CHAPTER 11 
CHAPTER 11
The next day, Bob Barker found the goat wrestle was almost anticlimactic. As Ortiz said, they laid out crisscross parachute cord over the brush on the slope, waited for three goats to step into it, and started pulling. The goats jumped nimbly up, straight into the crocheted nets thrown by Ortiz and Caswell.
Bob waded in and untangled one, bit by bit, with Ortiz helping. The scruff of the neck worked a bit to slow their thrashing.
Then he was picking up a smelly, squirming goat and carrying it across the field. He stopped after fifty yards, squatted down to hold the thing in place, and gasped for breath. While he did that, Caswell reached under his ass and tied the creature’s legs. That felt weird. There were so many jokes. She’d definitely be pissed if he said anything, so he didn’t.
“Go on,” she prompted, and went to tie the one Ortiz carried.
He made another fifty yards, another pause, smelling stinking goat, feeling it breathe in panic. He’d much rather wrestle the injured cat.
It took a good twenty minutes to reach the corral. He chose an inward point of the fence, reached the corner, heaved the goat up, waited while Caswell untied its feet, and dropped it in.
Ortiz rolled his over the side, and they went back for the last. Caswell had it pinned, and clutched the net to keep it down. The two men grabbed it front and rear, and carried it like a casualty. He had an arm under its chin to stop its biting, with it in a half chokehold. He was sweating heavily in his jacket, despite the cool air.
At the fence, Ortiz lowered the legs and he shifted. He got arms under the bristly hair, hooked the legs firmly, and heaved. It struggled and kicked him in the thigh, the balls and the guts. He grunted, clamped down on it, and hefted it like a kid with a puppy. Its gyrations did little, then.
He kicked something as he walked, and realized the damned thing had dropped a deuce on his boot. Of course, the old slick boats would have shed it better than the sueded finish on these.
“Crap,” he said, and realized the irony.
He fairly tossed that one over. It rolled, stood, and brayed at him.
“Yeah, fuck you, too, pal. You’ll be over coals in a week, if I have anything to say about it.” He couldn’t blame the animal, but he didn’t want to be friends with dinner, either. Much better to hate them.
“How many are we going to get?” he asked Ortiz.
“Eventually we need breeding stock, and we’ll eat the kids to keep the milk coming.”
“Yeah. Cheese. Someone here said they know how to make it.”
“I do,” Caswell said. “Spencer says he does, but I expect like a lot of his skills, it’s stuff he’s read about and not actually done.”
“Well, we’ve all got some of that. Like Oglesby and sex.”
Caswell gave him that stare.
Bob said, “Look, I’m sorry. I joke about stuff so I don’t get pissed off. I’ve got goat crap on my boot, bruises on my groin and thigh, goat smell all over me, and no cigarettes.”
Ortiz saved him. “I figure a half dozen for now, and we’ll expand the pen, but we’ll need to make sure they’re fed and watered. Someone has to come dig a pond in that low spot and start bringing water in, until we can run a pipe.”
“Good point. Don’t want them to bind up their guts and die.”
“Just toss all the food waste here, and all the trimmings off the trees. We’ll recover some sticks we can burn.”
“I’ll do it. Hey, the two of you are going to get me my breakfast cereal. You are my heroes.”
They got three more goats into the pen, and even though it seemed they could climb out, the animals ran around, then butted the fence, then settled down to munch grass.
“Not the sharpest spoons in the drawer, are they?” he said.
Ortiz said, “They’re not. But we’ll need other animals eventually. Still, this will make it easier to get a few things.”
That done, he looked across the stream at the site. The north wall was half done to the stream. Progress. They needed to find some way to trade with the Urushu for something other than medical care.
He walked down to the rocks to wash the stink off. Cold water was better than warm goat. He did wish the course was deeper, though.
Felix Trinidad was glad Alexander had found the cat. She seemed to be taking it harder than the others, and given her age and family, and her fitness, something to help her relax was probably a good thing. Chopping wood took a lot of stress off, but she really didn’t seem fit enough for much of it. She dragged branches, but that wasn’t the same as hacking bits off.
Or maybe he was just atavistic. It worked for him, but possibly not the others. Also, he needed to pay less attention to the females. They weren’t available, though he’d love to jump Caswell, but she didn’t seem like the type to go for men at all. A very angry, closeted lesbian, if he had his guess. Even if she did anything with men, it wouldn’t be with him, and it wouldn’t be very good. She was a large bundle of negative emotions.
Alexander was just depressed, and it wasn’t all separation. She had a fairly tough façade, but was not at all happy. The combination of being the oldest, and female, and with health problems meant she’d never fit with the rest, either.
Though she had that faintly mousy presentation, she was probably a firecracker in bed. But it would be up to her to make the call.
She seemed to get along best with Spencer, who was closest to her age. She didn’t notice Felix, found Oglesby annoying, didn’t like Dalton’s religious presence, and definitely didn’t care for Devereaux. She might consider the LT, but kept a very professional shell.
Which was a long-winded way of wondering when he was going to get laid. These women were off limits, so the interaction with the natives needed to continue until they could bring some in for socializing. And those women were tall, which was just fantastic. If only he could persuade them to be interested in a shorty like himself.
Back to the wall. They had one side, half of another, two natural obstacles—the creek and ditch—and several piles of brush. The more they got built, the better he felt. Spencer was correct about that. They needed their own territory, their own secure area, and they’d have both less labor and more comfort.
They had some fittings to install, that he’d helped carve. If the LT’s design worked, this would be a hinged gate.
Spencer said, “Trinidad, you’re the little guy, you’re voted.”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s always Felix up the pole.”
He grabbed the post, braced his feet, and shimmied. He reached up for the pin and thong holding it to its neighbor, and hoisted himself to the top of the wall. He was breathing a bit as he wedged a foot between poles. Barker tossed up the headpiece to him, a tumbling, rough-hewn block. He caught it and he wiggled it down the gatepost. It had been preshaped by drilling with the power drill from the toolbox, filing, chiseling, and finally just spinning it around and around the post until it fit. It had two holes cut for dowels.
The three men below shoved and pushed the gate section into place. He slid the headstock down, twisted until the dowel holes lined up with the recesses in the gatepost.
“Hammer,” he called, and Barker lobbed it underhand to him. He tapped the dowels in until they started to mush on the ends.
“Try it,” he said.
The pivot worked smoothly enough. They opened the gate both ways. The inside would be reinforced with a crossbar and logs set into the ground. Nothing the natives had should be able to open it, and most animals would detour around. A stampede might be a problem, but even then, after a few bumps, most animals would go past, not blindly into a wall of logs.
Barker walked the gate in and out, and it was surprisingly smooth. The rough spots had been well worn. Socketed top and bottom, it was a functional hinge.
“Good job, Bob,” he said.
“That was Sergeant Spencer’s work.”
“Still a good job. Can I get down now?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” The poles were biting into his ankles. He dislodged himself carefully, stepped back and dropped.
“We’ll put the second door up tomorrow.”
“Good. Once we do some more trenching it will be awesome.”
Spencer came over. “There’s going to be braces that prevent the doors swinging back, top and bottom. Then a crosslet bar in case we need extra reinforcement. And a sill.”
He asked, “Punji spikes in the trenches?”
“I am considering that, yes.”
Hah. He’d been joking.
So he added, “Also vines and twine to tangle whoever it is.”
Spencer said, “Right, but we also need to start on stone walls. Constant improvement.”
That . . . sounded odd.
“Who are we trying to defend against?”
“Anyone or anything. There’s thousands of them, ten of us. Enough bodies can climb over, or ram through, or maybe they’ll learn to control rhinos. I don’t know. Since we can’t get back home, we want a castle, fields full of serfs, a noble class of us and kids, who are well-educated, and then we’ll see about windmills for electricity, teaching people to mine metal for us. As far as we can go. Unless you want to eat grubs and baluts and chase native chicks.”
“The native chicks are starting to look pretty good. But yeah, we might as well work on being tops.”
“Visitors to the north!” Oglesby called. “Large group, a dozen or more.”
Elliott ordered, “Be ready, stay in camp. I want someone covering the gap.” The south wall was twenty feet shy of the stream while they figured out what to do about that.
“I have it,” he said, and grabbed his rifle from the log he’d leaned it on.
“What loading?”
“Magazines in, chambers empty,” Spencer said.
He climbed up the ladder on the back of Number Eight and got a good view downslope. Barker came up next to him. Oglesby was in the turret of Number Nine. He did a quick scan by eye. Spencer came up, and Elliott too, and settled next to him. Caswell and Dalton had the east covered from behind logs. Ortiz and Alexander were watching the north from the brush pile.
“More than a dozen,” he said. “Sixteen? And those are some other group, not the Urushu.” It was less than a kilometer, but there were trees down there and assorted terrain features covered in scrub. Visibility was about twenty percent.
Barker said, “They’re significantly more advanced.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m looking at the bindings on their spears, and the cut of their clothing. And they have bows. And tamed dogs.”
Yes, and he should have caught that. “Yeah . . . think they’re going to move in?”
“I expect so. Likely some advance or scouting party.”
He said, “Well, this is a major river valley. There’s bound to be both transients and settlers.”
Spencer said, “Be glad we got as good a spot as we did.”
He turned and said, “I was joking earlier, Sergeant, but I agree. We need to work on some stone, and mortar.”
Elliott said, “Slaked lime we can do. Water and sand we can do. I’m trying to remember the rest.”
Spencer said, “And it would be much better to get flat stone, or find some way to cut it. I can crack it and burn it, but it takes so damned long.”
Barker was still watching the travelers. He said, “Those dogs bother me. They’re not wolves. They’re dogs. Domesticated.”
Elliott looked quizzical. “Okay?”
“So how do they have domesticated dogs? We haven’t seen any others.”
“They may be first in the area.”
Ortiz called up, “I don’t think so. Breeding dogs took centuries. They’d be all over. What do they look like?”
Barker said, “Wolfhounds or large malamute types, but definitely dogs.”
Ortiz was standing, but stayed in position. “I might be able to tell if I could examine one.”
Felix was intel. He wanted to talk to them.
Elliott had the binox and was studying them.
He asked, “Can I take a look, sir?”
“Yes, here,” the lieutenant said and handed them over.
“I’m next,” said Barker.
“Then me, goddammit,” said Spencer.
“I’m behind you,” Alexander said. She held her camera with telephoto. “Strap around your neck first, and for gods’ sake, be careful.”
“Got it,” Spencer said, taking it and carefully looping the strap over his head.
Felix zoomed in on the visitors. “They’re less Asian looking, more European looking. Shorter. Less robust.”
Barker said, “Agreed.”
Spencer said, “I hate to jump to conclusions, but if they’ve got bows, dogs and small stature, it suggests they’re post-agricultural revolution. We know bows existed nine thousand years ago. Before us, I mean. Before that it gets sketchy. We know dogs started about now, but took a while. We know people got smaller after agriculture from eating more grain and less meat. And of course, all that is entirely speculative now that we’re on the spot.”
Felix said, “All I know is they’re more advanced. I see bows, lighter throwing spears, shoulder bundles, the dogs, and the clothing is more sophisticated. It has actual sleeves and leggings.”
Elliott asked, “Do they see us?”
“I would assume so. We’re hard to miss. Though possibly they think we’re just some odd landscape formation. No, wait, they’re looking this way. Huddling, passing messages back and forth as they move. So they’re aware of us, but want us not to be aware of them.”
Elliott said, “Then let’s keep quiet, and goddamnit, I wish I had enough troops for patrols.”
Spencer said, “After we finish the walls, maybe. Another month.”
“It’ll be almost winter then,” Elliott said, “I want two on watch. I am not trusting them. One up here during the day. Two at night.”
“Still think I’m crazy about the palisade and ditch, Trinidad?” Spencer asked.
“I didn’t think you were crazy,” he said, a bit defensively. “I thought your schedule was a bit rushed.”
“Fair enough.”
“They’re moving on,” Felix said. “But I assume they’ll be back.”
“Definitely,” Spencer said. “Sometime.”
Something occurred to him. “Are these the other visitors the Urushu mentioned?”
Spencer flared his eyebrows. “Possibly. They said they were wizards who talked to animals.”
Dalton said, “If they’re lost in time, how many others are?”
That was something to consider, Sean Elliott thought. There might be other groups displaced. Some of them could be from forward in time.
Well, so far, no one wanted a fight. God nor aliens had come down to tell them how to live. Either they were being left alone, or it was a bizarre natural occurrence. But had some kind of breach caused a bunch of stuff to come through in the same place? No, they’d have seen others. So not the same place, but within a few hundred miles?
He asked Spencer, then realized he should also ask Trinidad, who was intel. The man was so quiet, and Navy, and, yeah, he’d been defaulting to the old white guy. Or was it just that Spencer was older and knew this stuff? No, Devereaux was studying astronomy, and calculating the calendar. He should be talking to him, too.
He’d been inadvertently racist. Just a bit, but there really wasn’t room for it here. They were all one people for this.
“Okay, everybody, formation around dinner. And it smells good. Stew?”
“Antelope,” Caswell said. “With wild onions, some kind of pine bark and needle, some chopped cattail, plantains and a bit of what I think is burdock. It’s safe, I ate some.”
“Excellent. Bob Barker said he would be looking for fish and wild rice in the river.”
Barker said, “And I still will. I want to get the wall finished even more now, though. Sergeant Spencer wants more firewood.”
“How’s that going?”
Spencer said, “We have the brush piles and we can chop more logs. They need to season. I figure the dead of winter we drag a log or two into the tepee and just feed them in toward the middle.”
“How much do we need?”
“I read a story somewhere about a guy in a cabin in the Canadian Northwest. He had eight cords.”
Eight? “That’s a crapton of wood.”
“It is. But if it’s too much, we have it next year. If it’s not enough, it sucks at least, kills us at worst.”
As if to emphasize it, Dalton put another split piece of wood on the fire.
Ortiz asked, “Can we ask the Urushu?”
Oglesby said, “They all gather in that large lodge and have a half sleeping, half orgy winter. I already asked.”
“We’ll skip that,” he said.
“Please,” Alexander said. She turned and tossed a bit of food down by the bank of the stream.
Dalton asked, “Are you trying for a pet?”
“If you must know, yes. We need something furry to hug.”
Dalton looked as if he were about saying something, but she was right. They didn’t have partners or spouses. They needed something for companionship. It was either adopt Urushu children, or pets.
The cat limped slowly out of cover under a bush, crawled low, and snatched the food. He squirmed back into a hollow.
“Sergeant Devereaux has the date fixed.”
“Sort of,” Devereaux said. “I may be off by up to a week. I think I’m within two days. We’ll know on Twenty-One December. For now, I’m calling it October Third.”
“What year?” Dalton asked.
Devereaux said, “Thirteen thousand, two hundred ninety-six BC.”
Dalton about dropped his food. He stopped in mid chew.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Of course I am. There’s no way to tell. But you believed me.”
That had to be a poke at Dalton’s Creationism.
Dalton took a moment to swallow, looked half amused and half disgusted, and said, “Bastard.”
Devereaux said, “So we’ve got a month before it starts getting cold, not just cool.”
Trinidad asked, “How cold will it get at night?”
Devereaux and Spencer exchanged glances.
Spencer said, “This should be a small climate optimum between the Older and Younger Dryas. The temperature in those dropped back to Ice Age levels within three generations. This should be a bit warmer, more moderate, and lusher, and so far, it is, compared to what we had back in A-stan. This assumes we have the time frame right, that the research I read is right, and I remember it right. Winter will still be down into the sub-freezing range at least, though.”
That was a lot of maybes, but winter was winter.
“I endorse the plan for a lot of firewood,” Elliott said, to make sure people knew. “It’s always useful as a barricade and windbreak, and fuel for next year. Stack it deep.”
Spencer said, “We need to finish that smokehouse ASAP and get to smoking meat, salting meat and drying meat. We can use it as a sauna, too. Eventually it’ll be a hot water spa, with a tub.”
Ortiz said, “Goddamn, we could rent excursions here to rich Manhattan bitches for a grand a day.”
“Yeah, if we could.” Dammit.
He spit out a bit of gristle, and tossed it over where the cat was. Hell, they might as well have a pet. They planned to domesticate food animals, after all.
“So what about domestic animals?” he asked.
Ortiz said, “We need to clip bird wings, and build some cages out of willow sticks or something else skinny and straight. We move those around where we plan to plant crops and the guano will prep the ground. Goats are easy, we have the fence, and toss enough stuff for them to eat. Rabbits can go in cages framed in wood and meshed with the Kevlar RPG mesh off the vehicles. Bigger stuff we should just let graze. There’s enough of them hunting isn’t a big problem.”
Elliott said, “Okay, moving on, Doc’s been doing great work with everyone. So give us your background.”
Devereaux leaned back on the log he sat on, hands behind his head, and stretched.
“Armand Devereaux, Staff Sergeant, New York National Guard. Second year med student. I took a break from school to raise more money and look after my mama. I’m a combat medic. This was my first deployment. I was supposed to be doing some local charity stuff for a month, then going home. I’m fucking pissed about that.
“Anyway, I’m from Queens, joined up to get the college, get out of the city, and looks like I did.”
He paused a moment and took a drink from his Camelbak. He was almost never without it.
“I’ve got a good basic kit and few extras, but it won’t last forever. I know I’ve said that. I’m glad I can help our neighbors, and all of you, but you’ve got to stay hydrated, keep clean, be careful. I sound like your mom, don’t I?
“Goddamn, I miss home,” he said, and stopped talking.
Elliott quickly said, “Thanks. And thanks for helping with the calendar. Knowing what time of year it is is going to save us. Oglesby, you’re next.”
Oglesby said, “I’m a Specialist, I enlisted early and finished AIT right after high school. I’m an Urdu translator but I’m pretty good with Arabic as well, and some Hindi. I’ve always liked languages and I’m familiar with roots and development. That’s called ethnology. I’m out of Campbell, and I was supposed to rotate home in three months. Guess I missed that.
“I’m drawing up glossaries and dictionaries so you can speak without me, just in case something bad happens.”
“I guess that’s about it. I have a younger sister and parents, and I really don’t want to talk about them.”
Elliott said, “Hey, translation is critical. You made our entrance a thousand times easier. Don’t sell yourself short.”
To all, he said, “You all hear how we have all these skills, right? It turns out we know a lot more than we thought we did. We’re constructing a camp, we’re fed, we’re getting more variety of food. Doc’s doing a great job with us and the locals. We’re making progress on developing relations with them without letting them too close too fast. It’s working. It will get better from here.
“I’m going to say again that I’m both leader and chaplain. Anything you tell me in confidence stays with me. If you can’t talk to me, talk to Martin Spencer. If not him, find someone else. Cover for each other. Let’s not split into factions and let’s not squabble like siblings.”
“If I may, sir,” Spencer put in.
“Go ahead.”
“Shaving and haircuts are obviously already nonreg. That’s fine. Keep them neat for now. I’ve been shaving about twice a week, and it works well enough. I’m kempt without being too strack. I can cut hair reasonably well, male and female. Let me know and I can help you trim down. A couple of us have scissors and I may be able to sharpen them, and I have knives and sharpening tools.”
Sean ran a hand through his own hair, which was civilian thick, though he kept it whitewalled around the ears and blocked in back. His beard he kept trimmed short, but scraggly, between growth and uneven clipping. It didn’t feel professional. He’d ask about a monthly haircut or even head shaving.
“We should keep using the soap and such from that care package as long as it lasts. I don’t care if you only bathe once a week, but wash your damned hands after taking a dump and before eating. And I know a lot of you aren’t brushing your teeth enough. Doc has pliers, or we can drill it out with a hot wire and jam it full of pine tar, and repeat monthly. You don’t want that. Back to you, sir.”
“Anyone else?”
Caswell said, “I made a roof panel for the latrine, of grass and leaves. That gives us three sides and a roof. I’ll need help with a door.”
“I can do that,” Spencer said.
Barker said, “As soon as we can split a couple of logs, we’ll make a proper one with planked walls and roof. It’ll add some insulation, too.”
“Good,” Elliott said. It would be nice to take a crap in private.
Alexander said, “If I did it right, I got wireless working on the laptop, as a hotspot. It means we can use our phones for a couple of hundred meters as long as we’re in line of sight.”
Dalton snorked. “Two hundred meters? What good is that?”
She smiled in the faint firelight as she said, “More useful than shouting, and infinitely farther than zero. Also, you can text me updates on materials, inventory, or AARs.”
Elliott said, “I see it for watch. We can relay photos, too. Or give orders quietly. Thank you very much, Sergeant Alexander.” The range was pathetic, but hell, it was progress. They had the vehicles and parts of them, the gear and their personal stuff, and their skills. It was a lot better than it could be.
“You’re welcome, sir.” It sounded as if she were emphasizing just to drive it in.
“We can test that tomorrow. I’ll also do a periodic inspection of what we’ve got so far. So with that said, I guess it’s free time. Keep the watch schedule. Spencer.”
Everyone wandered off, but only a few feet. The glow of tablets and phones indicated movies and music. That helped a lot. It would get repetitive eventually, but for now, they weren’t entirely cut off from civilization. He’d wondered at first if a full break was better, much like Basic Training from civilian world. But they needed some connection.
“Sir,” Spencer said.
“So, we were right on the walls.” He started walking the perimeter. Spencer followed.
“Hell, I knew that, sir. Animals, natives. Someone is going to be hostile.”
“Yes. Can we speed up the north wall?” He walked along the laid-out line and the huge gap.
Spencer said, “It’s getting faster as we go, except we’re dragging logs farther. The straight ones are getting scarce. We’re carrying them five hundred meters, now. We’ll be taking them from downstream and dragging them uphill.”
The drag marks were quite visible, where logs had ripped grass and brush from the hillside in furrows. In the dusk they were eerie, like giant worm tracks. The trimmed limbs and branches lay in a long pile that would at least hinder attackers.
“Do what you can. What’s our strategy if we are attacked? Fire the brush?”
“I’d rather not. We need the fuel. It won’t flare up that fast. It won’t burn very long. We’ve got a pretty good break at the moment,” Spencer said, pointing. “It spans most of the gap and is about ten feet wide, five feet tall. It’s a lot of brush, and no one is crossing it quickly. We just dive into the trucks and button up. We have the turrets.”
“What if we have to shoot?” He’d really prefer to avoid violence with the natives.
“Then we shoot. They don’t know how much ammo we have. But that later group bothers me.”
“Yes, but why?” He had his own theories.
Spencer said, “I suspect they have more belief in gods than spirits. Some modern tribesmen think they’re immune to bullets through various magic. It never works, which just means they need more magic. Casualties don’t dissuade them.”
If so, that was concerning. “Then it depends on if that’s a small group of time travelers, or a regional takeover by contemporaries.” Certainly there was local internecine conflict of some kind.
Spencer said, “And what other groups are out there? If we’re suspecting two, there could be more.”
Spencer had the same thoughts he did.
With a slow nod, Sean said, “Yeah. Get the north done. I’ll figure something out for the river side.”
“Earthworks in several rings, fences, brush, the river. But we need some type of crossing.”
“I’ll design something.”
“I mean the fence crossing the stream. Then we’ll want a bridge, too.”
“Yeah, I got that,” he repeated with some exasperation.
“Sorry, sir, just making sure.”
“Should we store stuff in the trucks?”
“It’s very inconvenient, we don’t have a definite threat yet, and we have at least half a perimeter and modern weapons. I think we’re okay. But we do need to keep the watch up.”
Spencer pointed up where Oglesby and Dalton sat. Dalton was on watch, Oglesby was just shooting the shit, but as long as it kept the watchstander awake, that was fine. Dalton kept scanning the distance.
He said, “I’m tempted to suggest a night vision scan every half hour.”
Spencer replied, “I think that’s a good idea. Possibly not all the time, but definitely the next few days.”
“As long as we have rechargeables, I’m going to make it a regular thing.”
“I’ll spread the word, sir.”