Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) by Brent J. Griffiths

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hand, if you do consider yourself a Wee Mary, I am guessing that you probably
think of it a reverse ‘too cool for school’ type of label, like ‘Hey, look at
me I’m a Wee Mary, I’ve never kissed a boy and I’m proud of it’.”
    She looked at him for a few seconds then
said, “Do you have a fucking theory for everything?”
    “Well, interestingly enough …” he said.
    She cut him off. “I grew up in Cardiff.
Pretty boring story, really. Parents not divorced, an older brother who lives
in America. Oh, and I have an abiding love of rock climbing.”
    “Rock climbing, really? That is
interesting.”
    “And the rest isn’t.”
    “Sorry, not what I meant.”
    “I’m teasing you.”
    Finn plowed on, “So … you study
Evolutionary Genetics. What exactly is that?”
    “I am trying to figure out what happened to
the Neanderthals.”
    “Huh?”
    “OK, here’s the deal, Homo sapiens and Homo
neanderthalensis co-existed for a hundred to two hundred thousand years, and
then, boom, forty thousand years ago the Neanderthals start to disappear and
are extinct about five thousand years later.”
    “I thought I read somewhere that they were
wiped out by an ice age or something,” he said.
    “That may have played a part, but I don’t
think that is the whole answer because their extinction was so sudden. I think
we killed them. I think we raped their women, and I think it was the first
genocide perpetrated by our species.”
    “Wow, that’s sad and more than a little scary.
Why would we live in peace for hundreds of thousands of years and then suddenly
wipe them out?”
    “I don’t know, but I want to see if we can
find out. We have a lot of work to gather evidence to support the theory. For
example, did we change at about the same time that the Neanderthals started to
die out? If so, how did we change? Did we breed with Neanderthals? Once the
Human Genome Project wraps up we should have a lot more to go on. In the
meantime, we are running gene studies on early man and Neanderthal samples to
get some more insight into what happened.”
    They sat in silence for a couple of minutes
and then Bex broke the somber mood.
    “So, I joined this club at the Freshers
Fair at the start of the year, the Alternative Sports Club. They are doing an
event next weekend. Do you want to go?”
    “Alternative? How alternative?”
    “I think it is a piercing marathon. You
know, we go to Dundee and everyone gets something pierced in every tattoo
parlor we pass.”
    He just looked at her, eyebrows raised.
    “I’m just kidding. Your face! You should
see it.” She laughed a little. “They are trekking into the Cairngorms with
sledges. I think they are planning on staying overnight in a bothy, climb a
mountain in the morning and toboggan back down. It should be fun.”
    “If you say so. What’s a bothy, anyway?”
    “It’s like a little house out in the hills
that provides shelter for travelers. Don’t worry, it’s free. Come on, I paid
three quid to join the club and I am going to go on an event.”
    “Sure, let’s go,” he said uneasily.
    “Brilliant! Want to dance again? I think I
just saw your pal stumble off to the toilet so we should be safe from his
flailing arms. How can he still dance when he can’t even walk straight?”
    She looked over her shoulder at the dance
floor. When she turned back, their faces were inches apart. Finn leaned forward
to kiss her but she pulled back.
    He pulled back too, hurt.
    “I am so sorry, Finn. I like you. I like
you a lot, but I have a boyfriend back home.”
    “A boyfriend.” His tone was flat.
    “Yes, I meant to tell you earlier, but
there never seemed to be a good time to just bring it up. To tell you the
truth, Brian and I have been drifting apart.”
    “Brian.”
    “Yes, his name is Brian. We have been going
out for five years or so. Even though I think it is going to end, it hasn’t
yet, so it wouldn’t feel right to kiss someone else.”
    “Sure, no problem,