Time spike

by Eric Flint

  I'd just put a few shooters in the trees and keep us hemmed in.

  Eventually we'd get starved out." Luff nodded. He had thought the same thing. He just hadn't come up with a solution yet. He'd looked at the problem from every angle he could look at it from and, so far, had come up empty. Saving the dead in the freezers, just in case, wouldn't work. Cannibalism only sounded acceptable the day before you died of hunger, and by then it would be too late. Besides, the electricity was gone. Unless they could get the generator back up, the freezers would be warm a long time before the last of the meat was gone. Leaving the prison, moving away from the area, getting out of reach of Blacklock and his guards might have worked, but he didn't know who else was out there. If there were Indians and Spanish conquistadores, like Collins said, there could be too many of them. Or there could be other people altogether; modern people-hell, maybe even people from the future-who were well enough armed to take them out. Besides, there were dinosaurs roaming around loose out there. Real no-fooling dinosaurs. Adrian had seen one of them himself. It had walked past the prison just a few hours ago. As big as a shopping mall. No. They had to have the walls.

  Whatever else, they had to stay behind the walls. "What about hanging onto the disposable prisoners?" Bostic suggested. "Use them as cannon fodder. Force Blacklock into wasting his ammo on them. He can't have too much with him." "Don't you understand? We can't feed them in the meantime, period. We don't know how long the guards will be gone."

  Luff was getting tired of Bostic. The man was smart and capable, yes, but he could be a pain in the ass. "I heard once," Bostic said, "a man could go a month or so without eating. If we give them water, keep them locked up, they should still be alive." Luff slammed his left hand on the top of the desk. "What! Do you have shit for brains? They wouldn't go after the guards. Every swinging dick in the joint would turn on us the second we opened the gates. No, we have to get rid of them." Bostic shrugged. "Okay, then give me a few of our guys. Half a dozen or less. We can spare that many. I'll take them out into the woods before Blacklock can get back here. We can bring in enough meat to give us an edge. Dammit, Adrian, we needsomeone outside the walls."

  Luff thought about it. He was skeptical about how much meat Bostic and a small crew of hunters could produce. Sure, Danny could find deer hunters among the cons-but how many of them had been hunting in years?

  And shooting a deer was a whole different ball game from shooting a dinosaur. But it was true that they could spare that many men from watching over the others, once things stabilized a little. And Bostic and his guys could probably turn up something. The man was sharp and hard. In fact, he was probably the smartest and most capable of the three top lieutenants. He was sure as hell smarter than Haggerty. That was the reason Adrian had picked him, despite his misgivings. So, fine. Send him on his way playing Dinosaur Danny. Eventually, Adrian figured he'd probably have to get rid of Bostic. If that's what it came down to, he could use the time Bostic was gone to make the arrangements to do so. But there was no reason to do it now. The man was useful for the moment, and you worked with what you had. "Okay, fine. Put together a crew. Four or five guys including you, no more.

  You can leave in about a week, I figure. By then, things should have settled down enough." After Haggerty and Bostic left, Luff looked at the unmoving clock again, his mouth a hard straight line. Their prison was still their prison. He got up and went to the window. Things were moving too fast. He didn't know what to do. Hitler killed and disposed of something like six million Jews. You'd think a thousand or so dead cons shouldn't be that hard to arrange. But it was trickier than it looked. He couldn't leave them in their cells to starve and rot. That would draw vermin, and pretty soon they'd have an epidemic-with no medical people except one uncooperative redskin EMT. He couldn't shoot them. They had to conserve as much ammunition as possible. There was no way to replace it, and they still had Blacklock to deal with. Not to mention wild Indians and what sounded like wilder Spaniards and fucking dinosaurs and God knew what else. He couldn't just turn them out. Some of them-probably most of them-would die, sure, but some wouldn't. When Blacklock showed up, they'd slobber over him like dogs.

  That would give Blacklock an edge. Dealing with Blacklock was going to be a bitch, as it was. And he couldn't feed them. Not two thousand, two hundred and forty-six men. He figured he couldn't feed more than a thousand or so. Actually, right now, he couldn't even feed that many.

  But with only a thousand mouths and stomachs, he thought he'd be able to stretch out the food supply long enough to come up with alternative food sources. It was the only chance he had. This was really just a simple mathematical problem, when you got down to it. And he'd been a damn good accountant. Still was. Danny Bostic left the office and headed for the compound. Luff was crazy. He was screwing up, and Danny wasn't going to sit on his ass and die just because the man was an idiot. The prison was a trap, for God's sake, not a haven. Yeah, there were people out there. But they were people armed with rocks and spears. And, yes, their ammo wouldn't last long. But it didn't have to. All it had to do was get them on top of the heap. Then, they'd be home free. They could set themselves up as chiefs, with warriors they'd recruited from the natives to keep them on top. The same way any good gang got organized. Danny knew some history. Not much, but enough. Medieval times, medieval ways. Nobody started off as Duke Whoozit. They started off-their ancestors, anyhow-as the toughest and smartest barbarian gang leader around. Walking fast, he went down the corridor in the administration building that led to the yard. Bostic knew Luff. If the man was already planning to kill five hundred people, just like that, it wouldn't take him long to decide that was the way for lots more to go. Including, sooner or later, Danny himself. Luff was a sicko. The fact that he didn't seemed to be, didn't have any of the obvious habits of a sicko, didn't mean squat.

  Underneath, the bastard was the scariest crazy in the whole joint.

  Where would it end? Danny could already see the logic. As long as Luff was fixated on staying in the prison because he thought it was a safe haven, there'dnever be enough food. How could there be? A prison was a fucking prison, for Christ's sake. What'd he think it was? A farm?

  Cannibalism, that's where it would end. Sooner or later, in that crazy quiet way he had, Luff would decide it just made sense for the men he wanted to stay alive to eat the ones he didn't. Danny Bostic had been a criminal since he was eleven years old. Earlier, really, if you counted petty theft and misdemeanors. He made no bones about it. As far as he was concerned, so-called "honest citizens" were just damn fools. Work their asses off their whole lives so the millionaires and billionaires they worked for could buy some more yachts, and then retire on Social Security and a measly pension-assuming the pension hadn't been shredded. Spend their last dollars paying the bill at a nursing home that smelled like piss. Fuck that. If Danny hadn't been born into a great wolf pack family, he could at least make a decent weasel. But this was just nuts. Plain and simple nuts. Even if Luff could keep control over the situation, he didn't seem to realize he was just the captain of a ship going down fast. Danny slowed his pace, as he neared the exit, trying to keep his expression neutral. That was the reason he'd pushed, at the end, for his own hunting party. He didn't want a large band. A few men would be plenty, as long as they were well armed and well supplied. He knew the men he wanted, too.

  They could raid the armory, the kitchen and the infirmary before they left. Take everything they needed. Leave during the night. He paused at the entrance and looked down at the list of things Luff wanted him to do. He would do them. He had no choice. He had to do them and anything else the asshole told him to do. But a few days from now, he would be gone. First, he had to go see the Boom about the body-disposal business. That was another stupid move. Boomer might be crazy, but he was crazy like a fox. On that, at least, Luff had it right-but he hadn't thought through the logic. The Boom had managed to keep his boys together for years. Word had it that his gang of misfits had even grown a lot la
tely. Every con not already hooked up and not full white-or who was even willing to claim he wasn't-had attached to the man. That wasn't surprising, of course. Not long after the uprising, things had gotten out of hand for a while. Every con or group of cons with a grudge to settle had settled it, or at least tried. The big gangs had steered clear of each other, but lots of loners had been taken down. That was the reason there were twenty-three bodies piled up in the yard. That had scared every loner in the place, and some of them had gone running to Boomer. Who-yeah, crazy, sure he was-had played that "Uncle Timmy" bullshit to the hilt.

  It wasnuts. Couldn't Luff see that Boomer and his boys needed to be kept isolated? The other gangs could be played off against each other, but Boomer's was unpredictable. They should all be locked up tight, in lots of separate cells. You put them in charge of something-didn't matter what it was-and you gave them the opportunity to start planning and working together. And then-icing on the cake-Luff wanted the new kid in charge. Jesus H. Christ. New or not, Cook was a fucking hardass, couldn't Luff see that? With that Indian mask of a face he had, you never knew what he was thinking. Danny wouldn't put the bastard in charge of emptying kitty litter boxes. Bostic left the administration building and headed toward D-house. One of the men he was planning to take with him was very good at making keys. A few of those passed out at the right time, and the rest would be history. The shit would come down and when it did, he would be long gone.

  Chapter 28 At what he estimated was noon, Joe Schuler called a halt. He had to estimate based on the sun's position, because he couldn't use his watch. The watch was working, as were most watches.

  The problem was that they were skewed. His watch said it was 6:17 AM.

  Not surprising, really. It would be a little much to expect that a disaster that had sent them all back tens of millions of year in time would have maintained the same time of day. Someday, he supposed, if they could survive long enough to afford the luxury, they'd have to agree on a new standard. This was a good place to stop anyway, since they'd finally come to the river Marie had instructed the nurses to follow north. If the women had made it-and all indications were that they had-then his band of a little over sixty men and women were less than a half-day's walk from the cave Marie had sent the nurses to. Joe sat at the edge of the stream and soaked his feet in the cool water.

  Most of the others joined him. Their feet were raw and bleeding. Marie and Casey were the only ones wearing shoes. They were also of the few wearing long sleeved shirts, so they'd been spared most the misery of the sticker bushes. When Joe first felt the cool water, his skin crawled with the cold. But that sensation left as the icy water numbed the dull, burning ache of his feet. A few more hours and they could rest. Food wasn't going to be an option. Not tonight. But Marie had said she should be able to get enough to feed everyone at least one good meal tomorrow. Joe thought about that, smiling ruefully. One good meal sounded good. Not so long ago, the thought of just one meal in a two-day time frame would have had him complaining to the high heavens.

  He stretched back on the bank, leaving his feet in the water, and looked at the sky. A few clouds were drifting in front of the sun. He was looking forward to the shade they would give. It was the little things that mattered. So he told himself, as he closed his eyes, trying to relax. The little things: a little touch of cool, a little food, a little water to ease the pain in your shredded feet. But he couldn't relax. Too much anger was still seething inside him. Not anger at the prisoners. They had behaved no differently than he'd expected them to behave, given a chance. Better, actually. They hadn't killed anyone or even raped any of the women. The only one who'd even tried had been a guard. That stinking filthy Collins. That was the source and object of his fury. But the anger faded. Collins was dead, after all. He'd gotten his just desserts and, best of all, had gotten them almost right after his betrayal. Certainly before he could enjoy any of the fruits he'd expected from his treason. Mostly, Joe knew, he was just mad at life, at that thing that could throw you for a loop no matter how hard you tried. But that was pointless, too. Collins was dead and life was what it was. Joe was in charge of this group and he needed to stay in focus. When they'd left the prison, at his command, they'd gone away from the cave and the nurses. If they were tracked, he didn't want to lead the prisoners to the women and the only baby on the planet. He still thought that had been the right decision, although he hadn't anticipated the price their feet would pay for it.

  One day out, and now one day back. He sat up and pulled his feet out of the water, drying them as best he could on a handful of torn-out ground cover. He could only hope the ground cover wasn't something like poison ivy or nettles. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't grass. Jeff Edelman said that grasses hadn't evolved yet. Oddly enough, the plants that Joe would have assumed were the most basic and ancient were actually among the most recent. The lack of the kind of ground cover grass usually provided would have been simply a curiosity except that, today again, they'd been forced to continue on barefoot.

  Without a single meadow anywhere to give their feet any relief. He'd already decided that before they went any farther than the cave, they'd have to come up with some sort of foot covering. Leaving aside the pain, they were just asking for funguses, worms, you name it. He looked at the scratches and skin tears, grimacing a little when he saw a spot on his heel that was bruised and swollen. That was going to hurt for days, every time he took a step. Maybe even weeks. He sighed and pulled himself up. He needed to make sure everyone was all right.

  Some of the guards were too old for the hike they had just made.

  Others were too overweight. Some looked fine, but he knew they were out of shape. He planned for a one-hour rest, but then they would have to move on. He hated pushing so hard. It worried him. The memory of Greg Lowry's heart attack was too fresh. But he didn't feel he had any other option. He wanted to make sure they were at the cave before sunset. He did a head count out of habit. Each time he did one he came up short and his stomach would churn. Then he would locate the missing person and he wouldn't feel any relief. Instead, the dread would double. Dread of the time the numbers really wouldn't be right, and the missing person wouldn't step from behind a tree or a bush or from behind a person just large enough to hide him or her from view. This time the missing person was Willa. He started looking around. Then he spotted her, talking to Hope McDaniel. Her face was creased into a frown. The same frown she had been wearing for over two weeks. The first time he saw her mouth turned down and her forehead creased, he had been shocked. Willa didn't do that. She laughed and smiled.

  Sometimes, if she was concentrating on something, she would develop an almost blank look. But never a frown. He imagined that had changed forever, that the woman would wear this new look clear on up till the day she died. Moving around the clearing he was once again struck by the sounds of the forest. He had always thought of cities as noisy and the country as quiet. But he'd been a country boy in the well-settled and secure Midwest of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He knew differently now. "Quiet" was in the ear of the listener. When you were in a real no-fooling wilderness trying to spot dangerous animals, the woods were a cornucopia of never ending sounds.

  Constantly changing, constantly… A slight rustling in some nearby brush drew his attention. Then, he froze. A pair of eyes was staring at him from the brush, less than ten feet away. Dredging up the nature documentaries he had watched on TV, he tried to remember what to do when you encountered a large animal in the wild at close range. Did you make eye contact or not? With male gorillas, you didn't, he remembered. They'd take it as a challenge. Instead, you acted submissive. But gorillas weren't carnivores. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't a gorilla. Did you do the same thing with lions or bears? Did you stand your ground or run? Stand your ground, he was pretty sure. Running would almost certainly trigger off a carnivore's hunting reflex. Fine if you could outrun it, but he wasn't an antelope. Whatwas the damn thing? From what little he could see
of it through the branches, it looked like a bear, but it wasn't any bear he was familiar with. About the size of a black bear, as near as he could determine, but it was the wrong color. The fur was grayish blond, with a white band around the eyes, as if it were wearing spectacles. Fear was making it hard to think. He wanted to shout a warning, but didn't.

  He was afraid the noise would spook the thing, make it attack. He couldn't shoot it, because he didn't have a gun. They only had two guns among them. Marie always kept hers, because she was the best shot. Casey's was passed around to whomever was standing guard at the moment. Right now, that was Frank Nickerson. If Joe turned his head he would be able to see Frank, and if he shouted, Frank would certainly hear. But Frank was a good thirty yards away. And a pistol, even a. 40 caliber, wasn't a rifle. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw Karen coming out of the bushes a little downstream. He watched as Stacey stood up. She was stretching, getting ready to walk away from the river, toward the bushes. The women had been going in and out of them, one at a time for the last ten minutes. Then Stacey spotted Joe and stopped. The way he was standing stock still must have puzzled her. Oh, hell. Now she was moving toward him, calling out, wanting to know if something was wrong. The animal turned toward the noise, emitting a low, soft growl. Joe could see enough to of its body to tell that it was now hunched low to the ground, as if it were getting ready to spring. He shouted out a warning. Not a word, just a roar of sound, the only sound his brain could force his vocal cords to produce. He roared and then roared again, springing forward like a madman. Getting between the beast and the woman. The creature charged him, rising up on its hind legs. With it erect, Joe could finally see it clearly. It was a bear, sure enough, although he still didn't know what kind. A little shorter than Joe, obviously heavier, but nothing even close to the size of a grizzly or a brown bear. They slammed together with a thud of flesh. They grappled like wrestlers, clutching tight. The beast had Joe's chest in a bear hug and his hands were on its throat. Whatever else, he had to keep the teeth from closing on him. The canines weren't as huge as those of most carnivores, but those teeth would tear flesh easily. They swayed. Twisted. Back and forth. He could hear Stacey and Karen screaming for help, but didn't pay them any attention at all. He couldn't. God, the thing was strong!