Forever Dead (33 page)

Something was moving toward me, cautiously, quietly; the telltale snap of a twig here, a twig there, was unmistakable. I held my breath, shrank back into the rock crevice, and waited.

I could hear the footsteps coming closer, the shallow breathing, but from where I lay I could see nothing at all. My mind was pitched to the screaming point, the terror boring holes into me like worms into apples. I was afraid I couldn't stand it, that my fear would explode out of me, like some horrific sneeze of the mind, that I'd stand up and in desperation call out, “Yoo-hoo. I'm here.” Time passed. I struggled with my fear. The footsteps slowly receded and I lay in the crevice and watched for hours as
the sun move inexorably across the sky, while I tried to regain my sanity.

Where was he? What was going through his mind? I tried to imagine what he would do, tried to build up my confidence. He was not a big man, and I didn't think he'd ever counted on having to kill someone with his own hands. He'd baited Diamond, after all, and let the bear do the rest. He'd not had the guts to do it himself. Indecisive too. A coward as well. He'd tried to kill me with gas fumes and had thrown a rock in our canoe to destroy the film. I had a chance against a coward.

I began to feel a bit more confident, my fear subsiding to a dull roar. My mind cleared. I knew I couldn't follow the blazes back out. He'd be there somewhere waiting for me — waiting for me to manoeuvre myself near a cliff, and make it look like an accident. My throat was parched as dry as paper, but I'd lost my pack somewhere along the way. The palms of my hands were wet and I was breathing far too fast. I tried to calm myself down and think about what I had to do — tried to stop the panic from welling up again. I took out the compass from my pocket and decided to take a new line that I hoped would bring me out somewhere below the campsite. What I'd do when I got there would have to come to me as inspiration.

The sun had long since set when I finally made my move. It was rough going, and very slow, as I tried to avoid any dry branches. I felt like a thundering jumbo jet trying to be quiet. Every time I stepped on a dry twig I'd freeze, afraid even to swipe the mosquitoes from my face, straining my eyes searching the darkness of the woods for the telltale shape of a man lurking in the shadows. I stopped and rested often as the night wore on.

I'd been walking for what seemed like hours when I stumbled on a root and came down hard on something
soft, yielding, and wet. I pushed my upper body off whatever it was with my arms, looked down on what had cushioned my fall, and gagged. In the dim light of dawn, the unseeing face, contorted in death, gazed up at the last of the stars. I rolled violently to one side and did some heavy breathing. Don's face was badly mashed and bruised and his lower body was at an angle God never intended. I looked behind me and saw the dark looming shape of a cliff, perhaps twenty feet high.
He must have fallen in the dark while stalking me
, I thought.

I felt the relief flood over me like a tidal wave and then as quickly ebb away, leaving in its place a void of emotion before the next flood of feelings filled me with a sense of dread. Even in this light I could see that he'd been dead for more than a few hours. My blood ran as cold as the blood in Don's veins when I realized what Don's death meant.

It was someone else out there stalking me, and all the rules were different now. I felt the strength of my initial fear cascading back. At least with Don as an opponent, I had had a fighting chance. Now I didn't know who my stalker was, how strong or how well-armed, decisive or driven. I had no information at all, other than that whoever it was wanted me dead, just as surely as they had wanted Don dead.

Donaldson, Ray, Cameron, or even Lianna could easily have followed me. They all knew where I was going and had access to a motorboat. Roberta and Shannon had gone to join Patrick and Davies at the biology station, close enough for them to have paddled over here. Even Leslie could have doubled back and followed me. If any one of them knew about the cougars, there was a lot at stake for each of them.

I hadn't realized just how much I'd clung to the unformed thought that if I had come face to face with
Don I could have talked him out of killing me. But the others? I had no such confidence where any of the others were concerned.

I had to get out of here. I travelled slowly, stopping every few minutes to listen, waiting for whoever it was to leap out and nail me, bracing for it, whittling my fear into a sharp point. I came to a grinding halt as the woods suddenly ended at a huge rock outcrop. I glanced behind me and thought about heading back into the woods, but caught my breath when I saw a dark silhouette sliding through the trees toward me, moving silently and surely. Had I been seen? I threw myself down in panic onto the cold, hard rock and belly-inched my way forward, hoping to find a crevice. Instead all I found was air. I cautiously raised my head and, to my horror, found that I was at the edge of the cliff, and thirty feet below me lay the black waters of the lake. There was a small cedar growing out of a crevice, and below it I could see a small ledge. I grabbed hold of the cedar, swung my legs over the edge, and tried not to think about the drop. I let myself down to my full length, hanging there, my legs scrabbling for the ledge and not finding it. As I hung there, I started silently reciting
The Cremation of Sam McGee
to steady my nerves. I concentrated on pretending I was only two inches off the ground. No problem. I could hang here forever. Suddenly a stone rasped and tumbled down past me and I heard it scattering on the rocks below. Not two inches. I was too afraid to look up even if I could have. If someone was up there I could only hold my breath and pray they hadn't seen me.

And suddenly someone was there. I could hear them breathing and then the pain seared through my fingers as something slammed into them. I let go and at the same time instinctively bunched my legs against the cliff face as I spun around and pushed off. All that went
through my mind were thoughts of all those countless people who have died because they dived into water without checking for rocks first.
I don't want to die
, I thought as the lake rushed up at me in the dim light. I plunged into the coldness of the water, bracing for the hit, but nothing happened, just the peaceful silence of the depths. I kicked up to the surface, angling in toward shore so that when I surfaced the rocks and cliff face would hide me from above. I clung to a rock for a long time until I heard footsteps slowly move away. I pulled myself out, and as the sun came up I scrambled over the rocks and into the woods, heading toward the campsite. I knew I was close to the canoe. All I had to do was get to it. At least that's how I comforted myself as I struggled through the woods.

I could hear the rapids now, slowly getting louder, and I saw a clearing ahead. I approached cautiously, moving from tree to tree until I could get a view of the open area. It appeared that I was approaching the campsite from downriver. The beginning of the portage was quite close. I hadn't yet formulated a plan as I crept closer. Suddenly I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I shrank back against a tree and watched as a man, who had been stooping over something, stood up and looked around. I stifled a gasp. Patrick was standing over my pack, which now lay on the ground, the rope attaching it to the tree still dangling above it. In his hand he was holding a tin and looking about him furtively.

Suddenly he dropped the tin on top of my pack and turned to stare right through me. I froze. I was down-wind and the smell of fish was strong. I could see enough of the tin to tell me it was sardines and it was open. Patrick's hand went for his pocket. I bolted, racing between the trees heading for the water. I heard a loud bang even as Patrick yelled something I couldn't hear.

I felt the bear a split second before it attacked. The blow, silent and sudden, sent me sprawling forward. I felt a sharp row of painful jabs sear through my arm, and I smelled the hot breath of the bear on my face, the stink overpowering in its intensity. The weight of its body pressed me to the ground. I went limp trying to remember if I was supposed to play dead or fight like the devil. With some bear species you fight them, with others you play dead. As he began to nibble my arm I knew I could no more play dead than a bear could play a violin — the pain was too excruciating. I let out a murderous bellow fuelled by adrenaline, fear, and pain, and at the same time I wrenched my arm, flung myself sideways, and rolled away. The bear growled and came at me as I scrambled to my feet and whirled around. Then, standing at my full height with my arms raised, I bellowed again. But the bear kept coming, bowling me over. I went limp again, not because I wanted to but because I had no strength left and I was terrified. My arms were pinned under the bear's weight, my nose jammed into the smell of the cedar twigs, my ears blocked by its weight — all I could think was,
What a horrible way to die
. Suddenly the bear let go.

I lay immobile in the dirt, and from where I was I could see the water and the canoe and the reason the bear had left me. Patrick was yelling and bolting for the water, repeatedly looking over his shoulder to see where the bear was. The murder weapon turning on the murderer, I thought, and wanted to scream at my rotten choice of men. The bear caught up with him at the water's edge and swatted him in the head with his paw. The blow catapulted Patrick into the current of the river, and I watched him trying to keep his head above the water as the current caught him. The bear followed him along the shoreline, and I lost sight of them both.

I exploded from the ground, my head ringing, my vision blurred, but there was no pain, only a momentary fear of blacking out that surged through me but then was gone, and I was running, staggering under the fear that the bear would return. I resisted the urge to run into the woods and made for the canoe. I pushed it into the water, and then realized it was still tied to the tree. I scrambled up and struggled with the knot. I kept looking up toward the woods as I frantically tried to undo the knot. Finally it gave at the exact moment that the woods erupted with an enormous bellow and the bear came bursting out as if in slow motion, its massive forearms flung out at each stride, muscles rippling, the huge jaw open. The roar of the hunter hunting its prey boomed through the woods.

Frantically I pushed the canoe off with my right foot, but as I did I slipped and fell headlong into the canoe and lost momentum. The canoe rocked dangerously to the left, the gunwale almost slipping beneath the water as the bear charged down toward me. I frantically groped for the paddle and pushed myself up onto my knees. I could feel the current begin to pull me even as the bear gathered itself at the water's edge, its legs bunching into a coiled spring, and then it leapt at the canoe, one long, graceful jump at full stretch.

It missed the canoe by inches, and the waves it sent out caught the canoe broadside, throwing me off balance. I felt the canoe begin to go over. For one frantic moment, it sat suspended on the edge of tipping as I tried to regain my balance. I slapped the water with the open face of my paddle, and the canoe fell dizzyingly back to a level field. As I did so the bear reared out of the shallow water right next to me. I brought the blade of the paddle high over my head and brought it down on the bear's open jaws. The shaft of the paddle broke
and the bear lunged at me, grabbing the broken end of the paddle and jerking his head back.

The strength of the movement was terrifying and instinctively, I released the paddle and grabbed the gun-wales to try and steady the canoe. The bear sensed the danger before I did, but it was too late. I could hear the roar of the rapids, feel the pull of the water against the canoe. And suddenly the bear and I were one, the power of the bear reduced to basics as the power of nature took over. I had to move to the stern to get the second paddle if I was to have any chance of running the rapids in the canoe.

Leslie had said there was an easy route through them along the outside curve of the river, the route that was always taken in a lightly loaded canoe. It was a fast, straight run with no obstacles, and I remembered that Ryan and I had been able to run them almost fully loaded. However the western shore, the side now drawing me down, was a roiling, boiling mass of foam and standing waves, boulders, and small shelves. I shuddered at what must have happened to Patrick and marvelled at how I could still feel something for him.

I scrambled forward, holding both sides of the gunwale, grabbed the paddle, and hunkered down inside the canoe. I jammed the paddle into the water with a powerful forward stroke against the strengthening current. I had to hold my own against the current long enough to get me over to the other side. With my back to the rapids, I angled the canoe upriver, pointing toward the eastern shore, and paddled like a mad-woman. If I got far enough across I could steer my bow around and safely head down the clear channel.

The rapids were roaring in my ears, the sound inexplicably dividing in my head into all its parts: apart from the homogenous noise of constant wind through the
trees I could now hear, as in a symphony, the gurgles of water moving around the rocks that I could sense creeping up behind me; the sucking, squelching sound of whirlpools near a keeper where the swirling of the water has been known to spin and swallow a canoe; the crashes and splashes of the standing waves set up by water rushing over boulders many feet beneath the surface; the pounding of the waves against a rock island; and the quiet gliding of water flowing over rocks far beneath the surface. Like the instruments in a symphony, they all played their own tune, joining in to present a crescendo of raging, roaring water that overwhelmed the quality of its separate components.

I could feel the pull of the water on my paddle at every stroke as the river gathered speed. The small riffles on the water suddenly vanished, and I knew I would never make it to the other side. I was going down stern first into the rapids, held in the powerful grip of something I couldn't beat.