Darwin's Quest: The Search for the Ultimate Survivor Page 11

  “OK, Corter, your turn. “

  I didn’t bother to argue. I went, and I went fast. I was on the bridge in a split second, across it to the waiting arms of the rest not much longer than that. I looked back to Hamlin. His feet were digging in, the dirt furrowed. He seemed to time it. Right after a fierce hit which open the door a foot or so before he as able to stop it, he took off, running for all he was worth. The door opened, and a huge black and red saurian head pushed out, snapping at him. A scaly shoulder followed, but the door was too small for the rest of it to make it through. It wasn’t T-Rex, but it was something almost as big, and equally as nasty.

  Hamlin didn’t stop to see if the beast made it out or not. He rushed the bridge and barely slowed down to cross the single strand. He dived to the ground and lay there, chest heaving as he tried to replenish his oxygen debt.

  My legs were trembling, my own chest heaving. After a few moments, and with several looks over our shoulders at the dinosaur still looking at us through the door, we slowly walked back to our campsite and sat down in exhaustion.

  We still didn’t know what had happened to the crew. We didn’t even have our food to call the trek a success. Then a thought hit me, and even as frazzled as I was, I had to smile. I reached in my pocket and took out the package of Lay’s Classics, much pulverized, but still there. I passed it around, and everyone took a small handful of crumbs.

  So, the trek wasn’t actually a total loss.

  Chapter 14

  “Ok big boy, take ‘em off for me.” Josh stood in front of me, one hand on his hip, the other hand out effeminately.

  Borlinga had never put her leggings, headwrap, and smock back on, but I put my jeans on after each time they were used for water. Josh had her clothing and now wanted my jeans.

  Yash laughed. “I knew you had a thing for Mr. Corter there!”

  “Well, he is kinda cute, in that Outerworlder way,” he retorted, his voice in an exaggerated affectation. “But you, Yashy, you’re the real one I want, so mysterious.”

  Yash put his hand on his chest and gave a mock bow as we all laughed.

  “Hey, you can have Corter, but hands off Yash! He’s mine!” Alfhid sputtered, laughing too hard to get it all out at once. She jumped up and rushed over to him, grabbing him in an embrace and lifting him off the ground before planting a kiss right on his dastar.

  It felt good to laugh. We had been a morose bunch the night before after getting back, and the morning hadn’t been much better. When Yash blushed, we broke into even more laughter, Ratt laughed so hard that she started gasping for air.

  “Well, if that’s the way you’re going to be…” Josh spun to flounce off, actually swaying his hips. I wondered what his legions of fans would think if they could see him then. Who would’ve thought he could cut loose and goof off like that? I wouldn’t have guessed he had a sense of humor, but maybe he had hidden it before, conscious of his sports image. Without an audience, though, why not joke around?

  “I’ll go with him.” Ratt jumped up and followed, still chuckling. Our alliances had pretty much broken apart. We were one group then, and Ratt seemed to be gravitating toward Josh. He was a good-looking man, to be sure, and he’d had a small amount of fame before, so I guessed that wasn’t too surprising. Even his surliness of the last couple of days hadn’t seemed to bother her.

  Alfhid let Yash go and started after them. “Well, Ratt isn’t going to be much help hauling that thing up, so I’d better go, too.” She walked off, her half-nakedness now the norm.

  I think the rest of us contemplated helping out, but despite the spasm of laughter, lethargy had crept into the camp. We were listless, waiting for something to happen, for someone to come get us. Wherever we were, the trip here from Earth had taken two weeks. So no matter what had happened in Production City, they had to have dispatched a ship to come get us, and that meant we only had to wait another week or a little more before we could leave this God-forsaken place. So we were just sitting here, waiting.

  We sat in silence for awhile until Mike said, for the umpteenth time, “It just doesn’t make sense. No power, but the river is flowing. No ships. No messages. Dinosaurs inside Production City.”

  We’d heard this before, so we didn’t bother responding. Mike was worrying the issue, his mind clamped on it like a bulldog, refusing to let go. The rest of us had gone beyond surprise and shock and just accepted it as the new norm.

  Hamlin was leaning back on the log we used for a bench, his eyes closed. I couldn’t tell if he was asleep, or if he just didn’t want to talk. Not that the rest of us were talking much, either. I decided I had to break the silence.

  “So, Lindadawn, after we do get back, what do you think your employees will think of you?” It wasn’t the most astute question, but I didn’t want Mike to get back into what was happening, and Lindadawn would probably be able to talk for awhile on it. And I wanted talking to fill in the silence.

  She gave a quiet chuckle. “Well, they probably expected me to take over from the git-go.”

  That might’ve been true. Lindadawn had started a machinery shop when she was 21, and now she sold pumps to the EU military. She had over thirty employees, and from what she had told us before, she ran a pretty tight ship.

  “Why didn’t you, then?” I asked.

  “Well, with Hamlin and Josh,” she nodded at Hamlin who hadn’t moved, “they seemed to be doing a good job. And I didn’t want to get in a pissing contest.”

  “What would’ve you done with the money if you won? You’ve never told us that.” Yash asked.

  “A million unis is a lot of money. I think I would’ve taken most of it for my business, to expand it.”

  “What about your family? Your sister in Rotterdam, or your mom in, where did you say she’s at?”

  “Stephenville, Newfoundland. She re-married a Canadian and went to live with him there.” She looked over at Mike. “Hey, you’re a US citizen. Do you know the streets in Stephenville are all named after US states? Weird, huh? So where was I? Oh yea, anyway, my mom is happy in Stephenville, writing her poetry. I see her once every couple of years. And my sister? She does quite well on her own, thank you. She doesn’t need my money.”

  Yash shook his head. “I couldn’t get away with that. With my family, my extended family, they would consider the money theirs as well. And Nirmal would be in charge of making sure we fixed up the house. And we’d have to take care of my mata and bibi, of course, but the rest, well, I guess that is up to how strong Nirmal is. I would leave it up to her.”

  “From what you’ve said, Nirmal is a strong woman.”

  “Yes, she is. Her name means, ‘pure,’ you know? And she is. I’m lucky to have found her.” His eyes started tearing up a bit. “I hope I get back to her soon.”

  Lindadawn sidled over to put her arms around his shoulder. “You will, you will. And you are a lucky man, extended family and all.”

  Josh and Alfhid came back around the corner, wet clothes held between them, Ratt following keeping some of Borlinga’s leggings from dragging in the dirt. They gave us a slightly dirty look as they walked up the basin and started to wring out the water. I felt a little guilty for sitting there while they worked, but not guilty enough to actually get up and help them. As they left to get another load, I studiously avoided catching their eyes.

  “You’ve been a little vague about your plans if you had won the money, Corter.” Lindadawn looked at me expectantly.

  I debated for a moment if I should tell them the truth. But we were in a contemplative mood, so I just decided to go for it.

  “I know I kind of hinted that it would go for students. And I kind of told the GBC interviewers that I wanted to start a school. And I do. Want to start a school, I mean. But I need to pay back my mom first of all. She financed my company, and I lost it all.” There. I’d said it. I had admitted I was a failure.

  “Lost it all?”

  “Yep, every uni.”

  “How did that happen?”
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  “Well, my mom, she scraped and saved, so when she retired, she had a nice nest egg. She wanted to travel, to see Earth, for example. Go on an Alaskan cruise. She had holos of the various cruise lines in her room, and she dreamed of that. I’d been working as a pipefitter at the spaceport since I was a teenager. And it was a good job. But I wanted something bigger. I thought I could start my own business, sort of like you, Lindadawn. My mom trusted me, trusted my vision. So she gave me the money. I was going to pay her back out of my profits. But unlike you, I failed. I pretty much crashed and burned. That was last year. And now my mom had to go back to work. She’s a processor at the chicken plant in town.” Borlinga grimaced at that—I guessed she knew what kind of job that was. “So then this came up, and I thought if I could win, I could pay her back, I could send her to Earth and on that cruise. And I wouldn’t be a failure.”

  I knew that sounded melodramatic even as I said it. This could have been written for a holo script. But this was my reality.

  “I don’t think you are a failure,” Lindadawn said quietly.

  “With all due respect, that’s easy for you to say. You didn’t fail.”

  We were interrupted by a loud screech reverberating down the curved entrance to the camp. We jolted upright, looking at each other. Then my telltale vibrated. Someone had died. We jumped up, grabbed our spears, and rushed out the entrance to where Alfhid and Ratt were standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down.

  Ratt looked back at us, tears in her eyes. “It’s Josh,” she said simply.

  I moved forward to look over her shoulder. Down in the water, already a couple of hundred meters downstream, the pterosaur was struggling to stay afloat. It couldn’t seem to get its wings out of the clutching current. There was no sign of Josh.

  “What happened?” Hamlin grabbed Alfhid, spinning her around.

  She gathered herself. “We were just…we…Josh and me were pulling up the water, and then…”

  “That fucking flying devil swopped down and took him,” interrupted Ratt. “It just knocked him over the side. But he grabbed it, and he was too heavy for it, and he took it with him.” She broke down sobbing.

  “In Haven? It attacked him in Haven?” Yash asked incredulously.

  Lindadawn took Ratt in her arms as the rest of us watched the still struggling pterosaur get swept around the bend and out of sight.

  “How the hell would a golem cross into Haven?” Mike asked. “A biobeast, maybe, or a natural. If it could cross the bridge, and something lured it here. But a golem has to be programmed.”

  “But they’ve go their AI function, right? And if the directors in Production City are gone, then couldn’t the AI take over?” I asked.

  “Well, maybe,” he conceded. “But it doesn’t seem right to me.

  Losing Josh, one of our strongest cast members, was bad enough. But losing him inside of Haven? That was really, really bad.

  Chapter 15

  Losing Josh brought us right back down again. We sat quietly lost in our own thoughts. Then Ratt stood in front of us, the smoked venison in one hand, the other hand holding shut her nose. We could smell the rotten decay. Somehow, over the last couple of hours since morning, the meat had spoiled. It had looked fine and tasted fine when I’d had some for breakfast, but it was clearly inedible now.

  Ratt threw it in the fire, and putrid smoke rose around us. But I could understand that she hadn’t wanted to go to the river and chuck it there. The pterosaur was probably gone, but who knows what else might be out there?

  So we’ve got no food now, and only a bit of water. What now?” Hamlin glanced at Lindadawn after asking.

  I wondered if Hamlin was withdrawing. I hoped not. We needed him if we were going to get out of this.

  “If you are asking me, we need more water, so we’ve got to haul it here. But everyone goes. And if you are not hauling, you’re armed, and you’re protecting the rest.”

  Ratt started to protest, but Hamlin got up and said, “You heard the lady. Let’s go.”

  I had been sitting with my spear beside me, so I just got up and joined Hamlin walking out. We gathered at the opening to Haven’s entrance, scanning the area outside. Nothing was moving.

  “Corter, Yash, and Alfhid, help me secure the area. The rest of you, you’ve got to haul up the water.”

  That put our weakest people hauling up the water, but that made sense to me. The stronger ones would be protecting them.

  Thank goodness we had tied off the rope to the bridge stanchion. The four water haulers reached down, and with a lot of grunting and groaning, they got the water to the top. Mike untied the mass of wet clothing, then we all rushed back inside the camp.

  “We’re missing some here,” Mike said.

  Sure enough, while my jeans were still there, it looked like Borlinga’s headwrap and maybe one legging had been torn away in the raging torrent. Well, there was no help for that. We just might have to make more trips. At least the water bundle wouldn’t be as heavy for them to pull up.

  We had to make four more trips before the basin was full. Nothing threatened us, though. The next thing we had to get was food. We could last some time with only water, but not knowing when we would be evacuated, it made sense to get some food while we were still relatively strong. Yash was all for going back for the huge trout, but Lindadawn pointed out that with fewer people, we might not be able to corral them as we did before. I don’t think any of the rest of us wanted to make that climb down, exposed as we would be.

  Mike suggested snaring one of the rabbits which we could see occasionally scampering around. That sounded like the best alternative, so we shaved one of the remaining vines with Yash’s knife to make several thin strings. He and Lindadawn made a trigger assembly for a twitch-up snare so we could get in and out as fast as possible. We walked to the bridge head, and pointing our over the clearing, we tried to pick the likeliest spots from there in Haven, which we considered still slightly safer than Indian Country. While we were talking, a rabbit bounded out, snapped up some grass and scratched its ear with its big hind foot before taking a hop back into the underbrush.

  “I’m going to take that as a sign,” said Alfhid.

  That seemed as good a reason as any. While all of us had learned to make snares before we came, Lindadawn assured us that she was very competent at it. So she became our designated snareman.

  “Once we get across, Yash, Alfhid, and Corter, you join me in front,” ordered Hamlin, back in charge. “Let’s make sure nothing’s there first. Lindadawn, you and the rest follow in trace. You can set the snares up while we stand guard.”

  Once across, the vanguard pushed into the brush on the other side of the clearing, forming a small perimeter. Lindadawn, Mike, Borlinga, and Ratt looked for likely spots. Lindadawn selected a whippy sapling near a small run, bent it over, giving it to Mike to hold. She attached the string to it, then felt the pull it exerted as it tried to spring back up. Satisfied, she bent down to start emplacing the trigger assembly. She carefully pulled down the noose and hooked it in place. I wanted to watch more, but I could only get glimpses as I scanned the green in front of me for anything big and angry. I could hear her and Mike discuss the snare, though.

  “OK,” she said at last. “Now for a drag noose.”

  We all moved over to a second run about ten meters away. As the four guards arranged ourselves, she and Mike started blocking off the run, leaving only a small opening through which a rabbit could squeeze. She quickly set up the noose.

  “I wish we had some rabbit urine to rub on this. I don’t want them to smell us.”

  I was glad that she seemed to know what she was doing. Like most of the other survival skills, I had taken a quick class on snares, but I wasn’t sure I could actually build a working one.

  We carefully stepped back and into the clearing. My eyes kept darting back and forth to spot the danger I knew was coming, but we made it back without incident.

  Back at the campsite, we couldn’t rea
lly watch the area where we’d placed the snares, so first Yash moved back toward the entrance, and pretty soon, the rest of us had followed. We didn’t stray far, With our backs against the rock walls forming the curved entryway, we could see across the small flat area on our side of the bridge, then over it and the clearing on the other side, and finally into the undergrowth where we had placed the snares. We couldn’t see the drag noose, of course, but the bent sapling was barely visible against the backdrop of the taller trees which rose up behind it.

  It was late morning by then, so whatever rabbits or other small animals were probably resting quietly in their burrows or wherever rabbits rested. We didn’t have rabbits on Monsanto, so I really didn’t know. But we sat there, moving to shadows on the other side of the wall as the sun exposed us. Several times we heard roars of some sort off in the distance, and once we saw branches move as something came close to the clearing, but it was actually quite boring.

  Mike went back into camp for a moment and returned with a few pieces of loose flint and a length of Borlinga’s leggings. Tying one end around his wrist, he grasped the other end in the same hand, forming a loop. He put a piece of flint in the bottom of the loop, then stood and went to the edge of the cliff, off to one side of the bridge. I think he was looking for any sign of a target, but nothing moved. He started twirling the makeshift sling over his head a number of times, then let go. The piece of flint arched aimlessly over the river gorge to land in the clearing.

  I managed to keep in the chuckle that threatened to escape me. At least he was trying something. I was just sitting there on my butt. Yash jumped up and demanded a try. His throw (was what one did with a sling a “throw?” Or perhaps a “slung?” I certainly didn’t know) was a little better, but not by much. Hamlin and I passed on the opportunity to try, but the others all took a couple of shots. The artificial rock that made up Haven didn’t offer much in the way of loose stones, and with a limited number of flint pieces, no one got more than three tries. It seemed that using a sling was not an inherent skill. No one seemed too competent. While the sling might not have become our new super weapon, it did help to pass the time.