In the rocky clearing, rain poured down. At the tree line, the Absolom prisoner drew a bone from his pocket. The ivory object practically glowed in the pale moonlight as rainwater coated it, glistening. Two sharp dinosaur teeth were attached to the end. It was a makeshift knife. A Triassic weapon.
At the first sight of the man, Sam had thought he was killer. It was the look in his eyes. The blood on his clothes. The jawbone and attached teeth confirmed it.
The old prisoner’s grin widened, his eyes bulged, and his tongue snaked out and licked his bottom lip.
Sam’s breath came fast through his nose, and his mind churned.
The old man began to run across the rocky ground, dodging the green ginkgo plants, his double-toothed knife held at the ready, eyes never leaving Sam.
“Hey!” Sam called out, desperately hoping the sound of a human voice might bring the man back to reason, might snap him out of his murderous attack.
The man raised the knife and charged faster.
Sam crawled out of the cave. He had no choice. The crazy fool was twenty feet away.
“Stop!” Sam yelled.
The prisoner leaped. Sam shifted as the man reached him, swiping with the knife, ripping a gash in the sweater.
“Stop!” Sam pleaded, holding his hands up.
The man seemed even more incensed at the sound of Sam’s voice. He slashed with the knife, mouth open, as if he could taste the coming kill.
Sam stumbled backward, and his feet slipped on the wet rock. He landed on his back, near the extinguished fire.
The man shifted the bone knife in his hand and leaped again, bringing it down like a stake. Sam rolled, heard the knife hit the rock where he had been, and felt it come across his upper back, cutting into him. He cried out, rolled again, and caught hold of the sharpened stick he had tried to fish with.
The man charged again, and Sam reached out and caught his knife hand with his left hand, still holding his spear with his right, and they both went down, Sam on his back, the stick planted in the rocky ground. It caught in an indention in the stone and locked in place there. The spear pierced the man’s abdomen just above his belly button and didn’t stop until the whittled wooden end emerged from his back.
The man’s knife hand went slack, and the makeshift blade dropped to the rock below.
The man smiled. “Got me.”
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t mean to.”
The fool threw his head back and laughed.
“Quiet,” Sam hissed.
The man smiled, showing blood-coated teeth. “Killed two before you. Got sloppy.”
“Why?”
“Watched you, boy. Thought you… Thought you was soft.”
The man coughed blood, and Sam spun, throwing him over, trying to dodge the thick paste that he knew would bring predators.
Time was slipping away. Sam needed answers from the man.
“How did you get here?”
The prisoner stared up at the moon, and his eyes went glassy.
A wind blew through the trees. Or maybe it was something else—a predator moving.
Sam stared at the dead man. He had killed two others. Why? The man was clearly crazy. He had probably been a killer before he got here—and certainly was after. Maybe the time alone had driven him insane, or maybe he had been out of his mind before he arrived. If Sam didn’t get home, was that his fate? Or worse?
He was sure of one thing: the dead body would soon be a homing beacon for hungry animals. He couldn’t leave it on his doorstep.
He considered removing the man’s clothes, but they were soaked in blood. Too dangerous to keep.
And looting his corpse felt wrong. The man had tried to kill him, but he was still a human being. He should be buried. Or at least burned so vultures couldn’t pick him clean.
But propriety was a luxury. Survival wasn’t.
Sam gripped the man beneath his armpits and lifted him, the strain bringing pain to the cut on his upper back. The blood oozing there was another problem. It would attract hungry carnivores too, but he couldn’t exactly get rid of his own body.
Breathing heavily, Sam dragged the dead man away from the cave, into the woods, and dropped him with a thud. It was indecent. Shameful. And necessary.
He ran back to the cave, watching for predators. But he didn’t see any. In fact, the forest was eerily quiet.
Sam knew he should build the fire back. But the wood at the rock outcropping was still wet from the rain. Scavenging for dry wood in the forest felt like a bad idea—especially at night, with a cut on his back and a dead body nearby.
He took the sweater from his waist and tied it around the wound, hoping it would help stop the bleeding.
At the cave, he stacked the firewood vertically across the mouth, put a pile of sticks inside, and crawled in. Once settled, he erected the remaining logs until the mouth of the cave was completely covered up. He could see through the narrow gaps, but he hoped it would be enough to hide him from predators passing by. Assuming they didn’t smell his blood.
Sam thought sleep would be elusive.
But it wasn’t. He was dead tired.
*
He woke to the sound of thunder. Or what he thought was thunder. One by one, the sticks in front of the cave entrance toppled like dominoes falling over.
The ground shook, punching up at him.
An earthquake.
It was an earthquake.
Sam scrambled to his feet and cleared the cave just as the rock above him came loose.