EMP (Book 3): 12 Years Old and Alone

by Whitworth, Mike

  If the bear came any closer, I was gonna have to shoot. I didn’t think my arrow would do more than make the bear mad, so I just hoped he would up and leave on his own accord. Sackett was doing everything he could to encourage the bear to leave as well. Boy, I’d named that dog well. He was a brave one.

  The bear stepped forward, but the fire bothered him and he paused. I held my bow and arrow in one hand and kicked a log deeper into the fire. My face was less than five feet from the bear’s snout.

  The sparks flew and the bear backed up two steps and chuffed. I kicked another log deeper into the fire and the bear backed up some more and chuffed again. This time he was much louder.

  I built up the fire and soon the bear backed around the bend, still chuffing. Sackett calmed down but growled every now and then. We both sat behind the fire and waited.

  “I say we give that old bear some time to go away. What do you think Sackett?”

  Sackett scrunched up closer to me. That was answer enough.

  So we waited, and then we waited some more. Just as I was about to get to my feet and see if the bear had gone, I heard it. Sackett’s ears perked up, well as much as a dog with droopy ears can perk anyway. It was… It was a loud snore. What the fuck?

  I slipped around the fire and peeked into the outer tunnel. That damn old bear was sound asleep in the middle of the tunnel, damn-near wedged in between the stacks of firewood that lined the tunnel walls. Right then and there I decided that my winter camp needed an escape route. But the pick and shovel were leaning against the firewood not two feet from the damned old bear.

  I just thought my oldest sister’s snoring was loud. That bear snored louder than a rock band’s base amp set to ten, and the damned old bear had no musical ability whatsoever.

  “Son of a bitch,” I told Sackett. “We may be trapped here until spring.”

  Sackett looked at me like I was stupid.

  “And then we may be that old bear’s first spring meal.”

  Sackett moved farther behind the fire. I joined him.

  “I don’t know shit about hibernating bears, Sackett. I sure hope that bear is a sound sleeper, though. Maybe if he sleeps hard enough we can slip past him?” But I knew better. We’d have to walk right over that bear. There was no other way. The firewood on both sides of the bear was stacked almost to the tunnel ceiling. The only way out was to pretend we were walking across a big ole bear rug, one that could snap a leg off with one bite or crush a skull with a single swipe of its paw. Right now I wished we had gone with King. We were fucked.

  I felt kinda sorry for me and Sackett for a minute, and then I got mad. That damned old bear wasn’t gonna get away with it. I sat behind the fire and thought and thought about how to get me and Sackett out of there.

  I tried to think how to suspend me and Sackett from the ceiling, like jewel thieves in the movies, but I couldn’t think of a way using anything within reach, or with anything else either.

  After maybe an hour, it occurred to me that I could remove firewood from one of the piles, stick by stick, to make some room. Then me and Sackett could crawl across the firewood stack past the bear. That was gonna take a long time because there was a shitload of firewood in that stack. I shrugged my shoulders. I might as well get busy.

  I knew it’d be chancy, crawling up on the firewood stack so many times, but it had to be done. I studied both stacks, estimating which one was the most stable. I chose the one on the right because it contained larger diameter firewood and would require fewer trips. I removed firewood once piece at a time while Sackett stood guard. I also kept the fire burning brightly, just in case the damn old bear woke up and we had to get behind the fire.

  In an hour I was sweating. The fire was hotter than usual. Once, when I was on top of the firewood stack, the bear tried to roll over and jarred the firewood. It shook under me and I thought I’d land on top of the bear with a bunch of firewood. But the bear settled down and soon was snoring again.

  I kept working until I was too tired to do any more. I’d moved enough firewood so that our firewood road was now up to the bears head, but two feet above it. I’d have to finish moving the rest of the firewood in the morning.

  I fell asleep in a pool of sweat behind the fire. Sackett stood guard.

  I had no idea what time it was when I woke. It didn’t matter though, night or day, the work had to be done. The problem was, when it was dark outside I couldn’t see well enough to work. The light from the fire didn't shine around the bend in the tunnel.

  When daylight filtered in from the mouth of the tunnel, I began again. In four hours I’d cleared maybe six feet past the bear. The work required true concentration. I had to focus on every move I made. By the time I was done, I knew the firewood under my knees better than I knew the back of my own hand.

  “Okay, Sackett,” I whispered, gathering as much of my gear as I could carry. Sackett followed me up the firewood ramp on onto the firewood road. I moved quickly. Shit, I’d had plenty of practice. But Sackett was slow and unsure of himself. He soon got the hang of it though and we made it to the end of the firewood pile. Sackett hesitated to jump down but finally did.

  Once on the ground, Sackett turned and began barking at the bear. I grabbed his collar and pulled him out of the tunnel as the bear woke and chuffed at us. The bear was starting to get to his feet as we ran out of the tunnel.

  Without looking back and afraid the bear might follow, I dropped my pack and ran Sackett away from camp into the snow. After a while I noticed the bear hadn’t followed.

  So here we were, me and Sackett, no blankets, no food, just a knife, bow and arrows, and a half empty canteen, while the bear had our comfortable camp. I thought about going back for my pack where it lay in the mouth of the tunnel, but I decided not to risk it.

  So much for me being a savvy wilderness dude. Shit, no matter how hard I tried, I was just a dumb kid. And then I thought a bit. King never mentioned the tunnel might have to be shared with a bear. Maybe this was just a dumb-ass bear who waited too late to hibernate and took my tunnel because all the local bear dens were taken?

  Then I got mad. No dang old bear was gonna beat me, no way. I was gonna kill it and have its skin for my very own bear rug. Besides, I was running low on venison and my belly kept telling me that bear is good to eat, like it would know, never having had any bear before.

  I thought about shooting the bear with my bow. Yeah, right. That would be like shooting a tank with a BB gun.

  I figured getting the bear out of the cave wouldn’t be a problem. I’d just wait until the wind was right and build a smoky fire in the tunnel mouth. The draw from the chimney hole would fill the tunnel with smoke. That old bear wouldn’t hang around then. He’d be sure to leave the cave.

  But how was I gonna kill the bear? I sat and figured on that for a while and then I remembered the noose trap for deer that King taught me. The only problem was I would need a strong cable to hold a bear and I didn’t have one.

  So me and Sackett set out for the campground where we found the dead man in the travel trailer. The truck sitting next to the trailer had a winch spooled with steel cable. That would do nicely, if I could get it off of the winch.

  It took me and Sackett two days of slogging through snow, and one miserably cold night, to get to the campground. The dead man was still in the trailer. I checked. He looked more peaceful then I remembered. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could swear he winked at me when I wasn’t looking.

  I left the trailer as quickly as I did the first time.

  The cable on the winch was a half-inch in diameter. I figured out how to free-spool the winch, and with Sackett’s help, dragged the cable out as far as it would go. I wrapped a rag around the cable so it wouldn’t hurt Sackett’s teeth.

  The cable was almost a hundred feet long. Now I needed a way to cut it, and something to make some steel L-brackets to serve as a lock for the noose.

  The rest of the day was spent searching the campground for what I
needed. As darkness approached, the snow and wind picked up and I looked around for the best place for me and Sackett to sack out. Hands down, it was the dead man’s trailer. Shit.

  I mustered my courage and dragged the mummy from the trailer. Since the old guy had winked at me, I didn’t figure he’d mind very much. I dragged him over to a tree and propped him up against it.

  Then I opened all the windows in the trailer and aired it out. I didn’t think it smelled too bad, but it definitely smelled way better after it was aired out and the seat cushion the mummy was sitting on was tossed.

  I got Sackett into the trailer and he immediately went for the queen-sized bed in the back. I think he’d been somebody’s house dog before the lights went out.

  I’d seen two small propane tanks on the trailer tongue. They were tiny compared to the big-ass silver tank in our yard at home. Propane meant heat, if I could light the furnace anyway.

  And I figured it out. The furnace didn’t need electricity, it had a manual piezoelectric lighter, just like Mr. Sherman’s grill back in the neighborhood.

  I knew all about that because Mr. Sherman let me light the grill once and told me all about how it worked. Of course, I wasn’t invited to the barbecue because Mrs. Sherman thought I was white trash and chased me away.

  Pretty soon I had the heater going and had to shrug out of my lined jacket and lined jeans. Man, the heat felt good. Sackett rolled over on his back on the bed and stuck all four feet straight up in the air. His big floppy ears spread out on the bed and he had a shit-eating grin on his face.

  Sackett snored all night long but I fell asleep anyway, even though Sackett hogged the bed. The next morning neither me or Sackett wanted to get out of bed. I thought about just staying in the trailer for the rest of the winter but I knew that wouldn’t work. The propane would run out in a few days, or a week at best. It was a big trailer and they were small tanks. But we did wait until the sun was well up before we left the trailer. I turned the heat off and closed the tank valves just in case we needed to use the trailer again.

  I found a small shed and broke the lock with a rock. Jackpot! The shed was loaded with tools. I chose a hacksaw and a spare blade for it. I also found a battery powered drill, but the battery was dead. It wouldn’t even turn. I wondered how I could charge it while I was looking for some angle iron to make a snare lock.

  I found a piece of two-inch angle iron and cut it to length with the hacksaw. Now I had to find some way to drill the holes in the angle iron for the cable. Without electricity, that was gonna be a bitch.

  None of the cars worked since the lights went out, well almost all of them anyway. Old Mr. Graham was putt-putting around town in his antique Model T right after the lights went out. But he disappeared and I didn’t know what happened to him.

  Even if the travel trailer had a generator, it probably wouldn’t work. I checked just in case, but no luck.

  And then I found the bit brace hanging on the wall. There had been one of those in our garage and I’d used it once for drilling a hole in wood. It’d have to do. I clamped the angle iron in the tool shed vise and started with a quarter-inch drill bit. I had to stand on a chair and put dang near my entire body weight on that thing, but it drilled steel. At this rate, maybe I’d have the holes drilled by spring. But I stuck with it, moving to larger and larger bits until the holes were the size I needed.

  I scrounged around and found three U-bolts and some nuts. Then I looped the end of the cable through one of the holes and used the U-bolts to keep the cable from slipping out of the hole.

  Using the hacksaw, I cut the cable to length plus a few feet.

  I was ready. It had only taken me two full days to make the bear snare. Me and Sackett celebrated by turning the heat up in the trailer that night. I even bathed in the creek that ran alongside the campground.

  I crept into the mouth of the tunnel and peered inside. The damned old bear was still there. I don’t know if I was glad or disappointed. On one hand, I’d have been happy to see the bear gone. On the other hand, I wanted to get even with that bear for taking over my winter camp.

  I was starving. I wanted nothing more than to retrieve a few fish from my fish trap in the stream and cook them up for a nice meal. But I was afraid the smell of cooking fish would wake the bear. So I went about setting the bear snare and piling wood on either side of it to build the fires that I’d toss cedar and pine limbs on to smoke the bear out.

  Burning cedar and pine limbs made a shitload of thick, whitish-gray smoke that’d choke a horse, or a bear. I knew that because I was the one that had to trim the trees along the back fence at home and burn the cuttings.

  In a few hours, I was ready. I started the fires and, when they were burning well, I piled green cedar and pine limbs on them. The chimney hole was drawing the smoke into the tunnel just like I thought it would, especially since I’d waited for the right wind direction. In ten minutes the smoke was so thick inside the tunnel that I couldn’t see a thing.

  I stood with my bow drawn, waiting for the bear to dash out of the tunnel. Sackett was behind me because I didn’t want to hit him with an arrow.

  Then I saw the bear. He was coughing and looked like he was confused. He put his head through the noose and surged forward. It was his only way out. I’d seen to that. The pine tree I’d tied the snare to jerked. That really woke the bear up, but the snare was now locked around his neck and he couldn’t shake it loose. But boy did he try.

  The bear stood and swatted at Sackett who was now barking and lunging toward him.

  I aimed carefully and loosed an arrow at the bear’s throat from ten feet. I missed.

  Calm down, dumb-ass, I told myself. Maybe this was what buck fever was like. I’d heard of that all my life. Now I understood.

  I forced myself to calm down and nocked another arrow. This time it struck right where I wanted it to. The bear sort of gurgled and growled when the arrow struck and then lunged toward me. I nocked another arrow, and drew back… And the damn bow broke. Shit. I was fucked.

  Other than a knife, the bow was my only weapon. I thought about it a bit and figured the bear wasn’t going anywhere. Why not just find a good sapling and make another bow, only this time I wouldn’t shape it, I’d just cut it to length and string it.

  So that’s just what I did. I found a hickory sapling the right size, cut it down, and made me another bow—bark and all.

  The bear had calmed down some when I got back. He just stood there and chuffed at me. There was a lot of blood where the arrow penetrated his throat. I nocked an arrow, moved as close as I dared, and loosed it. The arrow struck the bear in the throat and went in so deep that only the feathers showed. Shit. What a shot.

  I put four more arrows into the bear and then just stood back and waited. The bow I’d just made was much stronger than my regular bow. I vowed my next bow would be better and shoot ever harder than this one.

  With all of the blood flowing, the bear was sure to bleed to death. And so he did, almost ten hours later.

  By then me and Sackett were eating a meal of some mighty fine fish. I was already hankering to try some bear meat. I laughed out loud and Sackett rolled his eyes in my direction, not willing to stop eating fish to see what was up. Everything I read about survival or saw in the vids was wrong. The first law of survival is the belly rules. Well, if you have enough water anyway.

  Chapter 12

  I swung the pick and relaxed at the last moment so the handle wouldn’t jar my hands. I was digging an escape route from the back of the cave up to the top of the bluff. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t gonna give up a good camp and I wasn’t gonna get caught again.

  The shale was easy digging, but the sandstone above it wasn’t. I kept on anyway. There was a foot of snow on the ground outside and we had enough smoked bear meat to feed an army. I didn’t have anything better to do. Besides, swinging the pick kept me warm and conserved firewood.

  When I grew tired, I slipped back into the main tunnel and sat by the
fire on the bearskin. Sackett came over and lay down against me.

  I looked over my shit, well stuff as my mom preferred I call it. There were two axes, both kept sharp with a file. A crap-ton of cooking pots, pans, and utensils from one of King’s boxes, and three good blankets. I also had four knives since I grabbed three more at the campground. But most of all, I was proud of my bows. I’d made three new ones, each stronger than my old bow. I’d also made more arrows, fletched with feathers of every kind that I collected from the ground. I now had thirty-four good arrows hanging in a bearskin quiver, fur side in so the arrows didn’t rattle when I was hunting.

  What I needed now were more arrow points. My arrows were tipped with an assortment of flattened nails and bear bone points. But what I wanted were some sharp stone points.

  I collected a pile of chert cobbles from the creek. Now was a good time to make some arrowheads. Well it was, until I found out I still didn’t know how to make arrowheads in spite of the vids I’d watched about making arrowheads.

  I did learn to make some sharp thin chips though. After some thought, I figured these would do. I collected some pine pitch, charcoal from the fire, and cut off some quarter-inch-long fibers from an old piece of sisal rope. I melted the pine pitch in my worst pan, mixed in crushed charcoal and sisal fibers and made glue. It took me a few tries to get a good mix.

  Then I cut grooves along each side of my arrow tips for an inch or so and glued in rows of small, sharp chert chips. I even glued pointed chips to the tip of the arrow. The arrows looked like shit when I was done, but they were sharp.

  It took me three weeks to finish the escape tunnel. I made it just big enough for me and Sackett. A full-grown man or a bear wouldn’t be able to make it through. I carved steps so me and Sackett could climb out and then made a cover for the hole on top of the bluff from wood and an old piece of canvas. I shoveled dirt and rocks over that, and covered it all with a layer of leaves and pine needles. Then me and Sackett went the long way around to the trail down the bluff and went back to camp.