Caveman Alien's Trap Read online

  Caveman Alien’s Trap

  Book 5 of the Caveman Aliens series

  Calista Skye

  Contents

  The story so far

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Also by Calista Skye

  Epilogue

  1

  The story so far

  The Abduction

  Sophia, Emilia, Aurora, Caroline, Alesya and Delyah are working on an advanced translation device at their university when a UFO rips the roof off the building and beams them on board.

  They try to hijack the spaceship, but are dumped on a jungle planet after Alesya is killed by the abducting aliens, called the Plood.

  The Alien Planet

  The girls are dumped on top of a mountain on planet Xren, light years away from Earth.

  It’s a jurassic planet where alien dinosaurs roam around, most of them deadly.

  Equally deadly cavemen live in tribes scattered around the jungle.

  The girls settle in a cave and decide to become the best tribe on the planet and create good lives for themselves, despite the difficult circumstances.

  The Cavemen

  There are no native women on Xren. They are said to have been abducted by the evil Plood.

  The cavemen live in villages of a few hundred tribesmen, waiting for the day when one of them will encounter The Woman. She’s a mythical being sent by The Ancestors to bring all the women back to the tribes.

  New babies are born in the villages, made by Lifegivers, large hybrids of plant and animal that can conceive and gestate male fetuses until they can be taken out.

  Bune

  The mountain where the girls were dumped is called Bune by the cavemen. It is in fact a huge, ancient spaceship that looks like it’s crashed. It’s a mysterious place where there are many dactyls (alien flying dinosaurs that look like pterodactyls).

  The girls feel that a lot of what’s happened to them has something to do with Bune and whichever entity controls it.

  The Girls

  Sophia

  Sophia was the leader of the student project to develop the translator device. She was also the first of the girls to encounter a caveman, called Jax’zan. They are married and have a baby together, little Jaxia Aurelia.

  Emilia

  Emilia is married to Ar’ox, another caveman from a different tribe. She’s now pregnant by him. She befriended an animal that the cavemen call a ‘gray ghost’, but which looks more like a mix of a mouse and a monkey. Emilia called her new friend Alice. Alice is now a rare guest at the cave.

  Heidi

  Heidi was caught by Dar’ax, a caveman who can tame dinosaurs. For a while he was riding on the T. rex-like dinosaur named Gerk, but he now prefers to ride on dactyls. Heidi and Dar’ax are married, and Heidi is pregnant. She's the only one of the girls who wears glasses, and also the only one who can ride a dactyl alone.

  Aurora

  The temperamental Aurora is the only one of the girls who made a bow and arrow for hunting and self-defense. She’s married to Trak’zor, a caveman she shot when out hunting. She’s a few weeks pregnant, and she's now replaced her bow with a much more powerful crossbow.

  Delyah

  The shy but fiercely bright Delyah is the elected leader of the little tribe. She spends a lot of time studying the old wall paintings in the cave, trying to figure out what Bune is and if it might be possible to use that ancient spaceship to go home to Earth.

  Caroline

  Caroline is almost as unassuming as Delyah and likes taking care of the other girls. She hunts, cooks, and experiments with food and drink.

  She also secretly fights depression.

  This book is her story.

  1

  - Caroline -

  “I guess we can't complain.”

  Heidi comes out of the cave rubbing her eyes.

  I stare at her for a few heartbeats, trying to grasp what she means.

  Nope. I'm not that sharp right before dawn. “Complain about what?”

  She waves her hand towards the jungle and the valley and Bune in the distance where the sun is lighting up its peak in bright orange. “You know. Stuff. This whole... thing. Being here.”

  I turn back to the pot of water over the fire that I've just lit outside the cave opening. “Uh-huh. You know, I'll give it a shot. For instance, this damn water isn't boiling yet. After ten fucking seconds over the fire. It's an outrage. See? I can complain just fine. Maybe it's just you?”

  She cuffs my shoulder, acknowledging that she gets and appreciates my weak joke in pretending to take her sleepy statement literally. “Maybe. It's just, I'm looking out at this early morning, and I'm thinking, was I ever that much happier back on Earth? If ever I saw the sunrise back then, it was because I had an early class, or I had to get up at the ass crack of dawn for some reason which was usually not pleasant. There was always a bunch of swearing involved. Now, not so much. Hey, I don't know. I'm pretty sleepy still, Caroline. I'll be spewing bullshit for another fifteen minutes yet. Unless that water of yours is being prepared for some real coffee that you miraculously found during the night?”

  I stir the tepid water with a stick just to do something. “Oh, sure. I drink coffee every night. Only problem is that it's in my dreams.”

  “I knew it,” Heidi says and walks towards the woven screen that gives us some privacy for calls of nature. “I could swear I heard someone slurping.”

  “Me, too. It's just, I think it was Aurora and her new husband. And I don't think it was coffee.”

  “Yeah, it did kind of sound like Worship.” Heidi giggles and disappears behind the screen.

  I sigh. I have a pretty clear idea of what it means when a caveman Worships his wife. It involves his alien tongue and her nether regions. And Heidi gets that on a regular basis. Of course, she's not going to complain that much about things here on this alien planet where we were dumped after we were abducted from Earth. She has a husband who adores her. A huge, strong, and insanely capable caveman.

  Just like Aurora's. And Sophia's and Emilia's. After Aurora got married yesterday, only Delyah and I in our little tribe remain unmarried.

  Before Aurora got hitched to Trak'zor, there were some little hints that a schism was beginning to form between the three married girls, who were pretty content, and the three unmarried ones, who were anything but. But that was mostly because of the temperamental Aurora. And now that she's deliriously happy with her cavedude, which I absolutely understand after overhearing what I think was him eating her out last night, I guess Delyah and I will be the tribe's spinsters.

  That's fine with me.

  Sure, the cavemen are strong. They're kind and generous, and they love their wives like no men I've ever seen. If the whispers are to be believed, then they're sensational lovers, too. Not that the girls whisper when they go out in the jungle with their husbands on some mysterious errand. Some of them get so loud out there, we're not sure if it's the call of some kind of new dinosaur we haven't seen yet.

  But they can be as well-endowed as they like. They're still cavemen. With swords and le
ather loincloths and huge muscles and freaking stripes all over them.

  That was never my type. I always liked the bookish, quiet guys. The kind of guy who wouldn't knock me over with his faked bravado or cocky bullshit, but who could suddenly say something so profound and intelligent that I’d be reeling for days after. The kind of guy who doesn't have any silly tattoos or fancy motorcycle but who would make me feel good about myself with a single, casual statement so honest that I’d just glow.

  The cavemen are fine for keeping us safe among the dinosaurs,but they're not thinkers. And I don’t want an alien. I want an ordinary Earth guy. One with a big heart and a quizzical look in his eyes.

  Heidi comes back and sits down on a rock.

  I lift my butt, take the not-sheep skin I'm sitting on, and hand it over. “Here. Very fancy cushion, pre-warmed by genuine Norwegian ass. You don't want to get some kind of UTI from the cold rock in your state.”

  She takes it and puts it between her and the stone. “Thank you. Yeah, good point. They say the risk for that is pretty high just about now.”

  Heidi is pregnant and showing it fine. So is Emilia, except about a month further along. Aurora is in a motherly way, too, but she's only been for a couple of weeks so won't be showing for a good while yet.

  Bubbles are forming in the bottom of the pot, and I keep stirring.

  “But the risk of everything else is lower. Feels like we're all breathing easier now. After Sophia's delivery, I mean. Now that we have Trak'zor's magic gel, that's a decent-sized load off our minds.”

  “A load about the size of Bune.” Heidi sighs and indicates the mountain in the distance, which is really an ancient spaceship. “I sleep really well now for the first time since I got knocked up. No waking up in the night to a cold sweat about that, at least.”

  “One less thing to complain about,” I agree. “Me, I'd be off like a shot if we had a chance to leave this planet. And I'd laugh happily all the way home.”

  “M-hm,” Heidi says non-committedly. “I know how you feel.”

  I start cutting up some leaves with a small knife. But you don't feel it anymore. “Still, it's a decent little tribe we've made.”

  “I know, right? Best on all of planet Xren. Water and food and iron. Now including a newborn, even. The first girl born on this planet for who knows how long.”

  “Right.” I gaze towards the horizon. The sun won't be up for a while yet. But I should get going.

  The water finally boils, and I add the chopped-up leaves to it to create an infusion that has nothing to do with coffee but which at least has about the right color after Trak'zor showed us a root to add.

  “This should steep for ten minutes or so,” I state and get to my feet. “I'll go get some more herbs for the breakfast before the others get up. Saw a nice patch yesterday. It's far, but I have the spear.”

  Heidi leans back and crosses one leg over the other. “Okay. You're taking really good care of us all. And you're being so discrete about it. I really appreciate it, Caroline. We all do.”

  I give her a mechanical little smile. “Hey, we all do our best.”

  Then I get my spear, tipped with a razor-sharp dactyl tooth, and walk across our yard into the still pretty dark jungle.

  - - -

  The morning dew is dripping from the trees, and it's so clammy in this stale air, I feel dirty and sweaty after two minutes. But that's just the way the jungle is, and I don't mind it too much anymore.

  I move as quietly as I can, always looking around and freezing at every sound around me, spear clenched tightly in my hand. And there are a lot of sounds. Clicks and rustling and screeching and snapping. There's no wind, so all of it comes from living beings.

  Most of them are small and not too threatening. The bigger ones are the ones I have to watch out for. They'll trample me underfoot or stick huge spears through me or just feed me to their hatchlings.

  There haven't been a lot of dinosaurs close to our cave for a good while now. We're not sure why. Maybe it's because all the human activity around our cave is chasing them away. But the cavemen in our tribe don't think so. Dinos are not afraid of coming right up to any human settlement or village, even ones that have been there for a long time. They think there’s something else here that's keeping the alien dinosaurs away, especially in the direction I'm walking now.

  Well, I have my own theory about what that might be.

  I follow a valley between two hills. The going is easier here than elsewhere around, with fewer bushes and only low grass that can't hide some monstrosity who wants to murder me and use my feet to decorate its nest. Or something. I don't trust these things one bit.

  I realize that the walking is easier here because dinos have been using this as a path for a long time. The first couple of times I came this way, I walked far up the hillside away from this obvious path. If there's a well-trodden path, it means the probability of meeting a monster is higher. But after a few times, I hadn't seen any dinos here, so I started using the path, myself. I'm pretty sure I can see any creature coming from a little further away, too.

  Compared to the dense jungle everywhere else, this is as close to a highway as we get on Xren. Even while staying on my guard, I'm able to walk pretty fast.

  And far. My destination for today is a good distance away. And it's not a patch of herbs like I told Heidi.

  The sun is lighting up the treetops now, and soon the dusk will turn to day. Aurora and Trak'zor will be leaving for their honeymoon today, but I'm hoping they'll sleep in and leave me enough time to get back and say goodbye. But if they leave early, I can live with that. My errand is more important.

  To me, anyway.

  The path starts slowly climbing and turns rocky. This part probably becomes a creek when it rains, judging from the round stones and the sand I'm now walking on. But it hasn't rained since the night Sophia gave birth to little Jaxia Aurelia, and it's dry now. It means I can walk even faster, even if it's uphill.

  It's a pleasant, cool morning, but it's not really registering. The butterflies are starting to take off in my stomach in excited expectation. Not too long now.

  The animal path crests a ridge and continues down, the easiest way. But I turn left, going up the side of a hill with hundreds of slender trees of the same type. It's pretty unusual to see this many trees of the same size in the same place in this explosively diverse jungle, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one from the cave who's been here. Otherwise, someone else would have mentioned the weird forest with all the same trees. This is uncharted terrain.

  I crouch down and crawl the rest of the way on all fours so I stay below the row of bushes that will shield me from being seen. There's no breeze today, so my scent shouldn't give me away, either. God knows how I smell now, after nine months on a dinosaur planet with the closest shower gel forty thousand years' travel distant.

  I reach the cluster of bushes, get up on my knees on the soft weeds, and slowly raise my head to peer between the leaves without touching them.

  The hill dives steeply down into the jungle, and everything down there is more rocky than usual. The first time I stumbled over this, it was obvious to me that it wasn't natural. If my path here was like a highway, then that valley down there is more like an eight-lane motorway like they have in Europe. It's trodden flat and looks dug up, and the few trees down there are so big, I don't think I've seen anything like it before.

  This area here is special. Someone has dug up the ground and carried the dirt away, placing it in large heaps here and there. It would be a huge project that you'd need an excavator and a truck to do back on Earth. But here, the only thing with a similar capacity would be a large team of diggers with big shovels.

  Or just one caveman. A really smart one.

  Then my heart skips a beat when I spot movement among the trees down there.

  Yep, that's him. My caveman.

  He's big and insanely muscular like all the cavemen I've seen. He's wearing pants, unlike the loincloths that the oth
er ones prefer. His hair is short and dark, unlike the long, blonde locks that I've seen on the others.

  He has green stripes on his torso, which is probably better camouflage than red or white or yellow like some of the other guys have. But still, I was able to spot him the first time I came walking. It's a very vivid green.

  He's not mine, of course. He doesn't even know I exist.

  The day I found him was the day after Aurora didn't come home. I was feeling pretty down because she'd rejected my offer to come with her. And then when she didn't return, for some reason I felt that I should have pressed harder to accompany her. So I wandered a little further into the woods than I usually would, taking less care to be silent and invisible to all the dangers, pretending to myself I wasn't looking for Aurora, feeling the old darkness tugging at the edges of my consciousness. But now, my standby stash of Zoloft is light years away.

  That’s when I saw him, and I forgot about the darkness.

  He had his back turned, so I just had time to throw myself down behind the bushes, my heartbeat suddenly banging through my whole body. When a few minutes had gone by, and I hadn't been abducted or killed or raped, and all I could hear was something like contented humming from below me, I slowly looked up.

  And I've come back here every day ever since. Sometimes in the afternoons, sometimes in the middle of the day. But the best time is the early morning. The sun is behind him, and I don't have to worry about him spotting my shadow. And this hillside below me is well lit up.