Eric Flint - Time spike

Horse enthusiasts. Andy thought they probably suffered from a mild form of mental disease. A variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder, maybe. The horses looked still more long-suffering when Kershner and his men insisted on piling the four pigs they'd caught onto the cart, too. Trussed and bound. They were taking no chances that their culinary future might get jeopardized by escaping into the wilds.

Which was where they belonged, in Andy's opinion. Those had to be the ugliest-looking pigs he'd ever seen. Long-snouted and looking as tough as wild boars. Salt pork and potatoes sauced in hog lard sounded bad enough to begin with. He could only imagine what it would taste like with pigs like this for the main entree-and he didn't even want to try to imagine what sort of substitute Kershner and his soldiers would eventually turn up for potatoes. To each his own. To each his own.

Andy had thought that was a good motto to live by even in the world he'd come from. In this new one, it was pretty much a necessity. A pack of twenty troodontids broke off their stalking of a nearby herd of hadrosaurs and looked at each other. There was a new scent in the air. A very powerful scent, too. It was an unfamiliar odor mixed with one they knew well, the smell of blood. Something-or some many things-had been killed recently. They were hungry. Confused, too. The hunting had changed and they were trying to adapt. Out of desperation, they'd even started stalking the hadrosaurs, although their prey was much larger than anything they were comfortable attacking. None of the troodontids weighed more than two hundred pounds. Even the smallest hadrosaur calf was much bigger than that. They didn't recognize the new scent, except for the blood. But they didn't recognize many scents any longer. And one thing was clear. Whatever was producing that scent, it possessed the most prized trait of all prey. It was already dead. The oldest female sniffed the air once more and then turned north. The others followed her lead.

Chapter 43 Marie Keehn looked at the smoke rising in the distance.

She was too numb to cry. Instead she took off her shoes and socks and looked at her feet. She had blisters on both heels and her right foot had blisters on three of her five toes. Her shoes, fine for an eight or sixteen hour shift at the prison, weren't suited for a long trek through a wilderness. She had thought she would find Alexander's staff and the Cherokees today. But that wasn't going to happen. Ten minutes back she had spotted smoke from what should be their camp. The location wasn't exactly where she had been led to believe it would be, but it was close. It was also about three miles away. On a good day, she could walk that distance in less than two hours, even across rough terrain, but today was not a good day. She was moving at a snail's pace. She guessed she still had a three to four hour hike ahead of her, and the sun was less than ten minutes from setting. At least she'd found a cave to sleep in tonight. More like a horizontal crevice in a short cliff than a cave, really, but it'd do. Especially since it was a steep twenty foot climb to reach it. That climb had used up her strength, for the moment. She could only hope it would look too chancy for any would-be nocturnal predator. Of which she hadn't seen any signs, anyway. Not once during the whole trek. So far as she could tell, all the dangerous predators in this world seemed to hunt by daylight. Whatever night hunters there might be were probably too small to see her as suitable prey. It didn't matter. She'd rather deal with nocturnal predators than risk sleeping in a tree again. She almost fallen out of the tree twice, during that horrible night-and when she finally woke up in the morning discovered that she'd somehow wound up twisting herself completely around in the fork. Her head was where her feet had started. How she'd managed to do thatwithout falling out of the tree was a complete mystery. The first and only case of possible divine intervention Marie had ever seen. Once she reconciled herself to another night alone, though, she started feeling better about the situation. True, she hadn't eaten in days-she wasn't even sure how many, any longer-but it had been long enough the hunger was gone. And she'd come across a small creek early in the day, so she'd had plenty to drink and had managed to refill her improvised canteen. That meant, come dawn, she'd still have the reserves to get to where she was going. "In the morning, babes," she whispered, as the last rays of sunlight disappeared.

Chapter 44 "Don't shoot, Nickerson. We're not looking for trouble." Hearing the soft voice coming from somewhere in the woods close to him, Frank Nickerson froze for an instant. Then, quickly, he crouched and began scanning the area, his pistol ready. "I said, 'don't shoot.' And we're over here." The voice was accompanied by a rustling branch. Frank's eyes could see it moving, when he pinpointed the location of the voice and the noise. But he still couldn't see anyone. Another voice came from a different part of the woods, about four o'clock from the rustling branch and the first voice. "I can take him if he tries anything, James." "Don'tyou get trigger-happy either, Geoffrey." A laugh came from the area when Frank had heard the second voice. "I don't never get trigger-happy. Pulled too many triggers. The thrill is gone." The first voice spoke again. "You don't have to put the pistol away, Nickerson. But lower it a little, will you? Once you do, I'll come out." Frank's mind was racing. These had to be convicts speaking to him. He was trying to remember which of the convicts were named James and Geoffrey. The problem was that he'd been too new to the prison to know most of the inmates by name. He did recall one Geoffrey, though. The man had been pointed out to him by another guard. Geoffrey Kidd. One of the more notorious inmates. Not because he ever gave the guards trouble, but just because of who he was and what he looked like. He hoped to God it wasn'tthat Geoffrey. Or that if it was, he didn't have a gun. But he had a bad feeling he was going to be out of luck, on both counts. Seeing nothing else to do, he lowered the pistol. Doing that much didn't bother him, since Frank was very good with a pistol. He could get it back up almost as quickly as he could pull the trigger. The man named James probably understood that himself. He'd just wanted to make sure no triggers got pulled by reflex when the pistol was pointed at him. All things considered, it was a reasonable enough request. Then, with a considerably greater mental effort, Frank made himself stand up straight. There really wasn't much point to staying in the crouch, he figured. If these convicts didn't have guns, the crouch would be worse than standing up in case they attacked him with blades. And if they did have guns, they could have ambushed him before he even realized they were there. The brush moved again and a man stepped into view. A convict, sure enough.

The reason Frank hadn't been able to spot the distinctive orange coverall was because the man had it covered with a blanket. He even recognized him, although he wouldn't have been able to attach a name to the face except the other convict had called him James. It was that new prisoner who'd been working in the infirmary. More to the point, from what Frank had heard, the one who'd gotten into trouble with Adrian Luff. Under the circumstances, that was a relief. The man completed his name. "I'm James Cook." He hooked a thumb toward the bushes behind him. "What's left-most of 'em-of Boomer's boys are with me. We escaped the prison three days ago. A rebellion started against Luff, he went berserk and started a slaughter, and we figured it was time to bail." Boomer's boys. Frank knew who they were, too, although he didn't know most of the individuals in the gang. The other guards had told him about Boomer. That was another bit of relief. Boomer's gang never caused the guards much trouble. Not even Boomer himself, whenever his temper blew, because his fury was always targeted on some other inmate. Restraining him was something of legendary task, though, by all accounts. Since Frank couldn't think of anything better to say, he asked: "What do you want?" "Well, that's partly up to Captain Blacklock. At a minimum, we want full paroles. But we actually think some kind of alliance would make more sense. At least, if you plan to take the prison back." Frank had no idea what to say in response. He had no authority to make any sort of deal with convicts. Cook must have understood that, because he nodded. "Yeah, I know. It's above your paygrade. So how about you just go get Blacklock?" "I can't.