Chapter 9

Jeff reflected that hunting was a lot more fun now that he had companions on his expeditions, again. Up until about four years ago, Jeff had been hunting alone because Julie had to stay at home and look after the kids. At first, he had been reluctant to let Mary join him on the hunts for fear that she would be hurt. However, Julie persuaded him that he needed to train somebody to take up the hunting duties if he was ever incapacitated.

A sprained ankle that kept him from hunting for nearly three weeks convinced Jeff that Julie was right, so he made a bow that Mary could handle. It had about 30 pounds of pull, so it was just right for a teenaged girl who was just learning. As Mary grew stronger, Jeff made her stronger and stronger bows, until she was now using a bow requiring 60 pounds to draw it 28 inches. Tricia had inherited Mary's old bow and would continue to do so for some time to come.

Jeff was still the one who pulled the wagon, but the two girls could do it by working together. As a result, their hunting grounds were expanded enormously, and they were sometimes gone overnight if they were looking for some particular game. At the moment, they were looking for more daddy long legs spiders, since they wanted more pipe, and that spider's legs were ideal for the job.

They had already killed two of the spiders, so they had 16 sections of pipe. With the pipe they already had at home, this was nearly enough to do their job. One more spider should be enough. Julie wanted an indoor flush toilet, and Jeff vowed to make one for her for her birthday. Actually, this would not be the flush toilet that they had been used to, but it would be the type favored by the Romans. In this type of toilet, the water ran all of the time, but the results were the same.

They spotted their quarry and began stalking it. That was a joke, since all they had to do was to make themselves seen by the spider, and it would begin stalking them. All three hunters were equipped with poisoned arrows; they were not hunting for food, so they did not need to worry about having unpoisoned arrows with them.

Jeff decided that he would let the girls take this spider down and he would provide emergency cover for them. This would be the first time they had scored a kill on their own, so it was a big deal. The actual kill should not be much to worry about; a simple scratch by the poisoned arrow would disable the prey, at least. The nerve poison came from scorpions and was very potent. A single arrow would do the job, and both girls would be shooting, so a kill was assured.

They had just dispatched the spider when Jeff shouted a warning. They were about to be attacked by a swarm of wasps. There appeared to be 13 of them, and they had plenty of arrows for the job if they did not panic and waste too many arrows on bad shots. They had another advantage, namely, the wagon, which they could hide under if the wasps got the advantage. The wasps were about six feet long in body length, which meant that they would have a hell of a time getting at the humans under the wagon.

The wasp attack was not coordinated, so the wasps were flying around in all directions and suddenly darting from one place to another. That made it hard to hit the wasp with the relatively slow arrow unless the wasp was very close. That made for some exciting moments because the humans had to shoot as the wasp was making its final run at stabbing with its stinger.

Jeff ordered the two girls to back each other up during the fight. He would try to kill wasps on his own, as well as act as a secondary backup for the both of them. He didn't say anything about them backing him up, but they silently vowed to do that anyway.

It turned out that he was the first one who needed backup. Jeff was standing beside the wagon and trying to get lined up on a particularly aggressive wasp when he heard a yell and ducked just as a wasp flew over him at head-level. An arrow whizzed close to his head as it hit the wasp. The wasp only flew a few feet farther before it crashed to the ground. He turned to thank whoever it was who saved him, and Tricia grinned at Jeff just as she had to duck to escape and incoming wasp which was, in turn, downed by Mary.

The fight got pretty frantic before they were able to kill all of the wasps. It took them a long time to find all of their arrows, since a number of them had missed their targets and had gone flying off into the brush. The arrows were too valuable to let them go if they could be found, and considerable time was spent hunting them down. The hits were easily recovered from the bodies of the dead wasps and the two from the spider.

They recovered the legs from the spider, but there was nothing of significant value to be taken from the wasps. Their venom was not as quick-acting nor as effective as the scorpion venom, so there was nothing they wanted from the wasps.

The humans packed up and hurried home, trying to get there before dark. The nights were not as dark as they were in the 21^st Century simply because the sky was clearer and the moon appeared to be bigger. Nevertheless, it would have been easy to have a debilitating accident in the dark, so it was better not to travel at night. They just made it in time for a late supper. They shared a quick shower, and it was off to bed, Mary and Jeff going to the master bedroom.

The next morning, Jeff called a family meeting prompted by their meeting with the wasps. He told them that he feared an attack by ants. They had seen some in the neighborhood for the first time, and the ants could be very dangerous if they tried to move in. He wanted to start preparing to fight them if they did show up, and the one thing that they would need would be arrows and bolts.

Since there was no intention to eat ant meat, there was no reason not to shoot them with poisoned arrows. Under those circumstances, he thought that the repeating crossbow that Julie had designed so many years ago would be the ideal weapon for those with no experience with bows to use.

Jeff wanted to set up an assembly line of sorts to make arrows for the three bows they had and to make crossbow bolts for the current weapon and the others that he proposed to make. He had long ago removed all of the brake cable from the car and there was plenty of it to make the bowstrings they needed. That afternoon, he, Mary, and Tricia would go to the flint quarry and pick up as much flint as could be carried in the wagon. Before the project was over, they would probably have to make several trips for flint, but a single trip was enough for now.

Once they had the load of flint, they would start hauling in the wood needed to make the crossbows, the bolts, and the arrows. He emphasized that they needed to push this job, because he had seen even more sign of ants, and an ant attack could kill them all.

To be on the safe side, while they were gone to the flint quarry, Julie would dig out the old crossbow and bolts to see if any of them needed repair or discarding.

Jeff and the girls left right after lunch to go to the flint quarry. They were able to find a lot of high quality nodules, so they got a load ready and returned home with it well before dark. They were lucky and did not have to defend themselves from attack even once.

Their house had been enlarged considerably from that original 20 by 20 structure. They now had a house that was 40 by 60 (2400 square feet) and two-storey in half of it. Their plan had been to make a house large enough for a very large family and large enough for some craft shops, as well as a kitchen, a shower room, and a toilet room. Thus, they were able to work indoors, well protected from the casual predator and could ignore the rain storms that appeared erratically.

The room they normally used for flint knapping was large enough for six or seven people to work in it without crowding. The carpentry shop in the room next door had several neolithic versions of machine tools for wood working. There was a drill press, a lathe, and a circular saw. None of these were precision tools, but they would be a great help in quickly turning out serviceable crossbows, bolts, and arrows.