Chapter 389

The Prison Planet

A couple of hours after Morales went to sleep, he heard Lobo’s deep but very quiet growl. In seconds, the human was on his feet, his crossbow in hand as he stared at the barely-visible entrance, the moonlight faintly illuminating it. His heart slowed a bit when he realized he could tell that the bars were still in place.

“What is it, Boy?” he whispered as he put a hand on Lobo’s neck, the hair there standing up as he too stared at the entrance.

The big wolf whined quietly in response, then a moment later, the rumbling deep within him began again, now more felt than heard.

They continued to stand silently for the next five minutes or so; the only noise from outside that Morales was able to hear was the snapping of a limb as something big stepped on it. Sometime later – Morales wasn’t sure how long – Lobo slumped to his haunches and the rumbling inside him stopped.

“Is it gone? What was it, Boy?”

Lobo just growled and stretched out a bit more, but he never completely resumed his sleeping position.

“Fuck,” Morales muttered as he put the crossbow in its usual position by his bed and stretched out again, certain he wouldn’t go back to sleep.

“Bueeccckkkak!”

Morales had been dreaming of getting a blowjob by the sexiest woman he had ever laid eyes on when the hen announced the morning, or more likely, her hunger.

“Fuuuccckkk,” he drawled out as he opened an eye and stared in the direction of the barely-seen fowl as the first rays of daylight invaded the cave. Sitting up, he had to nudge the chick before it stood and stretched its tiny body and emitted a sleepy, “Cheep. Cheep. Cheep.”

He tapped a finger against the chick’s chest and it stepped onto the digit. Bringing the chicken close to his face, he told it, “I’m seriously thinking about making one of those hoods that the falconers have for their hawks ... and using it on your momma. Maybe with it dark, she won’t know when the sun sends its first rays over the mountains. What do you say?”

The chick looked at him, tilted its head and returned its usual response, “Cheep. Cheep. Cheep.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. She either needs to learn to shut up or she’s gonna be the featured course for a Sunday dinner someday. Probably have to boil her ass though, ‘cause she’s so tough.”

As soon as Morales turned the lantern on, the baby chick ran over to do its business on the manure pile, but by then, the man no longer payed much attention and just assumed that the animals on 2214 were a bit smarter than on Earth.

After adding to the piss/brain bucket, Morales shelled some corn for the hen and put out more of the greenery for the chickens. He had cracked some of the corn for the chicks, and they went after it with gusto. Remembering what he had read, he told the chickens, “I’ll get you some protein in a few minutes,” as if they could understand.

The last comment caused him to chuckle derisively. “Glad the guys I used to work with can’t see me now. Not only do I talk to myself and the wolf, but lately I’ve been talking to chickens. Oh, well. Who the fuck cares?”

As soon as he had the coffee going, he checked on his oven. After sprinkling a little water on a couple of places that had pulled away a bit, he smoothed the clay back into position. “Not bad for someone who has no fucking idea what he’s doing,” he told Lobo as the wolf walked closer to sniff at the oven, or what would eventually be an oven.

A little later, while peeling potatoes, Morales looked over at his partner. “Well, what do you think? I need to make soap, but I also need to catch some fish to dry. I certainly need more pork to salt down, and I darn sure want more bacon before winter. There’s lots more vegetables in that valley, but I also need more lumber so I can build a wall across the whole front of the cave, not to mention more hides to cover that wall to keep the cold air out. And, truth be told, I probably need to block off a section of the cave with hides, or if I had more lumber, I could build another wall. I don’t know what the temperature is going to be deep in the cave, but unless there’s no other choice, I don’t want to live way back in there. But ... If I can’t keep this front section warm enough, I might have to do just that.

“Hmmm. Maybe I need to set aside enough time every day to saw out a couple of boards. In a few weeks, I should have enough lumber to wall off the front and put in a door, but I’m going to leave the bars in place just in case.

“I have no friggin’ idea how long it will be before winter, or even how long the years are here. I think the days are a little longer here than they are on Earth, but I can’t be sure without a watch. Year length is something else I need to try to find in that database, but long or short, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Turning to Lobo, “So what do we do? Go fishing? Go hunting? Bring in more vegetables? Saw out more lumber? What?”

Lobo grinned at him and chuffed, then looked at the pile of potatoes he was slicing. “Yeah, first things first,” he said with a laugh.

He cooked extra bacon and broke up several pieces for the chickens.

Once breakfast was eaten and his cooking utensils were cleaned, he sat down with his trotline. It was much too long for the stream, and this had caused problems last time, not to mention how much time it took to untangle all the knots. After cutting it into three pieces that he judged to be long enough to almost span the stream, he wound each onto sticks to keep them from tangling, grabbed the handle of a rolling case and went outside.

When he and Lobo had come out to do their business earlier, they had turned left, then walked uphill for a little way, but had not seen any evidence of their late-night visitor. Now, as Morales knelt to retrieve the beer can with his grubs in it, he glanced at Lobo, who had stopped to smell something on the ground just below the cave. As he got closer, Morales soon realized what Lobo was smelling. Hurrying the rest of the way, he knelt to examine the print.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Another fucking saber-tooth,” but then he realized that the print was shaped differently and much, much bigger.

Lobo growled. “My sentiments, exactly,” he assured the wolf.

Not only was the print different and bigger, but the impression was also deeper. He could only imagine how much the beast must weigh. There were other partial prints, and most were obscured by the undergrowth or heavy grass, but this one was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“Ah, shit. I was hoping those fucking things would never find me. Now how in the hell am I going to protect myself from one of them? I shudder to even think about how big this thing is. How in the hell am I going to kill it with a fucking crossbow?”

Judging by the tracks, the bear had come up the hill from the stream and, after rambling around some, had left in the same direction. For some reason, it had not come any nearer than twenty feet or so from the cave entrance – not that he was complaining about that. “Shit,” he told Lobo, “I thought the cave bears lived in the mountains. Either this fucker is a long way from home, or else he’s living a lot closer than the mountains. I hope like hell he’s just passing through.”

Standing back up, he let out a sigh. “Well, I can’t be any more cautious than I already am, and I can’t stay in the cave forever. Once I have a winter behind me, I’ll know more about what I have to do to survive as far is food is concerned. But right now, I have to, as they say, err on the side of caution. I need to continue stocking all the food I can. Worst case, there could be six months of bitter cold with few chances to hunt and few animals left here for the winter after migration.”

At the bottom of the hill, the bear had apparently crossed the stream and continued on in an easterly direction, at least as far as Morales was able to determine without following its tracks any farther.

After stopping at a rotted log to harvest more grubs, he and Lobo followed the stream down to where he had used the trotline before. He thought about using his fishing rig to shoot a small line across the stream, then use it to pull the baited trotline across, attaching the end to both sides of the stream. That would stop the tangling, but he would have to go upstream to a shallow place to cross, and ... he had three of the trotlines to put out.

Hoping that the shortened lines would not get as tangled, he baited the first one and threw it as far across the stream as he could, the end float landing only a few feet from the other bank. Then with a wide separation between them, he put the other two lines out as well.

With the lines positioned, he and Lobo walked on down to where the wolf had tackled the gar. Thinking about the gar made him decide to wait until he got back to his bathing area to take a bath. It wasn’t exactly a pool, but he could see what was in the water before going in. Here, the place was too big and he knew there had been at least one gar in this area. He shuddered to think what those teeth could do to his legs as he stood in the waist deep water.

The valley where the vegetables were wasn’t that far, and he wanted to give the fish time to discover the trotlines, anyway, so he found a wide shallow place farther downstream and forded it with the rolling case. A little later, he loaded several heads of lettuce and cabbage. Crap, he thought. I have bacon, lettuce and tomatoes, the ingredients to a BLT. Now if I just had some bread. Then aloud, “Oh, well, the chickens will love the greenery.”

He realized that he hadn’t seen Lobo for a few minutes. Just as he thought about calling the wolf, there was a commotion in the bushes a hundred yards or so away, but he couldn’t tell what was happening. One thing he did know was to have his crossbow ready in case it was something that wanted to eat him for lunch.

With a startling abruptness, a hog, probably around two hundred pounds, burst clear of the undergrowth with Lobo snapping at its heels. Without thinking, Morales already had the sights tracking the hog, but he dared not fire because Lobo was too close to the animal. Move out of the way so I can shoot, he screamed mentally.

Lobo immediately swerved hard to the right and Morales squeezed the trigger. The bolt hit the hog just behind its head, going through the neck and on into its body at an angle. Morales had to dance out of the way or be struck by the already dead pig as it – she – slid to a stop a step or two beyond where he had been standing.

Lobo, obviously proud of himself, strutted over and grinned at the human.

Morales let the crossbow dangled down his back on its lanyard as he knelt to hug the big beast. “Thank you,” he sincerely told the wolf. “I couldn’t have a better partner. Because of you, we’re going to have our fill of tenderloin tonight.”

He was fairly near the edge of the field, and there was a tree a couple of hundred feet away. After removing the lettuce and cabbage from the case, he muscled the pig inside so he could transport it. He soon had it strung up with the block and tackle, which made skinning and field dressing the hog much easier. With the meat in the case and the skin hanging on the side, he loaded the cabbage and lettuce again. After returning to the stream, he made his way across, then washed the case and meat to make sure he hadn’t gotten any dirt on it during the field dressing.

After reloading everything, he moved on upstream to the area where he had put the trotlines out. He pulled the first one in to discover a half dozen fish, with one that had to weigh at least ten pounds, the others he guessed to range from a pound to three pounds. The other two trotlines had similar catches. Not unusual, since he was probably the only person to have fished this stream.

Knowing that Lobo liked raw fish, he filleted a one pounder and gave the pieces to the wolf, who quickly made them disappear. “That should hold you until we have some tenderloin ready. Since you brought in the kill, you get the choice pieces.”

Whether Lobo understood or not, he grinned at Morales.

After carefully winding each trotline around a stick to keep it from tangling, he retrieved his empty beer can, and they made their way back to the cave, Lobo again helping to push the heavy case up the hill.