by V. Vaughn
But it was really the absence of Jenna’s brothers Matt and Nick that was dragging Mom’s spirits down. Jenna’s not-so-little brothers were both Marines, and both deployed with their units. Neither of them had had leave over Christmas. They had each been permitted five minutes of face time on Christmas afternoon. It had been good to see their faces, but both had looked haggard, and Sharon hadn’t exactly been delighted at that. And neither had Jenna.
These days, Jenna was all Mom had of her four children. Sharon had been a comparatively young woman when her husband had been killed in action. But, like most bears widowed young, she had not been able to replace her dead mate. It was the downside of the strong bear bond that mated bears formed. And another reason not to marry a soldier.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that Mom wanted her to share New Year’s Eve with her. Jenna knew the dance at the French Town community center would be fun. There would be fiddling and step dancing and a midnight supper featuring the traditional meat pies. Of course, her own grandma’s tourtiere recipe was the best by a long way. But how could you be absolutely sure of its superiority, if you didn’t sample some of those other pies to make sure?
Tonight Mom would dance with her nephews and cousins and have a fine old time. The community center would be full of laughing, happy bears. Mom would have friends to gossip with. She would help out with the midnight supper, and smile when her tourtiere was complimented. And then she would go home to the house her husband had built her and sleep alone in the bed they had bought together.
What did it say about Jenna’s life that it matched her mother’s widowed existence so exactly? Except for the part about being a widow. She had never been married. Never been mated. Never had sex, come to that. Nope, she was just a pathetic old maid.
It was a fair old march back to where Zeke had left his old Ford parked. But moving warmed him through. Carrying his gear helped too. This he could do. Wasn’t any worse than basic training. Except in basic, you had your pals with you, and some cranky but knowledgeable old sergeant bawling at you and making sure you didn’t die.
The interior of his pickup was dry. He had topped up his tanks before entering the park and had jerry cans in the rear just in case. The heater was a marvel and he began to feel better in minutes. He found dry fatigues in the spare duffel he had left on the rear seats, and changed from the skin out. Dry clothes improved his mood. His parka was soaked through, and his poncho was wet on both sides. He spread them out with his watch cap and gloves to dry in the warm cab.
Okay, he would leave the National Forest and head down the mountain into a town. Find a motel and a diner. Reassess after a hot meal and some shut-eye. Maybe he would look for his relations, or maybe he would head back to Colorado.
The road was awash in mud and even his big, heavy truck with its winter tires found it hard to gain traction. Zeke kept his eyes on the ribbon of oozing brown goo and tried to decide well in advance if he had the clearance to go over fallen branches or had to go around them. Inevitably, he had to put his wet parka and poncho back on to go move branches. Twice he fired up his chainsaw and cleared tree trunks out of his way.
The rain kept coming. Thunder rolled overhead and lightning split the sky. Zeke kept driving. He was going slowly, conscious of how the road fell away from the shoulder. He could see nothing through the driver’s side window because of the pelting rain. Between the rain and the dark, the windscreen was barely better. His headlights hardly seemed to penetrate the gloom.
The hill the road had been cut through was steep. Even though the hillside was lushly forested, the ground under the trees had become waterlogged after weeks of rain. And rain had to go someplace. It had made new gullies, and streams of mud were washing out the gravel surface he was driving on. For the first time Zeke realized that he was in danger. Paradoxically, the thought gave him a shot in the arm. Adrenaline. Gotta love it.
Over the thunder, he heard a different roar. Not animals. Something more monumental. The road shook and he came to a halt. Up ahead there was violent movement. Through the overworked wipers the scene resolved itself into a twisted pile of trees and mud rushing past. No way he could clear that by himself. No way anything short of a tank could drive over or through it.
The crisis seemed to have fired him up. In moments Zeke snapped into take-charge-can-do mode. Just as if he had a team of newbies right behind him, hoping he could save their sorry rookie butts. He added an olive green wool sweater to his fatigues and put his sodden outer gear back on. He grabbed his big heavy duty flashlight and went out into the storm to have a look.
His headlights showed that the gravel track was piled high in broken trees and boulders and mud. The entire hillside had given way and slid down the slope. The trees on the other side of the road had also been carried away downslope by the rush of debris. This was a major mudslide.
Two foot wide trunks had snapped like kindling. Roots as long as the trees themselves had torn out of the hillside and were jumbled in the broken timber before him. Now that the landslide had halted, he could see that the blockage was fifty yards wide and towered above him.
Well, hell, wasn’t this a situation? Automatically he calculated how long he could keep warm if he stayed in his truck with the motor idling. Didn’t seem long enough to guarantee rescue. His cell hadn’t had service in days. His satellite phone was charging in the truck. But he didn’t see who he could call.
Who the hell was he going to put into danger to rescue Major Zeke Bascom, late of the 75th Rangers? And wouldn’t that be a helluva story for the fricking media? A fricking Army Ranger mewling for help like some greenhorn civilian who expected his ass wiped when he got into a little trouble on a pleasure trip.
He’d get his bearings with his sat phone. Plot a course to the Ranger Station. Grab his gear and head downhill on foot. Simplicity itself. Feeling more cheerful than he had in six months, Zeke turned to trek back to his truck.
With another furious roar the rest of the hillside tore loose and hundreds of tons of mud and trees swept down. The landslide carried all before it. His big, heavy truck was just flotsam in the mess. It rolled over like a big red boulder and vanished into the darkness, taking his gear with it. Lightning split the sky and thunder punctuated the destruction.
Shit.
Zeke put the loss of his satellite phone and his truck and his rations out of his mind. He could do this. He scrambled over the unstable pile of mud and trees. It was hard going, but he was powerfully built. Besides, what else was he going to do? Staying put was probably suicidal. And if the debris shifted more and swept him away, it would be no great loss.
He was already warmed from being in the truck, and the exertion soon warmed him more. Inside his parka and poncho he began to sweat. He pulled his watch cap and muddy gloves off and tucked them into a pocket and kept going with just the hood of his poncho to keep the rain off. Before long he was back on the gravel road, trudging along in the darkness with only his flashlight to guide him.
The icy rain kept falling. Now when it landed on the trees it froze. Zeke felt clammy under his clothes and his hands were chilled. He replaced his hat and gloves and kept following the road down until it came to a crossroads. One track lead down and three up.
Downhill was civilization. That was the rule. But the road before him was waist high in mud. The deep sides that had been cut through the hill acted as banks, and had literally turned the road into a river. If he tried to navigate that, big as he was, he would be swept away like the trees and his truck. He didn’t think he could forge his own path downhill — not in these conditions.
Uphill led to a Ranger Station. Said so on the signpost. One point five miles. Piece of cake. He’d be there in no time. Cheered by the thought of the station, Zeke abandoned the road and moved briskly off following the indicated path.
He knew he was too wet and sweaty to lollygag. If he stopped, he would start to cool off and his clothes would freeze to his skin. The temperature was plummeting. Now with
each step, the ice cracked on the surface before his boots hit the mud underneath.
His boots were still dry. And he was wearing good army issue wool socks. He kept his flashlight out so he could navigate in the inky darkness. Very soon he encountered another mass of trees and mud blocking the path to the Ranger Station. This pile was slowly moving and he judged it too unstable to clamber over. Better to go uphill through the trees and circumvent this gooey, flowing muddle of timber and rocks.
Without warning the ground shifted under his feet. He lost his balance and landed sideways in the mud. He swore heartily. His poncho kept the worst off, but on one side his pants soaked clean through to his skin. Water seeped in the top of his boots. Now when he walked, he squelched. He was cold and shivering in no time. Nothing for it, but to carry on as long as he could.
It was a disappointment when he got to the Ranger Station. Total cluster fuck. It had long since been abandoned. Vandals or souvenir takers had partially dismantled what remained of the log structure. It was not even a shed anymore. The roof was pierced by saplings, and what must once have been a wooden floor was now a pond. His flashlight picked out some eye shine. Raccoons by the golden color.
Again he thought about taking bear. But, even if he resisted the temptation to go feral, when he wandered into habitation and resumed his human form, he would be a big naked scandal. Hard to explain. Impossible to conceal. And someplace on the mountainside there would be a pile of army issue clothes labeled Bascom to make folks wonder.
If the army had thought PTSD meant he was a mental case now, arriving muddy and naked someplace would only confirm he was cracked. He wasn’t going to have that on his fucking record. He’d sooner die.
So he’d have to deal with this new setback with his hard learned survival skills and brute force. The old fashioned Ranger way. Energized by this decision, Zeke switched off his light and let his eyes adapt to the darkness. The rain had long since changed to sleet. Now it began to be fat, wet flakes. Beautiful and deadly.
4
Discovering right before the holidays that your job was slated to disappear was a heck of a blow. And combined with the restlessness and longing Jenna had been feeling lately, it was enough to make her despondent. Still, she had tried to put such melancholy thoughts aside for Christmas week.
But talking to her mom had got Jen thinking about how close she was to unemployment and how far she was from fulfilling her longing for a family. Her peaceful evening seemed shattered by her glum mood. This would never do. She had a lot to be grateful for.
Jenna looked around her warm and tidy cabin and thought how much she loved living in it. It wasn’t very big, and she didn’t really own it, but it suited her perfectly. In fact Yakima Ridge suited her perfectly.
She had lived in Portland while she was going to nursing school, but every minute away from the mountains had been torture. When she had returned from the city a qualified nurse practitioner, she had resolved never to leave her mountains again.
Bascoms had been living in these green and mossy woods since before they were called Bascoms. Even though there were no mates for them here, and making a living was pretty much a scramble, no one thought it was weird when her male cousins decided to build houses and stick around on the Ridge. As a matter of course, the boys all got their clan land grants when they turned twenty-one.
She had been twenty-two when she asked her clan for land to build a house. You’d have thought she’d asked for the moon and a sterling silver spoon to eat it with. There had been a huge fuss, which all boiled down to, “You’re going to marry up and move away, and then what?” Clearly, clan land was for men only.
Probably she should have pushed those sexist bearshifters a lot harder, but when her cousin Joey Benoit had said she could have a slice of his land to build a house, she had grabbed it thankfully. The whole clan had been delighted with this solution, and they had all happily turned out to put up her house and put in her access road.
Her log cabin was just a little two bedroom house, with a kitchen and bathroom and one open living area, but it was nestled right in the heart of the forest. She could breathe here. She had a spring-fed well, and a septic tank, and she was hooked up to the grid so she had power.
Her clan had organized their own internet service for their part of the Ridge and linked her up. Of course, bad weather could make that patchy, but the internet was a luxury not a true necessity. She also had a couple of generators, just in case the power went as it had this week, and a couple of faces of cord wood. Her pantry was stocked to the ceiling. Her freezer was full. She was prepared for whatever nature threw at her.
Her cell phone usually kept her connected to her family and her patients. And for emergencies she could always take bear. But tonight, she would stick an LED lantern in the window over her front door, just in case she lost phone service. There had been lots of nights that some desperate father or granddaddy had gone up mountain for the midwife. Her lantern would make sure a seeker found her.
Jen looked around at her comfy couch and recliner, at her beautiful oak table and chairs. Lenny and Joey Benoit had made those for her when she moved in. And fitted out her kitchen and sewing room. They were the best of cousins.
It was a thousand pities that they were too closely related to her to be anything but pals. They were good men — strong, manly, loyal. Handsome, dependable and good tempered. But you couldn’t marry a guy who smelled like your own brothers. She was glad Len and Joe had found good mates in Portland. She had danced at Lenny’s wedding and was looking forward to dancing at Joey’s, and to helping birth their babies in due course.
She rubbed her own belly. Would she ever have a litter of cubs of her own? Likely not, she thought sadly. She had been to Portland and she hated it. She wasn’t going mate hunting in Portland as Len and Joe had done. Nor to any other city.
The whole time she was studying, she couldn’t catch her breath. The doctor had diagnosed asthma. Uncle Pierre had called it homesickness. And sure enough, the minute she settled here in the woods, all her symptoms disappeared.
Lately, she had had a powerful hankering for her own child. She wanted to hold her baby to her breast. She wanted to chase a toddler. Jenna sighed. First she needed a mate. But here on the Ridge where there were plenty of bears, there were none who weren’t kin.
In nursing school, there had been only a handful of guys. And not one of them had taken her fancy. She had returned to Yakima Ridge the virgin she had left it, because she wasn’t hooking up just as an experiment. And in eleven years her sex life hadn’t varied. And didn’t seem likely to. There were precious few incomers to the Ridge these days. It looked to be her and Mr. Imaginary forever more.
Of course, one of her jobs was passing out birth control and advising couples who wanted to conceive. Or at any rate, she had been taught about that at school, and to keep her accreditation as a nurse practitioner and midwife, she had to keep up her studies. Thank goodness for virtual education.
So she knew all about sex and all about artificial insemination. Artificial insemination was often ineffective in infertile women. But in a fertile woman whose only bar was the lack of a partner it worked just dandy. But did she want to be impregnated by some stranger’s sperm? And how the devil would she pay for AI? Especially if she lost her regular income when the clinic closed.
Nevertheless, the thought of artificial insemination was tantalizing. Maybe she should go to one of those shifter bars in the city when she was ripe and have a fling — AI on the cheap as it were. Shifters didn’t get STIs so that was one thing she didn’t have to worry about. But what kind of bear would have sex with a fertile female — and a bear nose couldn’t miss that — and fill her with cub and take off? Not the kind whose genes she wanted to mix with hers, thanks just the same.
Her cousins Ash and Gideon Bascom had told her about some websites they had been on to look for mates. Their big handsome faces had been bright red as they assured her that you wouldn’t find any respec
table bears there — and not even to look. Of course, Gideon and Ash were prudish — but so was she really. Knowing all about sex didn’t make her less prim.
Cousin Will Enright was rumored to have found his bride on some dating website. But likely that was just a tall tale or one of his jokes. Martha Enright was Hannah’s sister, so Will had probably met his wife through Hannah. But if the website story were true, that would be a possibility.
Only Martha lived in Wisconsin, so nice as she seemed, she wasn’t available for girlish chitchat. Certainly, during Hannah’s delivery there had been no opportunity to talk. And three days ago, Martha and Will had taken advantage of a break in the weather to fly home.
That left the mating frenzy at the Sanctuary. For years, she had heard giggles and snickers when that was mentioned. But likely it was just a myth. A retreat where shifters gathered annually for a mating orgy. How likely was that? It was beyond improbable. Plus, when push came to shove, the idea of losing her virginity at an orgy was frankly nauseating.
Jenna knew, in her heart of hearts, that she had picked spinsterhood and celibacy. She would be an aunt but not a mother. And if she lost her present job, she would have to turn her hand to something other than nursing and midwifery in order to stay on the Ridge and live in the forest. Both thoughts depressed her. Time to get busy.
She puttered around her kitchen straightening up and setting her breakfast oatmeal to cook. A covered pot with steel cut oats was soon on top of her wood stove. The stick of cinnamon she had added scented the air pleasantly. She pulled a package of meat out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrow’s stew. She checked the generator and headed for her bedroom.
Jen braided her long mass of dark curls into a thick braid that hung down her back to her waist. She pulled her favorite flannel nightgown off the hook and buttoned herself into its comforting folds. Her fluffy sheepskin moccasins kept her feet off the chilly hardwood.
