This was the stupidest possible thing. The stupidest possible situation to have to deal with. But we didn’t have a choice. We had to have that truck, had to get back to safety. Whatever was going on out there, I wanted to be with people, rather than caught out here in the woods.
I chambered another round and fired it off, watching to see how the bear reacted. I’d never chased off a bear before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I knew this was the way to do it, but I’d never even seen it done. Never seen it work.
Ideally, the bear would growl and complain a bit, maybe hesitate and scratch around a little before running off. Surely it would realize that I had a gun and that it didn’t want to mess with me. Hell, it had probably already eaten most of our food. Maybe it would decide it was full and just get out of there.
I certainly didn’t expect the thing to attack. But that was exactly what it did.
It leapt from the bed of the truck in a movement far too quick and agile for a creature of that size and came charging toward us, moving exactly like a predator closing in on its prey. I barely had time to think. I rushed toward Angie, throwing out a hand to shove her toward safety, then spun back toward the animal, chambered, and fired. But I’d been caught by surprise and the shot went wide.
The bear was on me before I could chamber another round.
“John!” Angie cried.
I tried to leap to one side, moving in the opposite direction from where I’d shoved Angie, but the bear was too quick. A swipe of its paw went right through the layers of my jacket and sweatshirt and left the burning trail of scratches across my ribs. It also sent me flying. I landed on my shoulder, but was alert enough to chamber another round as I rolled onto my back. When I came up, my weapon was in front of me and ready. And this time I was alert enough to aim.
But the bullets were designed for smaller game, not bears. Not angry, rampaging bears that had murder in their eyes. The animal hardly seemed to feel the bullet as it hit it in the chest. It didn’t slow down. Instead, the bear closed the distance a single bound and rose above me, one paw knocking the rifle from my grip and the other rising into the air, preparing to deliver a killing blow.
That was when Angie hit the bear with her rifle.
“Get off him, you son of a bitch!” she screamed.
“Angie, no!”
The blow had come out of nowhere and caught the bear by surprise, but the creature probably weighed close to a thousand pounds, and Angie was not much more than a tenth of that. Between the bullet, Angie’s kick to the ribs, and whatever else was wrong with it, the bear was extremely pissed off. It let out an angry roar and lashed out at Angie. She moved to hop away, but slipped in the snow and crashed to her back right next to me. Her right leg caught the full force of the bear’s swipe, claws shredding through her jeans and the flesh beneath them, and breaking the bone with an audible snap.
She screamed, and I roared my anger and frustration.
I dropped my hands to my sides, searching the ground desperately for something to use as a weapon. My gun had flown away from me and I had no idea how far away it had landed, so that was out. But I needed to find something. Then my right hand brushed against something cold and hard, my fingers closing around it on instinct. I drew the broken length of the deer antler from my pocket and, sitting forward in a single motion, drove the six inches of bone up underneath the bear’s lower jaw and into its brain.
The bear jerked its head away, ripping the antler from my grip, but the damage was done. It stumbled toward the truck, slipping and flailing in the snow, spilling its lifeblood on the ground with a deep, mournful whimper. I jerked to my feet, found my rifle, and snatched it up, chambering my last round in the same motion. The bear was now crawling slowly toward the trees, already nearly dead, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to get back up. I strode up to it, placed the muzzle of my rifle against its temple, and pulled the trigger.
The bear flopped to the snow amidst a thin shower of red, and I dropped to my knees next to it, my breathing heavy and my vision dim.
I sat in the snow for a few seconds while the adrenaline rush subsided, feeling the aching burn of the wounds in my side rise to the surface. Then an agonized cry from Angie brought me back to my senses. I scrambled back toward where she lay on the ground, the blood from her leg staining the snow a deep crimson.
“It’s okay, babe,” I said, though I was terrified at how much damage that bear had done to her. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Angie growled in wordless pain, teeth bared and eyes rolled back into her head. I took one look at the wounds on her leg and quickly began removing my belt.
“I’ve got to stop this bleeding, honey. I’m sorry. This is probably going to be uncomfortable.”
It was an understatement. But it was necessary. I didn’t want to scare her any more than I had to. I wrapped the belt around her leg, just above the lacerations. I looped the end through the buckle and pulled it tight, creating a makeshift tourniquet for her leg, but blood continued to pulse from the wound.
“Dammit,” I swore. This was going to be worse than I’d realized.
I yanked the belt tighter, watching it dig into the skin above her wound, and she screamed.
“I’m sorry, babe. I’m so sorry.”
The blood pulsing from the wound began to slow. But I needed to get her to a hospital. Quickly.
I looked around the parking lot, assessing the situation while Angie panted with frantic breaths through the pain. Most of our belongings were scattered around the parking lot. Well, we would just have to leave those behind for now. I didn’t have time to gather them up, and they were the last thing on my list at the moment. The only things the bear had not touched were the few items we’d left in the cab of the truck. And those were the important things.
Because my phone was inside that cab. The phone that would get me the information I needed—and the ambulance that would help Angie.
“John,” she said, her breath a quivering hiss through the pain and the cold. “John, I think it’s broken.”
“I know, honey.”
I had to get her out of there. Into the cab of the truck, if I could, so that she’d be safer from the cold. Shock and cold were a very bad combination.
Add blood loss to the combination and you had a recipe for death.
“Give me your hand,” I said. “I need you to hold this.” I guided her hand to the belt buckle on her leg. “You have to keep the tension on it, okay?”
She nodded, teeth clenched, eyes wild and roaming.
“I’ll be right back.”
I hurried to the truck and opened the passenger door. It was a newer model vehicle with large tires, a spacious interior, and onboard computer system. And there was plenty of cushy interior. Hell, the thing even had seat warmers. If I could get her into her seat and get the thing turned on, it would be a quick answer to the cold. I made sure the passenger seat was back as far as it would go, tilting the seat to recline, then jogged back over to her. The wounds in my side were burning, but I ignored the pain, determined to get Angie to safety before I concerned myself with my own injuries. I stooped and snaked both arms under her frigid body, lifting her with a grunt. She groaned, a weak sound punctuated by her shallow breaths.
God, she was already fading. I needed to move faster.
“I know,” I said. “I know it hurts. Just hang in there.”
I carried her to the car with ginger steps, trying not to jostle her, and slid her carefully into the passenger seat. Running around the front of the truck, I jumped into the driver’s seat, stabbed the key into the ignition, and turned it.
Nothing happened.
“No, no, no—”
I tried again. Still nothing. No whirring whine of the engine trying to fire. Not even the ratcheting click of a dead battery or a failing starter. Just…nothing.
“Shit!” I punched the steering wheel. “This cannot be happening.”
I stared out the windshield for a ten-cou
nt, breathing and calming myself. Trying to think. Had we had trouble with the truck before? Did I know what it might be?
Unfortunately, I was drawing a blank there. Which meant I had to move on to Plan B.
“Okay.” I nodded to myself. “Okay. Hang on, Ange.”
I reach across her lap and opened the glove box, rummaging for my phone. The moment it was in my hands, I clicked the button on the side to wake it up.
Nothing happened.
“What?”
The phone was a brick. Completely lifeless. Plugging it into the charger in the dashboard did nothing. Of course, I realized. Without the truck, there was nothing to charge the damn phone.
I yanked Angie’s phone out, desperate now, but got the same result.
Something was very seriously wrong, here. First the truck, and now the phones?
“This is—” I shook my head, staring at the black abyss of Angie’s phone screen and forcing my brain into action. What could cause this? What was going on?
Even more importantly, how could I fix it? How could I get Angie to warmth? It was getting cold in the truck now, courtesy of the open doors, and I could see her lips starting to turn blue.
“John.” Angie’s voice was a thin wisp of sound. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“The truck is dead,” I said, my voice deadpan. “The truck’s dead, the phones are dead, everything is dead.”
“How?” she whispered. “What the hell could have…was it an EMP? Could that have affected the truck?”
An EMP. I frowned, searching my memory. An electromagnetic pulse. A weapon with one very specific—and very dangerous—goal: to short out anything electronic.
But that didn’t make any sense. We were in Michigan, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like there was anything important up here. Hell, half of the state was wilderness. Why would anyone have used an EMP here?
Then I remembered the yellow sky. That contrail across the horizon.
“Yes,” I whispered. “This truck’s internal systems are all controlled by the onboard computer. If that goes out, the truck can’t start. And an EMP would explain the phones. But not the animals going crazy.”
Because animals were weird and had a better idea of what was going on in the world around them. But I didn’t think they would react to electromagnetic pulses.
Which left the truly terrifying idea that it was something else. Something that we might not know about yet.
“I don’t think it was an EMP. That wouldn’t explain the animals acting so weird.”
“Then what?”
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “Something else. Maybe something worse.”
“John,” Angie gasped. Her hand suddenly gripped my leg, fear giving her strength. “Sarah!”
Sarah. Angie’s five-year-old daughter. She’d stayed with a friend of the family while we went on this small honeymoon trip. In the three years since I had started dating Angie, Sarah had become every bit my daughter. I cared about her like my own flesh and blood. And whatever had happened, it would be threatening her, too.
“I know,” I said. “If the lights are off in Ellis Woods too, a lot of people are gonna be cold, hungry, and scared. Sarah could be in real danger.”
“We have to get home,” Angie said. “We have to get back to her.”
“It’s okay.” I opened the door, my thoughts whirring through my next potential move. “It’s gonna be okay. Just give me one second.”
I stepped out of the truck and closed the door behind me. Then I started pacing.
I’d been in a lot of difficult situations before, even life-threatening ones. But none of my training or experiences had prepared me for this. I had a wife who was broken and bleeding in a truck that wouldn’t start and phones that didn’t seem to be working. I had a little girl miles away from us in a town that might, if my suspicions were correct, have no power.
No heat. No light. In the middle of a Michigan winter.
I was out of my element here. I wasn’t a true outdoorsman; that was Angie’s department. I was a soldier. That was what I’d been trained for, and that was what I had done for the majority of my adult life. But right now I was a soldier without an enemy to fight, and all of my survival skills had been learned among the sunbaked rocks of Afghanistan.
They were skills that didn’t translate to northern Michigan.
I saw my duffel bag then and stumbled toward it, digging through until I found my dog tags. Standing, I put them over my head and clutched at the tokens, already feeling more like myself.
Right. We had to have a plan. I had to figure out what we were going to do—and I had to do it quickly. I didn’t have time to stand around feeling sorry for myself or my lack of experience in Michigan. In the snow. In the wilds.
Angie didn’t have time.
We weren’t completely without resources, I realized. We’d been planning to camp out here for a couple nights and had brought warm clothes, shelter, and food with us. What we didn’t have was a way to contact anyone, or a way to go for help. And if things were as bad as I suspected they might be, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
If that had been an EMP—or something even worse—then society had its own problems right then. No one was going to come looking for us. No one was even going to be able to receive our call for help.
We were going to have to figure this out on our own. And that, I was able to do. That, I had been trained for.
3
I reeled my thoughts in as a fresh flare of pain from the wound in my side reminded me that Angie wasn’t the only one who’d taken damage. But mine were only flesh wounds. A quick, deep breath told me that none of my ribs were broken—bruised, maybe, but not broken—and that my lungs were both working just fine.
I needed to get Angie’s leg bandaged. Needed to figure out how to get that bleeding stopped—and whether I could. A part of me was screaming that the bear had hit a major artery in her leg and that she was going to bleed out regardless, but I put that thought to the back of my mind and turned my focus to more useful things. Get her bandaged, get her warm. I searched through the scattered remnants of our camping gear until I found the large first aid kit we’d brought with us. I also grabbed a thermal blanket from our cold weather supplies, then returned to the truck.
“Okay, honey.” I draped the thermal blanket over her shivering body, leaving her injured leg exposed. “We need to try and get this bandaged up. I need to see whether that bear hit anything major, and get it to stop bleeding. You ready for this?”
I didn’t think so. One could never be ready for this sort of thing. But she didn’t have a choice. Not if she wanted to live. She groaned and lifted her head up a bit, but I could see her eyes growing heavy. The cold and the loss of blood were getting to her.
“You gotta try to stay awake, Ange.”
I found some scissors in the first aid kit and began to cut away the material of her pant leg, careful to stay away from the open wound. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, thank God, and I took that to mean that we didn’t have a ruptured artery in there. The ragged gashes in the flesh of her thigh were deep, though, her skin around them puckered to an angry red. I could see splinters of the bone inside—but that, too, was something to think about later.
Get her bandaged. Get her warm.
I knew from my field experience that there was nothing I could do to close those wounds, and given the state of the bone, that was going to be a surgical procedure. The best I could do was to wrap it up and try to keep her stable. I grabbed an absorbent pad, a roll of gauze, and a role of medical tape from the kit.
“John,” she said as I worked on her leg. “We have to get moving.”
“Just be still.” I shushed her, leaning in to rest a tender kiss against her forehead.
“No, John,” she rasped. “We have to get moving. We have to get to Sarah.”
“Look at your leg. You can’t walk out of here. I could probably carry you for a little way, but not all the way back to Ellis W
oods.”
“You’ll have to drag me,” she said.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, sweetie. You’re in pain. Just try to relax; I’ll figure something out.”
“John, listen to me. Stop.” Her hand found mine and paused my work. “John, stop.”
I looked into her eyes for the first time since the bear attack, and found that they had lost none of their strength or vitality. She might be fading physically, but mentally she was right there with me. And she knew a lot more about the outdoors than I did.
I pinched my lips together and nodded jerkily, agreeing to let her call the shots. For a moment.
“I know you feel like you need to take care of me,” she said. “But you can’t do this alone. We’re both injured, we have limited resources. We need to work together to get back to our daughter. I need you to trust me.”
I nodded again, feeling my raw eyes pool with unshed tears. I finished wrapping her leg, securing the gauze with strips of medical tape, and then loosened the tourniquet a little to restore some blood flow to the leg, hoping the pressure from the bandage would slow the bleeding enough. But that blood was important if she was going to heal. If those wounds were going to try to close up.
Regardless, it was the best I could do for now. It didn’t, however, answer the question of how we were going to get out of here. I knew she couldn’t walk and knew I wouldn’t be able to carry her that far. She might have been small, but even I had my limits as to what I could carry and for how long.
“Okay, sweetie,” I said. “There was a small cabin about five miles back. I noticed it on our way over from Ellis Woods this morning. If we can make it back there, we might find a radio or a vehicle. We might find help.”
I hadn’t thought much of the cabin when I’d first seen it. I certainly hadn’t looked at it as a possible destination. Then again, I hadn’t been expecting all the animals in the woods to go crazy. Or a freaking bear to attack us.
Bitter Cold Apocalypse | Book 1 | Bitter Cold Apocalypse Page 2
