drew his .45 and waited. The time was not yet right to make a break for it, but it might be that he would have no choice.
As the Neanderthals approached, Mark’s fear returned. Human or not, the half-men were not a pleasant sight. Mark stared at their sharp teeth and wondered. . . .
The three Neanderthals moved the boulder away from the cavern entrance. Mark got to his feet and faced them, the gun ready in his hand. He could smell them. What did they want? If only he could communicate with them, talk to them! Mark understood full well now what his uncle had meant when he warned against trying to go into a time stratum unprepared. If he could talk to them, he might at least have a chance.
One of the Neanderthals kept pointing at him and jabbering, and Mark finally got the idea that he was showing him to the other two. Mark was a prize exhibition. But he could see that the Neanderthals did not seem to be surprised at what they saw; they accepted him as a perfectly normal part of their surroundings. One of them poked at his clothes with what appeared to be curiosity, and another eyed his short-cut hair, but that was all.
Mark waited, the germ of an idea growing in his brain. It might be significant that the Neanderthals accepted him as an everyday part of their lives. Of course, it was always possible that they were simply too dim-witted to notice any difference between himself and the animals they saw all the time, but that was not probable. These Neanderthals, Mark knew, were in all likelihood much smarter than they looked. No, there must be some other explanation for their calm behavior. And Mark could think of only one possible answer. The Neanderthals must have seen men like him before. But where? How? Mark thought he knew …
After a time, the three half-men left him, resealing the mouth of the cavern with the boulder. Mark holstered his .45 and lay down again on the cold rocks. His hunger began to assert itself again, and he licked some more water from the side of the cave. What next? If something did not happen soon, it would be too late to do anything. He was growing weaker by the minute, and the rawness in his throat was getting worse in the damp air of the cave. He looked outside and judged that night had come once more.
The flickering fires threw long crawling shadows on the cave walls, and the half-men moved through the dancing light like creatures from a long-forgotten dream. Mark watched them roast chunks of meat on long sticks and then gorge themselves with food. His hunger became almost unbearable as the smell of roasting meat drifted up into his tiny cavern.
After the Neanderthals had eaten, Mark witnessed a strange sight. Methodically, as from long habit, the half-men shuffled into position behind the fire. There, fitting themselves into places between the ceremonial rocks and bones, they stood silently for a moment. One of their number, a man with a band of red painted across his low forehead, screamed loudly four times. Then he fell to his knees and four times he pounded his head against a large skull that looked as if it had come from a mammoth.
There was silence. The long shadows played among the stooped figures. Outside, the cold wind moaned across the cave mouth like the cry of an impossible spirit, forever dead, forever longing to be born.
Mark watched, fascinated despite the seriousness of his position. At what must have been a prearranged signal that he had failed to catch, every Neanderthal except the man with the red band on his forehead picked up a long white bone and started to beat it on the rocks. A rhythmic clicking filled the cave. Once more, the number four was predominant. The rhythm was a distinct pattern of a series of fours followed by short, sharp silences.
It was a scene to stagger the imagination, and its effect was not lost on Mark. Here in the dawn of time the first groping men stood in the black shadows beyond the leaping flames and made their rude music out of bones and rocks. There was something infinitely sad about the creatures in the cave, something that was past all knowledge or expression. Almost, Mark could pity them, horrible as they were. They were not really human—and yet they were not wholly animals either. There they lived and dreamed strange dreams, and all the while the great Wheel of Time rolled mercilessly on, wiping them out even as it wiped out the vast ice sheets that had been their home. The Wheel turned, grinding them under . . . But they were not gone yet.
Suddenly, the clicking stopped. The hush was deafening. The Neanderthals stood without moving. There wasn’t a sound in the cave except the sputter and hiss of the fire. Three men detached themselves from the group, the half-man with the red band across his forehead in the lead. They came across the cave floor, straight toward Mark.
Mark smiled coldly. The ceremony had been for his benefit, then. He was to be the star performer. He could not know exactly what his part would be, but he could guess. It wasn’t that the Neanderthals hated him in particular, or in any way regarded him as unusual. This was evidently just the process they went through whenever they got hold of anyone like him. What was the Army phrase he had heard his uncle use?
Standard operating procedure.
What would happen to him? Obviously, a group like the Neanderthals, living as they did on a bare economy of essentials, would have no use for prisoners. A slave was of little use in such a society, being more trouble than he was worth. Mark had not been fed, nor had he been given anything to drink. It was clear that they were not going to leave him alive. His death might be fast or slow, but death it would be. Were the Neanderthals cannibals? Possibly—but Mark was not worried about what would happen to him after he died. He wanted to live.
There would be no more waiting, no more hoping for a better chance. This, he knew, was it.
The three Neanderthals thrust aside the boulder at the cave mouth. The half-man with the red band on his forehead growled at Mark and Mark understood that he was to get up. He thought carefully and drew the .45; arid this time he knew that he would use it. But he did not fire yet. He pulled himself to his feet and then swayed dizzily. He shook his head at the half-man and stumbled. He tried desperately to get across the idea that he was too weak to walk.
The half-man snarled again and grabbed his arm. His grip was like jagged steel and his long, dirty nails dug painfully into Mark’s flesh. Instantly, he shifted the .45 to his other hand. If they tried to take it away from him, he would have to break for it at once, and that would take at least three precious shots . . .
But if the Neanderthals noticed the gun at all, they paid no attention to it. Mark’s trick—it wasn’t much of a trick, since he really was weak—worked and they evidently considered him too helpless to worry about. Two of the Neanderthals moved on ahead, going back to the ceremony beyond the fire, leaving Mark with the painted half-man.
Mark waited until they were clear of the little cavern entrance. The path to the outside world was open. It was dark and cold outside, but that did not matter. It was now or never.
Mark hesitated only a moment. The half-man was a horrible travesty of a man, but for all of that he was a man. Mark had never killed a man, and even now . . .
But he had no choice. Tensing himself, Mark suddenly came to life. He stopped short, and the surprised Neanderthal stopped with him, although the steel grip on his arm did not slacken. The half-man growled low in his throat. Mark looked him in the eye. He raised the .45 and his hand was steady. The half-man, not even knowing that it was a weapon, looked faintly puzzled.
Mark aimed right between the eyes and squeezed the trigger. There was a blasting roar that seemed to shake the cave, echoing and re-echoing back into the dark depths. The gun kicked back in his hand, and the grip on his arm fell away as the surprised Neanderthal, still with a puzzled look on his face, crumpled to the cave floor.
Calling upon hidden resources that he hadn’t known he possessed, Mark dashed for the cave entrance. The rocks stabbed at his feet and he had a wild, irrational fear that he would lose his wet shoes. His heart pounded wildly in his chest and he clenched his fists, clutching at the smoking .45. Which
way could he go? How long could he last?
In desperation, Mark increased his speed, racing like a scared rabbit out into the darkness of the cold night. He remembered all too well the terrible stamina and speed of the half-men. He ran frantically down the rocky trail and into the starlit valley he had stumbled through—when? It seemed like a million years ago.
Mark felt his exhausted body crying out in protest. He was weak with hunger and fatigue, and he knew that he could not hold out for long. Gasping for breath, he heard behind him the shouting snarls of the maddened Neanderthals.
Chapter 7 The Night
Within all men there is a deep reserve of dark power. It lies hidden, unseen, unsuspected, far in the depths of the human personality. It cannot be tapped at will, this reservoir of strength, and there is no way to call it to the fore. Most men go all through their lives and never suspect its existence. But some men find it. To some men, a chosen few, it comes. Ask the man next to you, he may not know. But ask the doctor, far in the night. Ask the fugitive, trapped and alone. Ask the soldier. They know.
And Mark knew. It came from nowhere and flowed through his tired veins. It kept him going past all endurance, kept him going when he should have dropped in his tracks. It came from deep within him, and Mark gritted his teeth and kept going.
He raced through the valley, dimly conscious of the sighing pines around him. The growls and the shouts of the half-men crept closer. He could not seem to lose them; now he knew that they would tear him to pieces.
Mark charged across the icy stream, his numb feet barely feeling the terrible cold. He plunged through the low foothills and out upon the open plains. The grass pulled at his feet and the shrubs tore with sharp fingers at his clothes. Ahead of him, the grass waved in cold unconcern, a silver sea under the faraway stars.