Snow’s ethereal silvery beauty was
best appreciated by someone who wasn’t having to slog through it, Ron McBride
decided, pushing his way through clinging white drifts. Halloween might be a few weeks away but this
far north, winter already had a solid grip.
Without the strength of his enhanced
muscles, this cross-country detour would have dropped him hours ago. As it was, he was beginning to wonder if he’d
made a fatal mistake. Hell of a thing if
his paranoia ended up killing him.
Four months of running. Four months of carrying the burden which
weighed down his jacket pocket. Never
staying in any one place for more than a few days. Always making his way further north and west,
searching for the tiny community Virginia had told him about. He’d already learned the fine art of
scrounging for cash-only day labor but now he had to be extra careful. It was too easy to accidentally lift more
than he should have been able to or move faster than human reflexes allowed. People noticed and then he had to leave
quickly.
Yesterday, he’d hitched a ride with
a trucker who’d promised to take him to one of the remote supply towns in
northern Canada, near the Alaska border.
Ron couldn’t even remember the name through the fatigue fog drowning his
brain. But he did remember the man at
the rest stop. The one dressed in plaid
and jeans, with a baseball cap pulled low over his features. There had been a jarring addition to the
traditional trucker uniform. Expensive
leather boots.
He didn’t know if who the man was or
what he was doing there, but he wasn’t about to take the chance. He ducked back out the door and began to
walk. The snow fell lightly on him,
promising to cover his tracks in fluffy obfuscation. His dark clothes would help him to disappear
into the dense woods.
Nearly twenty hours later, his
choice didn’t seem so brilliant anymore.
There was a lot of wilderness up here.
He could wander for weeks and never come across another human being. He only had a few basic survival rations in
his backpack. Without warmth and
shelter, he wasn’t going to have to worry about Dalhard finding him. His corpse would vanish without a trace.
The picturesque puffs of snow
floating down from the sky might make a lovely postcard but they clung to his
hat, hair and clothes, melting and refreezing into dense chunks of ice,
weighing him down. His fingers shook
with cold despite being pressed into his armpits as he walked. He was going to have to stop soon and take a
chance of pursuit catching up to him.
Just a little further.
The light was fading into gray-blue
twilight. Ron knew he had to stop and
build a shelter but his body seemed to have acquired a terrible inertia,
plodding endlessly. It took more effort
than he wanted to believe to force himself to stop and actually look at his
surroundings.
Black silhouettes of pine trees
jutted into the sky all around him. The
steadily falling snow piled into waist high drifts. He needed some bare ground and a fire. Numbly, he remembered a lesson in survival
training. Birch bark burned, even when
wet. Staggering through the snow, he
peered into the forest, searching for tell-tale white trunks.
His frozen fingers bled as he pried
strips of bark from a birch and broke branches to burn from a nearby pine. He found a small gap in the snow, blocked by
three large trees growing close together.
He used a branch to sweep away the sparse accumulation of snow and laid
out the supplies for his fire. It took
him three tries to get a match to light and another three before he got a piece
of birch bark alight. Luckily the
branches he’d broken were relatively dry and pitchy, catching easily and
flaming brightly.
The warmth hit him like a truck,
sparking an irrational temptation to crawl directly into the tiny fire to thaw
his frozen body. He clenched his jaw
against the pain of blood returning to numb extremities. He’d just give himself a little time to warm
up and then he’d go collect more wood and see about a shelter. Just a little time.
His weariness seduced him into
dangerous unconsciousness. Ron felt as
if he’d only closed his eyes for a moment when a snuffling sound popped them
back open. His fire had burned out and
the cold ground had leached the remaining warmth from his legs. It was dark, far too dark.
His body wanted to collapse back
into sleep. A tiny piece of his brain
shrieked warning that if he did, he would never wake again. He had to get up, get moving again.
As he rocked back, preparing to
rise, the darkness in front of him moved.
Adrenaline cleared away the twin
clinging cobwebs of exhaustion and cold.
The image in front of him suddenly resolved into perfect clarity.
Less than five feet away from him
was a bear.
It was monstrous, the shaggy head
easily the size of his torso. Even on
all fours, the shoulders would reach his waist and the massive hump over them
would be halfway up his chest. If it
stood, he guessed it would measure ten feet.
Dark brown shaggy fur blended into the darkness, except for a short
slash of golden brown over its shoulder, almost like a crescent moon.
The bear huffed at him, clacking its
jaws together. Ron slowly moved up,
using the tree trunks for balance. His
legs were numb and sore, ensuring he would have no chance of outrunning the
creature.
Except it didn’t seem aggressive.
It kept looking at him as if trying
to figure out what he was. Perhaps it
hadn’t seen a human before. If ignorance
kept it from trying to eat him, Ron was happy to keep it that way. He thought bears were supposed to hibernate
in winter, though. He vaguely remembered
reading that a bear who was awake in winter was considered especially
dangerous.
“Good bear. Nice bear,” he croaked.
The bear’s ears went flat against
its skull, exactly like an annoyed cat.
It snorted and shook its head.
“You don’t want to eat me, Mr.
Bear,” Ron continued. “Just go on and
find a pik-i-nik basket somewhere.” He
stopped as the creature let out a low growl.
Okay, so much for the
human-voice-calms-wild-animals theory.
The bear reached out with a massive paw and raked through what was left
of his fire. A few glowing coals shone
amid the ashy remains. Then it poked at
the remaining flakes of birch bark, growling again.
When it turned and began to amble
away across the clearing, Ron saw his chance.
He eased himself around the trees and started walking slowly out of the
bear’s sight. A good plan and one which
might have worked if his legs had cooperated.
His stiff limbs collapsed under him,
dropping him to the ground with a massive thud.
The bear’s attention immediately swung back to him and primitive
instinct took over. It didn’t matter how
many times he’d been told to never run from a wild animal, his feet were
pumping before his brain could consciously give instruction.
Running wildly through the woods, he
heard the bear crashing behind him. This is it, he told himself. I’m
going to die now. He tried to summon
his enhanced strength for a leap into a tree but his abused muscles had already
had enough. He slammed into the trunk
and then rolled down the hill on the far side, his backpack flying off and
scattering his belongings across the snow.
A tree graciously halted his
downward tumble, but did so by catching his head and shoulders with a
tooth-rattling abrupt stop. Stunned, he
could only stare at the top of the ridge as the bear looked down on him.
The life of Ron McBride, ended by
Canadian wildlife. Embarrassing, but at
least no one would ever know. He braced
himself for the inevitable crunch of jaws.
The bear stared at him, outlined
against the inky sky. Then it turned and
walked away.
He couldn’t believe his luck. Instead of being a bear’s before-bedtime
snack, he was going to get to die of a combination of exposure and a
concussion. He patted his jacket, feeling
for the hard lump he carried. Still
intact. He tried to force himself to his
feet but he was too weak. Wearily, he
stared at the green and blue lights floating in the sky above. Maybe this was for the best. All the things he’d done and seen. Maybe they should go to his grave with him.
Resignation pulled him down into the
darkness.
