Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever (11 page)

Fresh meat is always welcome, but they have also mastered the art of smoking and salting so they can survive during times of least abundance. In milder temperatures, they pick berries and sometimes larger fruits, drying and curing them much like they do animal flesh so their skin does not turn yellow in the winter.

All her memories of the hunt flee when she hears the snapping of twigs and the rustle of something just beyond her vision. The others hear it too. The strong grab for their spears and prepare for whatever is about to come.

~~~

Cassie opened her eyes. Not at the insistence of the jarring tone of the alarm clock, but to the sound of static buzzing over a talk radio personality, the white noise so overpowering it made his voice unintelligible.

Impatiently, she shut off the radio alarm, thinking she must have hit the wrong button when she set it the night before. Looking around, she saw that drab walls had replaced the wide expanse of Neanderthal territory. But she was still cold.

Jon was right, it seemed. While the realization saddened her, it also left her relieved. Shopping for food yesterday
had
informed her dreams. No matter how real they seemed
,
that’s all they were — dreams. How long she would have them she didn’t know, but she could rest assured that her memory wasn’t regressing somewhere in time. She only had the real world and her real challenges and struggles to deal with. And wasn’t that enough? Did she really need more than her day-to-day life?

Yet the emotional remnants of the dream, that feeling of icy loneliness, continued to haunt her.

During the familiar bout with cold cereal, she tried to watch the morning news. Static whispered through the speakers. She flipped through every station — all the same. She couldn’t even listen; white noise captured all the sound. She worried about sunspots and mused to herself about Mercury going retrograde, but reasoned in the end that it was only the cable company messing up the signal again.

The subway train shook and rattled, hummed and screeched, vibration communicating from the track into the passengers. This time Cassie found a spot above and to the left of a rider facing her. In her peripheral vision, his eyes appeared to be looking right at her even though they were not, yet she couldn’t seem to vanquish the feeling.

At the exhibit, throngs of patrons entered while she watched from a dark corner. She buttoned her sweater; even all the body heat that radiated from the crowd couldn’t take the chill from her bones today.

The cacophony of voices echoed off the walls and the ceiling. She couldn’t understand them; all she could do was watch. Children ran from mothers who scolded them, couples held hands and strolled through the bedlam trying to reach the brightly lit case, and all, no matter how bored some looked, marveled at the woman who had traveled from another age to be with them today.

Jon walked over to her and gave her a knowing smile.

“You were right,” Cassie tried to say over the din.

Jon just motioned to his ears and shrugged his shoulders.

~~~

A group of five men more refined in their looks than the males in her tribe approach them cautiously. Like them, the strangers are similarly dressed in skins and furs tanned from animals that had provided them food and now provide them warmth. Their faces hold a regal symmetry and are painted with what her waking self would recognize as manganese dioxide — brownish-black streaks beneath each eye to catch the glare of the sun. They hold spears as agile as their bodies must be, and whether they are friend or foe, no one in her tribe can tell.

They call out, but neither side can understand the other. That doesn’t matter to her, though, and for perhaps the first time in her life she isn’t afraid.

One man stands out to her and his eyes compel her to approach. The others in her tribe call out to her. She hears them only dimly and can’t understand their words — but even if she could, she wouldn’t care. Dropping her spear, she trusts that simple act of supplication to convey the understanding that she means no harm. In acknowledgement, the men lower theirs as well.

The man with the compelling eyes watches her as she walks toward him, and she can’t tell if it is confusion or recognition that shows on his face. The same face with dark eyes; narrow nose; and thin, inviting lips that she, having now found, can’t imagine being without. And she finds the ability to say these words that mean nothing and yet mean everything that she has ever wanted to say and has ever wanted to express:

“Unka sabo
uv
.”

And all he can do is
stare
.

~~~

She watches her life unfold from this moment as her tribe integrates with the early humans. Love blossoms in the spring and grows stronger in the summer. The birth of a new spring also brings the birth of her child — one, like so many others, that heralds the birth of the modern human race. For the first time, she is alive, so alive that the heartache intrinsic to a harsh existence is as fully realized as her new-found joy. She allows it all to wash over her; at least she isn’t cold anymore.
 

~~~

Cassie sat, enjoying an iced latte in an outdoor café. Spring had arrived and today the weather was as idyllic as it had been in her childhood. She wasn’t cold or warm but in that perfect place between extremes. Looking out at the passers-by, she thought she caught a glimpse of someone familiar walking
down
the far sidewalk. But his features were obscured by distance, telephone poles and other walkers.

Cassie left her cup on the grated metal table and walked past the partition that corralled the patrons who drank their drinks and continued their conversations. She hurried across the street, approaching the man at an angle.

He dressed similar to her in a navy suit and dark shoes. In his face, she saw familiar dark eyes, narrow nose, and thin lips, although this face was slightly fuller and the beard had given way to a clean shave. And she found the ability to say these words that meant nothing and yet meant everything she had ever wanted to say and had ever wanted to express:

“Unka sabo
uv
.”

And the man in the suit could do nothing but stare.
         

~~~

DAVID NORTH-MARTINO’s fiction has appeared in
Dark Recesses Press, Afterburn SF, The Swamp,
and New England Horror Writer’s inaugural anthology:
Epitaphs
(
http://www.amazon.com/Epitaphs-Journal-England-Horror-Writers/dp/0982727593
). He is also hard at work on his first novel. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, he holds a BLA in English and psychology. When he’s not writing, David enjoys studying and teaching martial arts. He lives with his very supportive wife in a small town in Massachusetts.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/dnorthmartino

Blog:
http://davidnorthmartino.wordpress.com/

Blog:
http://davidnorthmartino.blogspot.com/

TWEEN TIMES

Mythic tales and near-future accounts that could have been and could easily still be

With human hunters decimating his sleuth, Kerg concocts a desperate plan for survival. Just one problem — he isn’t the only one looking out for family.

TWILIGHT OF THE CLAW

by
Adam Dunsby

I swing my paw at the man’s head. His hair twists in my claws as he dies. A grunt alerts me when the remaining man throws his spear. It passes over my shoulder, cutting a small channel in my fur, drawing a line of blood. I reel, but instead of killing this small thing immediately, my frustration bursts from me, and I roar, my breath blowing the long, black hair from his face.

“Go,” I bellow. “Go from our land!”

I wait to see if he will run. He doesn’t. His face says defiance. I bite and shake — not fast, for I am no longer young, but firmly, as only an age-toughened body can — and the man dies with a weak groan. I’m surprised he gives me that small satisfaction.

Tur lies dead. He was a mighty bear. I swipe at the ravens that peck his wounds. I’ve left them plenty of men to feed on. A spear protrudes from Tur’s throat.
A lucky hit.
The men are not even good throwers, but there are many of them. Their luck is adding up.

We are now the hunted.

My young cub Kip bounds past me and tugs at a man’s stolen skin — camel, it smells like. This land has been my greatest ally and greatest enemy. Some days it has offered up both slow prey and heavy fruit; some
days
powerful storms, drought, or disease. But in the end, it has always relented — clinging to us as we cling to it. And for Kip and his cubs it will be the same. Or so I have always believed.

Near the horizon a line of smoke rises, disappearing into the thin clouds.
A raven lands on Kip’s back as he noses over a body.

I decide. Leave. We must leave.

~~~

The bears come from all directions. All who are
left.
I count 33. Two more lost to man, not counting Tur. And the bears of this year are not the bears of last, when men were but a curiosity — just one more meal offered up by the plain. Some of the bears limp. Ribs protrude.

I begin before the young males start fighting. Though tonight it will be a fight between the old males I fear.

I stand on my hind legs. “Man! They come in greater and greater numbers. We can no longer pretend. We have no choice. We must leave. Find new lands.”

A roar of shock is their response.

Bek rises to his hind legs. The low sun makes the scars on his torso appear to bleed afresh. When his father took the Ancestor Walk, he and I were the two candidates for Dominance. I won. But Dominance is like a hillside of rocks: impressive to the eye, but not so hard to send tumbling.

“Kill them,” he cries. “Kill them all!”

I respond before the shouts of approval can drown me out. “We have killed them, and still they come. We have found their cubs and killed
them
, and still more men come. Their numbers grow. Even if we kill ten of them for every one of us, this land will become theirs. We must cross the river.”

Bears shout, but to my surprise, cries of “It’s time!” blend with “Never!”

To my side, Kip rubs against his mother. I look out. Yes, Bek’s cub is crouching in his shadow.

“Bek!
Look at the cub at your side. What you say is fine for you.
But what of her?
You shall go down a hero, dragging thirty men with you. But there will be thirty more behind them. And thirty more after that! When you are gone, and when the rest of these warriors live only in stories, what will become of her?”

Bek does not respond immediately, and in that gap Grot stands. He is the oldest of us. “What do we do, Kerg?”

A bear snarls, and Grot silences him with a glare. As the saying goes, an old bear at least has luck.

 
“We must cross the river,” I say.
“Now.
Soon the spring flood will be upon us, and we will be stranded here, on this side.”

“Kerg,” says Grot, “man is at the river.
At the crossing spot.
He will stand on the ledges and cast spears down.”

Many bears now speak at once. It feels like I stand amid a flock of geese. But let them talk. It is better if they convince themselves.

“The mammoths.”
All talking ceases. Bek steps forward. “If mammoth and bear rush the river at once, there will be too many for the men to kill. Most of us will make it.”

“What makes you think the Grey Tusks will leave the plain?” asks a warrior bear.

Bek looks at the cub huddled against him and says nothing.

~~~

This time of year, the Gray Tusks will be on the far side of the south hills. The grass always comes in there first. It’s a warm day, and the warmth rouses the flies. They burrow under my fur and bite.

I rear up, snap pointlessly at a fly, and sort through the smells. Budding
osage
trees, camel dung, a bison carcass — my mouth moistens; I’ll explore the carcass on the way back — and, yes, mammoths, just over this next run of hills.

The adult mammoths search for new grass. The young bulls, bursting with clumps of fresh brown hair, lock tusks and twist heads. But these normal activities deceive; this herd was once much greater. And there were two other herds.
Dead or left?
I don’t know.

I recognize Old Mother from the gray streaks in her faded brown ears. I trot down the hill toward her, but make it no more than fifteen paces before two bulls rush up and block my path. I offer a guttural growl, but they don’t give way. One scrapes the ground with the arched nails of his foot, signaling a charge.