Grizzly (5 page)

She staggered to her feet and began to run again.

"You're going to break your neck," Kelly Gordon yelled.

Allison Corwin squinted down at him through her Pentax.

"Smile," she said. "If you know how."

"How much film do you burn up, anyway? I've counted six rolls already."

"Seven."

"Don't you ever stop shooting the same thing over and over?"

"Most of what I get can't be used. Wrong angle . . . wrong light. Wrong composition."

Kelly touched his jaw. "Wrong faces?"

She laughed. "No. The faces are never wrong. That's what makes it good eventually."

She scrambled down the eighteen-foot ladder.

"I thought you wanted to get some animal shots," Kelly said. "I'm supposed to be working."

"You
are
working," she said. "Just go about what you normally do. Forget I'm here."

He leaned over the saddle cinch he was repairing. "I still think you picked the wrong face," he said.

She moved in close and clicked off two more frames. "Every face is a story, baby."

"Baby?" he said. "Have you been watching old Lauren Bacall movies again?"

"Hold still."

"What kind of story do you think you get from my face?"

She lowered the camera. Her eyes met his.

"You're a dissembler."

"Yeah," he said. "That's what I'm doing now to this saddle cinch. Dissembling it."

"Oh, pooh! Stop kicking cow flop. And you'd better stop hiding everything behind that very tight jaw. One day it's going to break into a thousand pieces."

He smiled.

"See?" she said. "It's starting to crack already!"

June stumbled into the little clearing, crying with fear and exhaustion.

The old cabin had once been a line shack, for the riders who patrolled these forests when they were private property more than fifty years ago. It was faded dull gray by the wind and snow, and looked as if the next strong wind would knock it down. But to the terrified girl, it was like a welcoming fortress.

The door was jammed shut by the rusted hinges. She fought with the leather strap that served as a doorpull, broke it, almost wept with frustration, then managed to pry the door open far enough to get both hands on its edge. She put one foot against the wall and pulled with all her strength, and the rusty hinges wailed as they gave way.

She plunged into the gloomy interior and pulled the door shut behind her.

Sinking down in a corner, she began to choke, as she tried to calm her breathing.

Only now did she notice that her hands and arms were bleeding from the many scratches the sharp pine needles had scourged her flesh with as she plunged through the forest.

She hugged her knees close to her body and wept without sound.

It hadn't happened. It was only a wild freak-out, like she'd had the one time she had tried dropping acid. In a moment she would wake up and find herself safe in bed back in the rambling Lancaster Avenue house, the smell of coffee and frying eggs rich in the air.

But, as the chill air dried her sweat, and she began to shiver, she realized that this was reality; that Maggie lay dead up the mountain. Her weeping ceased. She had to think.

She was safe here. But night was coming on. She had to get down to the ranger station, down to other living human beings.

In a minute. Let me count to a hundred, and then I'll start down.

She had reached twenty-nine in her mumbled litany of numbers when the wall behind her gave a tippling motion and crashed inward, scattering broken boards across the single room of the cabin.

June started to scream, but the air was caught in her lungs and wouldn't come out. Her mind refused to believe this second assault. It spun away from her, retreating into fantasy.

Slowly, she stood and began to walk toward the closed door. Her voice came from a great distance. "I'm going home," she said. "It's time I went home."

She, mercifully, did not feel the giant claws as they ripped a huge chunk of flesh from her back. The impact staggered her, but the essence of spirit, of intelligence, that was really June Hamilton had escaped back to a warm bedroom where the aroma of coffee called her downstairs to breakfast.

When the second, destroying blow came, she was still walking slowly toward that remembered morning long ago.

Tom Cooper frowned at the low angle of the sun and walked over to where Aliison and Kelly were working.

"Kelly?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'd better take the jeep up to R-Four."

"That's horse country."

"No time. I know a way to get up. I've got a couple of missing campers. Two girls, I saw them around noon and they said they'd be down before dusk."

Kelly squinted at the golden sun, balanced like a ripe orange on top of the spruces. Allison caught the moment with a click of her shutter.

"They'll never make it now," Kelly said. "The sun's already sitting on the hilltops."

"They're nice kids," said Tom. "Maybe they took a wrong turn and ended up over in Beaver Valley. It'd be a shame if they had to set up a dry camp."

Kelly looked at his watch.

"We've got about half an hour. Okay, the jeep it is. And if you tear up the transmission, it comes out of your check."

"Can I come?" asked Allison, reloading her camera. "It sounds like fun."

"Sure," said Kelly, starting for the jeep. "It'll be nice to see you taking pictures of somebody else for a change."

The beast climbed the mountain slowly. The ache of hunger had abated.

Perhaps this side of the divide was a good place after all. Although the beast did not think in logical symbols, he had become aware that there was a new kind of food to be found here, food that was easy to acquire.

Even the pain from the shattered tooth had receded. He would find a place to sleep, and in the morning he would begin marking his territorial limits.

But now, back at the place where he had found the first food, there was something he must do.

"Let's hit Beaver Valley first." said Kelly, at the wheel of the jeep, laboring up the trail which was little more than two ruts in the rock-littered slope. "If they went down that way, chances are they holed up in that old line shack."

"The light's going," Allison complained. "I'm going to have to switch to black and white."

Kelly grinned. "That must take all the joy out of it."

"We'll see," she said. "Some people think black and white is the real test of a photographer."

Tom Cooper pointed to a slashed blaze on a small birch tree. "In that way," he said. "It's a short cut."

"Oh?" said Kelly. "Who's been blazing our timber?"

"Search me," Tom said innocently. "All I know is that's the shortest way to the line shack."

"You'd be the one to know," Kelly said. But he made the turn.

The road ended just below the weather-beaten shack. As they pulled up, Allison took several quick shots of it, silhouetted against the cloud-speckled sky.

"That shack's kept many a camper dry," Kelly said.

Peering at it through her telephoto lens, Allison said, "Well it looks like it could use a little help. What happened? Did somebody drive a bulldozer through it?"

Kelly parked the jeep and started up toward the cabin. Tom and Allison followed. Allison kept clicking away.

Kelly said, "You're right. A whole wall's been knocked in. Tom, what the hell's been going on up here?"

"I came by last week," Tom said. "It was all right then."

Kelly didn't wait for the others to catch up. He pulled open the door and went inside.

The darkness within made him stop for a second, until his eyes could begin to adjust. He looked right out the ruined wall into the forest, where the gloom of twilight was turning the hillside into a dank cavern.

The floor creaked under his feet, and the cabin trembled as he moved toward the shattered boards.

Something fell from the rafters. It draped over his shoulder and then slipped off. As it did, a mutilated hand scraped his cheek, coveting his face with fresh blood.

Kelly leaped back. He did not exactly scream, but the cry he gave was filled with rage and disgust.

He backed away from the thing on the floor, out the open door, and almost fell off the porch. Tom grabbed him.

Allison
did
scream. "You're hurt!"

Kelly rubbed a gob of blood off his face. "No," he choked. "Not me. Tom, get on the horn. We need some

rangers up here right now. With flashlights and guns."

Tom stared at him. "Guns?"

"You heard me. Move!"

High up near the timber line, in a sheltered cave, the beast slept.

Three husky rangers had hauled a small Honda gasoline-powered generator up the hill, and when it sputtered into action, bright lights glared across the R-Four campsite.

All of the rangers except Kelly were armed. Some had hand guns, but most carried heavy hunting rifles.

Into a walkie-talkie, Kelly said, "How about it, Tom? Do you read me?"

"Roger," came Tom Cooper's response.

"How far down are you?"

"We've worked our way up maybe a quarter of a mile from the cabin."

"What do you see?"

"Not much. The girl's tracks; she came down the mountain like a bat out of hell. But nothing else."

"No bear tracks?"

"Bear? Hell, I thought we were looking for puma or—"

"Negative," said Kelly. "Keep a sharp eye, Tom. I'm afraid we've got ourselves a rogue bear."

"Ten-four," said Tom. "I'm clear."

Kelly switched off the radio and looked around. The camp ground, illuminated by the harsh spotlights, had an unreal look to it. The lights did not penetrate into the trees, so the white birch trunks kicked back an effect of vertical bars, while the green spruces vanished into the darkness.

The blood, splashed over the tent and all the camping gear, was dark and seemed to be everywhere.

Allison moved quietly in the flood-lighted area, snapping pictures. Several of the rangers spoke to her, but she was so intent on her work that she made no response.

Something made a noise in the darkness, and a ranger threw his rifle up to his shoulder. Kelly almost leaped across the distance between them and knocked the muzzle down.

"Hold it!" he yelled. "Make sure you know what you're shooting at."

A ranger came out of the woods, sweating with the effort of his climb.

The first ranger lowered his rifle. "Jesus!" he whispered. "Thanks, Kelly."

"Let's not get trigger-happy," said Kelly. "How about it, Larry. Did you see anything.

"Exactly one hoot-owl," said the sweat-stained ranger. "Scared the crap out of me."

"No tracks?"

"Just the girl's."

"How far back are Tom and the others?"

"Five, ten minutes. They're spreading out. But it's darker than a witch's well in there, Kell. We might do better in the morning."

"There were two girls," Kelly said. "We know where one is. The other might be out there hurt."

"The way this place is ripped up?" said the ranger with the rifle. "Kelly, there's more blood right here than I thought any one person could hold."

"We keep searching," Kelly said grimly. "Fan out north of here. Maybe he went back up in the high country."

"Are you sure there were two girls?" asked the ranger who had just come up the mountain.

"Tom talked to them this noon. Ihere were two."

"Maybe she got away?"

Kelly would have liked to believe that. But the evidence in the camp was too heavily weighted against it. "No," he said. "But maybe when we find her, we'll find that rogue bear."

"Then what?"

Kelly squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He did not want to say them, but the words had to come out.

"Shoot his goddamned head off."

Half an hour later, Tom Cooper came out of the darkened forest. Kelly saw him first.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Nothing," Tom said. "Parker and Lane are right behind me, but they didn't find anything either."

"Take a breather," Kelly said. "Then get your asses back in the woods. Nobody sleeps tonight until we get that bastard."

Tom was surprised by the anger in Kelly's voice. Until now, there had been no ranger more devoted to the protection of the wild animals in the park.

"A bear's only a bear," Tom said. "He didn't know what he was doing."

"That's no excuse," Kelly grated. "We're in trouble, Tom. There's a killer out there."

"Are you sure it's a bear?"

"What else?"

"Mountain lion, puma, one of the big cats."

"What cat could have knocked down that line shack wall?" Kelly shook his head. "No, it's bear, and if we've been lazy in our garbage areas, Washington's going to fry our tails."

"We haven't lured bear down with garbage since I've been here," Tom said. "And we police the visitors as best we can. But you can't stop them from feeding the bears. They think it's cute."

"The newspapers aren't going to think it's cute, our letting two girls be killed and eaten by one of our bears."

"Eaten?" said Tom, going pale. "I didn't—"

"No," said Kelly. "You didn't see. And be glad you didn't. That poor thing back there in the cabin. . . . Tom, he scalped her. He ate every goddamned hair off her head."

"My God," Tom whispered, sickened.

Kelly heard the click of a camera's shutter, and realized that Allison was still taking photographs of them.

"I'm going to take her down the hill," he said. "This is no place for a woman. I'll get some chow and bring it up. You take over here, keep them circling in the forest. Two men together, armed. Be careful where you shoot, but if you come on that bear, blow him away."

"Okay," Tom said. In his mind, the image of the two attractive girls he'd seen just hours before was being wiped away by a vision of a hairless, horrible thing chewed by fangs and torn by claws.

Allison had mounted one of her cameras on a small tripod, and was busy taking color time exposures of the camp site. She knew the moving men would emerge as streaking blurs on the finished transparency, but that was the effect she wanted, as she set the shutter to two seconds.