by David Haynes
Jonesy put his hand on her shoulder. It didn’t seem possible she could lift the ax, let alone swing it.
“We need to go,” he said. “We’ve got some food and we...”
Lauren turned slowly. “No,” she said. “You need to go.” She licked her cracked lips. “I’m sorry.”
She grabbed the ax handle and wiggled it until the wedge eased free of the tree. “I’m sorry,” she repeated and stepped down into the darkness. Droplets of dark blood marked her path and where she had been standing a few seconds ago, a patch of blood as black as tar melted the snow. Olin’s shot had hit her.
“Lauren!” he shouted. But she was gone.
33
Lad was sitting beside the sled, one of his legs looped through the harness. Blood covered the silver fur on his flank and he was panting. The blood wasn’t from a wound on his body. His left ear was gone, destroyed by the rifle shot. He held his head to one side as if his balance were skewed. He whined and tried to bring up his front paw to wipe it.
It could have been worse. Much worse. They both went straight to him and hugged him. Lisa cried into his fur but he would let neither of them look at his ear. He pawed at the ground, his mind still on pulling the sled.
“Can he pull?” Lisa asked.
Jonesy connected the harness and then attached himself to the sled. “If he can, so can I.”
Without another word they pulled the sled clear, heading toward the trail.
“Wait!” Lisa shouted. She ran to the cabin. Jonesy kept his eyes on the treeline while he waited for her. A minute later, she appeared with one of their Winchesters and a box of ammunition. She loaded the rifle and packed the box on the sled.
She held the rifle in the ready position. “That feels better,” she said.
They reached the spring before the shots rang out. One, a pause and then one more.
“Lauren,” Lisa whispered.
How many shots had he fired in total? There had been seven left in the magazine when he found Olin. He was sure of that but how many had he fired since then? He wished he knew. It had all been chaotic. The last thing he’d considered was counting bullets.
“Go, Lad!” He urged himself on as much as the dog. They had a start on Olin, not much but it was something. They had food and wood but it was all for nothing if he caught them. Lisa walked behind.
“You need to be ready,” he said, meaning the rifle.
“Don’t worry about that,” she replied.
The adrenaline lasted only so long and with their energy reserves depleted, progress was slow. Jonesy stumbled and fell several times but he wouldn’t allow Lisa to take over. It wasn’t some misguided sense of ego that kept the harness strapped to his torso. It was that he could barely see straight and even if he could, Lisa was still the better shot. Could she fire on Olin if she had to? That was a question he would rather not have to ask.
They reached the trail that led down into the valley toward the Tanana, and paused. It was the faster route but if Olin was already down there, he would see them coming. Once they reached the valley floor, they would be sitting ducks in all that open space. But if they went the other way, the longer and more arduous route, it was difficult to imagine them making it even halfway to Big Six. It was a bad decision to have to make.
They both looked back along the trail, back from where they had come. It was still dark but dawn was slowly creeping across the sky, slicing a sliver of silver-gray through the darkness. Nothing moved.
“We go down,” Lisa said. “We stick to the forest the best we can.”
Jonesy nodded and guided the sled down the slope. They had walked for only five minutes when Lad growled. He let loose with a long, howling rumble and stopped in his tracks.
“Go, Lad!” Jonesy pulled the sled but the dog wouldn’t move forward.
Lisa moved up and tried to push him on. The dog was stubborn as well as strong, and held fast.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jonesy hissed.
Lisa turned full circle, holding the rifle sight up to her eye. She paused, keeping the Winchester steady, pointing somewhere down the hill and to their left. Jonesy waited, looking where she was sighting.
After a minute, she lowered the rifle again. “Nothing,” she said. “I can’t see a thing.”
Lad grumbled again but nothing like the noise he’d made before. Jonesy patted his flank. “You’re watching out for us too, aren’t you?”
The dog lifted his head, squinting against the wind, and pulled the sled forward again. It felt good to be away from the cabin. Good to be away from everything that place now meant. They would never go back there again.
As they reached the foot of the slope and emerged into the breaking dawn, Lad grumbled again. The frozen Tanana stretched east and west in a great icy ribbon. It was the path they had to follow. They made straight for it, not pausing to glance in any direction except the one they were taking.
It was an open expanse and, like the plateau, the wind blew across it unobstructed. It whistled down the valley into their faces, buffeting and fighting them every step. Before long, Jonesy stopped, calling Lad to a halt.
His legs had turned into rubbery strings of spaghetti about a mile back but now they collapsed beneath him. He sat in the snow, leaning against the sled. They had covered less than two miles across the valley floor. The treeline from where they had come was still visible, a dark scratch on the landscape.
“He’s not coming,” Jonesy said. “We’d have seen him.”
Lisa looked that way too. “Maybe Lauren got to him first.”
“Maybe. And if she didn’t, he’s less prepared than we are.” As much as he wanted his words to ring true, they didn’t. A man like Olin, or whoever he was, didn’t go quietly. Who knew what kind of life he’d lived or what he’d been through, but one thing was for sure – the guy was a survivor. Jonesy thought about how much like a skeleton he’d looked as they fought…his ravaged face a hideous mask, his hand missing. And yet he kept coming. He kept coming. On and on. And he’d keep coming until there was nothing left of him.
They were survivors too. Both he and Lisa had been through hell last winter and they came through it. They were going through hell now but they would come out the other side. They would.
He grimaced and stood up again.
“I’ll spot you.” Lisa grabbed the harness.
He grabbed her hand. “No. I’ll do this. You just keep your eye out for...for anything.” He turned into the wind. “Go, Lad!”
*
For an hour before the daylight vanished, the skies cleared for the first time in weeks. The temperature dropped another ten but the snow stopped. The blue sky was beautiful and gave Jonesy an hour’s worth of strength he thought had been left at the cabin.
“We should camp,” Lisa said.
He shook his head. “Give me an hour and I’ll be ready to go again. We keep going.”
Finally, they pulled the sled to a halt near a narrow thicket that ran beside the icy river. The trees brought the darkness a few minutes sooner, but the moon was full and pierced the boughs with sharp shafts of silver.
Jonesy was so tired he couldn’t even loosen the harness. He didn’t think he’d be able to put it back on if he removed it, so he just slumped against the side of the sled. Lisa took it off Lad and put some biscuits on the ground for him to eat. He finished them off before she had managed to dig the offal out and hand a piece to Jonesy. He didn’t feel hungry but pushed it into his mouth anyway. It tasted of nothing. That was probably a good thing. It looked like it might have been chewed and spat out once already. Probably by Olin. It dropped into his empty stomach with a thud.
“Should we light a fire?” Lisa asked.
He shook his head. He wanted to make a greater distance before they camped for the night. The harder they pushed it, the greater the chance of making it.
Lisa looked at her watch. “We rest for an hour, Jonesy. We rest and then we go again for another three. Then we stop.”
He opened his mouth but she held a finger to her lips and shook her head. The rifle was up immediately. Lad bared his teeth and snarled.
The thicket ran from the river across the valley floor and up toward the ridge in a thin wedge. Tree limbs were being splintered, smashed apart by something. Something charging their way.
Jonesy put his hand on the dog. “Ssh,” he whispered. He turned to Lisa. “See anything?”
She nodded. “Grizzly.”
There was only one bear it could be. Maybe Olin had seen it in camp. Was it hunting them?
Lisa dropped to one knee, placing the barrel on the sled, taking aim. Don’t miss, thought Jonesy. The bear meat would keep them alive until they reached Big Six and beyond. He crouched beside her, the sled forming a barrier between the bear and them.
He saw it. Briefly. Illuminated by the moon’s gleaming dagger, the grizzly looked twice the size it had been when they were hunting the goats. It looked almost mythical as it rose to its full height and took the air. Even Lad looked awed. Why was it hunting them? It had barely bothered with them until...
It wasn’t hunting them. It was hunting...
“Howdy, folks!”
They all looked up at the same time: Lad, Lisa and Jonesy. Olin’s face peered down at them, the Glock pressing against Lisa’s head. He must have come down off the ridge. He’d probably watched them from up there as they battled across the valley floor. He didn’t have a sled to pull, his belly was full of caribou but above all he was a lunatic. A man who didn’t know when to quit.
A pearly streak of moonlight jagged into his wasted face. It seemed to cut through what flesh was left, pulling his skull outward, exposing it even more.
Jonesy tried to get up but Olin cocked the hammer. “One move, Jonesy. One move and she’s...”
All the air left the forest as the bear hit Olin from the side. Jonesy’s vision narrowed into one focus point, eliminating everything else. Everything else except the enormous jaws closing around Olin’s face, crushing it, squeezing brain matter and blood over them all in less than a second.
The air smelled hot, vital and sour at the same time. The ground moved as the bear landed with a thud somewhere behind them. Was it a scream or the weight of the bear pressing the air from Olin’s body?
Jonesy watched the bear chew through Olin’s throat, grinding bone, spraying blood and cartilage across the thicket. The noises were hideous and awesome. Olin’s body rose into the air and was slammed back down by a giant batting paw. Bones were smashed into fragments by jaws and raking claws. In five seconds, there was almost nothing left.
“Move!” Jonesy grabbed Lisa’s arm but she held fast. She was transfixed as the beast set about devouring the last parts of his prey. Something it had been hunting for a long time.
They needed to get out of there. Olin was dead but something equally dangerous was just a few feet away from them.
“No,” Lisa said. She looked at him, bringing the Winchester around. “No,” she repeated. She jumped up, clambered over the sled and lifted the rifle, taking aim at the bear. Jonesy followed her. He watched as the grizzly lifted his massive head, rose to his full height and roared. Then he dropped onto all fours and charged toward them.
The first shot hit him just above his eye. The second pierced his head directly between both eyes. Yet still he moved forward. Lisa fired again but the shot went high as the bear hit them, knocking the sled over with Jonesy still attached. He heard Lad snarl and saw the dog leap at the bear’s throat as it slid into them.
Lisa screamed but the full weight of the sled fell on him, trapping him beneath it. He grunted as the air was driven from his lungs.
He could hear Lad snarling, biting the bear, but the dog wouldn’t last long against a bear that big or that close. And then when it had finished with Lad, it would take them both. He pushed as hard as he could, shifting the sled just enough to slide out.
He struggled to his feet. Lisa was lying unconscious a few feet away, thrown against a tree by the bear’s impact. He looked for the rifle but it was nowhere to be seen.
Lad jumped up from the other side of the sled. His mouth was covered in blood. For one moment Jonesy thought the dog had been mortally wounded, that the bear would reach up, grab the dog and rip him apart.
But he didn’t. Lad licked Jonesy’s face and then turned his bloody head over the other side of the sled. Jonesy peered over cautiously. The bear was stretched out across the forest floor, a glazed look in its one remaining eye. It was dead. Lisa had made the shot.
Lad seemed to think he was responsible for the bear’s downfall. He climbed down, snarled and grabbed one of the bear’s legs, shaking it from side to side. But Lisa had killed it, making the shot not once but twice. Jonesy knew that was way beyond his own skill. He could never have made that shot himself.
Lad let go of the bear and raced over to Lisa, whining. Jonesy followed behind, glancing back at the grizzly. The beast’s belly might be half-full of Olin, but there was enough food there to keep them going all the way down to San Francisco if they wanted.
They would survive.
He dropped down beside Lisa as Lad slobbered bear blood all over her face. He cradled her head. There was no wind, no creaking of the trees, just the sound of her breath.
They would survive.
34
Jonesy put the paper down and sipped his coffee. Out on the street, a car stopped by the traffic signals with music blaring before screeching off again. A cloud of black smoke rose up behind it. A group of high school kids walked past the window, hollering, whooping and laughing.
The waitress walked over. “More coffee?”
He smiled and nodded. As easy as that, there was coffee. And maybe later he’d have a slice of pie to go along with it. Tonight they were taking delivery of an extra-large pizza. All at the press of a button.
“Okay?” Lisa sat down opposite him. “Think I’m going for the pancakes. How about you?”
He smiled. “Just coffee and a slice of apple pie.”
They had been back in civilization for six months. Whatever the bear had left of the man they called Olin had been untraceable. Something else had come along and wiped his smear from the forest floor. The authorities were still trying to work out who he might have been. They were working a lead down in New Mexico but nothing was concrete yet.
Lauren had been found dead, frozen, shot in the head but intact. Her husband’s remains had been found in the other cabin. Olin and Lauren Murray. They had been reported missing a month before Jonesy, Lisa and Lad walked into Big Six with their bellies full of grizzly. Wilkes had been shocked to see them but still had enough sense to make an offer for Lad. An offer that was refused.
“We should get back to Lad,” Jonesy said. “He likes your mom but he’ll get fat if she keeps giving him all those treats.”
Lisa laughed.
Jonesy had sent Wilkes some money to put a proper headstone down for Paul McMahon, the man who’d saved them in their first winter. Wilkes had written a long letter about him and what he’d been able to find out. The letter was still only half-read. It would be a while before Jonesy could think about that.
“So?” Lisa started. “Polizzi’s or Joe’s tonight?”
“Joe’s,” Jonesy replied.
“Pepperoni? Ham, maybe? They do pulled pork at Joe’s.”
Jonesy grimaced. “Vegetarian deluxe.”
Lisa nodded. “Make that two.”
The End
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