Interrupt (2 page)

27,000
B.C.
SOUTHERN FRANCE

N
im’s tribe always hunted in packs. Their world was too dangerous for anyone to walk alone. Even his scouts traveled in threes, and those men never left the valley beyond sight of their camp. The instinct to stay together was as powerful as the urge to breathe.

Sunrise touched the valley as Nim led five hunters over a ridgeline, each man glancing back in turn. Below them, the horse-skin tents of their home had dwindled to six small specks. Now the shallow contours of the land separated Nim’s pack from the tribe entirely.

“Follow me,” he said.

It was more than the law. It was the best Nim could offer them. He put himself in front as much as possible, shielding his people.

The wind was cutting on the ridge. No trees grew from the earth, only patches of short grass and isolated shrubs. The wind tugged at their bodies, rushing southward as they moved east.

The men ignored the cold. If they reacted, it was to tighten their formation even more, using each other for warmth as they jogged into the barren steppe plains.

They did not speak. There was no need. Nim worried about En’s leg and Han’s cough—En had wrenched his knee six days ago, and Han’s throat had bothered him much longer—but they would have sent other men in their places if they thought they couldn’t keep up. Nor did anyone ask where Nim was going when his direction and pace began to change, slowing, sprinting, then slowing again. They kept their eyes down to search through the rock and brittle earth.

Silence was a survival trait. In the cold, each breath whipped away as white gusts of fog. Talking made their lungs more vulnerable. They trusted Nim to guide them.

It was a dreary world. Gleaming through the clouds, only the sun wasn’t gray or brown or dark green. Nim was less attuned to color than to the shape of the land, which varied sharply. Mountains filled two horizons. The men themselves were brown in every way, brown-eyed, brown-haired, clad in tan skins and leggings. Their faces had been burnished by the weather where their skin was exposed between their manes and beards.

Skirting a lake’s ice-rimmed muddy shore, Nim found reindeer tracks. “Good,” he said.

Unfortunately, the adults of their prey weighed several hundred pounds with antlers and stamping hooves. Three of his men ran with limps. Han had a withered forearm he’d broken twice. Every hunt was a risk.

Nim led his pack north—upwind from the reindeer. Scents and sounds carried for miles because there were so few of either. Nim hoped the smell of his pack would drive the reindeer toward the mountains.

The mountains were important because the foothills acted as a wall. Nim used box canyons for traps or stampeded the animals over cliffs, anything to minimize his casualties. Only twenty-six of them had
survived the winter. Five were children. Three women were pregnant. That was it. They were aware of two other tribes living in the south, but otherwise Nim’s people were alone.

Discovering new tracks ahead of him was like stepping on knives. Nim felt a sharp thrill of fear. “Stop!” he hissed, looking downwind first in case they’d walked into an ambush.

Man-shaped footprints had disturbed the pulverized rock—fresh tracks—intruders.

The sun was higher now, dull white behind the clouds. Snow gleamed on the mountains. Nim paced slowly over a wide area, examining the ground. Then he made his decision.

The reindeer had shied north to avoid the other men, so he took his hunters east. East was away from the herd but away from home, too. Han grunted his approval as they ran from the other men’s tracks, recognizing Nim’s intent.

Soon they hooked northward again, maneuvering behind the enemy.

Twice they found more footprints where the other men had followed the wider trail left by the reindeer. Each time Nim adjusted his course, threading through the terrain. He was careful never to cross the highest points, which would allow him to see but also to be seen. The wind was enough. He had their scent, so he stalked after both targets.

Finally, he spotted one of the intruders near the base of a hill. Nim dropped into a crawl with his best knife in hand. Each of his hunters carried several blades of flaked granite in addition to clubs of horse bone.

“Be ready,” he said as a second intruder joined the first.

The other men touched the earth again and again, clumsily examining the herd’s spoor. They were hideous. They had small heads, flat faces, and pebble noses. One had diseased-looking hair that was yellow and thin. They were taller than Nim with longer legs and arms.

He knew of them from his father’s legends. His father had called them Dead Men because they uttered nonsense if they spoke and because their tools and clothing were pitiful efforts like things imagined
by ghosts. The Dead Men even walked like spirits, with strides as long as the reindeer.

Nim’s pack had caught up because the Dead Men appeared to need a lot of rest, which was good. For any advantage the Dead Men possessed in height and reach, Nim’s hunters compensated with their stamina. His people were stronger. They had natural armor in the dense bone of their foreheads.

The Dead Men were Cro-Magnon men, the early race of
Homo sapiens.

Nim and his tribe were Neanderthals.

“Now. Before they smell us,” Nim said. He stole sideways against a crease of bedrock. Han and En came after him while the other three stayed behind. They would attack in two prongs, although they were outnumbered.

Nim didn’t need to see all of the Dead Men to know there were eleven. From their tracks, he’d learned a great deal about them. The Dead Men wore leather wrappings like his people, but they had smaller feet and didn’t push as hard into the earth. They were insubstantial.

To his eyes, their movements also lacked focus. As they traveled, the Dead Men meandered with the same flighty behavior as the reindeer, never holding position. Nim didn’t like it. Everything his people did, they did with unity.

The adrenaline in his veins felt loud and good as he ascended the lee side of the hill. Near the top, the wind increased. Nim was acutely aware of each gust sweeping his skin with the oxygen-thick scent of the glaciers.

This is our land,
he thought.

Beside him, En wore a feral grin. Han flexed his bad arm in a repetitive, habitual motion that Nim found calming.

“Go,” he said.

They charged over the hill. The Dead Men were exactly where he’d expected, kneeling at a spring. One fell backward in shock. The rest scattered to Nim’s right, where they would meet his other hunters.…

But their speed was breathtaking. Nim’s pack had no chance to engage the Dead Men, not even the one who’d fallen. Han got in a single slash of his knife, opening the Dead Man’s shoulder before the Dead Man sprang onto his long legs and ran.

“Haaaaaaaaa!” Nim shouted, chasing them with his voice.

His father had defended this territory before him. Nim would find the enemy camp and kill them in their tents if necessary. With luck, the Dead Men would return to their tribe and leave, taking their women and children. Why did they keep coming?

Seconds later, Nim saw the Dead Men sprinting up a hill to the southeast. Han laughed and sank his knife into the mud by the spring, rubbing off the enemy’s blood.

Nim had only superstition to explain what happened next. The moment Han’s knife cut the earth, the sky sputtered and dimmed. It was as if Nim blinked with his eyes open. Darkness buzzed inside his mind.

Magic,
he thought.
Evil.

Something in the daylight had undergone a profound change. The sun flickered. Then there was pain. When Nim could think again, he found himself on the ground, his cheek bloodied by a rock. The hunk of granite obscured his sight.

Nim shoved himself upright. His hunters sprawled nearby, dazed. The Dead Men must have unleashed a power beyond comprehension. Nim had no proof the Dead Men were to blame, but he trusted his hatred of them. He remembered how the sky had dimmed. Those shadows had been worse than any eclipse, unnatural and silent.

He swung his head to look at the sun. Was its light changing? Terrible currents roiled the clouds on the horizon, turning the sky black. The storm would reach them soon.

He realized instantly how this magic would tip the balance between his kind and the Dead Men. If his people couldn’t think during the shadows, they would be helpless.

“Get up!” he said.

En was the first to stand. Nim’s heart surged with defiant strength.

“Track the Dead Men and kill them,” he said.

The sun flickered again. Nim sagged to one knee, fighting it. The shadows felt like a club smashing him. He went blank, woke, went blank, and woke again. Each moment of clarity lasted seconds, allowing him no more than glimpses of his surroundings.

When it stopped, his environment had changed wildly. Rain fell through the dark of night. He was alone. Freezing water swirled at his feet, coursing over an open field where the hill had been. Other things had changed, too. His belly was as tight as if he hadn’t eaten for days. When he felt his cheek, the wound had scabbed. His senses screamed that he’d moved across the land while forgetting everything he’d done in coming to this place. It was two or even three nights later.

Nim’s feelings of loss were gut-wrenching. He howled in rage for his tribe.

“Where are you!?” he cried. Then another black bolt seared through his mind, and this assault did not stop.

The Neanderthals’ time had come to an end.

RISE

LOS ANGELES

E
mily’s vision went white as she drove down West 4th Street. For an instant, she thought the sky had flashed with lightning, but the air was clear and perfect like most summer mornings in California—and when she blinked, a red car was swerving into her lane. The front of her new black Nissan Altima crunched against the other vehicle.

Emily shouted, “Oh!”

The jolt wasn’t hard enough to set off her airbags. She’d barely been going twenty-five between two stoplights, but that was enough to ruin her entire day at six in the morning.

Fortunately, she had an arsenal of bad movie dialogue for any occasion. “It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue,” she said, stunned, trying to laugh at her misfortune. Had she been blinded by the sun reflecting from the glass face of a building?