Agent Out of Time

Deshavi looked appalled and looked up now at the chattering nut hurling throng in the trees with new awareness. I hated to destroy her image of the cute peaceable looking creatures, but it was best that she knew what nature was capable of in Siberia. Nature often could and did bite, when you least expected it.

The squirrels abruptly halted their chattering and there was silence in the forest. In a way I relaxed and yet my grip on my rifle tightened. Our hunters, in this scene were not human, which in a way was good, but it was a bit like starving to death and having the option of eating one of two bugs. Which did you choose? The bigger one or the smaller one? Whichever you chose it still wasn't going to taste good.

I caught sight of a fast-moving patch of gray fur off to our right in the pine grove. An ancient enemy was stalking us, wolves. Trent must've seen it too, because he glanced back concerned, and I mouthed, "Keep walking."

He nodded and we kept going on, as Deshavi walked between us keeping a wary eye directed upward at the silently watching squirrels. Occasionally carnivorous squirrels were the least of our problems at the moment. True I had a rifle cradled in my arms and ammunition enough to easily take out several packs of wolves, but I didn't want to use them for fear of bringing down our human hunters upon us. Humans by far were the worst predator of all.

The wolves would likely shadow us, until dark, before closing in. I glanced down at the rifle in my hands and reflected on what a change had occurred over the period of time of the past several centuries. Here I was again in the lands that my ancestors had passed through on their great migration to the Americas and yet everything was so different now.

After the discovery of the skull and Ted's initial explanation of the Ice Age to me I had pestered him for more of his knowledge of the time period, as I had become quite fascinated by it. This pack of gray wolves hounding us were small reason for concern, in comparison to the threats that my ancestors had to deal with on a daily basis, and they hadn't had the high powered weapons that I did. The archaeological evidence seemed to suggest that the colonization of the Americas, instead of taking place during one massive migration of peoples, had instead occurred in smaller movements of people at a time spaced out over long periods of time.

Some reasons for the slowed migration could've been that people lost the skills needed to build ships capable of ocean voyage or perhaps parts of the land bridge became impassable by rising water or heavy storms for years at a time.