Chapter 4

Time was not on my side.

The pain would pass, eventually; but until then, the fire was my protection and regardless of how much it hurt, I had to keep it burning. If it went out, I might not be able to relight it, and climbing a tree? That takes two good arms and two functioning legs. The arms, maybe. The legs, no way.

Best I could figure, my spine had twisted when that fish jerked on my line. It might straighten out naturally, or it might not. If that happened, I would die.

Fuel was plentiful, but gathering it wouldn’t be easy. I couldn’t bend or lift any substantial weight, I couldn’t even drag the bigger pieces back to camp. And I had already picked up everything nearby. Even more pressing, I had only a little water and cooked food on hand. I couldn’t get more until my back recovered. Without food, I would soon begin to weaken.

Living a primitive, subsistence life is only fun when someone else is doing it.

During that night and the next day, I ate sparingly and drank rainwater that I captured in my turtle shells. I pissed near the lean-to; it might repel animals, and right now, lack of sanitation was the least of my worries.

Grasping a branch, I hung by my hands as long as I could to see if whatever had popped loose in my back would pop back in. Maybe it helped. Even so, that second day was pure agony. There’s no other word for it. The spasms left my back muscles sore, and still they continued to seize up. The pain began, the muscles would begin to cramp, and then they would lock up for long moments before finally relaxing. Each episode left me sweating and gasping.

There would be a short pause, perhaps a minute, sometimes as much as ten minutes, and then the cramps would start again. The soreness got worse, making the spasms even more painful.

I held onto my tree when I had to, hung from the branch when I could, and toughed it out the rest of the time. Between spasms, ignoring the pain as best I could, I put a little wood on the fire. When I could manage to suppress the pain even a little, I crabbed my way to a downed limb that I thought I could manage and dragged it back to camp. Parking it close to the fire’s heat helped to dry it, enough that it would start to smoke, then the first small blaze would appear. Before it was consumed, I repeated the process.

During the brief, chill showers, I let the cold rain drip onto my back. I was desperate enough to try anything. I learned what misery and pain were.

I endured.

The spasms lessened during the third day and the intervals between cramps was longer. I had slept for brief periods during the worst of the pain, but now I got more sleep as the pain lessened. I had been on my feet for the entire time, even while I drifted in and out of sleep, and I was exhausted. But I had survived.

Even while I was nearly helpless from the pain, still I had somehow kept the fire going, creeping out to drag in more fuel whenever the fire burned low. I could remember only a few times I’d done that, but I must have done others. The facts spoke for themselves; the fire was still burning.

It had been three days since the injury, three days I never want to relive. I survived not by cunning, stealth, and knowledge but by pure dumb luck and determination. The luck part was because the worst of the storm held off for two days, and by the time it finally arrived I’d begun to recover. On the fourth day, driven by thirst, I was able to use the spear as a crutch and stumble to the stream. The sky was still overcast and thunder grumbled in the distance.

Hanging onto the spear, I slowly crouched, bending my knees while favoring my sore back. Dipping up water with my turtle shell, I drank. I did it again, then once more. After drinking, I made my slow way back to camp. Rain was falling in earnest by the time I got there. I huddled under my lean-to just trying to stay warm, while listening to water drops hiss on my fire. I salvaged some of the charred sticks that hadn’t completely burned and brought them under the shelter. A turtle shell, placed upside down over the flames and propped up to let air in, added more protection.

My fire endured, just as I had. Damp wood steamed near the fire; by the time I added it to the flames, it was dry enough to burn.

The spasms had stopped by the morning of the fifth day, and the worst of the soreness left my back while I did such work as I could and sheltered from the storm. I was hungry, cold, damp, there was still some residual soreness, but those things would go away as soon as I could begin foraging. It occurred to me that the Futurist may not have done me a favor by putting me here!

There was no letup in the rain that day. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and drops pattered around me where they dripped through the trees. I was reasonably cozy under my shelter despite the lingering pain and I was damp, but the fire warmed me. My shelter didn’t provide all that much of an advantage, but sometimes it doesn’t take much.

The rain stopped during the night. As soon as it was light enough, I sloshed and slipped down to the stream. The river now extended past its banks. The poles and gorge-hooks I’d set out before my injury were gone, washed away.

I drank some of the river water despite the muddy color before looking for my traps, but they were washed away too. How much farther would the river rise? If the storm was the remnant of a hurricane, flooding would extend for miles inland. The dying storm might also spawn tornadoes, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near one of those.

The clouds hid the sun so that I no longer had a good idea of directions, but by heading upstream I would be moving north, more or less. Going downstream, south, would put me where all that water was going, maybe into more storms, so continuing upstream it would have to be.

My fire had finally gone out, drowned by the rain. But I still had the Futurist-provided weapons, plus the club, spear, and bags that I’d made. In the bag I had some small bones and several hanks of string, and there were three more turtle shells under the lean-to for cup and cooking pot. These were all that remained of the tool kit I’d assembled. Not much, but more than I’d had when I arrived here.

I looked around, making sure I’d forgotten nothing, then headed upriver, glad to be away from that camp!

Despite the flooding, there were still a few huckleberries and other edible plants around. I ate some raw while I walked north. My back muscles loosened up more and the residual soreness went away. Muddy ground slowed me from time to time, but as long as I had enough light to see I kept moving; there was no other choice.

Until now, I hadn’t been seeking people. Just surviving from day to day had been my goal, but now I would keep going until I found them. Having companions to turn to in time of need was clearly a survival measure.

Two days later, still following the river, I changed course to due west. The skies cleared, the ground dried, the flood subsided. Three days after that I located a shallow ford and finally crossed the river. Each night, I wove strings to replace what I’d lost, then assembled them into thin ropes to replace my lost snares. New pyramid traps I assembled from materials I gathered each night.

Ground-level vegetation changed again and the forest became more open. I decided I was now in what would have been Texas on Earth Prime, west of where Arkansas and Louisiana bordered that state and possibly as far north as the border with Oklahoma. Memory, real or implanted, told me there were likely remnant glaciers farther to the north, bordered by wide permafrost expanses south of there. Ranges of steep mountains bordered the permafrost belt.

The Ouachita Mountains, lightly weathered in this time, would be a major barrier to any northward movement. There was nothing north of them that I wanted to get to anyway; people would likely be south of the mountains and west of the great forest belt that extended all the way down into what would be Mexico on Earth Prime.

I was now at least a hundred and fifty miles north of where I’d been transplanted, probably more. The river was behind me, so I was free to continue going due west. Traveling got easier and faster still as the forest thinned more. I was often able to jog now, something that had been impossible in the thick woods, but I still had to be cautious. Snakes were around. In fact, I’d eaten some, including poisonous varieties, but I avoided thick brush.

Something had screamed off in the distance one night, a cat most likely. Panthers, what farther west would be called a cougar, were known to be in this area, and hadn’t there been an American cheetah once? The animal wasn’t really a cheetah according to what was in my memory, more of a cougar, but built along the cheetah’s long-legged body plan. Coyotes yipped daily and howled each night, but so far, I’d seen no sign of wolves.