Primitive Instinct: The Journey Home
Run

We ran for a long, long time before Roar stopped, huffing heavily as he quickly grabbed his knife and sliced his paw, spreading blood on trees and dropping it into the snow.

“We are not fast enough,” he explained in a rushed tone. “Diesel is weighed too heavily to keep this pace much longer and as small and light as you are, I can’t carry you much farther.”

“Roar,” I snapped, knowing what he was about to say.

“I’m faster like this,” he said, making another cut in his other paw before spreading more of his blood around. “It’s steeper here, so it will be easier for Diesel to pull with you in the sled. The crossing is not far. Cazza will not walk on it. They’re too big.”

“Roar,” I shook my head.

“I’ll lead it on a chase and buy you time to reach the crossing,” he said, taking off all of his weapons and placing them on the sled. “There is a cliff. You can’t miss it. I’ll lead it there, then climb down where it can’t follow and meet you on the ice where it’s safe.”

“Roar! You are not going to be bait for that thing!” I exclaimed.

“I’m not losing another family to that monster!” he shouted, grabbing my shoulders and giving me a small shake. He’d never raised his voice like that before and I admit, it kind of threw me through a loop and rendered me completely speechless. “I’m the fastest runner in our clan. I’ll be fine. Please, Fern. Don’t fight this. I need you to go and, when we’re safe, I promise, you can be angry then, but there isn’t much time to waste.”

“Please be safe, Roar,” I grabbed him in a hug around his middle, squeezing tightly. “I don’t want to lose my family again, either.”

“I’ll be fine,” he hugged me back, then turned me towards the sled and pointed. “Go that way. Don’t deviate, even a little. It’s a straight shot to the crossing. I’ll buy you time, but don’t slow, don’t stray.”

With that, he was off, leaving bloody paw prints in the snow behind.

“Pull, Dies!” I called and started to push the sled to get momentum before standing on the back ends of the antlers, helping him by pushing off the snow with a foot.

We raced for a long time before I heard the sound of the cazza coming from the direction that Roar had gone, and it made my heart do something funny. I wasn’t sure if it stopped beating or if it beat faster, but it hurt and it was terrifying as I kept pushing from the back while Diesel put everything he had into pulling the heavy sled.

“Dies! The ice!” I shouted and he barked before bearing down and pulling harder when I spotted the clear, ice of the crossing, sparkling in the moonlight.

I assumed that it was some kind of lake or something, but I wasn’t expecting it to be that massive. I’d been around lakes before. All sizes and shapes and levels of cleanliness, too, because Rudy liked to travel outside of Texas a few times a year. But this one put all of the lakes I’d ever seen to shame. Now I understood why this was a major marking moment in the Mapok’s trips and why they had to wait for the sun to stop rising. This much surface would need a lot of time to freeze solid enough for them to cross it.

“Slow, Dies,” I called out as we hit the ice, and he slipped a bit. Once we were out on the ice a fair distance, I hopped off the sled and whistled, letting Diesel slow to a stop on his own as I searched around for the cliff Roar had mentioned.

“Shit!” I hissed, slipping and nearly falling as I started to run on the ice. I dropped down and yanked at the bindings keeping my snowshoes on and them tossed them onto the sled as Diesel circled back and we started running together. “Where is it?”

Diesel barked once and ran a little faster, making me scramble to grab the back of the sled and pull myself onto it, kicking off the ice to help him. My bestest good boy had seen the cliff and was taking me to it. I have never wanted night vision more in my life than I did right now, but at least Diesel had sharper eyes than I did.

I wouldn’t have missed it, because it was huge. Easily fifty feet high or more and it pretty much hugged the ice for easily twice that length. My eyes darted along the ridge as we got closer and then I slid my foot along the ice to slow us down when we reached the halfway point.

“Where is he, Dies?” I whispered, fearfully. “Where is he?”

Another roar echoed and I slapped my hands over my mouth to keep from yelling and maybe causing an avalanche. I didn’t think there was that much snow yet, but I couldn’t give a shit less about that. My hunter was playing decoy to something I could only imagine was some kind of John Hammond brainchild, considering that there were people with animal body parts and snow leopard wolf things and rabbits with horns.

Suddenly, I saw Roar break out of the trees, sprinting for the edge of the cliff and I nearly fell to my knees in relief. That is, until something followed him far too closely for my liking.

It was close to three feet taller than he was, and I put his height at about 7′9″, if not a few inches taller. It had off-white fur, like a dirty polar bear, but it wasn’t very long, though I knew it had to be thick. Its legs, up its sides and shoulders, the neck and face were all armored skin that looked like scales, but it was honestly skin, like a reptile. It had the body shape of a bear that had been given steroids and a weight set and the ears of a bear, but the face shape and teeth were very dinosaur. It had four massive paws with wickedly vicious looking claws and a tail that looked like a furry crocodile tail; flexible, but only enough to give it balance as it ran at speeds that made me wonder how the hell Roar had managed to stay in front of it for so long.

It was terrifying, seeing it from afar, and I was going to rip into the hunter good when he got his paws on the ice for playing bait for that thing, but my thoughts stopped instantly when it stood on its hide legs and swiped at Roar.

I screamed in horror as I watched the paw hit the hunter, glancing off him as he ran, but it unbalanced him, and he rolled in the snow right over the edge of the cliff.

“Roar!” I screeched as he fell and then hit the ice.

The cazza bellowed from atop the cliff, angry that its prey was now out of reach before stalking back into the trees, but I was watching Roar. I waited, knowing a fall like that would have hurt and he was probably regrouping, but when he didn’t move, even a little bit, I gasped before shoving everything off the sled and hopping in.

“Run!” I screamed at Diesel, and he shot forward, easily racing across the ice now that there was very little to weigh him down.

We got to Roar, and I jumped off the sled and slipped on the ice as I ran over to his side.

“Oh God,” I barely breathed through the fear when I saw the blood on his leg that was at an odd angle, clearly broken. “Roar? Roar!”

I pushed him to his side and laid my ear on his chest, listening for his heartbeat, so damn glad when I found it beating fast, but strong, that I sobbed before getting myself under control again.

“Dies,” I called, and Diesel whined at my side, head hanging as he looked at the injured hunter. “We need to get him to the caravan.”

I hooked my arms under his shoulders and pulled with everything I had until I managed to get him on the sled, panting from the effort. He was a hell of a lot heavier than he looked, that’s for damn sure.

I stood on the back of the sled, making sure that Roar’s legs weren’t getting bounced around or jostled too much before looking up and nearly crying when I saw some of the Mapok coming back from the other side of the ice.

“Run, boy,” I told Diesel, who eagerly took off for the clan so we could save our hunter.