The Last Cackle

In the cool of the night, the hyenas returned to Old Mound.

The hunting party was 500 strong and fortified, fresh off a traditional twilight of slurping lizards off rocks. 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 cackle approached Old Mound, the matriarch reflected on their surfeit of fortune. Most organisms weren’t afforded plentiful proteins, or lodging so insulated from the harsh wind, and its prickly whiffs of sagebrush. She understood hyenas 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 grasslands, 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.

Old Mound was impossible to miss; on clear nights, the mesa seemed to buttress the stars. The hyenas’ home 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 hear 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 terrible grinding got louder. More volunteers lined up to scout the depths.

By midnight, the atrium was restless, and the matriarch struggled to discern her own shrieked decrees over the 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! We Curantis suffered for centuries, victims of a destiny defrayed!

The matriarch rallied her kin, and the cacophony drew closer.

The lost lords stifled the cackle, warping it to their whims! We became beholden to them, decadent and soft!

Grit and dust poured down from the atrium’s eaves.

When the lords finally fell, we found each other again!

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

Do not question our resolve! 

A martial cry exploded out the mesa, and into the dark.

Old Mound is ours! 

Had it not been for the overwhelming fracas, the cackle might’ve heard a wispy mumble, coming from the tunnels.

“Sorry for the hullabaloo,” said a little voice. “But me and Wolf are needed at Point Pleasant.”

The hyenas’ howl echoed across the desert. Then, it ricocheted against the buttes and dolomite, and bled into the alkali flats.

Old Mound was quiet when the sun rose.

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