Primal Scream

by Michael Slade

  The bear's reaction tells you if you're going to live or die.

  Like Katt's fate.

  If you're lucky, the bear will flee. Fleeing isn't an option open to you. The grizzly can run at speeds in: excess of thirty-five mph, and you need a fast horse to stay in front. Contrary to myth, it can dash downhill and turn on a dime.

  If you're lucky, the bear will threat-display. It will rear up on hind legs to sniff your scent, swinging itsi head from side to side. It will huff, pant, hiss, and whuff at you. It will turn sideways to display its bulk. Front legs stiff, it will advance shit-your-pants close, then veer to one side. It will slap its paws on the ground. Or, lower lip extended, it will repeatedly; gnash jaws to "pop" its fangs.

  If you're lucky, the bear will let you subordinate by slowly backing away.

  If you're unlucky, the bear will charge.

  Katt was unlucky.

  The arrow saw to that.

  October or November sees grizzlies den alone. Some hole up in caves used for thousands of years. Some dig their own. Bears don't eat, defecate, or urinate during hibernation. How long—five to seven months—depends on climate. The colder, the longer. The winter sleep of grizzlies differs from that of other mammals, for body temperature drops just a few degrees, ensuring they are capable of rapid arousal.

  Owing to predation by wolves and other bears, sleeping grizzlies will jerk awake to protect themselves. The arrow stabbed into its gut had aroused this horror.

  Literally exploding from the mouth of its den, the grizzly came for Katt in a kill-or-be-killed charge. No whuff-whuff of warning in its bawling roar, just rage from rising on the wrong side of the bed. It plowed the snow as it stormed at Katt, billows of white blowing in its wake, paws pounding the ice pack as it came bearing down.

  Adrenaline squeezed Katt's stomach into knots.

  Adrenaline sent blood screaming along her arteries and veins.

  Bearanoia seized her mind as Katt stood paralyzed.

  Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

  In facing death, they say life passes before your eyes.

  Death passed before Katt's instead.

  Her imagination got ahead of her. . . .

  You have two responses to a grizzly charge, if you can't retreat to safety. The hope being aggression will frighten and dominate the bear, your only response if it is coming to devour you is to fight back with every means available.

  This bear was hungry.

  It hadn't eaten for months.

  So Plan A saw Katt jumping up and down, yelling as loud as she could and waving her arms in the air, then raising her jacket to make herself seem bigger than she was.

  This bear was riled, an arrow in its gut.

  No song and dance would scare it off.

  The second half of Plan A called for hitting and kicking and screaming after the grizzly grabbed hold of her, but that seemed worse to Katt than Plan B, so she watched herself drop to play dead. Playing dead doesn't work if the bear craves you as food.

  Katt's catch-22.

  It seemed like she was falling for a long time, a slow-mo tumble that lasted forever; then she sank into the snow amid a puff of powder. The ravenous, pissed-off bear loomed above. In fatal attacks a grizzly usually mauls by crushing chomps to the base of the skull and disembowelment. To protect her head, neck, and belly as best she could, Katt curled up in a ball onf her side, vital organs safeguarded by drawing her legs! up to her chest, face buried between her knees. Elbows together, she clasped her hands behind her neck to lock her head in her arms. Her crown was exposed, but chewing there slides off the top of the skull. Better to be scalped than decapitated.

  What could be more terrifying than being seized in the jaws of a grizzly intent on devouring you?

  The next thing Katt knew the bear had her by the foot. It' pulled her through the snow like a toy doll, then sank its teeth deep into her thigh, shaking Katt and tearing the hell out of her leg. She screamed, but screaming had no effect on the bear, for prey always screamed and howled as it was torn apart. Thanks to shock, Katt suffered no immediate blast of pain. She caught the sickening sound of flesh ripping as bones crushed. The bear dragged her back, then jerked her from the ground as fangs bit into her side just below the ribs. A whoosh of air expelled from a punctured lung.

  MY GOD, I'M BEING EATEN ALIVE!

  The bear dropped her on the ground and chewed into her back. Katt knew she was a goner if it got hold of her neck. She clamped her hands so tightly, her knuckles turned white. Instinct told her playing dead meant bite after bite. Instinct told her resisting would intensify the attack. Katt heard blood spurting out of her into the snow. It went pssst pssst like a cut hose. Had to be a severed artery.

  The grizzly straddled her, feeding on Katt Bones cracked like wishbones with each hungry bite. She tried to protect her stomach, but couldn't move. She knew she was a goner if the grizzly gutted her. The bear tore Katt open from her waist to her shoulder, yanking out a rib while stripping meat from her spine. Then it seized Katt's head.

  The jaws closed around her temples like a vise. As teeth slipped off her skull and peeled away her scalp, taking part of one ear along, Katt unclasped her hands and forced them between the fangs, inviting the bear to chew on her arms instead. Katt could feel its fur on her skin and smell its rank breath, a terrible stench foul from its last meal of carrion.

  The grizzly cocked its foreleg and sideswiped her head.

  The entire right half of Katt's face from the eye across to the nose and down to the chin was torn away. Her right eye was ripped from its socket, and she could barely distinguish anything with her left. Her nose was shorn off and cartilage stuck out of the crater. Katt's right cheek and part of her left were gone, her mouth so mangled that she couldn't make a sound except with her throat. Three teeth were left in her jaw while the rest dangled loose. All the flesh and skin torn off her face hung down beneath her chin like a bloody, gruesome bib. The pain in her mauled, half-skull head was beyond bearing . . .

  That was how death passed before Katt's eyes.

  Her imagination screened it in her mind as a slow-motion horror film.

  Now, as the bear neared, reality was catching up to fantasy, and in a moment imagination would play out as fact.

  Bearing this bad dream in mind, Katt gripped tight hold of the branch she had used to pole through drifts of snow, and as the shaggy male grizzly closed to smash into her and knock her to the ground, she dodged to one side and swung it like a baseball bat hard as she could at its muzzle.

  Craaaack!

  A home run for sure.

  Had the bat not snapped in two and spun from her hands.

  The grizzly reared up on hind legs and roared with more rage than before.

  It caught the pinwheeling end of the broken bat in its gnashing jaws, spraying splinters of spiked wood in all directions.

  Reared nine feet high over her, the grizzly seemed almost human to Katt.

  Dawn rippled across its silver-tipped pelt as the maddened monster cocked a paw and growled at Katt, then swung its hump-powered claws down to rip her head from her body.

  White Man

  Crimson dawn washed down into the Headless Valley like a flood of blood. Stars in devoured night snuffed out one by one, including the two bears, Ursa Major and Minor. The Earth's axis aligns with the brightest star in Ursa Minor: Polaris or the Pole Star. You get your bearings in the north by sighting on the first two stars of Ursa Minor, which point directly at the Pole Star.

  DeClercq took his bearings from the raging roar of the grizzly. It echoed down the Headless Valley toward the forest cabin, as if retracing Katt's tracks and the stalking snowshoes.

  Forcing his leaden legs to trudge as fast as they could, the Mountie struggled on up into the bloody wash draining into Headless Valley from the decapitated face of the sun.

  Blood on blood? he thought.

  The grizzly bear is the main crest among the many Houses of the Wolf Clan. Behind the grizzly bear crests
on Gitxsan totem poles lurks the legend of the Medeek. Before Tarn Lax Aamid was dispersed by the Flood, it was nearly destroyed many times as a lesson to the Gitxsan not to spoil nature. From the Lake of Summer Pavilions—Seeley Lake west of Hazelton on a white man's map—rose the supernatural Medeek. This huge grizzly ravaged the countryside, tearing up the slopes of Stii Kyo Din, then raging through Tarn Lax Aamid's Street of Chiefs to avenge the Trout naxnox after young women thoughtlessly adorned themselves with fishbones. To Gitxsan, Medeek means both "grizzly bear" and "big and powerful." Many times had Winterman Snow worn the grizzly naxnox in the reverend's loot, the skin of a bear and mask of a man transforming him, while he alternated walking erect and on all fours to dance spiritually in halait as Grizzly Man.

  Winterman Snow was of the Wolf Clan.

  Sighting down the shaft of the arrow, he targeted the Medeek.

  She's mine, not yours, he thought.

  No hunter gains a closer acquaintance with grizzly bears than he who uses a bow. The area for a clean kill is no bigger than a football. The target is just behind the head, below the back hump, and above the shoulder of the front leg. The first shot is the most important, so don't shoot until you can place the arrow. To kill a bear broadside, aim for the low neck. The best shot for a bow hunter is from the side, with the bear facing away at a forty-five-degree angle, placing your arrow behind the shoulder where it avoids heavy bone and can knife into the lungs and heart. Bears hit there often drop in their tracks, and few run more than fifty yards before they fall for keeps. To kill a bear face-on, aim at the low center neck. To break it down first, aim for the shoulders. Head shots often don't finish the bear, and above all, avoid a gut shot. A silvertip with an arrow in its gut is as dangerous as any beast on Earth. Rage matches pain, and it is going to even the score before it dies if it can.

  Everything about this shot was wrong.

  Reared up on its hind legs beyond Katt, the Medeek loomed huge against the sun-red slope. Already gut shot and riled as could be, it cocked its paw to swipe Katt with a sweep that would cover the kill area far back in its padded chest. A bow with a draw weight of fifty to sixty pounds will drive a razor-head all the way through lungs and heart if properly placed. The bow in Snow's grip was powered down to forty pounds so arrows would stick from his human prey like those in the painting of Saint Sebastian behind the reverend's desk. The killing power of the bow was weak for a bear, since the arrow had to pierce thick fur and slice through layers of fat and tough muscle to breach the rib cage and reach vital organs within.

  He brought the bow to full draw and let the string slip off his fingers.

  Shhhhewww . . .

  You can't get your hunting heads too sharp. Katt ducked the sweep of claws to curl up in the snow as the arrow whistled over her, burying itself to the feathers in the grizzly's throat. The paw veered to its neck and snapped off the nock end of the shaft. Thundering roars bellowing from the wound avalanched snow down the slope above the mouth of the cave, spewing sprays of white at Katt and the Medeek. Heaving down across her, the beast strode over Katt and came for Winterman Snow. The White Man loosed another razor-head, for in a showdown with a grizzly, you don't stop shooting as long as it moves or twitches.

  The arrow struck the Medeek in the shoulder. Round and round spun the bear, biting at the feathers on the metal shaft, blood streaming out of the puncture in its throat, before it charged again. Muzzle jutting forward and jaws open wide, growls rumbling from the pit behind its fangs, the beast came plowing through the snow like an icebreaker, chunks of frozen crust hurled right and left. Winterman Snow nocked another arrow on the string and hooked it with the first three fingers of his hand, extending his bow arm toward the oncoming fangs as he drew the shaft back to anchor feathers at the corner of his mouth.

  Twelve feet . . .

  Ten feet . . .

  Eight feet . . .

  The White Man loosed the shot.

  The slingshot effect of the bow picked up the peak weight of forty pounds stored in both arms to drive the razor-point down the bear's throat. No bones to; deflect it, the arrow ranged the length of the beast's body and tore it apart inside, slicing through the heart, lungs, liver, and intestines before it lodged somewhere in the bowels. Bleeding to death deep within still Medeek came on, eyes glazing as front paws stumble then the bloody jaws of the grizzly crashed into snow at the archer's feet.

  When the white man first arrived in North America there were about 200,000 grizzlies here. The numbe has dwindled to about 25,000 today, a quarter of whic roam the north of British Columbia. Now there ws one Medeek less.

  "Katt!"

  The White Man turned.

  From the woods sloping down to the iced-over river glazing the valley floor, DeClercq stumbled frantically toward the curled-up girl. Snow was halfway between the Horseman and Katt. He could easily take both down with the bow, but he hadn't gone to all trouble for an easy hunt.

  Not when he could torment, strip, rape, hunt, Saint Sebastian Corporal Spann's friend.

  No need for bait now that he was here.

  Snow yanked the beheading knife from his belt and went for Katt.

  "Katt!"

  At first she thought his voice was her imagination running away with her. Curled up in a fetal ball will her face between her knees, sound muffled by arms hammerlocking her head, she thought her "Dad" shouting "Katt!" from far away was her mind hallucinating under stress. Time had slipped to slow-mo again. Waiting for the pissed-off grizzly to maul her, would amazing grace deliver her from life wrapped in the voice of the dad she had yearned for so long and had finally enjoyed for such a short time?

  She wished she had Scratch Bear.

  To love to death.

  So disoriented was she that Katt had no idea where the grizzly was. Its roar had boomed like thunder high above. Then its fur had brushed her skin as it stepped across. Then it had bellowed repeatedly on this side of her. If traversing her was so it could attack from over here, why was it taking forever for the grizzly mauling to begin?

  Katt peeked and saw the bear dead in the snow.

  Trudging toward her from the woods was Bob yelling, "Katt!"

  And closing fast between her and him was the madman of the north.

  "Katt!"

  "Jane!" he cries, and tries to run to her from the maple trees, but his legs feel heavy, so very heavy, as if forged from lead, while he must run fast, very fast, if he's to get from here to there in time to wrench his terrified daughter from impending death. Doomed to live the prophetic nightmare in real life, Robert floundered through the snow impeding nun, having pushed his leaden legs past the point of slave driving long ago, and now as he staggered the last hundred feet of the marathon, they failed him. With mounting anxiety he stares down to see what's holding him back, and discovers both feet are planted in the ground. He drops the crossbow and grabs one leg with both hands to tear it free. Unable to budge it, he switches legs and tugs with all his strength, straining until his rooted flesh begins to upheave, clods of earth clinging to the filamented ankle he weeds from soil groaning under the maple leaves, a tug-of-war waged with Mother Nature for his daughter's life. Gone was the shuffling glide required to slide his snowshoes across the ice pack, for only if he ran fast, as fast as he had ever run in his life, would he reach Katt at the same time as the killer. But more haste, less speed, says the proverb, and running sank the tips of his snowshoes into the snow, the crust beneath the powder catching them, while he gripped both legs behind his thighs to pump like a railway engine, using his upper torso to power his exhausted feet. "Let go of me!" he orders. "DAD-DYYYYYYY!" cries Jane."Bob!" yelled Katt as the psycho grabbed the hood of her parka and wrenched her from the ground, swinging Katt halfway around so she landed on her knees facing DeClercq, hood torn from her head to release her ash-blond hair, which the Decapitator grabbed and jerked up to stretch Katt's neck, the arm with the beheading knife sweeping back to slice. Now his legs are free and he is lurching forward, draggin
g half the forest floor toward the cabin. Chunks of sod weigh down his botanic feet, which rustle like snakes through the fiery leaves. Pains of overexertion shoot up and down his arm. Now his feet turned up chunks of ice instead, the crust beneath groaning as it cracked and buckled, the powder on top puffing like breath from below. Desperately trying to free himself of his dragging feet, his body leaned forward like the Roadrunner in cartoons, snow churning behind with hands outstretched in a last-ditch effort to save Katt which he knew was too late.

  "Daddy's coming! Don't leave me, Jane!"

  Ten feet short of the psycho and Katt, Robert fell to his knees.

  "Freeze, white man," snarled Winterman Snow. "And forget the gun. I know it's empty. I watched you fight the wolves. But to be sure, toss it away."

  On hands and knees Robert saw the knife poised to behead Katt. The Decapitator stood behind her, gripping Katt's hair. No way could he cross the distance between before the knife hacked. He withdrew his gun from his parka and threw it away.

  The Mountie was unarmed.

  Tears flowed from Katt's eyes as they locked with his, not a sound uttered by the great lone land as fate hung in the balance.

  "You came," Katt whispered.

  "I knew you'd come, Daddy. I Knew you wouldn't fail me."

  The hacked-off head on the pole isn't Jane's.

  The hacked-off head is Katt's.

  "Hear me, white man," spat Winterman Snow. "It was your friend Corporal Spann who betrayed me. He found me when I ran away from the reverend's school, and said I was lying when I told him what the holy man did to us over the desk in his office. He returned me to Reverend Noel, who raped me with this ring on his cock from then on. For years after I was released from that school, my bowels let go and I shat myself every time I was around whites.