by Sadie Savage
“It’s a girl,” John said, crying a little himself as he held their new little person.
Ursula carefully took her into her arms. “Matilda,” she said. “Matilda Joan. Joan for her daddy, and Matilda just because it feels right.”
John smiled and kissed Ursula deeply. “I love you,” he said. Then he gingerly touched the small brown head of their daughter. “I love you.”
For several months, Ursula Blake sang songs in the cabin for a very limited audience of two. When Matilda was old enough to be able to laugh at her mom’s over-the-top performances, Ursula took her around town in a sling across her chest, sticking and stapling flyers to anything that could hold a flyer.
“Live at the Black Bear Inn: Ursula Blake-Asher! Jazz and Soul Songs to Cozy Up To!”
No matter what, even with his fairly rigid schedule, John never missed a performance. He sat in the front row with Matilda and the two of them would smile up at Ursula every night after dusk, when the black bear and his cub had shifted back into the man and his daughter.
THE END.
BEAR POCALYPSE
“We saw you in here,” The voice was cold and mocking. It matched the evil laughter in the man’s eyes. I had run back into the building as soon as I saw the looters prowling the streets. There was no telling how many had followed him into the hospital. Although, I guess it doesn’t matter what you call any of these buildings now.
It was quick, I will say that for the virus. A super virus, bred in hospitals for years. Immune to antivirals, inoculations, and other medications. It killed billions of people for sure, but the worst thing that it did was remove our humanity.
“Come on out,” I curled my knees in tighter as he beckoned to me. I was hiding in the large compartment of a janitor’s cart. I was not about to move for anything. Although, I was sure that I was shaking. This man had nothing to fear, he knew his days were numbered, so what did my days matter to him? “I can smell you.”
It was an odd realisation, and not likely his intention, but the looter reminded me of how long I had gone without a shower. The water had stopped flowing weeks ago. There was no one to monitor any of the public works. Electricity worked on and off in some areas. Water was done altogether. The sewers were a whole other problem.
Everyone was too busy living for today to do basic things like jobs or work. Billions had lost their lives to the virus, but many had been killed by gangs like the charming gentlemen who were hunting me at the moment.
For the first few weeks I had been a member of a community. The nurses of A2. That was our ward. We had all brought our families to live in the hospital. We were taking care of each other. We had food, medicine, and beds. A few left when the rolling brown outs started. The rest left when the water stopped flowing. The backed up sewers drove most people out of their homes. It was rare to see people moving through the streets.
They would move through the streets scavenging from time to time, but for the most part everyone stayed away, because of the scent. I had stayed because of my father. He was too weak to move. When he finally passed on yesterday I decided it was time to move on. I have been trying to do it ever since.
My first trip outside of the building I ran into a bear. The woods must be getting too crowded now that they are filled with people. He didn’t seem to pay me any mind. He must be used to humans by now. I on the other hand ran like the wind. As soon as I saw him I froze. He looked me up and down and then turned his head. I took off like a shot. It took me ten hours to work up the courage to step outside again. That’s when I saw these guys.
“Knock, knock,” The man was only a few feet away from me. He was knocking on the door to the janitor’s closet. “Let me come in,” he said mockingly. I was mad as he said those words. I didn’t know why I hadn’t gotten behind that heavy steel door. There was even a lock. There was a weird muffled banging that seemed to be shaking the cart.
“What are you doing?” It was a deeper voice than the first.
“I am getting ready.” The first man said. He was shaking the cart. I tried to hold myself still as he violently shook the cart.
“By humping a cart?” The deeper voice sounded a bit confused. I tried to hold it together, but a cry of fear escaped.
The hand flew in through the door before I could react. “Ahh!” I yelled as I felt the cold floor tile hit hard against my cheek. The laughing eyes were going all over my body as he licked his lips. Just the look in his eyes was enough to make me feel sick to my stomach.
The slight bit of solace that I had in this moment was that the virus had likely rendered me sterile. There was no way that I would ever have to have this man’s baby. I edged myself backwards along the floor. I held my foot back ready to kick him. There were four men moving toward me. I knew that I couldn’t take all of them, but I was going to kick him in the balls so hard. That was my goal in that moment. I didn’t think about anything else, I just wanted to hurt him.
“Don’t worry,” the man’s smile made my skin crawl. He leaned forward to grab my legs. “My eye!” He yelled as my 3 inch heel went into his eye. They were the only shoes I had left. I had had to leave the hospital from time to time to get food and I had managed to destroy every pair of shoes that I had owned. The heels were my last clean pair. They had blood on them now. “You bitch!”
“What did you expect?” The deeper voice was coming from a fat young man in a black t-shirt that was two sizes too small. He was almost doubled over with laughter as he watched the man who now had only one laughing eye. They were travelling together, but they didn’t care about each other at all. It was sad to see how much he enjoyed his companion’s pain. The others were still moving towards me.
I was trying to back away further, but I had backed myself into a corner quite literally. I had deterred the first contestant, but I knew that this wasn’t over. A skinny redheaded man wearing a fedora and a Hawaiian shirt was already undoing his pants and he was still fifteen feet away from me. My world was going dark. It was like the stress of the situation was taking away my senses. I had a ringing in my ears.
It was only the fear in the fedora wearer’s eyes that alerted me to a change in the situation. His eyes went wide and then a brown furry paw swiped across his face. Blood spurted on to the floor by my feet as the man dropped lifelessly to the ground. The others started to run. It was only the man with the injured eye that stayed to deal with the bear. He had taken a knife out of his coat pocket, and he was walking slowly toward the great beast.
I took advantage of the situation and crawled along the floor. I knew I could get to the stairwell if I could only stand up, but I could not get my legs to work. I kept looking backwards to make sure that nothing was following me. The looter made up for his size and strength disadvantages with a healthy dose of lunacy. He was swinging the knife wildly.
The bear was up on his back legs and hanging back from the blade. I was almost to the stairwell when a missed swing of the knife took the man by surprise and he went down to the ground hard. He spun onto his back as the bear dropped down on top of him and sunk his teeth into his throat.
“Grrrrrrowwww!” The great bear moaned. I watched as the fur began to recede. The bear itself was shrinking too. It was hard to tell what was going on. I got back to my feet and started running over to the spot where the combatants lay. The laughing man was missing his windpipe. It looked as though he was trying to say something to me, but all that was coming out was a bunch of gurgles and blood bubbles. I was barely paying attention to him as the crazed laughter drained out of his eyes.
On the end of his knife was no longer a bear. It was a naked man. He was alive, but not for long. I looked around. I was still in a hospital. There had to be something that I could do. I ran through the lobby and into the emergency department. I found a gurney and wheeled it out to him. I couldn’t roll it when it was down and I couldn’t raise it by myself. Truth be told, I have never liked working with gurneys, it’s a paramedics job as far as I am concerned. It wa
s one of the main reasons that I had never worked in the emergency room.
I had spent my entire nursing career working on a post-surgical floor. I knew how to heal and treat wounds. I just had to get this guy to stand up. It was going to be tough. The naked man was not responding at all to my voice. I shook him and that seemed to get his attention. His eyes went wide and he grabbed for the knife.
“Gahhhhhh!” He shouted as he stood up and ripped the knife out of his abdomen. He was big, even when not a bear. About 6’5” and at least 250 lbs of solid muscle. I guided him onto the stretcher. As soon as the rush of energy had passed he just kind of followed where my hands were taking him. He laid back on the stretcher and I wheeled him into the emergency room.
The cupboards had been raided for drugs and supplies. They had taken almost everything. I got a lot of gauze and started to pack the wound. I knew that he was going to need stitches so I started looking for a kit to help me get the wound closed off. It was frustrating to open so many doors and see the same empty shelves staring back at me.
In the end I had to use steri-strips to close the wound. I had found a supply closet with saline in it. I already knew that there were really no options for blood or plasma. I had gotten to him fast enough that I was hoping he wouldn’t need anything like that. The rolling black outs had been a killer for medical supplies in this hospital. Anything that needed to be kept at a constant temperature was useless by now.
I knew that I was going to need more than just a couple fancy bandages to get this wound to heal properly. I waited until he seemed stable enough and I moved up a floor and started poking through the drawers, carts, and supply closets. The hardest floor was the second. My father’s corpse was still rotting in bed 2034-A. I could smell him as I walked out of the stairwell. I checked the floor for a suture kit, but I already knew that there was nothing. I had helped the people who were trying to leave pick the floor clean.
I had originally told my father and myself that I was just going to leave with the group. I was going to head out and leave him to die on his own. I thought that I could do it, but it is just not who I am. It was the seventh floor that finally yielded some results. I had some morphine, saline and a suture kit. I was pretty good at sewing and I had always believed that I could do surgery. I had seen so many of them done on TV and in person, I was actually excited to get the opportunity.
I was getting more and more worried as I got closer to the emergency room. What if this man had already turned back into a bear and he was gone? What if he was just waiting downstairs to eat me? I left the stairwell cautiously. It had been a nerve wracking day. I didn’t hear anything except for the thrashing of the patient. He had been having small fits whenever he came to. He was in an incredible amount of pain. I put the morphine in through his saline and waited for the thrashing to stop altogether for an extended period of time. I wanted my first surgery to be a success.
I found a nice quiet place to wash my hands. I was only going to seal off a wound. It really seemed as though the organs and intestines had all been missed by the blade. It was only the skin that had been broken. There had been a very significant loss of blood, but other than that the young man stood a really good chance of making it through.
I could feel the needle shaking as I got closer to the cut. I still had the steri-strips in place to hold the wound, which liked to move in place. I was going to take them off one by one as I moved down the gash. His stomach was hard with muscles, but the skin still moved very freely back and forth. I was trying to keep everything under control, but I could not get my hand to settle down.
It wasn’t until I passed the needle through the skin and pulled the thread through for the first time that my nerves started to settle. With each passing stitch my confidence grew. By the end I was sad to be finished with the sewing. I was starting to really get the hang of it and I knew that it might be my last opportunity to stitch somebody up. I had found another kit as well. It was secretly hoping that I would have to go in and try to find a bleeder or something.
I walked outside to bath in the moonlight for a moment. It probably wasn’t a great idea, but I knew that I needed some fresh air. It was like my victory cigar. I looked around, none of the stores nearby looked like they would sell cigars. The convenience store seemed too small to offer the finer things in life.
The patient seemed stable and I had gotten the bleeding to stop. I knew that he would be up soon. I had a really good feeling about surgery. I went back and washed the blood off of my hands. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say as I walked back into the room and found the patient was still asleep. I had probably given him too much morphine.
It was a horrible thought. Morphine was a terrible pain killer for surgery anyways. It always made people so itchy. He is going to wake up and scratch the stitches off immediately, I thought to myself as I watched him sleep.
What do you say to the man who risked his life to save you, but was clearly a bear at the time? I had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure what kind of answers I was ready to hear. There were all sorts of weird mutations that were popping up all over the place. When the TV was still working there was a news story that all of the nurses from A2 had come together to watch about a circus of freaks that were not in any way put on. It was a real life freak show that the virus had made possible.
The TV stations had stopped broadcasting after the first month. That was when everything had become pointless. The second month was when the realizations started to set in. We were no longer going to be, “Getting back to the way things were.” The president’s phrase had become a popular source of mockery as the days and weeks wore on. How could we go back?
There was no way to un-see things and no way to undo them. I had watched too many people give up their humanity to ever have faith in the human race again. I saw a nurse that I had known for years stab a man over an armful of pudding cups. I did nothing to save the man as my friends threw him out into the streets to die. I watched as the people I had lived with for a month all left me and my dying father behind.
So why should genetic mutations frighten me when the regular people that I knew had already changed so much. The TV circus had had a wolf family. They were all were werewolves that could shift without the help of the moon. They had run around under the big top and they had an amazing act that they had put together. Even that hadn’t prepared her for what she had seen today. The strength and power of the bear, and the frailty of the human body. It was all just a bit too much.
The naked man was all just a bit too much all on his own. He had a sleeve of tattoos running down his left arm. The symbols looked mainly Celtic and clearly they were trying to tell a story. It all started with a tree of life on the top of his shoulder. The rest of the sleeve was tied together by the roots of the tree as they ran down his arm. It was an amazing design. There were bears and claws, an old raven and Celtic knot made of thorny roots.
It was hard to ignore the muscle tone. He only seemed to have body hair as a bear, it didn’t look like he shaved, but there was no hair on his body. It was hard not to stare at the rippling muscles that ran from one end of his body to the next. His muscles looked as if he was always flexing. Some of that might have been the morphine too, but he was in amazing shape. I ran my fingers along his stomach as I went to examine the wound. As soon as I touched his skin I could feel a rush of energy flow through me. It was impossible to resist trying it again. I ran my fingers down his thigh and up along his stomach and chest only to see his eyes were now open.
“Can I help you?” He said to me and I almost fell over. I had gotten lost in the moment and the angry snarl on his face brought me right back to reality.
I grabbed a chart that sat at the edge of the gurney. “Good neurological response to outside stimuli.” I said loudly as if I was charting it. I was hoping that he wouldn’t notice that I didn’t have a pen. There was also no paper on this chart. I just needed to have an explanation for what I was doing. I was finding it difficul
t to just admit that spending the last several weeks here essentially by myself had turned me into a bit of a perve.
It was a very sad truth that I had been having trouble even before I met the sexy bear man. I had been in a relationship all through university. Mark was great, but he was going through med school and I was in nursing. I got lost in his shadow. As soon as I found the courage to end it I promised myself I would never let that happen again. I was going to live for me. It meant that I always pulled myself back when I felt any feelings starting to stir. It also meant that I spent a lot of time on my own. As soon as the virus hit that became completely alone.
“I am leaving,” the bear man said as he stood up. His knees buckled under him. I rushed in and grabbed him. He had already pretty much stopped himself with his hands against the bed.
“You lost a lot of blood.” I almost whispered. I was pressed right up against him and looking him right in the eyes.
“I just need to…” He stopped and looked at me. He wasn’t sure if had seen him earlier.
“Turn into a bear?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I knew that he was a shifter, but I didn’t know if that was it, or if something even weirder was going to come out of his mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was a fire in his eyes that made me jump. I backed away and pushed himself up to standing.
“I was just guessing,” I was talking way too fast, “You know because there were those guys, and you came as a bear and fought them and then the nutty guy stabbed you. Anyways, so the knife went in and you got smaller and naked, smaller for a bear, is what I mean, you are still very big…” my eyes went too low on the word big.
That was when I realized that I hadn’t even found the poor man a sheet. He should have been freezing, but his skin was warm to the touch. I was really hoping that he would start talking. After that long rant that I just did, I was absolutely sure that I shouldn’t try talking again for a while. He was studying my face. I could literally feel his eyes. It was like he was looking into my soul. I looked at the ground.
