by Gene Stone
“Where have you been?”
“Fighting. I thought you’d stay on that bluff forever.”
“I might have. But here I am.”
“This was your plan?”
“It was. Sometimes to watch and think is more valuable than to act.”
“And what did you see up there?”
“Everything.”
“Let’s go.”
The two bears ran ahead, looking to wound.
As the bear charged, time slowed. He could feel the core of the earth reverberate up to his chest each time his paw struck the sod. Some new synaptic connection linked him with every animal that wanted victory and feared defeat. He had singular focus. Find the humans, avoid the bullets, and kill. Not for his own protection. He didn’t need protection from humans. But for the mice, the rats, the beavers, the lesser animals who’d fed him and his brethren for so long. For the dead fawn.
As he charged, as he growled and postured, new words flooded his mind. He knew what corporeal meant, and he could feel his body in a way he never had before. He was aware of his actions, aware of why he stretched and roared and ran. He understood his purpose. He understood cause and effect. He understood power. He understood that humans knew more of power than any other species, that this knowledge alone made them special. He understood that he had power, that he’d had it all along; he could feel it with each stride. He had seen his own power in the face of the hare, the humans, the beavers, the mice, but he hadn’t been able to harness it like the humans.
He ran toward his destiny. As he did, he thought of his mother’s den, of his brother, of the new life awaiting him if he survived.
The lines of combat met. A wolf tore into a human, ripping apart the jugular. Three ferrets gnawed at another human’s midsection.
Not all the humans had dropped their arms, despite the success of the rodent assault. A human got off a shot and an elk fell on his hindlegs. He buckled. He died.
The black bear killed four humans in a matter of seconds. His assault was magnificent, like an empire taking its first crushing steps.
The bear wished his brother were here with him, fighting at his side. Together, he and his brother, they would have conquered everything.
The battle waged on. The bear’s plan was working. The predators were killing. The humans, when disarmed, were nothing but rotten berries to be picked off a vine and chewed up.
Dawn. The bear ebbed back, away from the battle. He was exhausted. His bones ached and he needed to rest, so he climbed up into the rocks where he’d spent the previous night. Again, he watched. The battle’s ferocity had dimmed, and the bear could see the results: bodies of every species bleeding from punctures and wounds, limbs severed; all the things, deserved and cruel, that happen in a battle. He stayed crouched in his slice of safety. A confused human, wounded by rat bites, by a wolf’s swat, by hunger and exhaustion, crawled toward him, so dazed he didn’t know he was talking to a bear.
“Yesterday I was on my way to work.” The human was dark haired, the heaviness of everything pulling down the skin below his listless blue eyes, which were puffy with bruises. His clothes had been ripped and were shredded at the hems. The man couldn’t catch his breath.
The bear thought of those salmon. He couldn’t stop his heart from feeling the man’s pain.
“It’s been a rough few hours,” the man said.
“Tell me why.”
The man looked at him. Now he realized he was talking to a bear. The man laughed, but it wasn’t a mocking laugh, nor was it joyful. It was scared and incredulous. Everything that had happened over these last hours—none of it made sense. This made no more or less sense.
“I don’t understand what’s going on, but I think you’re going to win.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t understand what we’re fighting. We don’t have the right weapons. We made our weapons to fight each other. No one ever told us we were going to do battle with you.”
The bear thought this over. “Did you have a mother?”
“Of course.”
“Did you have a brother?”
“No. I have three sisters.”
The bear looked at him closely. The human was so frail, so white, so vulnerable—and so hurt. His body was riddled with bites, his mind by guilt.
“I know guilt now, too,” the bear said.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I killed humans the way you kill us. It felt good, but then it felt bad.”
The man started to shed tears. “How can I hear this bear, this beast? Please, kill me. End it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I need to understand more. Come.”
The bear picked up the wounded human and carried him up the steep incline. He dropped him upon his earlier perch, and the two of them watched the battle. The human started coughing violently.
“You need care,” the bear said. He picked up the human again and brought him to the den. The human was weak, and his frailty was beginning to annoy the bear.
“Please kill me,” he repeated. “I have nothing to go back to.”
The bear shut him up with a growl.
Once inside, the man collapsed into a deep sleep. The bear went back outside and picked at some insects from inside a log. After he ate his fill, he cupped his paws and took some for the human.
The human made noises as he slept. Was he remembering something? Finally, the human stirred, stretched, then sat up.
“Where am I?”
“The place where I rest. Here. I brought you food.” He extended his paws to the human.
The human, seeing the insects, shook his head. “Thank you. But we don’t eat that.”
The bear shrugged. “I have things I need to ask you.”
“And then you’ll kill me?”
“Why do you keep talking about death?”
“Do you not know what’s going on?”
“Tell me.”
“Animals are fighting us everywhere. Africa, Asia, Europe. Our world is over.”
“Your world?”
“As we knew it.”
“What did you like best about your world?”
The man pondered this. “What do you mean?”
“What is your favorite part of being human?”
“Sex,” the man said, and then laughed without conviction.
“Sex? To have offspring?”
“No, to have fun. We have fun when we mate. It’s what makes our world go around.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think the best part of being human is how well you adapt. And so swiftly. How you conquer. You are able to pull together different thoughts, plans, and actions in a way the rest of us can’t.”
“Until now.”
“Until now.”
“And what about you?” the man asked.
“What about me?”
“What was it like before? Do you remember?”
The bear laughed. “Of course. I can only speak for myself, but I was aware of everything I needed to be aware of. There wasn’t as much going on in my mind as now. I didn’t have all these words, but I had the same feelings. And maybe I did have thoughts. They were just different. That is all. It would be like me asking you if you knew how to chew because your teeth aren’t as sharp as mine.”
“I see,” said the human.
“Do you?”
“No,” the human said. “Not really.”
“Tell me more about being human. Tell me about your mother,” the bear said. For a while the man remained silent. He looked overwhelmed and defeated. The bear didn’t press him. He picked at the insects.
“Why would you be interested in my mother?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t stop thinking about my own mother. About that feeling I felt when I was next to her.”
“How do you eat those?”
The bear looked down at the insect and shrugged. Then he dropped one into his mouth. The man smiled.
“I loved my mother. I was raised on a farm. We grew corn. Farm living is tough and outdated. But she made it fun. She woke us up early with breakfast, she was always laughing, helping us enjoy our lives. She was religious. She read to us from the Bible every morning. Then we’d do chores. There were four of us, so the workload wasn’t too bad.”
“Four offspring? Did your mother watch you closely?”
“I suppose. But not really. We each had a job to do, and we knew how to do it. Then we went to school, came home, did our homework, and were free to play the rest of the day away. Then, before we went to sleep, Mom would come to each of us separately, sit with us, talk to us one-on-one, so that we always felt special.”
“What would she say?”
“Oh, sometimes she’d tell us something funny Dad did, or maybe ask us how school went. My favorite was when she’d tell me about the day I was born. I came two weeks early. She was riding in an elevator when it got stuck between floors. No one came to help, she panicked, and soon she went into labor. A stranger happened to be in there with her. The poor man was an accountant. But he delivered me and from then on he was invited to every Thanksgiving and every Christmas.” The human smiled.
“You humans need help delivering your young?”
“Yes.”
“And this stranger just helped out, even though he didn’t have to?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“I don’t understand humans.”
“I don’t either.”
The bear yawned. His head ached from all these thoughts. “I think I have learned enough for now. I would invite you to stay here with me, but that isn’t wise, I fear.”
“No.”
“Would you like me to take you back?”
“I can walk. I could use the fresh air.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go home, if I still have a home. I want to talk to my mother.”
“She’s still alive?”
“She was two days ago.”
“Does she live with you?”
“No. She still lives where I grew up. Many, many miles from here.”
The bear thought about this. “Say hello from me.”
The human laughed. So did the bear.
“And I was wrong before,” the human said. “The best part of being human isn’t sex. It’s love. That’s what separates us from you. We can love with the same intensity that you hunt.”
The bear nodded. “How would you define this love?”
“I can’t. It’s just something you feel for another human.”
The bear thought about his own family. “I loved my mother too, I think. But I didn’t realize it until now. At least, I didn’t realize that it was love.”
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t know.”
The human said nothing. The two sat there for a long time in the safety of silence.
“What are you going do?” the human finally asked. “Go back and fight?”
“No,” the bear said. The bear knew he needed to learn more. He wasn’t ready to fight just yet.
The two creatures looked at each other. The bear, without understanding why, stood and hugged the human, gently, trying to express something, perhaps kindness, or sympathy, without hurting the fragile creature. The human, though startled at first, hugged the bear back. He began to cry.
The two creatures parted. The human walked into the sunlight, grabbed a branch from the forest floor, and used it to steady his gait. The bear closed his eyes. This time, when all the thoughts deluged his mind, he’d sort them out. A plan was forming amid all the dreams and reflections.
He wasn’t so sure that the human was right. Love was very important. But so was hope, and kindness, and empathy. And there was something else, too. He didn’t have a word for it. But it was that thing that humans used to survive, to thrive, to succeed. Because that’s what they did. All of them. Everywhere.
“Creation.” The word just came to him. Creation.
Dog
They’ll be back, Clio had told him. It was all he could think about. Jessie had boarded up the windows, including the one in the room where Cooper had found Clio hiding. But the cat slipped back into a dark corner whenever Jessie was present. Why was she hiding? Clio was smarter than he was, he knew that even before the awareness, and he figured she must have had a reason to keep herself out of sight.
The door at the top of the stairs felt secure. The walls seemed unbreakable. But none of those obstacles would stop the animals. Nothing would prevent them from finding a way in, from turning on him, the treasonous dog, and from tearing into Jessie’s summer skin, already bronzed and tender from days in the park and at the beach.
He let the image of Jessie’s dead corpse. Her flesh stuck to the teeth of his fellow mammals, ebb into the recesses of his new mind. Now he wondered: Did the other animals know what he had done? There were so many thoughts in the air now and inside him. It was too confusing; he didn’t like confusion. He remembered what it was like to ponder a bone, that wonderful white piece of calm.
He forced himself to think of something else, of anything other than the barriers that had to come down, the fate that seemed preordained by the rats and the raccoons.
Carol was up again, walking about. Her movements were frenetic; she was like a wounded animal, like prey. Jessie was pacing, pensive now, daydreaming away the reality of war. Her eyes squinted though there was no sun, and the creases next to them aged her. Her pacing had a soporific effect on Cooper, like a pendulum. Happily, his mind wandered. He thought of strange things. His food bowl. His collection of plastic toys. The feeling of the leash on his neck. Remembrances bound by fondness, simple pleasures.
“We’re trapped in here,” Jessie said, her worried tone piercing his thoughts.
Cooper lifted his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Trapped. Confined. By the floor, and by the planks over the windows. It’s like we’re just sitting here waiting for them to come back.”
Had Jessie read his thoughts? Were they floating around in the air, free for anyone to grab and understand?
“We can’t leave, Jessie,” he said.
“I know. They might be up there. They might be waiting. I don’t know. I don’t know what the right thing is.”
Her pacing quickened. She raced around the perimeter of the room. Carol ignored her, muttering to herself.
“Jessie,” Cooper said. “Please.”
“I just keep thinking this has to be a dream. I keep thinking that Peter will turn up any moment, tell me he loves me again, we’ll all be together back it in the apartment. Having sex again.”
“Jessie!” Carol said. So she wasn’t as remote as Cooper had thought.
“What?” Jessie asked. “What, mother?”
Carol didn’t answer.
“It’s not a dream,” Cooper said quietly. “It’s not even a nightmare. It’s real.”
Jessie nodded and then sat down, her back against the wall. Stillness eased itself into the room. Their breathing was uniform. They made no sudden movements. The threats that loomed over them seemed easier to comprehend, easier to endure, when perfecting an almost meditative silence.
Cooper played along. He was watchful, but he acted indifferent. Again, his mind wandered. This constant drifting had to be part of having awareness. It roamed from topic to topic, like it was tracing debris on a sidewalk late at night, as when Jessie and Peter would take him down Houston, where the vomit and the litter warranted his pressing attention.
What did he want? What did he want?
The answers that came to him would have been a fool’s choice mere hours ago. He wanted to know why humans smoked cigarettes. He wanted to understand why humans didn’t mind thunder. He wanted to look into the eyes of the man who had ripped him from his mother’s teat, and to understand the exact hold the mailman had over him. He wanted to drink coffee, to enjoy food without devouring it,
to grasp Christmas, open a present. He wanted to rescue those who couldn’t rescue themselves. He wanted to be like Jessie.
But then he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted to understand what it meant to be a dog in her world, to understand his old life in the new context of awareness. Every dog has its day. Let a sleeping dog lie. The dog days of summer. Humans thought they knew the connection between dog and man. Pet. Cooper couldn’t figure the word out, the concept. To be both revered and imprisoned.
And he couldn’t understand the endless streams of this new mind, calm eddies, spinning rapids, tumbling waterfalls. He would learn to swim through it all with time. If only he had enough of it.
Carol was staring at him. Her eyes had lost some of their clarity.
“What?” he asked. “What?”
She shook her head and looked away. What had she been thinking? He’d saved her life. Did she want him dead? Did she blame him for this morning’s events?
“The radio,” she said.
“The radio?” Jessie repeated.
“You should have brought a radio with you. Or a phone. Or something we could use to hear what’s going on.”
“For goodness’ sake, Mom, we didn’t have time to think. Cooper dragged you down here and saved your life. We were being attacked.”
“We need a radio,” Carol said. Then she muttered a few words to herself and turned away.
“Actually, she’s right,” Jessie admitted. “We do need to know what’s going on outside.”
“Where is it?” Cooper asked.
“Mom’s is in the kitchen cabinet.”
Cooper cocked his ears, listening for movements on the floor-boards above. “I don’t hear anything. Maybe it’s safe. I can get it.”
“No, let me,” Jessie said.
“No,” Cooper said firmly.
They stopped talking, both attuned to any noises upstairs. Carol was engaged in a quiet conversation that began and ended in her dreams. “Shh!” Jessie said. Carol stopped muttering for a moment.
“I don’t hear anything,” Cooper said. “Come with me to the top of the stairs. Open the lock, I’ll run out and grab it.”
