The Last Cackle

In the cool of the night, the hyenas trekked back to Old Mound.

The hunting party was 500 strong and fortified, fresh off a traditional evening of slurping lizards off rocks. Unlike the grasslands, the high desert didn’t offer exciting prey, but it was generous with its reptiles, who sated the cackle for as long as they could remember.

As the hyenas approached Old Mound, their matriarch reflected on their surfeit of fortune. Most organisms weren’t afforded plentiful proteins, or lodging so insulated from the harsh wind, with its prickly whiffs of sagebrush. She understood they had an extinct relation, Chasmaporthetes or something, who made due with this desert. But Chasmaporthetes lived long before The Clench, and ages before her own bloodline was rebranded Crocuta crocuta curantis. She was certain Chasmaporthetes hadn’t shared their good luck.

The hyenas hadn’t met a rival cackle in generations. Some forgotten clans once ventured into the plains, only to disappear into New Golgotha. The hyenas of Old Mound didn’t share the ancients’ ambitions; neighbors were a liability, and the desert wasn’t running out of lizards.

Their home was impossible to miss; on clear nights, the mesa seemed to buttress the stars. Old Mound began at a rocky overhang, which led to a sprawling atrium, then a twirl of tunnels, pocked by the occasional antechamber of corroded machinery and dull drills.

Outside of the whelps, who’d hoot ridiculous when the basement arroyo acted up, nobody thought much of the underground, so the matriarch was surprised to return to a frenzy of laughs: something was bumping around the deep rooms.

The cubs first noticed the low noise. While the cackle plucked the badlands for scaled edibles, the juveniles accounted for the sick and elderly. The curious youth had gone down to investigate, and the matriarch sent a dozen adults to find them.

After an hour, the enigmatic fracas got louder. More volunteers lined up to scout the depths. By midnight, the atrium was restless, and the matriarch struggled to hear her own shrieked decrees over shuddering stone and giggles of discontent.

Half of the cackle had gone below, and no one had come back. The matriarch settled it: the tunnels were off limits.

You are Crocuta crocuta curantis! she barked. Crocuta crocuta survived the savannah, and our ancestors, the curantis, suffered for centuries, victims of a destiny defrayed!

As the matriarch rallied her kin, the terrible grinding drew closer.

The lost lords stifled the call of the cackle, warping it to their whims! Our clan, unerring and fearless, became beholden to theirs, decadent and soft!

The unknown cacophony was trundling towards them.

And when the lords finally fell, we found each other again!

Grit and dust rained down from the eaves of the atrium.

Do not underestimate our strength! Do not question our resolve! 

The hyenas snarled and thrashed, exhuming attack formations long dormant from their collective subconscious. The lost lords were mad and cruel, yet they’d plaited an uncanny understanding into the cackle’s very being.

Old Mound is ours! 

The cackle’s cry exploded out the mesa and into the dark.

Had it not been for their martial howl, or the quaking of the atrium, the hyenas might’ve picked up a wispy mumble from the tunnels.

“Sorry for the hullabaloo,” said the little voice. “But me and Wolf are awake, and we’re going to Point Pleasant.”

The war whoop echoed across the desert, ricocheting against the buttes and dolomite. Then, it bled into the alkali flats, and the night reclaimed its silence.

The sun rose, and Old Mound was quiet.

The lizards basked in the sun, unsure what they’d done to earn such a holiday.