Project Hannibal by Kathryn Hoff (books suggested by elon musk .txt) 📕

flopped her trunk a bit but seemed helpless to figure out how to pull Jet upright.

The rope tightened as Cortez urged Ruby forward, perhaps thinking that the little mammoth only needed encouragement.

“No!” Kanut waved his arms and shouted. “He’s tangled! Tangled!” How long could a mammoth stay under water?

Cortez looked back, puzzled.

To hell with this. Kanut slid off Emerald into the hip-deep river. Water soaked his crotch and flooded into his boots. Damn, it’s cold. “Stay here, sweetheart,” he begged.

Two steps brought him to where the little mammoth lay on his side. Kanut fished around under water with both hands until he found Jet’s trunk. Grabbing it was like trying to catch an anaconda with hands stiff with cold while the river tried its best to push him downstream.

The trunk weighed more than he expected, more like a firehose than a garden hose. He pulled it above the water. Breathe, baby, breathe. Water dribbled out the end.

Part of Kanut’s brain asked what he was doing. The army wanted all these animals dead. Why not let nature take its course?

Because drowning while tangled in a rope isn’t nature. If the mammoth was brought down by a wolf, well, that’s nature’s way of feeding carnivores. But a pointless death brought about by human carelessness? That was different.

Or maybe he was getting to like the smelly creatures.

With a mighty sneeze, the little mammoth—his head still under water—blew his trunk clear and started to suck and blow.

Cortez finally splashed up. He clasped Jet’s trunk in both hands and shouted over the roar of the river, “Do you have a knife?”

As if Kanut would ever be unprepared. He fished his buck knife from its pocket on his tactical vest and began sawing away at the rope.

The rope parted. The wet lump of mammoth wriggled and struggled. At last, Jet’s head poked above the water. His eyes rolled wildly, but Ruby was right there to lay a reassuring trunk on his head.

Kanut snapped the knife shut and slipped it back into his pocket. Damn it, I’m not losing that, too.

Cortez grinned and used a boulder to boost himself onto his mount’s shoulder.

Kanut turned to remount Emerald—but she was gone, climbing the opposite bank with the rest of the herd.

“Climb on Jet!” Cortez shouted.

Ridiculous. Kanut clambered onto the mammoth he just saved from drowning, using Jet’s wet, hairy back as a stepstone. A foot into the mesh of Ruby’s harness and Cortez grabbed his arm, pulling Kanut up behind him.

Then they were off, riding double across the river: thoroughly wet, freezing cold, and completely exhausted.

CHAPTER 33

Last words

Estelle wondered if Sera realized the challenge she’d given them, to come up with a last message to the world. For the first time, Estelle understood something of the verbal paralysis that her sister Marie must have experienced facing a blank piece of paper on her last day. Whatever was in her heart and mind, anything she chose to write would never have been enough. Perhaps a simple apology was the best she could manage.

Sera, on the other hand, seemed to have a lot to say. She whispered into the phone her anger that her mother had chosen to die, and her forgiveness. Her admiration for the people she’d met in Rainbow, scraping life out of a harsh natural world, supporting themselves and one another with generosity and without envy of the world beyond the village. Her sorrow that Rufus, a man she’d never met, had crossed her path only in death. Her wonder at watching the drama and joy of a birth. Most of all, her fierce determination to survive the aftermath of the plane crash, and her hope that if she didn’t, her final message would bring comfort to her grandparents and friends.

Annie seemed to have shrunk from the day she’d left Rainbow, hunched over and trying to stifle the growls of her empty stomach. Still, she asked Estelle to prop her up for her message to posterity. Looking remarkably unruffled, she expressed hope that she would see her son, her husband, and all her loved ones again, if not in this life, then in the next.

When Estelle’s turn came, she couldn’t come up with anything inspiring or pithy.

“I’m a doctor,” she told the phone’s camera. “I’ve seen a lot of death. Sometimes it’s welcome, the coming of peace after long suffering. But often it’s the loss of a hard-fought battle. It’s not in my nature to give up. I want to keep battling to save my life and the lives of Annie and Sera. I want to live, to go on battling pain and disease whenever and wherever I can. But if this is my time to go, then I’m so very grateful to have spent my last days with Annie and Sera. And to my parents—Sera’s grandparents—and on behalf of my late sister, I want to say how terribly proud I am of Sera.”

Sera put down the phone. “I’ll take a few more pictures, but it’s down to ten percent now, so that’s probably all.”

“I hope you won’t be too disappointed if we survive,” Estelle said.

Sera grinned. “I won’t be disappointed. And I’ll have one hell of an essay for my college applications.”

Estelle huddled in the lean-to with Sera and Annie, trying not to think of the cold and hunger that made her insides ache. Having all said their piece, it scarcely seemed worthwhile to talk. Sleep was best—conserving whatever energy they had left.

Estelle’s mind drifted between dreams and regrets. I should have been closer to Marie, been a better sister to her. I should have visited home more often, maybe pushed my parents into a twelve-step program.

It was foolish to keep dwelling on past choices, but Estelle couldn’t make the wheels stop turning.