Darwin's Quest: The Search for the Ultimate Survivor Read online

  It didn’t take us long to get ready. This was a far different crew from the group that had set out to catch trout, so full of energy and hope just a short time ago.

  I seemed to have been somehow ceded the point man position. I didn’t really want it, but I accepted it. I had my spear at the ready as I moved carefully down the trail. The crew hadn’t tried to hide it, but even a novice tracer could back-track along the huge three-toed footprints left by my killer. Birds twittered alongside us, and each tiny motion in the brush instantly brought up images of Hell Pigs or T-Rexes. My adrenaline was pumping as we moved along.

  Lindadawn stopped us once and moved to the side of the path. She knelt to dig up something, a root from the looks of it. She sniffed it, then grimaced and threw it away.

  “Sorry about that. I thought it looked like a yam plant. I guess I should’ve paid more attention to that class.”

  I had never eaten a yam. We didn’t have them on Monsanto. (I guess we farmed only about 30% of the plants cultivated on Earth.) But I would’ve liked to try one. I would’ve liked to try about anything by then.

  We walked on. Something or some things big crashed by in the near distance, followed by squeals and roars. The noise ended mid-squeal. An animal, construct or natural, had just died. I shuddered and moved on.

  We came around a bend in the trail, and we could smell a cloying sweetness in the air.

  “It’s mango!” said Ratt in a stage whisper.

  I moved carefully forward until I saw an orangish fruit on the ground in front of me. Kneeling, eyes still scanning in front of me. I picked it up. It was mushy and long past its expiration date, but I bit into it. An almost overpowering sweetness filled my mouth. I was lost in ecstasy as I swallowed. Juice and bits of fruit dribbled down my chin.

  I turned to show the others what it was when a snuffling, grunting sound got my attention. I spun back around, mango forgotten for the moment. I couldn’t see what was making the noise until it moved from in back of some bushes. The Hell Pig was harvesting mangos as well, head down, small tail held high. I don’t think it knew we were there yet.

  I slowly backed up to the others. They must have seen from my expression that something bad was in front of us.

  “Yea, Ratt, there are mangos there. A bunch of trees, I think. But the Hell Pig’s there, too. And I think he is claiming the mangos as his.”

  “I guess that’s that,” said Lindadawn, starting to edge back.

  “Wait a minute, let’s think this through,” Hamlin stopped her. “We need those mangos, unless you know of somewhere better to get something to sustain us. And the pig backed away from us last time. I think we can drive him off.”

  “It killed October,” Borlinga reminded him.

  “Yes, but that’s because she attacked it. When we went forward together, it ran off.”

  “I think we can kill that thing.” Ratt shocked us into silence.

  “No, really. Think of it. That’s not a real prehistoric killer. It’s a pig or something, engineered into what looks like the devil. And we eat pigs in Thailand. We can kill it. Just hit it in the throat right here,” she indicated a spot on her neck. “And we have all the food we’ll need until rescue comes.”

  “Pig or not, that’s still one big, huge monster,” Lindadawn said.

  “I’m just sick and tired of sitting here waiting for things to happen to us. We need to take what we want.”

  In a way, I understood what she was saying. I hated being the victim. On the other hand, I didn’t want to face that thing with only a flint-tipped spear.

  “Super Ratt, you’re a fierce little bitch,’ Alfhid told her. “I’ve gotta give you that. But as much as I would love some fried bacon, I think we can skip that for now.”

  “I’m just saying it, you know?”

  “I know, sweetie, and we love you for that.”

  “I’m still not convinced that we should even try to drive him off. Are some mangos really worth it?” Lindadawn continued.

  “I have to go with Lindadawn here,” Borlinga agreed. I couldn’t help noticing that her fake syntax was fading. With most of us in on it, maybe it didn’t seem worth the effort when things were on the line.

  Hamlin looked back down the trail. “I’m going to stay out of this one,” I was surprised to hear him say. “Ratt and Alfhid, I assume you want to drive it off and get some mangos?”

  They both nodded in agreement.

  “And Lindadawn and Borlinga, you want to pull back and think of something else, some other way to get some food?”

  “It seems to be the most prudent thing to do,” answered Lindadawn.

  He looked at me. “I’m going along with the majority, whatever that is. What do you say?”

  I looked at five expectant faces peering at me. I admired and respected Lindadawn, and she was usually right. But my heart went with Ratt. I wanted to strike back at all the crap thrown at us. And it had readily backed down before.

  “I say we get some mangos.” Rat looked thrilled, but Lindadawn’s eyes furrowed as if she felt betrayed. I looked away. “But that means driving it off. Not actually attacking it.”

  “OK, OK,” Ratt readily agreed. “Just drive the bastard off.”

  We started planning it out. We didn’t want to surround it. We needed to give it an avenue of escape. So we decided to make a concerted front and move that to it in lock-step, shouting and making a nuisance of ourselves.

  I crept forward to spot it again. For a moment I thought it might have already wandered off, but then I saw it in the dappling of the sunlight coming through the trees. It grunted happily as it foraged.

  I came back to tell the others, and we all crept down the far side of the trail. When we got even to where I had last seen it, on Hamlin’s signal, we all got up and started shouting.

  The grunting stopped, and suddenly, we could see the beast, yellow eyes glaring at us. It stamped one of its surprisingly dainty-looking feet at us, but it didn’t charge.

  “OK, move forward,” Hamlin directed us.

  We stamped our feet and edged forward, still shouting.

  “Get away from our mangos, you piece of shit!” screamed Ratt, while the rest of us shouted mere incoherent noises.

  The beast was getting extremely agitated. It suddenly hit me, watching it swing its head back and forth, that its eyesight was probably pretty bad, that it couldn’t make out what we were.

  “Wave your arms,” I shouted, figuring it needed to see us before it turned and ran.

  We were pretty close to it by then, and when we started waving our arms, it wheeled away. But it was up against a tree trunk, and as it wheeled, its little hind hoofs slipped on the ripe mangos underfoot, and it bounced off the tree. Falling over to its back, it waved its legs helplessly in the air for a moment.

  That instant of helplessness was all Ratt needed to forget her promise. With a shriek, she plunged forward, spear pointed at the huge beast’s belly. Before she could cross the short distance to it, though, the Hell Pig scrambled up. Ratt’s spear never even hit it, and the huge head turned, mouth snapping closed on Ratt’s side.

  It didn’t worry her or keep biting. It let go just as Alfhid, with a battle cry worthy her Viking ancestors rushed forward, spear straight and true in her good arm, steadied with her recovering bad one. She might have been trying for the throat as Ratt had suggested, but the spear missed and plunged deep into the thing’s shoulder. It roared in pain and flung its head, sending Alfhid flying up against the tree trunk. She fell bonelessly to the ground.

  Our telltales vibrated.

  The Hell Pig swung around to look back at us, spear sticking out of its shoulder. It started to move, and for a moment, my perspective was such that I thought it was charging. But it was trying to run, to get away from its tormentors.

  It crashed off through the bushes, and the four of us rushed forward. Alfhid looked OK, as if she was going to get up in a moment, laughing it off. But she was still. I checked her pulse without hop
e. The telltales didn’t lie. She was gone. I eased her down, and her head flopped on a loose neck.

  I looked over to where the others were on Ratt. She looked pretty bad. There was so much blood flowing from her side, so much for such a tiny body.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying.

  “Hush, Super Ratt,” Lindadawn soothed her. “It’s OK.”

  “I just thought it was helpless, and I wanted to kill it, I wanted it dead because of Paul, because of Tobie, because of the others….” Her voice trailed off.

  Lindadawn looked up at us, tears in her eyes as she shook her head.

  “Tell Alfhid that …”

  Our telltales vibrated again. In thirty seconds, we had lost two of us. Just like that. For a pig that was running, that had wanted to run away.

  Borlinga stood up and started to strip Ratt of her clothes. I grabbed her arm.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Borlinga looked at me with her calm eyes. “We still need food. This doesn’t change that. And unless you can carry all we need in your hands, we can use her clothes as a pack. Along with your jeans and shirt, along with my shirt. With anything we can.”

  I wanted to object, but couldn’t. She was right. I looked down at Super Ratt’s body. The punctures looked so huge against her tiny lifeless frame, but still, there were only the four bite marks. The rest of her body seemed fine, but now so helpless lying on the jungle ground.

  We didn’t bother taking off Alfhid’s shorts. They would not have held much. With our makeshift packs, we picked up as many mangos as we could carry. I was actually loaded down with my jeans and shirt full of them. Hamlin had filled his pants and had taken Ratt’s shirt.

  As soon as we were finished, we trudged back, four naked apes burdened by our gathering. I was still nominally point, but I doubt I could have done much had anything attacked. I didn’t even glance back for one last look at Ratt and Alfhid. I couldn’t.

  Chapter 21

  I groaned, feeling my stomach cramp up again. “Ah, shit,” I exclaimed, no pun intended. The mangos had been delicious, but now Lindadawn and I were paying the price. While I had never had it before, I knew this was what they meant by “explosive diarrhea.”

  I wasn’t even bothering with the nasty toilet. I made my way outside the camp and over to the far corner of the entrance, away from the bridgehead, where I grabbed the ends of the remaining vines and did my best to get most of it down into the river. This was miserable.

  I was about done with the latest evacuation when I looked up from this peculiar vantage point and saw something that chilled my heart. I pulled myself back up and got up close for a better look, squatting low to get my face as close to the ground as possible.

  Haven was all artificial. It might look like rock, but we knew it had been molded and formed. But a layer of dust had blown on it since we had been here. And very faintly, not noticeable unless your face was at the right angle, I saw the distinct impression of a large three-toed footprint.

  I had taken off my jeans before I had shit, not wanting to risk getting them dirty, so I pulled them back on, feeling a little of the mango stickiness that two attempts at washing had not been able to erase. I ran back to the other three.

  “You getting better?” Borlinga asked, concern on her face.

  I didn’t bother to answer. “Come here,” was all I said.

  I led them back, merely pointing to the track. At first, they couldn’t see it, but when I told them to get lower, the reality that portrayed hit home.

  “They’ve been here,” was all that Hamlin said.

  “Here, on Haven? How could they get here?” Lindadawn was perplexed.

  We looked at the bridge. I looked back at Hamlin, who nodded.

  “It has to come down.”

  “Wait,” Lindadawn said. “OK, I see your point. But let’s check the snares one last time. Otherwise, it’s mangos until we get rescued, and most of those were too far along to dry well.”

  Hamlin nodded. We got our spears and made a quick check, but the snares were empty. We hurriedly returned and got back on Haven. I took out Yash’s knife and began sawing on the nearest horizontal rope supports for the bridge. The knife bit in easily for a few millimeters before stopping dead. I looked at it, puzzled, before scraping with the blade to reveal a synthetic core to the rope. I checked the other supports. All were the same. The bridge was made to look like natural rope, but it was really an un-cuttable modern bridge.

  We discussed our options. None of us wanted to share Haven with whatever was big enough to make those tracks. Finally, we decided to barricade the bridge. Taking one of our two ropes, we formed a latticework in the middle of the bridge, making it pretty hard for anything to cross. We thought about using our last rope to build another one, but we would need that one for water.

  We would also post watches. No more sitting back at camp, oblivious to whatever was going on across the bridge. Lindadawn and I, still suffering the effects of the mangos, volunteered to take the first watch, sending Hamlin and Borlinga back to try to get some sleep.

  Lindadawn and I sat down, backs against the rock wall. We looked out over the reservation, the setting sun bringing out the colors the old photographers so coveted.

  “It really is beautiful, in spite of everything,” Lindadawn said quietly.

  I knew what she meant. The set designers had done an Emmy-worthy job on the massive set. A few full-length holos had also been made here, between Darwin’s Quest seasons, and there was little wonder why.

  We looked up to Fuji-yama in the distance.

  “You know, every other season had to climb that. A lot of cast members died on it. Even Pete Harrow died there, on that transverse, before he got voted back and won Season One. I think we’re the first cast never to go to there,” I mused.

  “Well, I think we are the first cast for a lot of things, most of them bad.”

  “You’ve got that right. Too bad we had to sign that waiver. You’ve got lawsuit limits on most of Earth, but we don’t. I wonder what would happen if I took GBC to court over this?”

  She laughed. “Oh, GBC would hire some hotshot lawyer who would convince the jury that all of this was your fault, and you’d have to pay them for the pterosaur Josh killed, or the rabbits we snared.”

  “Don’t forget the mangos!

  “How could I forget them? And now that you’ve reminded me, I think I need to go give some of them back.”

  She went without any degree of shyness and let the cramps run their course as I watched off in the distance. It was amazing what a week or so of an emergency would do. Before I came, I would never have dreamed that I could watch someone take a shit without suffering extreme embarrassment. And while guarding the camp, it was no big deal. Just biology.

  She finished and came back to sit next to me, our legs touching companionably.

  “Do you regret it?” she asked.

  “Regret what? Coming on Darwin’s Quest?”

  “Yea.”

  I thought about it. “Yes and no. I certainly regret what has happened. I wish we could have been like every other season. People die and come back. One person wins and becomes famous. And gets lots of money, too. But would I do it again? Maybe.”

  “Really, you’d do it again?”

  “I know that sounds weird. And I am truly sorry for the others, the ones who really died. But that would’ve happened whether I was here or not. And if we get back…”

  “Yea, IF we get back.”

  “If we get back, well, we’re going to be famous. We may not get the official prize, but we can certainly turn this into something. A book deal, if nothing else. And I can pay my mom back.”

  “I guess I’m a little less commercial than you. Not that I’m criticizing you.” She grabbed my arm to emphasize that point. “I just don’t think I would want to go through all this if I had the choice. And if we don’t get back?”

  “Aye, there’s the rub. Well, if we don’t get back, if
we die out here, you can come haunt my ghost and tell me I was wrong.”

  “Deal,” she said, and she leaned back and watched the sun get lower in the sky. We shared a special companionship then, the same sort of brotherhood soldiers shared, or at least, what the Holowood writers told us they shared.

  As the light started to fade, she grabbed my arm again.

  “Look, over there.”

  I looked, and a huge, flightless (I hoped flightless, that is) bird stepped out of the jungle. It had to be close to three meters tall. My first thought was that it might be some sort of huge ostrich, but that comparison was very out-of-whack. Its legs were huge and evilly taloned. Its solid-looking body was covered in a rainbow of feathers, although Mike’s comments on colors stuck with me. They made for good holos, but that was about it as far as accuracy to some ancient bird-of-prey.

  And where an ostrich has a long, elegant neck and small head, the neck on this thing rivaled that of a T-Rex in proportion to its body. The head was quite a bit larger than an ostrich’s, and the beak was a work of menace. Not curved like an eagle’s, it was a massive thing, obvious able to impale or crush whatever its owner wished to kill.

  The bird stood still as it looked across the clearing at us. Casually, it walked up to the bridge. I gripped my spear, but this thing somehow frightened me more than even the T-Rex. Intelligence seemed to radiate from its eyes as it watched us. I was about to tell Lindadawn to go get the others when it just as casually turned around and walked off, fading from sight into the jungle.

  “What the hell was that?” Lindadawn asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, and I’m sure I don’t want to find out,” I answered.

  Chapter 22

  It was Borlinga and Hamlin’s watch, but since we were not asleep, Lindadawn and I decided to sit with them. The sun was bearing down on us, but like most days on the reservation, the weather was comfortable. We sat in the shade and relaxed.

  My body must have been getting used to the mangos as I seemed to be keeping them inside me better. Lindadawn had a few twinges of diarrhea left, but we were regaining our strength.