The Hunted (8 page)

T
hough the grizzly was still too groggy to run as fast as she normally would, within seconds the gap between boy and bear narrowed to yards, then to feet.

“
No!”
Ashley screamed. “
Miguel!”

It wouldn't help. Nothing could help. Miguel, Jack knew, was a dead man. There was nothing to be done. Miguel was about to be ripped apart, soft flesh to bone, and all Jack could do was watch as the bear overtook the boy. He heard a piercing scream from Miguel, whose eyes opened wide in terror as the bear caught up from behind.

“He's going to die!” Ashley cried hysterically.

Suddenly, the grizzly stopped her charge. Rearing once again on her haunches, she shook her head in confusion, as though not understanding what was happening to her. It's the drug, Jack thought.
Go, Miguel!

Sensing he couldn't outrun the grizzly, Miguel took the only escape route that might work: straight up! As nimble as a monkey, he grabbed a rough branch of a Douglas fir and heaved himself up to his hips, then swung his legs up and over the bough.

With her face pressed into the glass, Ashley yelled, “Yes! Hurry, Miguel! Go higher!”

Rocking and weaving, the bear swiped at Miguel, barely missing his leg. Miguel grabbed the next branch, but it broke off in his hands. When he reached for a higher branch, that broke, too. Wrapping his arms around the trunk, he wedged both feet against the rough bark, pressing hard with the soles of his ragged tennis shoes. Then, laboriously, moving only inches at a time, he began to shinny up the tree.

The female grizzly roared in fury. Raising herself to her full height, she lunged upward at Miguel, her claws missing him but leaving deep gouges in the bark of the trunk.
“¡Jesús, María!”
Miguel cried out. He struggled up to a safe branch just barely beyond the bear's reach; panting in fear, he clung there.

The grizzly circled the base of the tree, exhaling in great gusts of air like a bellows, growling, rearing up, ripping at the air before dropping back again to all fours. The drug in her system seemed to make her flounder between rage and confusion; she would stop, shake her head back and forth, then pace again.
Leave,
Jack prayed.
Just go
.

As quickly as she'd begun, she stopped pacing and stood on her hind legs again, this time positioning her front paws against the tree trunk.

“She's climbing after him!” Ashley shrieked.

It was true. Hesitantly, then furiously, the grizzly sank her claws into the tree. She began to ascend, her back haunches thrusting as she pushed up through the bough spikes, snapping the smaller ones as if they were twigs. Screaming, “Help me!” Miguel shinnied even higher, but the top of the tree began to sway beneath his weight. There was nowhere left to go. The grizzly, though not adept at climbing, moved higher.

With her hind toes splayed against the trunk, she used her long claws to dig into the bark. Front paws cupped around the trunk, she climbed paw over paw, but at 350 pounds, her weight was too great for speed. Still, she climbed.

“She's going to get him! We've got to do something!” Ashley cried.

“Do what? We can't go out there—”

“We can't just sit here, either! Jack, he's going to die!”

“I know, I know, I
know!”
Jack pounded the wheel of the car. The car. He caught sight of the cup holder, where the keys lay. Without thinking it through enough to talk himself out of it, he grabbed the keys, inserted the Jeep key into the ignition, turned it hard and gunned the engine. The gearshift lever projected between the bucket seats like a letter
T.
Pressing his thumb into the button on the side of the gearshift, just as he'd seen his father do, he released the handle and slipped the arrow onto
R.

“Jack—what are you doing?”

“Driving!”

“You don't know how—”

Whipping his head around so he could see behind him, Jack cried, “Put on your seat belt and shut up!”

The car lurched as he gave it some gas, moving faster than he thought possible in such a short distance. He was out of control, bumping over rocks and barely missing a stand of trees. When he slammed on the brakes, both he and Ashley whiplashed toward the dashboard before crashing back into their seats. Ahead of him, he saw the grizzly, her massive bulk struggling as she inched up the tree.

The shaft popped as Jack yanked the gearshift into Drive, then jerked the wheel to the right. Taking a breath, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and immediately spun out of control. Too far! He'd bounced into the woods, snapping a small aspen tree at its base. Reversing again, he heard the tires sputter as he backed up onto the road.

“Jack!”

He jammed on the brake. Slower this time, he put his foot on the gas and eased the Jeep forward. His plan was simple—drive at the tree without hitting it in the hope that the motion of the car would scare the bear. A thousand things could go wrong, but he couldn't worry about that now; he had to focus on the one strategy he hoped would scare the bear away and save Miguel's life.

The steering wheel wanted to wrench from his hands; he gripped it, hard. Sweat moistened his palms. He was moving, heading for his target dead ahead. The grizzly was only 40 feet away from the Jeep, but it had climbed dangerously close to Miguel.

“What are you doing?” Ashley screamed. “If you hit the tree Miguel will fall out!”

“I'm not going to hit it.”

She leaned into him hard and smacked the horn in a ferocious punch. “Scare her with the horn!” she cried. “Blast it!” The sound blared through the trees like a gunshot, and the bear, eight feet up now into the tree, reared back her head.

If he'd ever driven before in his life, his sister's sudden movement wouldn't have mattered. But Jack barely had control; Ashley's motion threw him off. In an instant he was bumping across the ruts on the road, and then, with a crash, he rammed up and over a log that had fallen on top of a boulder. The Jeep tilted at a crazy angle, its right front tire spinning helplessly in the air. The other three tires whined against the dirt, useless. Jack's shoulder jammed into the driver's door. Ashley flew into him, her head hitting his rib cage with a thud. Breath burst out of his chest, and for a split second Jack thought he would suffocate, until air sucked back into his lungs in a painful rush.

So this is what his plan had gotten him. The Jeep was wrecked, and Ashley—when he looked down, he saw she wasn't moving. Her head lay still, a round, dark circle against his chest. “Ashley,” he gasped, “are you OK? Ashley!” He shook her harder than he meant to, and when he heard her snap at him he almost laughed with relief.

“Quit pushing at me. I'm fine.” She righted herself, rubbing her elbow as she peered out the windshield. “How about you?”

“Fine. Sore. Where's the bear? Where's Miguel?”

“I don't know. I'm all turned around. Wait—over there. I see them! In the tree!”

Straining to sit up, Jack followed his sister's finger. It took a moment for his eyes to focus before he saw her—a large shape descending the tree, making its branches shake wildly as she moved down, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

“Look, Jack! It worked! You actually did it!”

“We
did it,” Jack answered softly.

All four legs moved paw under paw as the grizzly worked her way downward in reverse, slipping the last few feet like a fireman sliding down a pole. Her fur—paler across the hump and the shoulders, darker on the rump—rippled as she shook herself, finally standing on all fours at the base of the tree. Then she walked away from it, stumbling as she moved, her steps uneven, her front paws toeing in like parentheses.

“Oh, man, that was close. But Miguel—I think he's safe. As long as he stays up there.” Ashley's breathing was rapid, shallow. One of her braids had come undone, coiling around her shoulder like smoke, and Jack could see white commas of fear around her nose and mouth. “OK, bear, you've scared us all half to death. Now go away.”

But the bear's snout snuffed the air, as if searching for a scent. Wagging her head, she stopped directly in the path of the Jeep. Jack could see her eyes zero in on them, her stare as straight as a laser beam.

“She's looking our way. Jack, I don't like this.”

“I don't like it either.”

“Well, get us out of here.”

“Ashley, I can't. We're stuck.”

“But I don't like the way she's staring at us. Put it in reverse! Back us out!”

“The Jeep's stuck on a log. We've only got three wheels touching the ground. Listen, we're not going anywhere.” Gunning the engine, Jack heard the tires grind into the dirt. He saw dirt clods spit into the road in a heavy shower. The noise and motion caught the attention of the grizzly. Her black nose moved as she sniffed the exhaust; she snorted.

“Stop it, Jack. The sound is making her mad!”

“I'm trying!”

The grizzly shook her head again and woofed, sounding like a very loud big dog. Ashley's fingers clamped on Jack's forearm so tightly her nails dug into his skin like four tiny daggers. “Jack, Jack, Jack—she's coming toward us! It's like
Night of the Grizzlies
—she's—looking right at
me!”

“It's OK,” Jack assured his sister. “She's probably just heading for her babies. Listen, they're making an awful racket. She'll walk right past us and go for her babies, that's all. We're safe in here.” He wished he knew that for sure. The Jeep ought to protect them, but what did he know? This grizzly'd been shot with some kind of drug that seemed to be causing volatile, unpredictable reactions. And she'd had her babies taken away. Jack knew that no animal on Earth was more dangerous than a mother bear protecting her cubs. In the background, hooting their fear in an unending series of
wooooohs
and howls, the cubs kept up their pathetic cries for their mamma. Everything was at its most explosive, like sparks dancing around a stack of dynamite. Anything could happen.

“I'm so scared,” Ashley whispered.

“Just stay in the car,” Jack told her as calmly as he could. “She can't hurt us.”

“Don't let her get me.”

“I won't.”

“She's coming!” Ashley's voice rose in pitch. “Look at her, she's nearly—Lock the doors!”

All Jack's weight was against the driver's side. Pulling forward, he pressed the small silver button to click down the locks. Jack never knew if it was that tiny sound or his movement, but something angered the grizzly. Instantly, she began to charge the Jeep, chewing up the distance like a train, her long claws scoring the ground as she ran straight toward them, mouth open, teeth bared.

Over his sister's scream, Jack barely heard his own voice as he whispered, “We're dead.”

T
he grizzly slammed into the Jeep with a force that jarred Jack's teeth. Staggering, the bear took two steps backward, her head swaying from side to side like a toy dog's. If Jack hadn't been so scared, he might have felt sorry for her. Whatever Terry had drugged her with was affecting her behavior. She seemed unable to focus. Confused, she backed up farther, stopped, and then charged again.

“Go away!” Ashley screamed, as the grizzly rammed the passenger side. The Jeep tipped lower on its left. Jack was smashed into the driver's window, his weight bearing down on his sore shoulder, his view a crazy jumble of the steering column and patches of sky. Ashley, trying to right herself, pushed off from Jack's headrest, her unbraided hair dangling like a rope ladder.

“We're going to tip over!” she cried.

“I—can't see—” Jack stammered.

“She's backing up. She's coming at us again—”

Wham!
The grizzly's fury seemed to unleash itself against the Jeep. Roaring, she stood up to look into the passenger window. Now Jack could see, all right, and the vision made his heart freeze. Three hundred pounds of fury; a huge head with wide nostrils in a black nose pressed hard against the glass; two small, black-rimmed brown eyes staring; mouth open to reveal knifelike canine teeth that could tear through wood.

With a swipe of her claw, the grizzly savaged the hood of the Jeep, leaving deep, two-foot-long scratches. Illogically, Jack thought, I hope Dad won't blame that on me.

“The horn,” Ashley whispered. “Blow the horn again. Scare her away.”

The bear did flinch when the horn sounded, but instead of frightening her, it seemed to inflame her further. She began hitting the window on Ashley's side with both front paws, harder and harder.

“Ashley, climb into the backseat!” Jack yelled. If the bear shattered the front window, his sister would be dead meat.

For once, Ashley obeyed without arguing. Clambering over Jack, she jammed herself into the floor space between the front seat and the back, her spine pressed tightly against the far door, her arms twined around her legs. She'd made it just in time.

With one final thrust, the grizzly broke through the front window, right where Ashley had been sitting. Because it was safety glass, the pane shattered into a cascade of diamond-shaped pebbles, spraying Jack and the whole interior of the Jeep. A few of the glass bits stuck to the bear's foot; while she huffed and sniffed and investigated her thick black paw, turning it up and nudging it with her nose, Jack pulled himself into a crouch. He grasped the rearview mirror with his left hand, balanced his right hand on the headrest behind him, and pressed his body into a curve against the car door: feet on the floor, stomach crowding the steering wheel, and head angled into the roof of the car.

With the window gone, Jack could clearly hear the sounds from outside: the hooting and yammering of the baby cubs, mostly, but there was something else—a louder hooting, sounding just like the cubs, but closer. Jerking his eyes to stare through the windshield, he saw—Miguel.

The boy had come down from the tree and now stood a dozen feet in front of the Jeep, making noises like the bear cubs, darting forward and then running back again, a few steps at a time. The big grizzly looked at Miguel, then at the Jeep, unsure which one deserved her attention. She picked the Jeep, and thrust her massive foreleg through the broken window to reach for Jack.

Too terrified to yell, Jack flattened himself against the door, sucking in his midriff as the bear's claws scraped across the steering wheel. He was barely out of reach. If she'd plunged the front part of her body—head, neck, and foreleg—through the opening, she'd have had him, but her leg alone wasn't long enough to cross the width of the Jeep.

Now Miguel was yelling, “Bear, bear, hey,
oso.

 

¡Atención!”
and imitating those hooting sounds the cubs kept making, like the middle notes of a badly played clarinet. Miguel darted so close to the grizzly that if her foreleg hadn't been inside the Jeep, she could have clawed his face.

Looking from Jack to Miguel, the grizzly backed out of the Jeep. Immediately Miguel began to run, stopping every few yards to turn toward the bear and wave his arms, goading her on.

Ashley was on her feet now, clutching the seat back as she watched through the windows. “What's he doing?” she squealed, and Jack answered, “Saving our lives.” Never in his life had he felt so scared or so helpless.

And there was Miguel, risking his own neck to save Jack, who had betrayed him.

“Miguel, Miguel, Miguel.” Ashley repeated it like a prayer as the boy ran away from the lumbering grizzly. “He's heading toward the pump!”

“Yes! The pump!” Jack raised his right fist in excitement because right away he could picture what Miguel was planning.

Miguel reached the pump just seconds before the bear did. He pulled up the sheet metal cover on the compartment housing the pipes, dived inside, and pulled the lid down on top of him.

Ashley collapsed against Jack, sobbing, “He made it.”

Not wanting to frighten her, Jack didn't answer. Miguel was safe, but only for the moment. How long would it take before the bear managed to lift the lid with her long, lethal claws? Bears were smart and could use those claws almost like fingers. For now the grizzly just prowled around the lid, snuffling, growling, head down, the massive muscles of her shoulders hunched.

And then came the rumble of a truck's engine. Doors opened. Jack's heart sank. Were the poachers coming back?

If they were, they could grab the cubs, still tied up in the netting, and get away with them before the mother grizzly figured out that she should go after the real bad guys and forget about Jack and Ashley and Miguel, who'd only been trying to help. At first Jack couldn't see what was happening because of the trees, but then he heard a sound he could no way have expected: barking.

It all happened so fast! Before he knew it, his mother was running toward him. Beyond her were three women. Each woman held a black-and-white dog on a leash, and each dog was barking furiously at the female grizzly. The woman in the lead fired a shotgun at the bear as she shouted, “Go away, bear! Get out of here, bear! Get out of here!”

Olivia, looking frantic, had reached the Jeep and wrenched at the door, reaching through the broken window to release the lock. In an instant she pulled out her children, crying, “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“We're fine,” Ashley cried, “but Mom, that woman is shooting the bear!”

“That's Carrie Hunt and she knows what she's doing. She's firing rubber bullets and firecracker shell rounds. They won't hurt the bear.”

The grizzly, forgetting Miguel, stood up to face the three dogs and their unceasing barrage of barks. The loud noise of exploding firecrackers blasted Jack's ears as he yelled, “Mom, we gotta get her cubs. They're tied up back there. Where are Dad's wire cutters?”

“You've got her cubs? No wonder she's—” Olivia pointed to the tailgate. “The cutters—they're inside the box with the starter cables.”

Ashley wailed, “I don't want Jack to go out there, Mom. It's too dangerous!”

“I'll be with him. You stay here. The bear doesn't want to hurt any of us—she just wants her cubs.” When Ashley still looked frightened, Olivia added, “See the other two women with Carrie? One's a handler named Angela, and there's Ali, the ranger, with the third dog. All three of them will stay between us and the bear, and the dogs will keep barking. Look—they're already getting the bear to move back into the trees.”

Loping, the grizzly had turned toward the thickest stand of Douglas fir. As she ran into the shelter of the woods she made all kinds of worried sounds—barks, grunts, roars, all of them combining with the steadily accelerating barking of the dogs, the shouts of the women dog handlers, and the explosion of firecracker shells.

Cutters in hand, Jack raced down the path to reach the cubs. He cut through the cord-wrapped wires of the net that held them while his mother pulled the cubs free of the netting and gently set them onto their feet. Freed at last, they stood up, gingerly trying out their legs, terrified by the presence of so many people plus the wildly barking dogs, not knowing whether they should risk a dash to reach their mother.

Hearing her babies squealing and bawling, the agitated female grizzly came out of the trees once again and started toward them, but Carrie let loose another barrage of rubber bullets. Bending forward toward her lead dog, she spoke to it just loudly enough for Jack to hear, saying, “Cassie, this is going to be a hard one. She thinks we're going to hurt her babies. We need to let her know that if she stays back, we won't hurt her or the cubs either.”

Cassie, the lead dog, doubled her barking, while Angela and Ali encouraged their dogs to do the same, shouting, “Bark at the bear! Bark at the bear!”

When the mother grizzly once again retreated into the trees, Carrie instructed, “OK. Ali, Angela, pull the dogs back now so the cubs can go to their mother. Olivia, have your children back up behind us. We need to stay together so we don't look like a threat. Let's clear a path and keep real quiet.”

The cubs, stumbling, took a few hesitant steps in the direction of their mother and then took off, their back legs tucked under them as they scooted toward her. When they got close, the female grizzly rushed to them, sniffing each one thoroughly to discover whether they'd been harmed. Maybe it was knowing that the cubs were safe, but the rage seemed to seep out of her. She was wary but no longer interested in Jack or Ashley or anyone else. Woofing, she hurried her cubs into the trees. One behind the other, they followed their mother until all three bears were hidden by the foliage.

“They're gone! Thank heavens!” With the bears out of sight, Olivia took a deep breath and said in a trembling voice,
“Now
can someone please tell me what's been going on here? I mean everything! Starting from the beginning.”

Ashley was about to answer, but Jack shook his head and said, “Wait.” Taking his mother's hand, he said, “Explanations later. Come on, Ashley. There's something we have to show Mom.” With Ashley on one side of Olivia and Jack on the other, they led their mother toward the pump.

“All clear!” Jack yelled as they approached it.
“Es bueno,
dude! You can come out.”

By only an inch, the sheet metal lid moved upward. After a wait that seemed minutes long but probably was just a few seconds, the lid rose another inch. Then, slowly, like the top of a coffin in an old vampire movie, the metal lid squeaked open a little at a time, until it was high enough to reveal Miguel jammed inside the concrete compartment, his slight body twisted between the pipes. With a final thrust, Miguel flipped the lid all the way open until it banged on the ground on the other side.

Laughing, Jack grabbed Miguel's hand and pulled him to his feet. Ashley was laughing, too—at the astonishment on Olivia's face. “Mom,” she said, “this is Miguel. He's from Mexico. Say hello to our mother, Miguel.”

“Buenos días, Señora,”
Miguel said, and gave a little bow.

 

Fifteen minutes later, after the most basic explanations had been made, Olivia kept hugging Jack and Ashley, saying, “I never should have left you two alone here.” And then she'd hug them again and look them in the eyes and ask, “Are you sure you're alright?”

“We're OK, Mom,” Jack kept telling her, but Ashley just nestled into Olivia's hugs.

Carrie, the leader of the bear dog team, said to the kids, “Your mother asked me to drive her back here so she could show you the dogs, but I never expected you were going to get a demonstration.”

“That bear—” Ashley began. “Mom, I was so scared!”

“I'm sure you were, poor baby,” Olivia answered, hugging Ashley again.

Angela told them, “The way the grizzly was acting makes me think those men used an old, outdated drug when they darted her. Years back, bears got darted with something called Sernylan.”

“Yeah, you might have heard of it,” Ali added.

 

“When it's sold by street dealers, it's called angel dust. It put the bears to sleep fast, all right, but the park people quit using it because it's no longer manufactured legally.”

Carrie, kneeling next to the panting dogs as she rubbed their necks affectionately, looked up to explain, “Some bears, when they started to come out of that drug Sernylan, would fixate on movement and charge at anything that was moving anywhere near them. I imagine that's what was going on with this grizzly.” She tilted her head back as the dogs licked her chin, then added, “And even in her drugged state, that poor mamma bear kept hearing her cubs bawling. No wonder she reacted the way she did, charging you kids.”

Ashley shuddered in Olivia's arms before she said, “But Mom, everything that happened—that wasn't the bear's fault. Terry and Max lured her with a dead deer for bait, and then they shot her with drugs. So she shouldn't be destroyed. That would be so wrong.”

“Don't worry, she won't be destroyed,” Carrie assured Ashley. “When a mother's defending her cubs, the park doesn't punish her. In fact, that grizzly was very good to us. Even though she was afraid for her babies, she stood back when we confronted her. Most bears really don't want trouble, and they'll do the right thing if you just give them the chance.”

As Carrie moved away, Miguel took her place, sitting on the ground to pet the dogs, who seemed to tolerate the petting rather than encourage it. So many words were flying around while Jack and Ashley and the women discussed what had happened, Miguel must have given up trying to understand. When Carrie and the handlers gave each dog a treat of beef jerky and told them, “Good job on the bear,” Miguel shyly held out his hand. For a minute Jack thought Miguel was asking for some jerky so he could eat it himself, but when Carrie handed him a piece, he fed it to the lead dog, Cassie, who licked Miguel's salty fingers.