A seven hundred pound, nine-foot animal which can appear out of the snow, grass, low-lying bush, or even thin air, kills a man with one bite and carries him off, into the forest, like nothing more than a rabbit.
sans - ˈsanz /sænz/ Without.
sa•bre - ˈsā-bər /ˈseɪbə(r)/ A heavy sword with a one-edged, slightly curved blade.
Sans Sans•Sa•bre (ˈsanz ˈsanz sā-bər) Without, without sabre.
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Sabre City (Book 2)
The Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy
By
James Paddock
Published by Desert Bookshelf Publishing
Copyright © 2011 by James R. Paddock
Cover photo and art by James R. Paddock
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.
This book was printed in the United States of America.
To order additional copies of this book contact:
Desert Bookshelf Publishing
www.desertbookshelf.com
Prologue
I don’t know which is worse, the ruts and ice of the road we’re on, or the bushes and small trees we now deal with, hidden under the snow that has suddenly gotten worse, if that’s possible. I’m thinking that the fence is close, like right in front of me. I peer intently at the black wall, looking for the shape of chain link to appear, when suddenly a sabre-toothed cat looms at me, mouth open, hissing. His head is covered with snow. I can barely see his ears, but his eyes–his eyes–are huge, the size of my hand. His sabre teeth are the size of my arm–maybe I exaggerate a little but maybe not. I freeze for a second in awe and fear and then open my mouth as far as I can and make my biggest ugly face. I’m afraid I may be showing him my fear instead. He disappears.
“Eeeeee!” Tanya is pushing against us.
“Give him your ugly face,” I calmly try to say, but I don’t think it’s coming out that way. “Don’t show him your fear.”
Suddenly Aileen is pushing and grunting, and there is another cat, a different one, lunging toward me. “This is it,” I stammer. “They’re challenging us from all sides, trying to break us apart.”
“Oh, God,” Aileen cries.
“Make the face. Keep it going.” Shifting the muscles in my face actually feels good against the frigid air. I can feel the women wiggling and pushing against me while trying to suppress their frightful muttering and make their faces. “It’s working!”
The cats keep lunging in, hissing and making their own faces, and then backing out.
Tanya screams and shoves against me, driving me into a mound of snow which turns into a low bush. My feet tangle. I start to fall. Tanya shoves again, even harder. “Stop!” I yell, but she keeps screaming and pushing. I’m going down face-first and my instincts are to catch myself with my hands, but I must not allow us to break apart. Even as I think that, my arms are trying to get free in response to my forward, falling momentum. They are trapped, and Tanya keeps pushing and screaming.
“Tanya! Stop!” Aileen screams.
It’s slow motion in my mind although I am sure it’s happening in a matter of a second or two. I slowly lay on top of the bush, first my legs, and then my body, and then my head. My face penetrates the layer of snow, and then Tanya’s weight is on my back, pressing me down harder. I hear a mixture of both of their voices screaming and hollering, but I cannot make out words as bush sticks and stems thrust their stiff, frozen ends into me. Despite the numbness of my face, I feel the pain, and then I see red and hear a lot more screaming, one scream that sounds very much like me. And then there is black, and then nothing.
Chapter 1
A seven hundred pound, nine-foot animal which can appear out of the snow, grass, low-lying bush, or even thin air, kills a man with one bite and carries him off, into the forest, like nothing more than a rabbit.
—from the journals of Zechariah Price
“Zack! Zack!”
The blackness is turning to fuzz as I try to figure out which one is calling me. Tanya, stop! I remember those words from Aileen as I fell forward, and I can still feel Tanya on top of me, pressing me down . . . down . . . down, until I cannot breathe, until I scream myself, not at Tanya to stop, but at the explosions in the pain centers of my brain.
“Zack! Wakeup!”
She is shaking me now, and pulling on me. “No! My eyes! My eyes!” I try to yell. Nothing comes out but muffled screams as she turns me over anyway and shakes me even more. I try to fight her as part of me is certain that my eyeballs are now still hanging on sticks and the resulting craters in my face are filling with blood and maybe pieces of my brain. Another part of me is slowly emerging, pushing the first part out of the way in the growing awareness that I’m rising from sleep, and a violent, three-dimensional nightmare is the reason for Tanya’s screaming.
“Okay!” I say. Her manhandling of me stops.
“Mom!”
“It’s okay. Your dad just had a nightmare.”
“Wow!”
“Go back to bed, both of you.”
“He hasn’t had one like that in a long time.”
“I know. Go back to bed, please.”
I listen to the resulting silence for a time, expecting that they have both turned around and headed back to their rooms. It must have been loud to have awakened them. Suddenly I realize they are still there. I lift my head so that I can see them, and so that they can see me. “I’m okay.” I lay my head back down. “Good night.”
“Good night, Daddy,” Christi says.
“C’mon, Christi,” Becky orders.
“Close the door, please,” Tanya says.
I hear the click. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I thought you were over these things.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe it was something you ate.”
“I get heartburn or gas from things that I eat, not nightmares.”
“You shouldn’t have had those extra jalapenos.”
“Hot peppers don’t cause nightmares.”
“Humph!” She turns off the light and snuggles close to me. “There isn’t something else, is there?” she says into my chest.
“Like what?”
“You aren’t having any feelings, are you?”
“That something terrible is going to happen? No. Nothing like that. Haven’t had one of those since the ball game last summer, when the pitcher got hit and almost died.”
She is silent for a time, and then suddenly sits up. “That’s it!”
“What? The ballgame?”
“No. Don’t you know what yesterday was?”
I digest that thought for a few seconds and then say, “April thirteenth. But I haven’t thought about it at all.”
“You know better than me how complicated the brain is, especially yours. It’s probably been in your subconscious all day.”
“It’s been eight years.
“So?”
“What did I say in my nightmare?” I ask because it seems to me I was yelling someone’s name. I don’t know why it would have been Aileen, but if it was, it’s best to face it immediately.
“Nothing in particular except ‘stop.’ That and, ‘my eyes.’”
“Ah.”
“You didn’t say her name, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“I . . .” I glance at her face. She’s not angry, I don’t think. “I’m sorry.”
She gets up and goes into the bathroom. I hear the flush and then pass her at the door as she comes out. I pause briefly, expecting a standup hug. She continues on and I go in
and do my business. When I return I turn off her light before walking around to my side of the bed. I slide under the covers and lie wide awake, worried that I might roll and fall into the canyon lying between us. After a time I begin getting irritated for being in the dog house for something I have absolutely no control over. Eight years. She said back then that she forgave me, but still, every now and then, it surfaces. And besides, Aileen is dead. Tanya, herself, watched the cats carry her off. And even if she were still alive today there’s no way I’d do something so stupid as to jeopardize my marriage. I love Tanya and have no desire for anyone else.
Eight years ago I let my hormones bring out the worst in me, and I got caught. I have more than paid my price. Instead of an eye for an eye, I’ve given an eye for cheating, and nearly got Tanya killed in the process. Oh, yes! I’ve definitely paid my price. I no longer deserve to be on Tanya’s angry side for that.
I roll to my back and Tanya rolls toward me, directs my arm around her, and rests her head on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you can’t help your dreams.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m not trying to start anything—really. I’m just curious.”
“Curious about what?”
“Was she in your dream?”
Chapter 2
“Nightmare,” I correct.
“Nightmare then. Was she in it?”
“Yes, along with the sabre-toothed cats, the snow and cold, and the stick in my eye.”
“You didn’t mention me.”
“Yes, you were in it too.”
“Why didn’t you include me in the list with the cats, snow, cold, stick, and Aileen?”
“I was listing off the aspects of the dream that made it a nightmare. You don’t make dreams into nightmares.”
“I was the one who poked your eye out.”
“You didn’t poke my eye out. The stick I fell on did that. You were panicking. You didn’t push me down on purpose.”
“When I first found out about you and Aileen, and if I’d had a stick in my hand, I might have.”
The clock downstairs goes through its extensive rendition of the Westminster Chimes. It’s followed with one gong. “It’s been eight years. Can we not hash through it another time?”
“You brought it up. Not me.”
“What do you mean, I brought it up?” My voice is growing an edge. “Because I had a nightmare about it?”
“You don’t have to yell.” She rolls away, onto her back. “The girls probably already have their ears tuned for our argument.”
“I’m not yelling.”
“Then you’re trying to have a conversation with the neighbors.”
I grind my teeth and count to ten, then count to ten again. “Okay. What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t want you to say anything! I just asked a simple question because I was curious. You’re the one who got all heated up.”
This time I manage to check my anger and focus it toward the dark ceiling. After several minutes I roll away, punch up my pillow and attempt to return my brain to neutral. She drops into a soft snore. I should wake her and tell her to change position. She’s okay lying on her back while reading or talking, but it’s not good for her to stay there for a long time, such as all night sleeping. She should be on her side, gently curled. If not she will hurt in the morning, sometimes be totally unable to move. Ever since she broke her back—the same night a sharp, frozen stick pulled my eyeball from its socket—her day to day struggle has been difficult, even with its improvement over the years. She needs a firm bed, often wears a body brace at work for support when she has to bend forward over patients. She has an entire regime of daily exercises; will for the rest of her life.
I listen to the snore for a little longer. Knowing she will not wake and change position on her own, I reach back and put my hand on her arm. “Sweetheart.” There’s no response. “Sweetheart!” I shake her arm.
“What?”
“Don’t sleep on your back.”
“Thanks.” She rolls to her side facing away, and then quickly falls back asleep.
She’s right. I brought it up, and until I fall asleep again it’ll be all I can think about. The problem with the wide awake dreams—unable to sleep at night dreams that play back from the archive of factual, very graphic memories—is that they can be even more hellish, even more nightmarish than what my sleeping brain can produce.
I lie on my side facing Tanya’s back—a dark shape in the dark bedroom—and see the frigid mountain peaks of Montana’s Flathead National Forest where twice I thought I was going to freeze to death, where twice I thought I was going to become food for the newly-removed-from-extinction sabre-toothed cats, where twice I thought I would be dead at the hands of men with guns. Then I think of Aileen. There’s no way I can think about that time at Sans Sanssabre, a company full of secrets, without thinking about Aileen’s white nightgown dropping to the floor, and her sleek, scantily clad body slipping under my covers. How can a man forget that after eight years, or even eighty years?
And then I remember sitting back to back with Tanya, not yet knowing that there was only a hole where my eye used to be, and that something was pinning my tongue to the roof of my mouth; not knowing these things because I was numbed by the intense cold accompanying an early springtime Arctic blast. I remember her telling me what happened that got us to that point, and how she watched the huge sabre-toothed cat, the Smilodon, carry Aileen off like she was a rag doll.
There is no need for a nightmare when I can look into the dark bedroom and see sabre after sabre flashing before me through the swirling snow, and hear Tanya screaming.
I repeatedly force my mind into neutral until, eventually, I sleep.
The Thursday morning routine is normal, or as normal as a family with two teenage girls can be. Fortunately we can afford a house with two bathrooms. Tanya gets hers, the girls get theirs, and after they all leave, I get my quiet. I’m a freelance writer so while they’re doing their morning routine, I paddle around in my slippers and bathrobe making coffee, pouring cereal and toasting bagels. Sometimes this is the best quality time I get with Becky and Christi—at sixteen quality time with Becky has vanished—so even though I could sleep in and stay out of the way, I don’t. Instead, I prepare breakfasts and lunches and stay out of the way of the bathrooms.
All three of my ladies are morning people, although I think Christi could easily sleep until the last minute. She is up because her mother and sister are up, and she doesn’t want to miss anything, especially since Becky unofficially declared herself queen of the house. Christi doesn’t spend quite as much time working on herself—actually at fourteen years old, she spends nearly no time, not yet having figured out why she should—so as a result, she and I get ten to twenty minutes of private time together in the kitchen.
“What was your nightmare about, Dad?” It has been only in the last year or so that she has switched from Daddy to Dad. Sometimes she slips, like during the night when my nightmare awoke them. Becky seldom calls me anything, unless she wants something.
“The sabre-toothed cats.”
She dips out a spoonful of whatever sugar-covered cereal she’s eating. I may have poured it but I seldom actually look at the box. Does that make me a bad parent? “Kids at school think I’m being stupid when I say the sabre-toothed cat really exists now, that it ain’t extinct anymore.”
“You shouldn’t use ain’t.”
She gives me the “get real” look.
“Ain’t ain’t a word.”
She hardens the look. She thinks she’s too old for stupid jokes.
“Do they pick on you and give you a hard time?”
“No. Not exactly, I guess. They laugh and walk away, and then whisper about me.”
“How do you know it’s about you they’re whispering?”
“I just know.”
“Hmm.” I don’t like the idea that she’s being ostracized because of me.
“Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t bring the subject up.”
“I only did once, at the beginning of school when Mister Gray was doing a lesson on prehistoric animals. They’re the ones that brought it up this time. Sue Chadwell said that her dad said that you’re loony.”
Oh boy! I don’t mind being called loony to my face, but to my daughter, who by nature of being my daughter, must defend me against a bunch of other fourteen year old razor tongues . . . that sends my blood to boiling. I don’t show that to her though. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Do you think I’m loony?”
“No,” she says seriously.
I remove my spoon from my coffee and lick it clean. “Even if I walk around with a spoon on my nose?” I hang it on my nose and stick my tongue out the corner of my mouth.
She laughs and milk goes squirting out her nose, and then I laugh and the spoon rattles to the floor. When Tanya comes in we are both laughing uncontrollably.
“What’s going on?” she says.
We both suddenly stop. Christi’s eyes are huge, big question marks for eyeballs. I retrieve the spoon. “I was trying to prove to Christi that I’m not loony.” I put the spoon back on my nose and add the tongue.
“Oh!” She turns and pokes her head into the refrigerator, but not before I see the corners of her mouth turn up. She is trying, unsuccessfully, to remain serious.
By the time Becky comes in with her toe nails in neon green, we’ve all settled down. Christi is trying to make her spoon stick onto her nose.
“Grow up!” Becky says, and plops her backpack onto the chair.
“Why? So I can be like you?”
Becky displays her usual dirty look.
“Besides, Dad started it. Show her, Dad.”
I know that my demonstration would not have had the same affect on Becky even when she was fourteen. Now, two months from seventeen—she makes the point of reminding everyone—there is definitely no room for such foolishness. I do it anyway, including the tongue. She rolls her eyes and pours juice from a carton in the refrigerator. Christi sticks out her tongue at her back. Tanya gives her the look, and she returns her spoon to her cereal.
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