Eviskar Island (18 page)

More rustling and crashing were suddenly heard in the nearby vegetation.  Spencer and Jocelyn sought refuge among tall ferns and Jack scooted over to a large rock.  Jack’s cover was too small to conceal him completely, but there was nothing else available.  He felt particularly vulnerable considering that whatever was coming through the brush was larger and seemingly more aggressive than the animal drinking at the river bank.  The same unmistakable thought ran through everyone’s mind: the creature that had wounded this animal was probably moving in for the kill.

A shrill cry accompanied the appearance of the hunter.  It leaped onto the beach and ran on its hind legs towards its prey.  In marked contrast to the other quadrupeds they’d seen, this one was purely bipedal and had a head surrounded by fur.  In one forelimb it brandished what appeared to be a weapon.  Sure enough, close inspection showed the object to be a spear.  Swift on the attack, it plunged its lance into the chest of the other, killing it instantly.

The figure looked around apprehensively, wary of the arrival of yet another creature.  The three students now realized that the spear-wielding killer was human.  He had long, brown, disheveled hair, an unkempt beard and wore crudely constructed leather shoes and a breechclout.  As they processed this astounding new information, that a human was living and hunting in this primordial world, they too heard what had captured the attention of the man standing before them.  Another animal was indeed approaching.  A series of high-pitched grunts accompanied the occasional snapping twig as this new arrival slowly maneuvered towards the beach.

The breechclout-clad man adopted a defensive stance and pointed his spear at the ‘bamboo’ grove as the new arrival made its appearance.  In body style it was similar to the animal the man had just killed.  It had a short, stocky, lizard-like body with leathery skin and a short tail—overall length: just over four feet.  The head, however, was that of a carnivore.  Surprisingly dog-like, in both appearance and mannerism, it had its nose to the ground, following the recently deposited blood trail.  When it looked up and saw the man standing there, its upper lip curled up in a snarl, revealing sharp canines and incisors.  Like the archosaur they’d encountered the day before, this creature had a head disproportionally large for its body, at least by modern standards, and its jaws were filled with sharp nasty-looking teeth.

The carnivore began circling the human, who staunchly positioned himself between his kill and the unwelcome interloper.  Spear point and teeth flashed as the standoff progressed.  Every lunge by the animal was countered by a well-placed thrust of the human’s pike.  The man was eventually able to jab his point into the animal’s neck, not deeply enough to cause significant damage, but sufficient to end the altercation.  The carnivorous beast squealed and grunted as it slunk back the way it had come, pausing once to look back in envy at the meal it had been denied.

The human watched intently the animal’s departure.  When he was certain it wouldn’t return, he turned his attention back to his prey and wasted no time binding its legs together with twine and looping them over his shoulder as a means of carrying it away to another locale for butchering.

Jack stood up from behind his rock.  The man with the spear was concentrating on his preparations to leave and had no idea he was under observation.

“Hello,” Jack yelled.  He made no move towards the man, not wanting to appear aggressive.  The man whipped his head around at the sound and stared at Jack.  Jack held up his hands as though surrendering—the universal sign that he held no weapon and meant no harm.  “Can you understand me?  Do you speak English?”

It was difficult to gauge the fellow’s immediate reaction because of his fully bearded countenance.  When recognition set in he adopted a relaxed stance and waved, the crinkles around his eyes belying the presence of a smile.  “I bloody well do speak English,” the man boomed, “and just who the hell might you be, friend?”

Jack stepped forward and held out his hand.  The man clasped it heartily.  “I’m Jack Malinowski.  My colleagues and I were working on an archeological site and had an accident while exploring the coast of the island.”  He waved for Jocelyn and Spencer to join him, but needn’t have bothered.  They were already almost entirely across the stream, both sporting broad grins.

“Loren Endicott,” their new acquaintance said, “I also worked at the Eviskar excavation until last year.”  His voice trailed off as he remembered the circumstances that had brought him here.

“You’re one of the three researchers who disappeared last June,” Jocelyn recalled.  She and Spencer had arrived in time to hear Endicott introduce himself.  “What happened?  Where are the others?”

Endicott shook his head.  A look of sadness replaced his previously eager demeanor.  “We have a lot to discuss,” he said soberly.  Taking an apprehensive look around, he continued, “It would be prudent to talk back at my camp.  The blood from this pig will attract more lizard wolves.  We’d best not be here when that happens.”  Abruptly he began walking away from the river and beckoned the others to follow.

XI.

As they hiked single-file along a jungle trail, the students excitedly related to Endicott the story of their experiences of the past several days; about Debbie’s fall, the failure of the satellite communicator to send an SOS message to Morgan and the others at the dig site, and of their perilous journey through the valley.  For his part, Endicott listened solemnly.  He asked a few questions about the satellite unit, but, in general, his attitude became ever more sullen.  What might have been a rescue party, his salvation, had turned out to be nothing more than a group of kids who shared his predicament.

It was a long way to camp.  Dr. Endicott explained to the group that the best hunting was in the valley, but it was too dangerous to live down there.  In this exotic land, lush and humid meant food and sustenance, while arid and cool, where they were headed now, meant fewer predators and bugs.  Slogging along, they meandered through vegetation that became more and more sparse as the trail wound up into low hills.  The older students expressed interest in routes to the eastern coast and whether or not Endicott knew of a convenient path to get there while bearing a stretcher.  The response they got was disheartening.

“I’ve been in this God forsaken place for over a year,” their host began.  “Sure, there are places where one can overlook the sea, but you need to be a mountain goat to get there.  I’m afraid the most likely way to get your injured friend to safety is by going back the way you came in.”

“I don’t get it,” Jocelyn commented.  “If that’s the only way out, why do you live way over here?”

“How much food and vegetation did you see there?” came the rather curt reply.  “It snows up on that ridge regularly, right through the month of June.  It’s a day’s hike from anything edible as well as anything that can be used for constructing a shelter or fueling a fire.  I stayed there for nearly a week after our accident and damn near died.  The wind up in those high peaks routinely gusts to over 100 miles-per-hour.  There is one thing of which you can be entirely certain: your two colleagues buggered down on that shelf are having a miserable go of it.”

“I’m sorry to have offended you Dr. Endicott.  I know you’ve been through hell here, but we’re desperate to help Debbie.”  Jocelyn’s strong-minded nature was unaccepting of Endicott’s defeatist attitude.  “We’re getting out of here no matter what it takes.  Even though we’ve been unable to call for help, a rescue party should arrive in a couple of days.  Snow or no snow, wind or no wind, I will personally be on that beach to welcome them.  For Debbie’s sake I simply wanted to know if we could get her out of here sooner.”

Endicott pondered her statement.  “That’s very noble of you,” he said, “very admirable indeed, but tell me, just how do you intend to get to the beach?  Can you fly?”

“We have all the climbing gear we need to scale the cliff,” Jack interjected.  “That’s not the problem.  The key issue is how to get Debbie up over that ridge and down to the beach without killing her.”

Endicott stared at Jack and Jocelyn.  He’d fixated on one thing that Jack had mentioned, and as he contemplated it he became excited.  He grasped Jack by the shoulders and exclaimed, “Ropes? Climbing gear?  Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?  My God, I should have realized—that’s the reason you’re all uninjured.  You had to have proper climbing equipment or you wouldn’t have made it here.  Let’s hurry now and get back to camp.  At dawn tomorrow we’ll gather supplies and head over to that blasted cliff.  How long did you say it will be until they begin searching for you?”

“They’ll probably set out on Friday if they don’t hear from us,” Jocelyn said.

Endicott laughed.  “My dear girl, how presumptuous of you to think that I have the slightest idea of what day of the week this is.  Please, just tell me, again, how many days
until
they come for you.”

“Two,” Jocelyn replied, “possibly three.”

“Ah, excellent, I’ll pack food sufficient for six people for three days.  We can certainly manage to camp on the beach for that long.  Come, my young liberators, we’ve no time to waste.”

“What do you propose we do about Debbie?”  Jocelyn asked.  There remained the important question of how to extricate the badly injured woman from the mountainside.

Loren Endicott’s eyes again hardened.  “She’ll live,” he snapped.  “Her husband can stay and care for her for a few hours once the cavalry arrive.”  Fighting to control his exasperation, he said almost apologetically, “Think, my dear girl.  When your…our… colleagues arrive they’ll be able to send a Sat phone call to Daneborg.  Within twenty-four hours, probably less, a rescue chopper will arrive to pluck that poor woman from peril and transport her to a proper medical facility.”

He paused to rest.  Dropping his ‘pig’ to the ground, Endicott sat on a rock and rubbed his eyes with filthy, weathered hands.  Jocelyn made note of his long, broken fingernails, cracked lips and numerous cuts and sores.  She began to fathom what he’d been through in the past year and the psychological toll it had taken.  His volatile temperament was understandable.

“Don’t for a minute think that I’ve no sympathy for your friend Debbie,” the Doctor continued, “I and my colleagues shared a similar experience.  A fall, it was, but in our case I’d guess you’d say it was more of a landslide.  On a rare, clear day we hiked from the beach just as you did, anxious to catch a glimpse of what all of us thought was the bowel of an unexplored, smoldering volcano.  One minute we were gazing into the interior of the island and the next…it was an eerie sensation of free-falling amongst a shower of boulders.  Fate favored me, I suppose.  My injuries were astoundingly minor; a few broken ribs, a badly sprained wrist and a number of bumps and bruises.”  His eyes were hollow.  He was staring at nothing in particular as his mind resurrected the details of that fateful day.  “It happened quickly, but the terror of the episode seemed to drag it on forever.  I’ll never forget the enormous pressure exerted by one of the rocks that rolled over me once I was prostrate down slope.  Like a truck it was; it must have weighed several tons.  I believe that’s when my ribs fractured.

He looked down and shook his head.  “Aage, that would be Dr. Aage Randrup; he was killed outright, crushed and mangled by tons of rock.  A finer man I’ve never known, a native Greenlander who had such passion for his work.  That archeological dig meant so much to him.  You see, he was part Inuit and part Nordic, and he considered the Eviskar settlers as distant relatives.  Learning about them was a link to his own past.

“And Karlsen, the Dane, he was very badly hurt in that fall, mortally so.  Of course I could do nothing for him given my own circumstances.  The memory of his moaning, beseeching me for help that I couldn’t render, still haunts me every day.  Finally, when he knew the end was near, he pleaded with me to make certain to tell his wife and children how much he loved them.  That was his dying wish: that I relay those sentiments to his family.  Strangely, those words were largely what have kept me going.  I promised that man that if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll fulfil his dying request.”

Endicott stood and shouldered his quarry.  As he did, the sadness left his voice to be replaced by bitterness, “Karlsen might have lived had they come for us.  He lived in misery for several days, but no proper rescue attempt was made.”

“But they did search for you,” Jocelyn said.  Morgan told us they patrolled the coast for weeks and saw no sign of you or your vessel.”

“Well, it wasn’t enough, was it?” he fairly spat the words.  “My exile here proves to me that we just didn’t matter.”

Endicott’s words hung in the air as they resumed their trek.

*   *   *

The mood lightened considerably while they walked.  Telling the students about his misfortunes was ultimately cathartic for Endicott.  Now someone from the outside finally knew what had happened to him and his friends, his colleagues.                Their conversation turned to the nature of the world around them.  Spencer, in particular, began asking questions of his new hero, the man who’d managed to survive here alone and unaided for so long.

“We’ve nevah seen one of those yet,” he observed, pointing to the ‘pig,’ “It looks like some kind of cynodont.”

Endicott gave him an interested look.  “You’re very perceptive, young man.”  They hiked for a few minutes, reaching the top of a bluff, where Endicott then turned to address Spencer once again, “I’m intrigued.  Just how is it that you can identify a prehistoric creature such as this?  Are there others back at the dig site, paleontologists perhaps, who’ve taken an interest in this island?”  His last question was directed at all three of them.  The request seemed important to him.  He stopped walking, expecting an answer.

“Nope,” Spencer said with pride, “I just know this stuff from readin’ 'an doin’ my own research.”

“Impressive, impressive indeed.”

The trail abruptly branched to the east and wound through several switchbacks up a steep, rocky slope.  Endicott grunted with the effort of carrying his heavy quarry uphill.  At the top, he spoke, “Spencer, my lad, you’re observation is spot on.  This is one of several species of cynodont that inhabit this part of the island.  Most are herbivorous, like this fellow here, and at least one type is carnivorous.  You saw a specimen try to take this kill from me.”

“It did look pretty fearsome,” Jack offered.

“They most definitely are.  I refer to them as ‘lizard wolves’, or simply ‘LWs,’ as they seem to serve the same purpose here as do modern wild canines such as coyotes and wolves.  Their amphibious/reptilian ancestry is obvious when one considers their morphology, but they also have characteristics indicative of their mammalian progeny.  Did you happen to notice the whiskers on the snout of that LW?”

“I couldn’t see past its teeth,” Jack laughed.

“A point well taken; their dentition is indeed formidable.  What are perhaps more interesting, however, from an evolutionary standpoint, are the unmistakable presence of small amounts of fur, and an uncanny sense of smell.  Their olfactory capabilities are nothing short of amazing.  A bleeding wound can draw them from a considerable distance, a quarter mile or so, maybe more if the wind is favorable.  ‘Land sharks’ might be another appropriate nickname for them.”

Spencer was absolutely enthralled with Endicott’s accounts of the island’s fauna.  His own readings and research into the fossil record of the Triassic meshed perfectly with what he was hearing from this man.  “Are they primarily hunters or scavengers?” he asked.

“A bit of both I’d say.  Again, the moniker ‘lizard wolf’ fits them to a tee.  I often see them feeding on carrion, but they’re quite proficient at taking small prey.  In fact I suspect they fill the important ecological niche of controlling the population of small herbivorous cynodonts—the early Mesozoic equivalent of the relationship between foxes and hares.”

“Aren’t you worried they might come after you?”

“I suppose somewhat, yes, especially if I have a major cut or a large open sore.  Like I said, the scent of blood can draw them from far away.  Ordinarily a single individual will shy from a full grown human, but all bets are off if he’s bleeding.  Blood lust imbues them with a fantastic instinctive courage.  They can be extraordinarily dangerous in that sort of scenario, especially if there’s more than one of them.  Like their modern canine counterparts, they’ll sometimes travel in groups of two or three, and they’re smart enough to coordinate attacks.  What has saved poor Loren Endicott’s bacon on many occasions is the noise they make.  You heard it—that high-pitched grunt sound.  One always knows when they’re nearby.”

“You’d think they’d learn not to do that,” Spencer reasoned, “I bet it scares off a lot of their prey.”

“One would think so, yes,” Endicott agreed, “but evidence suggests they don’t hear well.  From the small auditory openings in their heads—ears, if you will—and the internal arrangement of bones in their skulls, I believe that these cynodonts, both predators and prey, have poor hearing.  Theirs is a silent world; virtually all their sensory input comes from sight and smell.”

The trail veered to the north.  As they contoured around a small hill, there appeared a cluster of boulders near the top that had been turned into a dwelling.  Strong ‘bamboo’ logs were strategically placed between some of the rocks and also across the tops to enclose the structure.  Large leaves belonging to a vine-like plant brought up from the river bank were interlaced with conifer boughs to create a thatch that lined the roof and sides.  It was a well-designed and well-constructed abode, capable of keeping its occupant safe and dry against whatever challenges Mother Nature had to offer.

“Make yourselves at home.”  Endicott pointed to several rustic ‘bamboo’ chairs and a table as they entered.  “Sit wherever you like.  I’ve got to skin this pig, dispose of the guts and cook him before it gets dark.  It won’t take long.”

None of the students were much interested in sitting around.  They all accompanied Endicott to a clearing fifty yards from the dwelling where there was a large rock set up as a butcher’s block.  Drawing a large folding knife from his belt, Endicott made a careful incision between the animal’s hind quarters.  “It’s like carving up any large game,” he noted as he worked.  “The principal things to watch out for with these guys are the musk glands.  Puncture those and you ruin the meat.”

Endicott worked with an efficiency and precision borne of considerable practice.  In minutes he’d disemboweled his kill and carefully flensed its hide, intact.  Jocelyn was surprised that he wanted to save the animal’s skin given their imminent rescue, but decided it was being done out of force of habit.  The good Doctor was apparently still in survival mode.  Tossing the head and the lower portions of the limbs in with the entrails, he harvested two tenderloin strips from along its back and stripped slabs of shoulder meat for what he called ‘pot roasts.’  He then wrapped the edible portions in the hide for transport back to the shelter and stood back to appraise his handiwork.