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 twilight of slurping lizards off rocks. The high desert didn’t offer exciting prey, but it was generous with its reptiles, who’d sated the cackle for as long as they could remember.

As the hyenas approached Old Mound, the matriarch reflected on their uncommon luck.

Most desert organisms weren’t afforded a dwelling so insulated from the harsh wind, with its prickly whiffs of sagebrush. The matriarch understood the cackle had an extinct relation, Chasmaporthetes or so, who’d made due with this harsh land, but Chasmaporthetes lived long before The Clench, and ages before the dead meat.

The hyenas of Old Mound hadn’t met a rival cackle in generations. Some forgotten clans once ventured into the grasslands, only to vanish into New Golgotha. The matriarch didn’t share her ancestors’ ambitions, as the desert wasn’t running out of lizards.

It was a clear evening, and Old Mound appeared to buttress the stars. The hyenas’ home was a hollowed-out mesa. It began with a rocky overhang, which led to a sprawling atrium, and then a twirl of tunnels, pocked by the occasional antechamber of corroded metals.

Outside of the whelps, who’d hoot ridiculous when the basement arroyo acted up, the underground was an afterthought, so the matriarch was surprised to return to a frenzy of laughs.

Something was bumping around the deep rooms.

The cubs heard the low noise first. While the cackle plucked the badlands for proteins, the juveniles stayed behind to account for the old and ill. Some curious youth had gone down to investigate the fracas, and the matriarch sent a dozen adults to retrieve them.

After an hour, the distant grinding grew, and more volunteers disappeared into the depths.

By midnight, Old Mound echoed with giggles of discontent.

Half of the cackle had gone below. No one had come back.

As grit and pebbles poured from the atrium’s eaves, the matriarch settled it: the cacophony was to come to them.

You are Crocuta crocuta curantis! she railed. Crocuta crocuta survived the savannah, and we Curantis suffered for centuries! We were warped, beholden and soft, to serve the dead meat!

Her cackle snarled with concurrence, gnashing and snapping.

And when the dead meat shriveled and pocked, we found each other again!

The atrium went wild, as the cackle exhumed intricate pack tactics from their collective subconscious.

Do not question your resolve! 

If it weren’t for the shuddering stone or the matriarch’s shrieked decrees –

Do not doubt your fury!

– the hyenas of Old Mound might’ve discerned a mumble coming from the tunnels.

“Apologies for the hullabaloo,” said the tremulous presence. “But Wolf and I have a klatsch at Point Pleasant.”

A wet volume of screams gushed out of the mesa, slapping against the buttes and dolomite, before soaking up silent in the alkali flats.

The next morning, Old Mound was still.

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