The next day, Auru roused Billy (without
arousing Billy) before dawn. The sexual endurance test from the night before
had exhausted Billy well into unconsciousness, miraculously dodging any
restless anxiety from hunting a massive, wild animal.
Billy decided, if he could take two enormous
beasts in one go, then what was another? All in all, he was much more confident
by the time he followed Auru and Strong Elk out into the tundra. Then again,
confidence had been his undoing before…
The fiendish mammoth’s territory was well known
to Strong Elk. Now, Billy knew very little about ancient pachyderms (he was a
historian, not a palaeontologist) but he assumed they were migratory creatures.
Thunder-That-Walks, however, was said to be a solitary wanderer who kept to a
territory all to his own. That was unusual.
The hunters travelled, from the open, chilly
tundra, to the shadow of the towering valleys. By mid-morning, Billy noted a
drastic change in the landscape. The scenery transitioned from the soggy,
brown, green of the prehistoric plains to a charred, ashy, gravely situation
that reminded Billy of a grim landscape from one his dark fantasy video games.
Gray, ominous cliffs rose at either side of the hunters, and a hollow wind
whistled through the crevasse, ushering in an eerie atmosphere over the shadowy
passage.
Billy’s anxiety returned, nearly on queue. Up
until this point, he’d kept quiet, not wanting to throw the hunters off their
game. By the time his eyes passed over the skeletal remains of a creature he
could not possibly recognize, embedded deep in the cliff, Billy felt a lump
form in his throat.
Also, something stunk.
“Something stinks,” Billy said, pinching his
nose. “And it’s not me.”
Strong Elk, indifferent to the ominous energy
seeping from the cracks and craigs, acknowledged Billy’s complaint. “We are
near the hot place,” he said. “A wound
in the ground. The blood of the land boils.”
It took Billy a few moments to try and piece Strong
Elk’s poetic vaguery together, but he didn’t need to wonder for very long. A
steamy mist embraced him and the other hunters. The stench rose, as did the
temperature. Soon, Billy, Auru, and Strong Elk were surrounded by glowing, red
pools in the earth.
Lava roiled, crusting over black at its edges.
Even at a ‘safe’ distance, Billy—who was more fascinated than afraid—found the
heat nearly unbearable. The volcanic breach flowed in a fiery river around the
hunting party, keeping Billy mindful of where he stepped. He felt the heat from
the hot earth though his sneakers. He couldn’t imagine how Strong Elk and Auru
could bear it.
This really is like going into the boss’s lair!
Billy thought.
An accurate assessment. For when the curtain of
volcanic fog lifted, the dark silhouettes in the distance grew more distinct. What
Billy had mistaken for jagged rocks were the jagged remains of mammoths.
The three hunters stepped into the clearing
within the forest of bones. White tusks grew out of the earth, and the dark
hollows of skulls stared deep into Billy’s soul. Even though it was physically
hot and humid, Billy suddenly felt quite cold.
“It’s a graveyard,” Billy absently muttered to
himself. But it wasn’t as if Auru and Strong Elk would have ever heard that
term before, so he added, “A place for the dead.”
Strong Elk acknowledged Billy, with cold,
serious eyes. The hunter then took a few steps forward to examine a pile of
muddy matter on the ground. “Droppings. This must be the lair of
Thunder-That-Walks.”
The proverbial belly of the beast, in other
words. With all the heat, smoke, and bones, it didn’t look dissimilar from the
covers of old, heavy metal albums vinyls used by Billy’s dad to line his
office.
Billy was hesitant to step forward, but he
decided if he didn’t summon any bravery now, he was less likely to be prepared
for when they eventually encountered this walking nightmare. “Why would he come
to a place like this?” Billy asked the group.
Auru had been unusually quiet up until this
point, content to take everything in and process it slowly. “Mammoths are
creatures of instinct and routine,” Auru said. He did not elaborate. Instead,
he approached Billy. “Billy, this place isn’t far from where my old clan once
kept their village. Until that day, there were no rivers of fire here.”
Billy thought about saying something consoling,
but he didn’t get the chance. All at once, there was a great shaking in the earth.
The bones around them began rattling like horrific, hollow chimes. “Guys, I
think we’re standing on a volcano,” Billy said over the rumble.
Strong Elk’s hair whipped with his head,
towards a divide of bones—a tunnel of rib cages—in the distance. “No,” he said.
“It’s him.”
And then, the world exploded. Not with a rush
of lava, but shards of bone and strewn earth. Something the size of a truck,
with the same velocity, crashed through the growth of rib cages and tusks,
storming out into the open. A foul reek of ammonia and musty fur hit Billy in a
violent waft, almost overpowering the sulphuric stench of the unearthed magma.
Fittingly, a very primal area of Billy’s brain
activated, or perhaps it was genetic memory, dormant for thousands and
thousands of years, now reawaken. Adrenaline, terror, and an alien sense of
wonder gripped Billy, frozen in the face of something impossible.
Billy had seen pictures and render of mammoths
before, and the genuine article was mostly like those known recreations. But
there was no way to replicate the realistic details of the beast’s muddy,
matted fur, or hunched over shape, or the forest of spear tips and broken
pieces of wood—remnants of the doomed hunting expedition—embedded in the
monster’s flesh. As horrible as it was for Billy to behold Thunder-That-Walks,
it was the awe that stuck Billy to the spot.
Then, the creature’s strangely shaped head
turned towards the visitor from the future. True to Elk’s stories, its left eye
was a nearly solid, burning red, matching the geothermal landscape of its
territory. That single look was like a frozen claw digging its nails into
Billy’s chest. Thankfully, he was far too much in shock to scream.
Even as the sound of a hundred infernal
trumpets bellowing from below the earth threatened to shattered Billy’s ear
drums. Thunder-That-Walks roared. Then, it charged.
Billy ran, quite literally, for his life—not
that there was much room for him to run. Everything was rock and bone or
burning fissures in the landscape, belching noxious gas. It was probably the
closet approximation to hell that Billy had ever encountered, coupled with the
raging, giant demon about to squash him flat. The terrible odor from beast and
landscape stifled Billy’s desperate gasps.
Coughing and sputtering, Billy turned his head
towards Auru and Strong Elk’s general direction (the smog made it hard to
tell). “You said you wanted a distraction!” Billy gasped. “HELP!”
A sharp screech from behind tore through
Billy’s ears. He felt the mammoth’s breath on his back, and everything went
slow and drawn out. Billy knew he was on the precipice of death.
But when he turned to stare his doom in the
face, he suddenly understood why the beast had screamed. Strong Elk, with all
his muscles gleaming in the hellish light, bared his teeth and withdrew his
spear from the creature’s flank, in a spray of blood. Amid all his wild fury,
his matted hair whipping around his ravenous face, his eyes fell softly on
Billy as if to say, ‘good job’.
Billy’s ‘job’ had mostly been running and
screaming. While humanity’s best evolutionary trait was their sheer endurance
over time, the smog and the adrenaline were making it hard for Billy to move.
He tried looking for Auru, but both the ash and the mammoth blocked out his
view of the hunter.
A human roar, this time, cut through the
darkness. Strong Elk leapt with his spear gripped firmly in his hands, ready to
deal a vengeful blow to Thunder-That-Walks. Strong Elk was fast, but
unfortunately, the demonic mammoth was faster. With a sewing of its head and
its trunk, it slammed into Strong Elk with a violent force, throwing the giant
man straight through the hollow orbital of a mammoth skull. His prolonged moan
was the only indication her was still alive.
If a beast like this could toss Strong Elk like
a rag doll, then Billy feared there was no means in this era of bringing down
he beast. Once again, the angry monster turned towards Billy, who,
incidentally, was now fenced in between two bones, with nowhere to run.
“HOOOOO!”
It wasn’t the mammoth making that loud,
obnoxious noise. Billy looked to his right and deduced the large outline of
Auru’s body. The hunter, far from being subtle, was jumping up and down and
waving his hands.
“Hey, ugly!” Auru shouted.
Billy’s heart sunk into the fiery earth. He was
doomed. “Auru, I’m supposed to be the distraction!” he squeaked. What does
he expect to do, bear hug something that size?
Just as Thunder-That-Walks was ready to spear Billy
straight through the gut with his tusks, the mammoth decided Auru was much more
of a threat (or more annoying) and veered to the right, slapping Billy with a
cloud of hot dust that left the young stud coughing and sputtering on the hot
earth (but still very much alive). With eyes watering, Billy looked up in
horror as the giant closed in on his friend. Auru was seconds away from
becoming a caveman kebab.
Billy had only known Auru for about a week, but
it felt like longer. Across the eons, he’d made a friend and lover, and now
Billy felt that man was about to sacrifice himself for the biggest dumbass in
all huma history. Head dizzy, and lungs likely charred black with the poisonous
smog, Billy forced himself onto his wobbly feet and used all his breath to
scream out Auru’s name, in the hopes it would either force him to come to his
senses or turn Thunder-That-Walk’s attention back on him.
Time slowed and the mammoth speeded. Then, in
quite possibly the most well-timed and calculated swerve Billy had ever seen,
Auru threw himself to the side, out of the mammoth’s path, revealing the
jagged, knife-sharp bone sticking out of the earth that had been hiding behind
Auru.
The mammoth’s momentum was far too great for it
to catch itself. The beast threw itself into the tall, sharp bone. A spray of
blood turned the white remnants red. This was accompanied by a death ‘trumpet’
that Billy could not couple to a modern equivalent—only something out of a
nightmare.
Impaled on the bone, the beast slunk awkwardly
to the side. Auru rose, determined, knife in hand, but as soon as he laid eyes
on the fallen creature, he knew there was no need. He’d already dealt the
killing blow.
With Billy focusing mostly on not passing out
face first in a puddle of hot lava, there was nothing more he could do than
watch events unfold. The giant stumbled backwards. It paused, still. For several
seconds, all Billy heard was a melancholic wind passing through the hollow
bones. Thunder-That-Walks fell forward, without much fanfare or impact,
slumping onto its side.
Strong Elk’s groans and stirring managed to
snap Billy out his stupefaction. Cautious, he met eyes with Auru, covered in
sweat, ash, and a warpaint of mammoth blood. The caveman slowly nodded.
Under normal circumstances Billy would have kept
his distance from the fallen animal. Violence and death made him squeamish. But
these circumstances were far from normal, and he was far from the man he was a
week ago. Billy stepped forward, along with Strong Elk, and went to the crumpled
mass of fur.
Gently, Auru held his hand out and placed his
palm to the mammoth’s face. The creature breathed, slow and laborious, with
every rise and fall of its stomach prolonging in duration. Only a red ribbon of
blood from beneath its bulk told Billy the story. Otherwise, its mortal wound
was well concealed.
Auru’s bright eyes reflected the embers and
ash, falling like snow upon the trio of hunters turned mourners. The caveman glanced
around, quietly assessing the grim landscape, before he spoke. “This place,” Auru
started. “The same explosion that killed my village. I think it killed his
tribe too.” He looked down at Thunder-That-Walks.
The bone that speared the mammoth through the
chest may as well have speared Billy. A pain struck his heart, an anguish he
had not felt since his last breakup.
In the hot air, in the middle of the mammoth cemetery,
Billy knelt at the beast’s side. “No wonder he was so mad,” he mumbled. Next to
him, Strong Elk—stone faced and inscrutable as always—appraised the situation
with solemn respect.
Auru grunted. “No,” he said softly. “Alone.”
Billy’s hands reached out and touched history.
Warm, coarse fur threaded through fingertips. The last of something. A solitary
beast that would not go unwitnessed.
Something inside Billy, something that he had
both held back and refused to face, finally shattered and broke. He wept,
openly and freely, for all lonely monsters.
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