DAY FIVE…OR SIX? STURM UND DRANG

I would like to impress upon you, that unless you live in Bangladesh or something, you almost certainly never experienced a true rainstorm. Neither did I, before the fifth day of being marooned in this strange reality.

Blissful and happy, I fell asleep staring at a clear night sky. I could not possibly imagined the weather changing, there was not a single cloud in sight.

Oh, how wrong I was.

It was early in the morning, when the first drops hit my face, gently waking me up to lull me into a false sense of safety. I yawned and stretched, ignoring the pleasant morning drizzle. I stood up and strolled towards the river when a gust of wind hit me in the chest with the force of a wrecking ball. I staggered and fell on my butt, which saved my face, because the same gust tore up every loose leaf, reed tip, stick, and piece of debris and turned it into a projectile. I raised, shielding my eyes, and saw what appeared to be a mountain range racing towards me over the river.

Do tsunami waves happen inland? Because it sure looked like one. The flying mountain range turned out to be a wall of rainfall so heavy and powerful it seemed like a mobile waterfall, because the rain was so thick it did not seem to leave any space for air between the droplets.

The blast hit me so hard, I had to hunch down to take it. The wind kept undulating wildly, slamming my clearing over and over with a near-horizontal stream of rain. Trees around me creaked, and another lonely pine fell, mercifully away from my camp. Every piece of silk I created, except those attached to my body, got blasted off the clearing and disappeared in the woods. Wind turned my bonfires into rolling fireballs briefly, before the oppressive waterjet from the sky extinguished them.

The duplication pools were a sight to behold. As rain and wind forced their way into one of them, a doubled burst of water and air came from the other. The two streams arced up and fell back into the pools, duplicating exponentially, until the whole thing turned into an unholy combination of a geyser and a tornado, taller than the biggest trees in sight.

“What, in the fucking fuck!" I yelled at the sky, but my shouts were completely drowned in the roar of the wind, and a thunder that boomed right after.

A bushbird erupted from the reeds, picking that very moment to escape the madness, but a powerful gust made it fly sideways, to the complete astonishment of both the bird and me. The poor thing crashed into an alder tree, and rising, gave me a terrified look. For one second we stood like this, a wild avian and a formerly civilized human, sharing this bewildering moment, and we both bolted into the woods. The bird cut a straight path through the bushes, and I followed, reasoning that I had no idea where to hide from the storm, but the bird just might. I covered my eyes and slammed head-first into shrubs and brambles, counting on the several layers of thick silk canvas to protect me.

I was determined not to lose sight of the bushbird, luckily, it was a colorful male with bright, amber-and-green tail feathers. I chased it until my lungs burned, and barely managed a sharp turn on the wet soil when the bird cut right and found an opening of the ravine. I followed, and ran knees deep into a gushing river.

Right. I was banking on the bird to be the reasonable one, yet it ran straight into a small canyon that was becoming the storm drain for the entire woods. The only better place to drown was in the middle of the big river I just ran away from.

The bird flew over the rolling water and disappeared under the roots of a nearby pine. I backed off to the opposite ravine wall, and found shelter under a fallen oak. At least, there was not much of a chance another one of the nearby trees would be toppled by the water undercutting its roots, as all those that could have fallen were already down. I was completely soaked through as if I dove into the river. Shivering from the cold and the fear, I curled into a ball and bit on my sleeves to stop myself from crying in sheer grief. As I watched the water rush by, a ball of spikes bobbed on the waves and caught on the roots of my tree. Instinctively, I rushed out of my shelter and grabbed it, before the wash took it. It was one of the hedgehogs. I tossed it onto the clay wall and it stuck in there like a burdock burr, hopefully out of danger.

Every few seconds lightning would strike, and in the momentary flashes, I could see a glimpse of the madness around me.

Up the ravine, another tree was toppled by the wind. I saw countless small creatures fighting the waves and losing the battle. Something big, and vaguely ungulate, washed down the stream, kicking and whining. Minutes turned to hours. The wind calmed down to less than apocalyptic levels, but the rain became even more oppressive. The stresm became a wild river, filling the gulch from one wall to another. I was effectively trapped. If I moved from my burrow under the oak, I would fall into a waterjet and disappear like the unfortunate creatures before me.

The day, however, decided to become even more interesting.

Between the roar of the rain and the blasts of thunder, I had not noticed the heavy steps, until they were right above me. Something really heavy stepped onto the rotten oak log, making my burrow sag a little and threaten to collapse on me. Then the newcomer hopped off, and crossed the wild stream in a single leap, landing with a heavy thud. As on cue, a lightning strike illuminated the woods, and I saw my greatest nightmare and my future arch-enemy in its full grace.

It was a bird, that I could be sure of. It was easily twice as tall as I was, and massive. It had powerful, trunk-like legs, with oversized thigh muscles that promised a hell of a kick, and wicked talons longer than my forearm. In the split-second glimpses of light, I saw it was covered in short, gray feathers, almost like fur, but the stubs of its wings and the crest of its head were tipped with sword-like white plumage, the exact kind I found in my demolished camp.

Mercifully, it stood with its back to me, but as it scanned its surroundings I saw a red and yellow beak longer than my arm, ending in a wicked, curved tip.

I held my breath and tried to meld in one with the clay wall. Luckily, the monster did not turn around, but moved along the stream and disappeared in the green. Not bothered by the storm, it likely sought the opportunity to catch the washed-out animals where the stream fell into the river. I had a nasty suspicion that it would not be as merciful as the wolverine was. Had it seen me, I would be dead in seconds. How do I even fight this thing if it ever comes back? The wolverine, I could at least kid myself that if it came to the worst, I could fend it off with a spear, or scare it with a torch. This thing? It would be like fighting a carnivorous backhoe. Spears? I would need a damned catapult, to even hope to injure this thing.

‘Lucky me,’ I smirked to myself mirthlessly. I maybe was a shitty survivalist, hunter, gatherer, weaver, tailor, and fire-starter, but I had the exact particular set of skills to build a catapult if I really needed to. That was if I did not drown, die of exposure, or get eaten before my siege artillery was finished.

The following hours were mercifully dull, as the terror bird did not return, and no other prehistoric monsters came by my hiding hole. As the rain calmed to more reasonable levels, the stream running the width of the ravine was reduced back to a relatively harmless trickle. The hedgehog I rescued crawled down from the perch I forced it onto, and trudged away, inspiring me to do the same. I considered trekking up the ravine and climbing out of it near the place where I found the orb-weaver spiders and their silk, but my hopes were soon dashed. The walls of the ravine became slick with wet clay and completely unscalable. If I went there, I would trap myself in a one-way street, and become easy pickings for any monster that followed me. The only viable option was to go downstream and cut left once I reached the thickets that framed the riverbank. The problem, of course, was that the Rooster From Hell went that way, and could very well be still around. I had no fire, and no spear, not that it would do me any good.

I had to use my rather unimpressive skill of stealth to sculk around the bushes, and hope the terror bird hunted by sight. Just to be extra sure, I rolled in the mud, to cover my bright silk in mustard-colored mud, which I hoped would make me less conspicuous, and mask my scent too. The noise of my prancing around the bushes was covered by the buzz of the rainfall hitting the canopy.

I half-ran, half-belly crawled towards the thickets. I felt safer there, the greenery here was so thick with bushes, saplings, and brambles that the bird could never chase me into it, being much too big to squeeze between the obstacles.

I kept crawling forward, stopping at any suspicious sound that broke through the noise of the rain. At some point, I noticed my hands and knees were red with blood. Frantically, I patted myself looking for serious wounds, but all I found were minor scratches. The blood was not mine, and I soon found its source.

Looking for a path through the bushes, I unknowingly picked one already carved through by a large, wounded animal, that left a bloody trail in its wake. It went all the way to the edge of the river, where brambles gave way to the field of reeds, and collapsed there. I carefully approached to inspect it, ready to bolt if it rushed me.

It was a young elk, or perhaps some prehistoric species of deer. It was seventy, maybe eighty kilograms, and likely a juvenile. It was certainly not going to grow any older though, as it had a giant hole in its side, as if some powerful force cleaved off a big piece of its shoulder, a chunk of its right-side ribcage, and enough of its stomach to spill its guts. Incredibly, the animal was still alive, wheezing its last harrowed breaths through the gusts of foamy blood spilling from its mouth and nostrils.

It must have been the creature I saw being washed down the runoff stream. It likely landed half-drowned and confused right where the terrorbird or another predator was already waiting for it. Somehow the calf managed to escape the carnivore’s initial strike and ran to safety, only to bleed out here.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

It could have been me. If not for the confusing lightshow of the storm, the giant bird could have very well found me and bitten off a chunk from my ribcage instead. I felt sorry for the elk calf. What an awful, awful way to die. It must have sensed me, because it started kicking the ground feebly, its strength running out with its blood. It bleated wetly, spewing crimson.

It was probably a bad idea to be anywhere near it, as the smell of blood and the noise the calf was making could attract predators. But I could not just leave the poor creature to suffer an agonizing death of slowly drowning in its own blood.

I had to end its misery, yet I had no weapon, not even a big rock to smash its head with.

But I had a bit of thin silk rope I used for a belt. It was the strongest fiber on this Earth. I took it off and wrapped the ends tightly over my hands, and as the elk reared its head in fear, I looped it over its neck and pulled with all my strength. The animal started trashing, with the last sliver of life it had in it, but I stomped on its neck and pulled even harder, twisting the rope. In a dozen seconds, the trashing stopped and the creature fell still.

I kept the loop on for about a minute to make sure. Then, I gently took the garrote off its neck and tied it around my waist again. Then I sighed with relief.

And then, because the adrenaline and the shock of the realization of what I had just done had to go somewhere, I retched drily, heaving and crying, until I was calm again.

It was just an elk, I thought to myself. Just an animal, no different from the pigs and cows I used to eat in my old life, except I never had to kill them personally. It was dying anyway. Knowing all this did not help at all. It just filled me with grim, irrational anger. I was angry at this fucking world, the evil incarnate of the terrorbird, and the sheer injustice of being forced to mercy-kill an innocent creature.

I grabbed the calf by the hind legs, determined to drag it to my camp. Rage made me careless, I was adamant to deny the beast its meal. I was forced to kill the calf, so I was going to claim it, and the bird could kindly fuck off. The dinosaur-killing catapult was already half-designed in my mind, and I saw myself dining on a turkey leg the size of my whole body.

Reality, however, tends to ignore our righteous feelings in favor of Newtonian physics. Before I dragged the gutted elk halfway to my camp, I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Carrying that much weight would be a minor challenge by itself, even for a much stronger man, but dragging it through a labyrinth of thorny vines and knee-deep mud was much harder.

Even though I have never been seen inside a gym, I always considered myself a relatively fit man. A physically demanding job in the trades and occasional hiking trips kept me spry for a man under forty, at least that was what I told myself. Less than a week of living like a caveman completely disabused me of that notion. I was weaker, slower, and clumsier than the beasts of the wilderness, or any hunter-gatherer who could survive here on their strengths alone. I needed to stop trying to think like a wild man whom I could never match physically, and instead approach it like a civilized guy I was. Use my brain, not my brawn.

I dropped my bounty and jogged towards my camp, or what was left of it. The duplication pools still acted like a novelty fountain, though the geyser died down to firehose levels. I ran around the clearing and found one of my spears, as well as a spool of silk thread that got tangled in the branches of a nearby tree.

I carefully approached the duplicators, crouched low to avoid backlash, and tossed the spear into one of the duplicators. Two spears shot up toward the sky, one fell nearby, embedding itself in the ground a few steps from me, and the other plopped into the river. I repeated the process several times, dodging falling projectiles. Tying several spears together, I created something like a travois with a stiff frame, and loops to put over my shoulders. With two spare spears in hand, to act like walking sticks, I went back to the calf and loaded it on the drag-frame. It was an unpleasant job, to say the least, for the creature’s guts spilled out earlier on, and entangled themselves with the bramble vines. I had to go back for a flint shard to cut them loose and ended up eviscerating the calf completely, so that the smelly, torn intestines would not spill all over my camp.

I was elbows deep into its belly, when I heard a loud sniffing noise, followed by a cooing chirp, that sounded like a question. Without making any sudden moves, I lifted my head, and locked eyes with my friend, Logan, the wolverine carrion aficionado. I was sure it was the same beast, it had an irregular pale patch on its throat and a floppy left ear. I remembered it all too well from watching it devour a human corpse. It emerged from the bushes and made that chirpy noise again, that would sound adorable if it did not come from a nightmarish toothed maw.

It slowly toddled towards me, its clumsy gait masking incredible strength and speed. I was, at this point, covered in gore, and crouching over a fresh kill, as enticing to a predator as I could be. There was no way we could solve this without a fight. I stood up, and spread my arms to look as big as possible. My oversized tunic spread like wings and billowed in the wind, making me even bigger.

“Hey! Fuck off!" I yelled at it. The wolverine halted, flattened its ears not unlike a cat, and snarled at me.

“WRAAAAHHH!! "I roared back, giving it my best impression of an angry ape-man. Incredibly, it made Logan back off so fast it fell on its rump, though a few seconds later it decided to approach again, growling menacingly, as if embarrassed by its previous display of fear.

I had no choice but to ramp up the aggression. I had no intention to let the wolverine steal my kill, not after everything that happened that day. And even if I did let it take the calf, I had no reason to believe it would not chase me down this time and kill me as well. I was covered in blood, smelled deliciously, and it already tasted human meat. I had no place to hide from it, and no fire to scare it away. My fight-or-flight instinct was in maximum overdrive, but I was completely out of flight options.

I went completely apeshit. Roaring, stomping, slamming the spears on the ground and over the carcass until sprays of blood and mud shot up. I snarled and bared my teeth like a maniac. If it were a haka competition I would surely have won. Logan suddenly jumped to the side, and made a move, as if to flank me, and that was the last straw. Abandoning all caution, I attacked, and threw one spear at it with all my strength. Not like a javelin, for it had no point to speak of, but like a giant boomerang, with a powerful overhand toss.

Amazingly, the wildly spinning spear struck it in the ear with enough force that it bounced off its head and disappeared in the bushes. The wolverine yelped in pain and backed off, rubbing its injury with a front paw.

“Hurts, ain't it?! You want more?! I have another spear!" I brandished it as if to throw it as well. Logan learned fast, it leaped away and crouched low to the ground, growling quietly.

I had the advantage and needed to milk it dry before I ran out of luck. I ducked quickly, grabbed a handful of mud, and tossed it at my enemy. It splashed harmlessly against its fur, but it seemed too much for the creature's nerves, it scampered back into the brambles. I could still see it there though, two amber pinpoints of its eyes glowering angrily at me from the darkness under the bushes. It did not run away as I hoped, it just retreated to strike again at a more opportune moment, probably the second my back was turned.

I could not believe my luck. All the fight went out of me, and I felt like I would faint at any moment. I strapped the travois to my chest, and with the spear raised to strike, I walked backward, not taking my eyes off the wolverine. Before leaving, I picked some of the viscera with the tip of my spear and tossed it into the bushes.

A peace offering. I would not have eaten the guts anyway, and hoped the gift would distract the wolverine from further pursuit.

Between the fear, adrenaline, the cold, and the fatigue, the walk back to my camp felt like an eternity. I dragged the travois up to the duplication pools so that the diminishing fountain coming from them would wash off the grime off the carcass. I duplicated my spear several times to have more projectiles in case the wolverine decided to follow me, but it seemed to have given up, or maybe was preoccupied with the spilled intestines.

I needed to start a fire, but how? The rain was dying down, but the entire clearing was covered in ankle-deep water, and there was not a single dry stick in sight. I searched through the nearby bushes and found one of the silk blankets. I tried to duplicate it but first had to smother the fountain coming off the stump. I covered one of the duplicators with the blanket and held onto it for dear life, to prevent the stream from falling back from one duplicator to another and feeding itself exponentially. Within minutes, the waterjet died, and for the first time in many hours, it was finally quiet.

I wrung the blanket, copied it several times, and used it with the spears to make a small tent. With enough layers, the silk stopped the rain. I was still wet and cold, but at least I was not getting any wetter.

I needed fire, but everything was soaked! I found some of my firesticks, but all were wet and useless. I had to use a flint chip to carve away the surface of a stick, until I found the dry interior. I also found some dry punked wood in a hollow of a nearby willow, and cradled it under my shirt to cover it from the rain and moisture.

I could not duplicate the tinder or the wood, because the duplicators still belched droplets of moisture, no matter how well I covered them. I had to work with what was at hand. Nearly an hour later, I managed to start a tiny bonfire, but it was eating my reserves of dry wood rapidly, and adding wet wood almost smothered it. Wet wood was useless, and so were bits of wet charcoal.

But I knew one thing that burned well when wet. I ran towards the dead calf and dug into its belly. Right below the hide, it had a thin layer of fat. I carved a strip and wrapped it over a stick. When I put the stick over my quickly diminishing fire, the fat started melting and dripping flammable gloop that quickly caught on fire. The lard burned so hot even the soaking wet wood easily ignited from it. Soon, my fire roared so high it threatened to burn down my dinky tent, and the whole camp smelled deliciously of venison bacon. I ran out again, salivating like a dog, and dragged the calf closer to the tent. Took the biggest shard of flint I could find, and haphazardly carved a big chunk of meat across the flank and tenderloin, prying the meat off with the spear where I could not carve it out.

Soon, a ragged steak four times the size of my palm was sizzling over the fire, fueling it further. The tent was filled with smoke to the point it threatened to turn me into a smoked ham alongside my roast, but I did not care. My eyes teared up equally from the smoke and the sheer joy of the meal before me. I dug my teeth into a still sizzlingly hot chunk of meat and wolfed it down in a way that would disgust the wolverine.

Satiated and warm, I felt my spirits rise. I’ve survived a hyperboreal hurricane, hid from a beaked dinosaur, rescued a helpless animal, and ended the suffering of another. I’ve beaten a wolverine bigger than me in a fight, and scared the shit out of it. Finally, I started a fire in the middle of a rainstorm, and roasted myself a delicious meal. Maybe I was not a badass, I thought to myself, but I felt calling myself a relatively-capable-ass was acceptable.

I had to up my game, and no longer just react to what nature threw at me. I had my wits, the wonderful duplicators, and the element of surprise on my side. I was not a helpless child, but a dangerous agent of civilization that this wilderness had no answer to. I had technology on my side. And technology is more deadly than any claw or fang. I sat, chewing venison with angry gusto, and plotting how to drag this world, kicking and screaming, into the Anthropocene.