by Lynn Red
Well, mostly not anyway. Luckily, they weren’t going on a picnic, so there was enough room for a week’s worth of stuff to be hauled in on Jill’s back.
She buckled in, the click of the seatbelt a very dramatic punctuation to the rest of what led to this point. She closed her eyes and slid the helmet on, adjusting the visor without looking. She took a deep breath, and Jacques noticed.
“You all right, Miss Jilly?” he’s the only one who ever called her that, and she wasn’t ever sure why. “You lookin’ like you not so sure ‘bout this all.”
She shook her head as they lifted off the ground, and opened her eyes to the tops of the pines, the firs and the oaks. “Can you open a window?” she asked, before remembering the opening mechanism was beside her, and cracking the window.
Even this late in the summer, the morning was slightly crisp up here in the foothills, and the green, piney scent of the forest was cut slightly by the chill bite of a coming storm. As she massaged her temples, she thought back to her absurd fantasy with the two giant men on either side of her.
Prickles rose up on one of her arms as she imagined the sensation of fingertips brushing along, curling around her elbow. She had no idea why, but in that moment, she wasn’t able to think of anything else except their breath, and their hard, leathery, earthen scent. And, of course, the fact that there were two of them.
Oh no, she thought. Not here, not in the front of a helicopter with a Cajun a foot and a half from my elbow.
Gazing out the window, Jill tried to concentrate on anything except the desire burning in her chest. She watched the trees whiz by underneath, and let them lull her into a momentary trance.
Jacques stayed quiet until she finally spoke. “Sorry,” she said. “My mind’s a million miles away.” Ain’t that the damn truth.
“We all do it, Miss Jilly,” he said. “But you seemin’ like you ain’t in your own head. Bad way to be out there in the woods. You sure you wantin’ to do this?”
She smiled. “A year in the making, this camp. Two years getting the grants. A lot of sleepless nights and a whole lot of crazy angst. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed,” she lied, sort of. “Leaving society for a year to watch bears? That’s kinda weighing on my mind. Being alone out there...”
“Don’t you worry none about that. I’ll be keepin’ an eye on the weather and what’n not. Any kinda bad mojo come your way, I’ll pick you up. And you ain’t gonna be completely alone,” his sunglasses sparkled as he dipped the helicopter to begin the descent. “I’m bringing you food once a week, you know. There’s the radio an’ all. And from what I understand, Fred’s gonna come along as soon as his doc gives him the okay.”
Jill smiled, and then returned to staring out the window. Something about watching the trees whip past, seeing the shadows from the clouds vanish underneath her, it brought some small measure of peace.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent again, letting it fill her lungs. She smiled, the sun warming her face against the morning chill.
“I think it’ll be fine,” she said, exhaling slowly, a slight tremble marking the end. “Something tells me that... yeah, it’ll be fine. Don’t ask me what, but there you go.”
“Intuition?” Jacques asked. “Luck?”
Jill shook her head. “Nothing like that, I don’t think. It’ll work out because, basically, it has to. This is the way everything is supposed to go.”
“Ah,” he smiled, watching the horizon and making a slight adjustment. “You talkin’ fate then, huh? I always thought that was a bunch of shit, fate and all. But lately though?”
Jill looked over at the pilot with the big, square beard, and the tanned skin and waited for him to finish.
“Lately though, I ain’t so sure. I’m thinkin’ maybe so. Maybe there is something to that fate business after all.”
The rest of the hour-long flight they spent without speaking, Jill thinking about what he’d said, and what had stuck in her mind.
The next time the two men from her fantasies returned, as the chopper thumped along, Jill didn’t fight her heart, instead just letting her thoughts drift away on top of the clouds.
*
“Field camp is four miles to the north!” Jacques shouted as Jill stepped out of the helicopter and into fate. “You sure you can make it?”
I’d probably rather jump out of this damn thing than make that trek right about now, Jill thought. “Of course! I’m gonna live out here for a year, I better be able to hike a couple miles.”
“That’s the spirit,” he shouted back. Gingerly, he handed her pack out and down to her waiting arms. He waved, spun the chopper, and headed back the way he’d come.
For a moment she just looked around her surroundings, slightly amazed that even though she’d scouted this location out herself, that had been two years ago. Her life hadn’t changed much, to be fair, but still, turning over that hump between the don’t-give-a-shit twenties, and the ugh-where-is-my-life-going thirties was quite a feat.
To the north, the direction of her camp, there was nothing but a dense, green wall of forest that looked imposing as all hell, even in the early morning. She’d been down this road a hundred times, going out deep into the woods, frequently by herself, and always ended up fine.
But never this long. And never this far away from humanity.
She did have that radio, though. She smiled and laughed a little to herself, thinking back to Fred trying to sell her on this absolutely stupid-crazy idea. “Always with the radio.”
Still, she didn’t much like it. And this time, Stanton was supposed to be with her. Something about his abrupt departure from the project – or at least the first few months of it – still didn’t sit right with her. Yeah, sure, he was pushing seventy, but he’d never had any health problems before. And more than that, he was far too annoyingly specific to ever just say things like “oh the numbers are off” and leave it at that.
Jill shook her head, tied her brunette curls into a doubled-up ponytail and shouldered the enormous backpack.
She’d be taking deliveries every week or so, depending on the weather, so taking the hike slowly and marking the path would be a very good idea, especially since the weather that day was perfect.
Overhead, light, wispy cirrus clouds mixed with exhaust from a couple of jets.
As she walked, those two creeps – Eckert and Marley – came into her mind. Their accusations that she was chasing what amounted to dragons in the sky. Anecdotes, true, were all she had to go on, but she knew, somehow, she’d find them.
How did they survive this long without ever being seen? She wondered. Then again, I guess I am in a place so remote that Bigfoot would feel solidly safe, so there’s that.
The nearest town was about eighty miles away by flight, far more if a hiker had to weave through the endless, tangled woods.
She swallowed hard as reality set in deep.
There was no backing out. The disappearing helicopter was the end of the humanity she’d see until that very same helicopter came back. There was always the remote possibility of a hunter, a poacher, or some other adventurer passing by, but way out here? Not much of one.
As she buckled her backpack into place and tightened the harness down to keep it from flopping against her back, she let the beauty of the place overwhelm her. She turned in a circle, taking in the ring of trees all around. She was in a different world, and nothing could be more apparent.
Jill’s regular day-to-day of cinderblock office walls, the eternal, but somehow lovable asshole Albertson Craven making dirty jokes, that was all gone, and in its place was a massive forest with undergrowth so thick she could hardly see to keep on the path through the plants.
No more Albertson, no more office, no more... anything.
A mixture of earth, pine, fir and rain either coming or just passed filled her nose as she inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with life.
Every inch of her body prickled with a mixture of fear, possibility and inescapabl
e excitement.
And with that, she took her first step.
One step turned to two, turned to a thousand. She couldn’t see the sun anymore, thanks to the canopy, by the time she stopped to eat some of her hardtack and granola, but she knew it had to be around noon just from the heat.
Sweat ran down the sides of her face, and cooled slightly each time a breeze blew through the woods. Breezes didn’t come as often as she liked, but she pressed on anyhow, dripping wet, soaked through all the way to her skin.
As the woods got deeper, and slightly darker, all kinds of forest life caught her eyes – some expected, some not so much. Jill never stopped looking around, never let her attention falter. Out here and alone, all it’d take was one misstep to land her on a timber rattlesnake.
A bite from a rattler would be bad enough closer to civilization, but so far away? There’d be nothing she could do except curl up and die.
That sent a nasty shiver snaking through her guts. Why do I have to think about that stuff all the time? She asked herself. Oh right, because constantly being aware of where I’m stepping is why I’ve still got all my fingers and toes.
She took another breath, marked another tree trunk with her orange elastic bands, and continued.
The path was surprisingly well beaten-down for a place so overgrown and unknown. Some sort of animal, perhaps, used this route as his path to water, or maybe this was a long-used hunter’s trail fallen into disrepair.
A shiver crept through Jill, piercing her to the core.
She knew that feeling.
Something was watching her. No, not something. Someone.
Animals never made her feel the way those two creep assholes had two weeks before when she and Stanton met with them. She was more comfortable out here, in this wild world, with the wild things and the hidden things, than she ever had been in the other one where she usually lived.
But still, something wasn’t right.
All around, she looked, convinced someone was watching. A poacher maybe? A curious hunter? Jill got low to the ground and listened.
Birds, squirrels, and something pawing at the dirt. I’m freaking myself out for nothing. Just get up and keep going. It’s nerves. That’s all.
Swallowing hard, she got back to her feet, walked seventeen paces, and then froze solid in her tracks. There it is again, the feeling like eyes are all over me.
Chills rose from the base of Jill’s spine all the way to her scalp.
Something flickered through the woods. She turned just in time to see a vanishing blur of grey along the tree line not thirty feet from the rough path she followed.
“What was that?” she whispered.
Whatever it was zoomed past again, this time across the path, too far ahead for her to see, but close enough to see that it was – whatever it was – the color of quicksilver.
In one instant, fear gripped Jill, and the mark on her chest flared slightly. She touched the mark. It was warm under her fingertips even as her heart was cold with fear. The sound was behind her, and she spun to see it, but again it was gone before she could see anything. Slowly, Jill made her way toward the camp, though there wasn’t any reason to bother – it was still miles away and if something was after her, she needed to deal with it right then—
Crashing into her from the side, something hit Jill like a locomotive.
Her ribs burned, her neck cried out from being wrenched to the side.
Opening her eyes and clenching her fist in the rotten leaves, Jill spat out a mouthful of dirt. She turned her head to the side, but saw only teeth.
Long, yellow, dagger-like fangs brushed the side of her face in an almost seductive way. Pale yellow eyes caught her gaze.
“There aren’t any wolves here.” The air burned her chest with every single breath. Her throat hitched as the creature opened its mouth, and hot air slid out, caressing Jill’s bare throat. “Are there? Okay, yep. Yeah, there are definitely wolves here.”
Nervous yammering was Jill’s forte. The only thing is, usually she deployed it to derail an embarrassing phone call, like when her mom called to ask if she still made sure to use protection. She wasn’t so sure she could fast-talk a wolf.
With a glint of intelligence in his yellow eyes, the wolf opened his mouth, showing the full length of his terrible teeth. He snarled and then drew his head lower, near to Jill’s neck. He stared for a second longer, and then she closed her eyes, not willing to look at the horrible thing that pinned her to the ground.
Jill’s pulse throbbed in her neck, but a strange calm overcame her. Here, staring straight at death, all she could wonder was why he hadn’t done anything yet.
He dug his quicksilver paws into the ground on either side of her waist, and pushed hard, pinning her deeper into the muddy, rotten leaves. She felt his fur brushing against her stomach, against her legs, and opened her eyes again, to find him just studying her face. Again the beast lowered his head, sniffing around either side of Jill’s face, and down her chest until he lingered just above the mark.
Tingling? Why is it tingling? What’s going on?
The memory of her dreams, or fantasies, or whatever they were had never left, but her scientific brain wouldn’t allow her to parse it as anything other than a ridiculous dream. Then again...
Behind and to the left, something crashed through the woods, coming toward them. It was at once a relief, and even more terrifying, as there was always the chance the rest of this strange attacker’s pack was following.
She took a breath and held it, waiting for whatever was primed to explode to just happen. The slow, patient, crunching was loud and clear, but plodding.
Jill arched her back, trying to see what it was, but it was impossible to twist herself enough to see.
From the woods behind, she heard a roar, and something she swore was a voice shouting “No!” and then all hell erupted.
Something that resembled a massive, black, Mack truck slammed into the wolf, taking both of them head over heels. Jill stared, wide-eyed in amazement, for a split second. The bear, on top for the moment, snapped brutally in the much smaller wolf’s face. He slapped a paw across the canine’s face, leaving an angry, red mark, and looked in Jill’s direction.
The look on the animal’s face was something entirely too human. His eyes were dark, but flecked with gold, and filled with something she could only describe as compassion. He flicked them to the right, as though telling her where to go for safety.
She hesitated for a split second, then heard a series of howls joining in with the roars and snarls in front of her. A quick glance back showed her three more pair of yellow eyes coming through the wall of vegetation. There was barely time to think, much less move, before the three wolves blasted through into the clearing, and toward her.
Move, she urged herself. Now!
Diving into the undergrowth on the other side of the massive bear, Jill’s first instinct was to run. It made sense – running was the only thing that made sense – but she knew too much to think she’d actually outrun any of these huge animals.
Two of the wolves dove at the bear, but he simply swiped one of his massive paws in an arc and sent them flying. A noise that sounded vaguely laugh-like came from the bear as he turned to face the third of the newcomer wolves.
The larger of the two he’d just put down rolled over and crawled to his feet. Blood ran from a wound across his shoulders. The creature lifted a paw to his wound. Seconds later, instead of a paw, he was holding his wound with something vaguely resembling a human hand, with long, thin fingers. He stood on two legs, though they were still more wolf than man, and looked directly into Jill’s saucer-wide eyes.
He grunted and turned, hobbling away, hunched over and dragging one foot, into the woods.
She blinked, unable to believe what she’d just seen, but the adrenaline pumping through Jill’s veins overwhelmed her sense of normal. One of the swatted-off wolves wheeled around, leaping onto the bear’s back and drove his teeth into the
massive creature’s neck, pulling and wrenching to try and open the wound.
Effortlessly, the bear shrugged him off and followed through with a swipe that sent the wolf scuttling across the ground and crashing into a tree.
The bear looked again in her direction, and she noticed what seemed to be intricate tattoos, or maybe just a light pattern on the fur, around his eyes and his ears, like spider webs of different colors.
For a long moment, she felt like he was in her heart, talking to her soul. A sense of warmth filled her from within, a completely ridiculous sense of security came next. She let the long-held breath leak out of her lips. “What are you?” she asked in a breathy trickle of sound. “You’re not a bear. Are you?”
The huge creature shook his mighty head, snorted, and turned away just in time to catch a rake of wolf claws on the side of his face. He returned a roar so savage and wild that the entirety of Jill’s body wriggled with a sort of pleasure she wanted to deny, but couldn’t.
The wolves, three of them still willing to fight, stood still for a moment, exchanged a glance, and charged at once.
A huge paw shot out, catching one on the side of the face and wrenching his head in a sickening way. That wolf fell, motionless, as the other two leapt. One went high and the other low. Teeth sank into the hide on the bear’s neck, and the other bit hard on the underside of his head.
He writhed, trying to loosen the jaws, but this time he couldn’t free himself before blood came. Just a small amount ran to the ground, but seeing this creature who gave her such peace injured sent a shock through Jill.
Pepper spray, she remembered, wrenching her arm free from her pack and grabbing the red and black can from the front pocket. What the hell am I doing? There was no time for doubt. She charged as she shook, and then unleashed a stream into the face of the wolf on top of the bear.
It howled in pain, and loosened enough for the bear to shake him off. The bear blinked a few times, but didn’t seem particularly bothered by the little bit of spray that dusted his eyes.
The wolf turned to come back, and she brandished the can again, snarling at the beast. He wrinkled his face, baring those massive, yellow fangs, then snapped the air. Jill took another shot. The stream hit the ground right underneath the wolf’s face, splashing up into his mouth and his eyes.
