Dale Cozort's Alternate History Newsletter - Feb 2011

by Dale Cozort

  Chapter Three

  Roy Fleming was stone cold sober and his stomach churned as the frigate jounced across the English channel. He studied his companions, evaluating them. Expendables for the most part, but with a scattering of more soldierly types. He didn't know names yet and his pounding head and protesting stomach kept him from approaching the others.

  The rank animal smell from below the deck didn't help with the stomach though he would normally have taken it in stride. A horse whinnied from down there.

  A tall, broad shouldered man strolled over to him and said, "We're getting awful close to Jerry-land. I suppose they don't have artillery on the coast over here."

  "Supposedly there aren't any Germans over there except the ones we’re trying to catch," Roy said. He turned away to discourage further conversation, but the man persisted.

  "Just when you think you've got a handle on this war the Nazis yank it off."

  Roy shrugged. "If the Nazis really did this. I’m not sure they did. If they can take an entire island like Britain and move it to wherever we are, they should be able to do a whole lot of other things."

  "Maybe they did. Maybe they put us into ape man times and they put New York into dinosaur times, or are they the same thing?"

  "No. They aren't, or weren't. No caveman ever saw a dinosaur. At least that's what they told me in school."

  "A lot of things they tell you in school don't turn out to be true."

  The freighter lurched, as did Roy's stomach. The persistent conversationalist said, "You're looking green, my friend."

  "You’ll want to move back if you don't want something nasty on your shoes."

  The tall guy finally moved away, and Roy turned back to his dark thoughts. The freighter headed northeast, away from Normandy and toward what should be Calais. The channel gaped wider than it should have, and he could only see a faint outline of land at the horizon. An officer walked up, Lieutenant Gilbert according to his insignia and name patch. The group came to attention.

  Gilbert said, "We'll be offloading into small boats in half an hour. Get your gear and be ready for anything. We're chasing a couple of hundred Nazis. Some of them have guns. These are tough old boys. Combat veterans we cornered in North Africa."

  Roy had heard the speech before so he mostly tuned it out. He did catch a few phrases. "...at least a hundred hostages, most of them women...we're to track them and pin them in place so paratroopers can drop in and do the rescue...they’re calling the natives Neanderthals… not sure they really are, but it’s close enough for government work."

  When the officer finally finished, Roy got his gear together. He checked and cleaned his M1 carbine, trying to keep his mind off his churning stomach.

  They were closer to shore now, and Roy spotted what looked like wreckage of several small boats. He thought about the rough channel waters, rougher than their equivalents back home and he wondered if anyone survived a trip in the small craft.

  Black dots moved on the wreckage. As they sailed closer to shore the dots resolved into people of a sort. They were burly, muscular looking men, dressed in animal skins. They had heavy brow ridges, but other than that there was little of the ape about them. They stood upright, carrying spears and sharpened stones. They were white-skinned, many of them with blond or red hair down to their shoulders. Their faces were frankly ugly, with large noses dominating their faces. The women among them were almost as muscular as the men and to Roy’s eye no more appealing. A scattering of children worked along the adults, and couple of women carried infants

  Someone in the group apparently spotted the freighter. The men waved their spears in either greeting or menace. Studying their faces, Roy guessed at menace.

  Offloading the men and horses into the smaller boats was an effort in the rough seas, and Roy lost track of the group around the boats. When he settled in for the final stage of the landing, Roy scrutinized the guys who were going inland with him. He counted a little over fifty. There were horses for each man and some spares, plus pack animals.

  The conversationalist ambled over again. "Ape men. I never figured I'd see the likes of that."

  "Neanderthals."

  "Yeah. What you said. We should probably blow them back into whatever time they came from."

  "That probably wouldn't be a good idea."

  "What are they going to do, throw rocks at us?"

  "Yeah, from a countryside they know and we don't. We could kill them, but we're here to hunt Germans. No need to get sidetracked. Besides, they might tell us where old Adolph's boys got to."

  The other soldier shrugged. "If they can talk. And if we can understand them. That’ll be a problem."

  They landed on a beach half a mile from the Neanderthals and brought the horses ashore, along with a dozen hunting dogs.

  The Neanderthals shuffled down the beach toward them, obviously wary. They lined up about thirty yards from the landing area, yelling and keeping their spears in position. They eyed the horses, and especially the dogs nervously.

  Lieutenant Gilbert said, "Form a skirmish line, but do not fire unless you hear my order." He walked over to Roy. "You supposedly know how to handle this kind of situation. Handle it."

  "Why am I supposed to know how to handle this?"

  "South America. Back when you were a kid."

  "You know about that?"

  "Yep."

  I wonder how much they know about that year. Roy decided not to pursue that. "Anybody got an old watch they don't care about?”

  Nobody responded. Finally the lieutenant handed Roy a cheap, battered timepiece. Roy strolled past the line of soldiers and sat down on a boulder, sidewise to the Neanderthals. He put his rifle beside him, within reach but hopefully not threatening. He lit a match and held it, peering over the flame at the Neanderthals, but not staring at them. They looked scared, but tried not to show it. He let the match burn almost to his fingers, then flicked it onto the ground and scuffed it out with his shoe. He took a harmonica out of his pocket and played a note, alert to their reactions. He played a couple more notes, then went into a tune. The Neanderthals stopped talking and stood looking at him. He kept playing, but didn't get much reaction. These aren't people, at least not the same way we are. They're more different than the Japanese or the Germans or the Indians I met in South America.

  Roy sat and played another song on the harmonica, trying to figure out some way of communicating with the men. Finally he sat the watch on a stone a little further out toward the Neanderthals. Then he backed his way to the line of soldiers.

  Roy pointed to the watch and made a come-here motion with his hand. The Neanderthals chattered or talked (he wasn't sure which) among themselves. Finally one of them sidled to the stone and picked up the watch. They examined it, passing it back and forth while keeping a wary eye on the soldiers. Finally, one of them put a loop of animal hide with the canine tooth of some large predator on the stone.

  After the Neanderthal hurried back to the others, Roy strolled out and picked up the loop. When he got back to the line of soldiers he examined it. "Big cat of some kind. Probably a lion. They gave us the good stuff. Hopefully I just said, ‘Hi. We’re scary magicians but we’re friendly and willing to trade.’ Then again I could be saying ‘You’re uglier than your mother and she looks like something I scraped off my boot.’ They would probably be throwing those spears by now if I said that though."

  He continued the gift-giving process for a couple more rounds, leaving a couple of tins of spam that the Neanderthals obviously had no idea what to do with, but were fascinated by. Finally he used the key to partly open a can and left it on the stone. The Neanderthals passed it around, sniffing at it. Finally one gingerly wiped his fingers across the exposed meat and licked a little of the grease off of his fingers. When he didn't die, the others followed suit.

  The spam broke down the tension. The Neanderthals relaxed and smiled, showing formidable looking teeth, though they still kept their sharpened stones an
d spears handy.

  Roy improvised a few gestures that they seemed to understand, and asked, or at least thought he asked. if the soldiers could examine the boats. That took three more cans of spam, but the Neanderthals finally moved aside and let the soldiers through.

  The boats were stripped of every piece of metal, including nails. The metal lay in piles further up the beach. The Neanderthals deployed subtly but definitely between those piles and the soldiers.

  A man’s body lay on the beach. He was naked, with his clothes in a pile nearby. From the clothes it looked as though the dead guy was a civilian, probably a hostage.

  The Neanderthals didn't react when a medic examined the body. "Gunshot wound. Been dead a couple of days at a guess. Looks like somebody gave the Nazis too much trouble or tried to run away."

  Roy noticed a shallow trench and some heavy rocks near the body. Roy said, "Looks like they were going to bury him."

  "The Nazis or the Neander-whatevers?" the medic asked.

  "The Neanderthals. The Germans left before the last rain." Roy waved his hand, taking in the beach. "No boot prints, and the tide hasn't gone this high.”

  Roy finally managed to get enough communication going to ask if the Neanderthals had seen the German soldiers and their hostages. The Neanderthal who had tried the Spam first pointed inland. By that time they had exchanged names and the words for a few common objects. Roy tried to pronounce the Neanderthal’s name, but it consisted mainly of clicks and deep rumbles, and his attempts to say it provoked fits of laughter among the Neanderthals, laughter that the Neanderthal himself didn’t join. Roy pointed to his mouth and shook his head. “Bad!” He mentally labeled the Neanderthal “Joe” and added a last name out of the Tarzan series. “Joe Mangini.”

  “Joe” picked up English words fast, almost scary fast, though his pronunciation was atrocious. He seemed fascinated by the horses and dogs, especially after a soldier petted one of the dogs. His attention shifted to the horses when a group of soldiers swung up on them. The Neanderthals froze and stared at the mounted soldiers.

  The talkative guy, Walker according to his name-patch, sauntered over. “Horses seem to be a hit with the locals. By the way, I’m corporal Walker. Call me Jesse.” The guy held out his hand, then tried to crush Roy’s hand in the handshake. Roy refrained from turning the handshake into a test of strength. “Roy Fleming. I’ve been a sergeant a couple of times. Right now I’m a buck private again.”

  “Lot of people like that in this crew.” Jesse jerked his head toward the Neanderthals. “Those old boys stack on the muscle. I could probably take most of them in a boxing ring, but if they got those big hands of theirs on a guy and it was no-holds-barred wrestling, I don’t think there is a man alive who could hold his own.”

  Joe Mangini was watching the two of them. He tentatively held out his hand and said his name. Jesse shook his hand. Roy noticed that he didn’t try to put the squeeze on the Neanderthal’s hand. He would lose on that one. Like shaking hands with King Kong.

  A couple of guys lit cigarettes, which seemed to fascinate the Neanderthals even more than the dogs and horses. One of the soldiers offered ‘Joe’ a smoke, which he accepted before Roy could intervene. After the first puff, the Neanderthal coughed his lungs out, doubled over and looking like he was about to lose the spam he had eaten. The Neanderthals jumped back into potential enemy mode, but Roy managed to convince them with gestures and his limited stock of words that the soldier wasn’t trying to poison ‘Joe.’

  When the Neanderthal recovered enough to talk, he crushed out the cigarette and gestured to the pile of scrap metal and nails. Roy called the lieutenant over. “Mind if they keep the nails and scrap from the boats?”

  “Sure. We’re not going to carry that crap around.”

  “We’ll want to ask for something in return. From what I’ve seen of backcountry Indians, that metal is a treasure to them. These guys strike me as ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ types. Make it something small so they think they’re getting a deal, but big enough that they don’t think we’re idiots.”

  “What do they have that we want?”

  “A guide and a translator. We can’t go through this meeting and getting their confidence junk every time we meet a new group of these guys. We need someone along that speaks the language. I’m trying to learn enough of their talk that whoever we bring can’t tell the next tribe over to get together with his and slit our throats without me knowing about it, but I’m nowhere near that yet, and I’m keeping part of what I know close to my chest. It’s not good to let the other side know how much you know.”

  “And they’re the other side?”

  “Everybody is the other side, except maybe family and the people you grew up with, and sometimes even they’re the other side.”

  “You live in dark place, and you’re the one who makes it dark.”

  Roy shrugged. “Maybe I do.”

  They camped a few hundred yards down the beach from the Neanderthals that night and put guards out. So far they had seen no land animals larger than insects, but Roy suspected that was due to the animals having learned to fear man, rather than a lack of animals. A couple of times he thought he spotted bulky moving shapes in the forest, but couldn’t identify them, even with his field glasses.

  It was a clear night, dry and a little chilly. Roy bedded down in his bedroll and looked up at the stars. The constellations looked vaguely familiar, but distorted. The sky was dark and deep, full of stars. To the west, in the direction of Britain, the sky glowed faintly.

  "Looks like something is burning over there."

  Roy didn’t respond. He recognized it as the normal faint sky glow from a Britain still under blackout, but with an inescapable minimum of light permeating from human activities.

  "A lot of stars." He recognized Jesse's voice from a nearby bedroll. "I'm a city boy. I've never seen it this dark."

  "I have a time or two. In the hills east of where I grew up you can roam for days and not see a soul or any sign men have ever been there."

  "That's unusual in the twentieth century."

  "Not really. No roads up there. The land isn't good for much except for straggly little trees that aren't even worth cutting down, that and briars. If anybody owns it they aren't there much."

  "Good hunting country?"

  "If you know what you're doing. If you don't you’ll break your neck. There are caves and sinkholes up there. Springs come out of the hillside and creeks go into the hill and vanish."

  "You a hunter?"

  "Mostly bow hunting."

  "Like an Indian."

  "Yep. Just like an Indian." Roy turned quietly and wished that the guy would shut up. On the other hand, that left him alone with his thoughts, something he had avoided in the rush to get ready for this expedition. The reality of the situation pushed its way into his consciousness. You're alone. You're trapped. You'll never get back. He wished for a bottle of whiskey but the brass had carefully checked his stuff for that. They had almost not let him bring his bow, but he managed to at least salvage that.

  "Ride horses much?"

  Roy focused back on Jesse's voice in time to catch that question and the silence that followed it. He thought about pretending to be asleep, but finally said, 'Yeah. Wouldn't make much sense to be here if I didn't."

  "There are no roads here, of course," Jesse said. "That's why the horses make sense. Fastest way to travel if you don't have a car."

  Roy shook his head in the darkness. He's spooked and trying to get unspooked. Talking does it for him. I prefer silence and the bottle. I'm not as annoying. "It's going to be a long day. I'm shutting it down for the night."

  That didn't shut the guy up, but a few more hints finally did. That left Roy to stare up at the stars. As he tried to find a comfortable position he finally put his finger on something that had been nagging at the back of his mind for the past several days. It's not real. It can't be. Or maybe it
is but my brain isn't accepting it. He felt numb all over, as though he was feeling the world through a glove around his body. It wasn't a rubbery feeling, more like a thin cloth. That's in my head. My brain isn't accepting this. And if I'm not accepting it with my imagination and my reading and my adventures, how are the others managing? He mentally reran the day, examining his memories of the other men in the expedition. Almost all of them were quieter than he remembered from groups of soldiers he had been in other places. Could be the people they chose. Outsiders because they drink too much or don't talk enough, or they talk too much and annoy everyone around them.

  Roy tried to rationalize the feeling away, but it didn't leave. I wonder what Joe Mangini is thinking. Does he have that same feeling, like the bottom of his world has been ripped away and he's floating on a little piece of it? A little bubble of reality that is going to pop and leave him falling into a pit? Does he have enough imagination to be worried about us or are we just another unexplainable thing in a world he doesn’t understand and doesn’t question? Is he worried about what we’re going to do to his world? His way of life? If he isn’t, he should be. That little stack of scrap metal will change everything for him. It’ll make him rich. It’ll ignite wars. We shouldn’t let them have it, but we would have to kill them to get it away from them.

  His thoughts merged smoothly into dreams of falling and of struggling to breath in a world filled with a kind of pink cotton that pushed in on him from every direction, not crushing him, not heavy, but everywhere. Then his dreams took him back to his mom's kitchen, where a shiny yellow and white wood cooking stove yielded the aroma of eggs cooking. He could almost taste the wood-smoked goodness of eggs cooked on that stove, but then he looked down and saw that he was sinking into the floor, its surface warping like a deflating balloon. He jerked and woke himself up. The strange stars of this night sky stared down at him and he felt totally and wrenchingly alone.