THEY never did get to sleep that night. The creatures in the dark made themselves known with rustlings, twitterings, and the occasional terrifying roar. Once they saw eyes reflecting the firelight. They threw a torch in that direction and the eyes vanished. They talked about taking watches, but decided against it. They made love again, this time more carefully, if such a thing can be done, Matt kneeling with his back against the tree they sheltered under, Susan on her hands and knees, aware of each other and aware of their surroundings, too.
When dawn came they started walking again. Within a few hours they came to a low hill overlooking a small stream. The Los Angeles River? There was no way of knowing, but they did know it was quite a few miles from the warehouse. And they weren't the first ones there. From the hilltop they could see, half a mile away, a herd of mammoths drinking and splashing.
Matt wanted nothing more than to get away, but he didn't interfere with Susan's pleasure in seeing the beasts. If they were stuck here, and he was beginning to fear they were, being with an expert on elephant behavior was a lot more luck than he felt he deserved. And being in love with her into the bargain. They would have to learn to deal with mammoths, and much more.
"I hadn't thought about that," Susan said. "Naturally, wherever there's water, there will be other animals. We're going to have to learn to approach it cautiously, just like all the other animals. Predators hang around waterholes."
"Like right over there," Matt whispered, and pointed off to their left, where a saber-toothed cat was slowly approaching the river.
"Jesus!" Susan quickly turned and brought her rifle to bear on the cat. It was not quite as large as an African lion, but far larger than Matt would have liked. Its fangs were six inches long and it moved with the easy grace of a born killer.
"Here," Susan said, and thrust the gun toward Matt.
"I don't know anything about shooting!"
"Neither do I, I've fired it twice. It's got a gigantic kick. You're heavier than I am so maybe it won't knock you over. If it comes at us, aim in the general direction and maybe the noise will scare it away. If it doesn't, keep shooting. If you hit it anywhere you'll probably tear it to pieces."
Matt followed the beast as best he could with the sight, wondering if he should tell Susan this was the first time he'd ever held a firearm.
When the cat was no more than fifty yards away it stopped, looked at them for a long moment... then dismissed them and resumed his walk down toward the water. Soon it was out of sight in some bushes.
"Let's get out of here," Matt said.
"Which way?"
"Back toward the warehouse."
THEY talked about it on the way back. Their choices were stark. Neither of them wanted to move away from the warehouse; it was their only protection unless they could find a cave. Neither wanted to spend another night away from the safety of steel walls. But this river was too far away to haul water from.
"Or we could head to the ocean," Susan said. "All rivers join the sea."
"Good idea."
A bit after noon they did find a watering hole... and that's when they realized they were lost.
They had been following what they thought was the trail of their elephants, in reverse, but they had apparently crossed a mammoth trail and not noticed they had taken the wrong turning. They looked around, trying to orient themselves, but other than the distant Hollywood Hills there were no landmarks to guide them.
"We should have blazed a trail," Susan said.
"Next time we will. It shouldn't be a problem. We can't lose the ocean, and the warehouse isn't far from that. How many places could it hide?" Thousands of places, Matt told himself, and he knew Susan realized that, too. But there was no point in thinking about that yet. They needed to find it before dark.
"I think we're north of where we should be," she said.
"I think you're right."
Now that they were looking for them, though, they noticed dozens of mammoth trails. They followed some until they started to look wrong, then backtracked and tried again, all afternoon. Finally it was getting too dark to see, and they had to admit it was time to start gathering wood and prepare themselves for another night in the open.
"We're not very good at this, are we," Susan said as she watched Matt blow on the twigs and leaves to get the fire going.
"We'll get better. We have to."
They huddled together again, too tired and frightened to make love again, and eventually they fell asleep in each other's arms.
4
"MATT, something's coming!"
He sat up quickly. There was a red glow far away through the trees. He heard the sound of breaking branches and what might have been a trumpeting elephant. Had Susan's herd returned? "What is it?"
They were both standing now, looking in the direction he knew was west because he had seen the sun set over there. A wind had come up, blowing from that direction, and it brought with it the smell of smoke.
"A brush fire," Susan said.
"Los Angeles," Matt groaned. "Always either burning down or shaking apart."
Then the wind brought a sound different from the mammoth's trumpeting. The sound was answered, again and again.
"Tell me that wasn't a human voice," Matt said.
"I think it was. It sure sounded like a war cry."
"Or a hunting cry." He paused. "I think it's coming this way."
They both stared into the west. Part of the land was indeed burning, but there were also isolated points of firelight on the top of the next ridge, moving quickly down. They looked like torches.
"Somebody's herding the mammoths," Susan said in an awed whisper.
It was hard to see. It must be something like being in the heat of battle, Matt thought. He had read that confusion was the norm, that one seldom had a clear idea of what was happening, there was not a godlike perspective like you had in the movies. Night made it worse, and so did unfamiliar terrain.
Everything seemed to be happening at a distance of about a mile. What little they could see of it was on the top of a small rise, and it seemed to be moving down into the draw, getting swallowed up in the vegetation. Beyond that... was that a moving shape in the darkness? Was that another? It was hard to see them, though from the trumpeting they knew they must be out there.
"I think we ought to get out of here," Susan said.
"Me, too. Just take the guns, we may not have much time."
He didn't like leaving their gear, but the sounds of the mammoth hunt were getting closer pretty fast. He picked up the tranquilizer gun from the ground, wishing he had more confidence that he could hit anything with it if he needed to, or that it would bring down a mammoth faster than ten or fifteen minutes. But it was better than chucking rocks, he supposed. With the gun in one hand and the time machine in the other, he fled into the night.
Like a nightmare, he didn't know where he was, he didn't know where he was going. He wasn't sure what was behind him. About all that was missing was the sense of running in place, of being stuck to the ground, working hard and not getting anywhere. And before they had traveled a mile, he had that, too.
"I know where we are," he shouted to Susan.
She was already some distance ahead of him, but she reluctantly hurried back.
"What's that on your shoe?"
"Tar. We're where the intersection of Wilshire and La Brea will be. We're in the tar pits." At that moment a bull mammoth crashed through the trees and faced them across a mirror-smooth pond.
He was enormous. He had to be fifteen feet high at the head, with a big hump behind that. He was covered with short fur, and his tusks extended so far from his face that he could not have pointed his head straight down without poking them into the ground. They flared out, then curved back and almost crossed each other in front of him. He was no more than fifty feet away from them, and there was nothing between them but the pond, which did not look deep.