Eric Flint - Time spike

Nickerson nodded, his jaws tight. She tightened her own jaws. "And now comes the worst part. Don't take the time to bury it. It's not worth the risk. You'll be running enough risk just carrying the body. Not too much, I don't think, if you do it right away. But if you leave it lying while you take the time to dig a grave deep enough that scavengers wouldn't just pull it up, it'll start to go ripe in this heat and moisture. Don't forget that most predators are also scavengers." Frank was holding his breath. Suddenly, he let it out in a little burst. "Shit," he said. But it wasn't an argument, it was just a pained acknowledgement of the truth. "Just pick your spot, dump the corpse, and then hightail it back here. We can make up some kind of memorial for Joe later." She knew Frank would have already thought of everything she was saying. But telling him what to do made it easier for her to leave, somehow. She handed Nickerson the knife. "You may as well take this too, I guess." But Frank shook his head. "Not a chance, Marie. It's the only real tool and weapon you have. Not much of the first and even less of the second, but it's something. It might save your life, and I can't see where it's critical for us one way or the other. If we need cutting edges, there are stones around we can use to sharpen belt buckles." She decided he was probably right, and tucked the knife away. She was on the verge of giving Frank some more advice, but stopped herself. At this point, she was just jabbering at the man. He and Barbara Ray went with her to the creek. Once they got there, she knelt and soaked her T-shirt in the water, then rolled it loosely and wrapped it in some big leaves they'd found from a plant that looked tropical but wasn't any plant she knew. That was the closest thing to a water bottle they could manage. She should be able to find enough water along the way to keep it water-logged. She started to get up but Frank pointed at the creek. "Not so fast. You need to hydrate as much as you can before taking off." He was right.

She was just feeling nervous and wanting to get on with it. "Thanks."

She dropped to the ground and drank as much as she could hold. The water would bring her body temperature down, and that would mean she would have to burn extra calories to warm back up. But for now, the calories were something she could spare more than she could the risk of searching for water along the way. Water drew animals and animals drew predators. "Marie," Barbara said, tears in her eyes. "I would go if I thought I could do it." "I know, Barbara. I'll be fine." "Do you think you can find Andy and Jenny?" The nurse looked toward the cave entrance. "I wouldn't even know where to start." "Rod told me where they were going. It's about a two-day journey from here, I figure."

"Will the Indian camp still be there?" Nickerson asked. "It doesn't matter. If they've moved on, I'll be able to follow them. They couldn't have gone too far. According to Stephen McQuade, there were about three hundred people in his Cherokee group, many of them elderly or children. They'll be moving slowly enough for me to catch up with them." Barbara gave her a hug, "God bless you, girl." When she was out of sight of the cave, Marie stopped to look around. She wanted to make sure she could find it again. Even though she had a knife, she couldn't mark a trail on the trees as she went. Blazing trees was as obvious to pursuers as to the pursued. She needed something the prisoners or Spaniards would miss if they decided to track her. She'd use twigs, stones and patches of downed grass. She found a branch that was small enough to go unnoticed but large enough it would take a significant wind to move it, and laid it against the base of one of the trees. She placed it on the side facing the setting sun. Her next marker would face sunrise. Rotating her marks was one of the little tricks she had learned as a kid, but it was something that would be missed by anyone but the most experienced tracker. She started walking. About an hour later she came across an old set of prints. She shivered a little. They were big enough that she could almost lie down in one of them if she curled up. Well, not really. But they sure looked that big. She tried to imagine the size of the creature that had left the prints and then broke off the exercise before she scared herself into running back to the cave. Besides, she didn't think the tracks had been made by a predator anyway. As big as they were, they had to be a dinosaur tracks, and she'd gotten a lesson in basic dinosaurology from Jeff Edelman. She'd paid very close attention. In the Cretaceous, big land predators belonged to the theropod group of dinosaurs. From giant multiton tyrannosaurs down to velociraptors the size of a big turkey, they were all theropods. At least, so far as Jeff knew. That meant they were all two-legged, walked something like birds-and, more to the point, all had birdlike feet. She looked down at the tracks. No bird in the world had left those tracks. They looked more like something a gigantic elephant might have left. So, feeling a little better, she continued on her way. The better feeling faded soon enough, though, as other alternatives came to her. First, they onlythought they were somewhere-somewhen-in the late Cretaceous. But even Jeff, whose theory that was, had admitted that some of the creatures they'd seen belonged to much earlier periods. She tried to remember the names of the earlier periods in the Earth's evolutionary history. Permian was one of them, she remembered. What did giantPermian predators look like? For all she knew, they looked like gigantic elephants with fangs instead of tusks. The second alternative was even worse, though, in a way. At least if she got caught and eaten by a predator, there'd besome sort of purpose to her death. Even if it was just the primitive purpose in the tiny brain of a prehistoric monster. But she could also imagine herself being squashed flat by a giant herbivore, simply because it didn't notice her at all. That was a really creepy thought. It wouldn't happen in the daytime, sure.

Unless she'd been hurt in an accident and couldn't move, she was certain she could get out of the way of a dinosaur just lumbering along. But what about at night, when she was asleep? She'd have to sleep sometime. She and Frank had already considered the possibility of her sleeping in the trees. But neither one of them thought that was really such a good idea. First of all, because they had no idea what lurked in the trees. Even in the world they knew, some big predators could climb trees. And once you were in a tree, you were pretty well stuck there if something came after you. You might not have much of a chance of running away on land, but at least you had some. The biggest problem, though, was the simplest. Sleeping in the trees sounded great in adventure stories, but in the real world people tossed and turned in their sleep. Marie knew for sure she did. She'd never been married, but she'd had several boyfriends. Two of them had lived with her for a while. Both of them had made wisecracks about waking up to find Marie sprawled every whichaway on the bed. That was fine on a queen size bed whose mattress wasn't more than hip-high off the floor. Not fine, perched in the fork of some tree branches thirty feet off the ground.

And they had no rope she could use to tie herself down. Tying together strips of cloth was another one of those things that sounded great in stories but Marie had her doubts about. And they didn't have enough suitable cloth anyway, unless they stripped somebody of the one and only suit of clothing they had. Which was skimpy enough as it was, since most of them had been caught by the prisoners while asleep. No, she'd have to sleep somewhere on the ground. She was hoping she could find a cave, or at least a decent-sized rock overhang. On the bright side-so she told herself, anyway-the tracks were leading in the same general direction she needed to go. She decided to follow them, on the supposition that an animal that big probably scared away other animals added to the hypothesis-very dicey, this one was-that an animal that big would also find it hard to turn around. And both of which were irrelevant anyway, since she could tell that the tracks were at least three days old. But… at least it gave her an orientation. She'd be less likely to just get lost. After she'd traveled perhaps another two miles, however, her heart skipped a beat. The tracks she had been following were now covered by the tracks of another creature.