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Page 14.

Soon after, as he was crossing the beach, he could only think about that second hide he wanted very badly.

He had his big bow, ten big arrows, and a stone knife. He wore only a leather loincloth so that he could move unencumbered.

He had planned his day’s work very carefully.

He jogged down to the cattle, and predictably they stampeded a bit. A few ran into the water, and that was where he shot a medium size bull. He was still a bit leery of his predatory lifestyle—Alex Kirk had disliked hunting, saying he’d only do it for survival—and he would rather choose to kill a male than a possible mother with young who would be left behind.

The bull took his arrow through the neck and stood lowing in pain, stunned. He put another arrow through his neck, hoping to sever arteries, but the animal just turned to face him and put its horns down as if to attack. Then he saw the poor beast was staggering. He ran close and put another arrow into him from underneath, as close as he could to where he guessed his heart must be. The bull toppled over and he danced out of the way.

Still no sign of the rippers.

Alex emerged from the water with this incredibly wet, heavy square of hide. He managed to drag it onto the dry sand above the tide line, fleshy side up, and decided to leave it to the sun and to carrion seekers to clean it for him. He was tired, and it was too heavy just now. Heavy arrow at ready, he sprinted again across the sand. All the while he heard his ragged, panicked breathing as he felt the sand sucking in every footstep, slowing him down. He stumbled over a sharp rock and cried out in pain but kept going. He looked more carefully where he was going—he’d be dead if he stumbled and sprained an ankle. He hopped up to the first rock, raced across his ladder, and pulled the ladder up for the next hop. Already, he was out of reach of any potential rippers. Slowly and carefully, he made his way back up the rocks, one by one. The biggest rock loaf had a surface about ten feet by six feet. He could rest there a few moments and look back. The hide lay on the beach, covered by birds that pecked it clean for him. Some of the birds had sharp beaks for poking open shells—He hoped they wouldn’t damage the hide too much. He was already daydreaming about the things he could do with that hide, from fancying up his water still, to dressing more warmly.

He decided to walk back to the cliff. Halfway across, he slipped and fell. He managed to grasp the ladder and hold on. The ladder turned once, but then stabilized. Then the rung he was holding came loose. As he struggled in midair, he smelled ripper. Horrified, as he twirled in space, he saw their tusks and their tiny eyes just a few feet below him. They must have been watching the whole time, waiting for him to make a mistake. Now it looked as if they had him. He could see the cold determination and triumphant hunger in their eyes. He could see the wetness in their pink snouts as they salivated for a taste of him. The hide wasn’t strong enough to hold his weight. He grasped the poles with both hands and shimmied as quickly as he could to the ledge. The wood crashed down below him, just as he got his heel out of reach—but not before he heard the snap of jaws and felt the hot breath of a ripper on his foot.

He clambered frantically up the rocks, scrambled onto the dry grass atop his sky island, and lay down sobbing in relief that he was alive.

As time went by, Alex resolved to avoid any more such close calls. He always carried his weapons, and never left his back exposed. He went out each day to hunt and fish, and he always made a point of knowing where the adult rippers of the valley pack were.

In a way it was comforting that they shadowed his every move. There were usually at least three, sometimes five, beasts following him at a distance. As long as they shadowed him, he knew where they were and could feel reasonably safe from surprise attack.

One day as he walked along the beach, under palm trees rustling in a sea breeze, he kept a wary eye on these evolved mammals, whose upper halves reminded him of wild boar, but whose shaggy bellies and clawed limbs were thick and fast like those of bears. They paralleled his path, staring hungrily from a sandbar across a swiftly flowing run of cold, foamy tidal seawater. They were afraid to cross the fast-flowing salty water or they would long since have made a quick meal of him. They had also learned to stay out of range of his deadly, poison-tipped arrows, and there were several piles of bleached bones on their side of the water to remind them what happened when they got into range of his bow.

Alex liked the warmth of the sun. He liked the smell of vegetation and seawater, the wind in his hair, the thunder of surf. He tolerated the raw screams of seagulls, who kited overhead in moist semi-tropical air under billowing white cumulus clouds.

He liked being alive. Despite his predicament, which included the enigma of his own solitary existence in a world where humankind had been extinct for eons, he enjoyed life and planned to cling to it as long as he could.

In a patch of blue afternoon sky among puffy clouds, the full moon floated among spindly palm trees high up on the reddish cliffs covered with vegetation on the landward horizon. The moon’s smudgy lime plains and powdery maria gleamed a faint lemony-silver. Near the moon hung a mysterious little grayish smudge, an elongated cluster of tiny lights and shadows, whose nature Alex could not coax out of his ancient memories.

Alex’s memory was filled with images and sensations that half drove him mad: cities and roads, skylines and jet airplanes, the touch of other humans, especially Maryan... He could not find a shred of evidence that any of it had ever existed.

In his dreams he floated down rainy neon streets at night, and sometimes he could smell, almost taste, the way rainbow gasoline slicked the curbs, the way rubber and discarded fast food buns stank in gutters, but had any of it ever been real? He floated among glowing computer screens. A white-faced geisha’s oval face wore a veiled expression as she stared down with wondering eyes at her miso soup and seaweed while koto music swirled in a mix of breathy jazz. He rode in elevated silver trains among dots of light made hazy with fog and smoke, high up, to that one dot of light that was Maryan’s window, behind which she waited while applying after-bath perfume in slow motions with pale hands and steam roiled over her naked form. Later he lay among tangled bed sheets with Maryan, while nearby a mute television screen flickered unwatched; its bluish light danced in empty glasses and in a wine bottle and amid the abandoned China plates of a finished dinner. He could almost feel her silky skin and hear the passion in her rapid breaths as he and she touched each other.

No matter how deeply he managed to sink into these cinematic and evocative dreams, he always awakened to the monotonous cawing of sea gulls and the thunder of distant surf. He was utterly alone on this earth.

Sometimes he awoke in the middle of the night to the crash of thunder and slashes of lightning amid a downpour. He would lie awake inhaling the rot of the jungle and think how the stalking rippers were probably at that moment scheming about ways to eat him, and then he’d drift back into a cheerless sleep that was entirely of this place rather than that long-gone place.

Sometimes on a sunless day, when there was no hunting or fishing and all he could do was sit in his doorway chewing dried fish and stoking a smoky little fire, certain shreds of that extinct world might float by—a whiff of cold beer, a laugh on a street corner, the rumble of a passing truck, two shop girls teasing each other. In a blink of the eye, all that remained was the distant crash of surf invisible in a blinding fog that kept even the sea birds on their black wet slippery jags.

He did not fully understand who he was or how he’d gotten here, but he did understand how utterly alone he was. He was a castaway marooned beyond the end of time, the last human being, a final Robinson Crusoe.