by Sarah Davis
“Just what?” he asked against her cheek, catching her earlobe in his lips. Her stomach tightened, and she lost herself in his touch.
The lights flicked on, and a voice called out that the building would be locked down in five minutes.
Penny sighed and pulled back slightly, meeting his intense gaze.
“Penny, would you want to go out on an official date sometime. With me?”
She chuckled, her unspoken yes endorsing his light kiss on her nose before leading her out of the gym.
While gathering their coats, Penny stumbled from the vertigo that slammed into her.
“Penny?” Noah began.
Dark images pulsed in her mind. She sucked in tight breath. “Noah, I saw Gigi!”
Without question and with urgency they left the gymnasium. Penny sent a message to Gigi as they jumped into Penny’s truck. Noah drove—fast—and when they pulled up to Gigi’s home, no light shone from the two small windows facing the street. Penny pounded on the door until the lights flickered on.
“Penny, what’s going on? Noah?” Gigi asked sleepily.
Relief swept through Penny. “Um, I, we, ah-h, need to see if you are okay?” Penny said weakly.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Look, I know this will sound odd. But you know me. You know I won’t lie to you. Penny had this, sense tonight. That you might be in danger. Would you be willing to staying with a friend for a few nights? It’s nothing, I’m sure, but we just want to make sure you are alright,” Noah quickly explained. He could convince a snake to shed its skin by looking at it.
Gigi’s eyes moistened, and she invited them in. Relief hit Penny, and she let out the breath she had held during Noah’s speech. She didn’t know the girl well, but something in their faces registered with the waitress from The FrostBite.
“The phone calls started again a few days ago. They bothered me before, but now that my roommate officially moved out and I am alone, well… Let me get changed,” she said, then gathered up an overnight bag and left with Noah and Penny.
After dropping Gigi off at her aunt’s, they drove back to the school to load up Noah’s bike before heading home in a comfortable silence. Penny felt liberated, hopeful that they prevented Gigi from suffering the fate the others fell victim to.
To get her mind on other, less frightening images, Penny showed Noah the picture she received on her phone of her and Noah at the dance, unaware of who sent it.
“That would be from Laura. She sent it to me, too. Here, she sent me another.” He tapped his phone, and Penny’s hummed with the newly received message. The picture was of them posed for the camera in front of the photography backdrop.
“There, now you can say you went to a dance.” He took hold of her hand, his thumb stroking circles along her knuckles resulting in a cascade of goose bumps up her arm. “You are beautiful, Momma Bear.”
“You are not so bad, yourself, Mr. Volkov.”
“Ok, don’t spoil the moment by calling me Army’s name,” he said, grinning at her.
When they arrived home, she helped him unload his bike. After a brief goodnight, she drove the several hundred feet to her own driveway alone.
Penny practically floated from her vehicle, but the doubt crept on slowly, like a migraine as she walked up to her house. By the time she opened her front door she was borderline miserable.
Her mother didn’t appear to notice Penny’s mood, worn out from cub duty as she was.
“Yeah, so that was more fun than my vet school emergency rotation with newborn twins.” Her mother called out as Penny entered the living area.
“Did you enjoy yourself at least?” Eelyn mumbled.
“Yeah, I did, Mother.”
“Well, are you two dating yet?”
“What?”
Did you tell her already? Lucy failed to respond, and Penny’s dark mood deepened.
“He asked me out on a date. Does that count?”
“Good enough for me,” Eelyn continued, oblivious to the conflict in her daughter. “I fed your little ball of fur, cleaned up his insane messes, and have been chewed on, peed on and pooped on. I didn’t do that all for nothing. Not when there are future grandchildren on the line.”
“You kinda just described a grandchild, didn’t you? Isn’t Fjord good enough for now?” Penny asked, trying to pull herself back toward lightheartedness.
“He looks nothing like me, although we are starting to smell alike.” Eelyn groaned and lifted her weary body off the couch. “He last ate thirty minutes ago. Good night.”
Penny stood for a moment and then went to her room. She removed her dress and put on her pajamas. She slowly removed her makeup, brushed her teeth and went to her bed.
Lucy?
What?
I wish you came tonight. It was a lot of fun.
I saw, Penny. I am glad you enjoyed it.
Don’t you want to learn to dance, Lu?
Penny, someday I will be well enough, and you will take me dancing all night. Penny could sense the sleepy smile, so she bid her sister good night.
In her dreams that night, shadows flickered around her. Headlights glared, and she faced a figure in the shadows. The Shadowed Man. She didn’t feel the fear she had experienced before, just certainty that it was time. As she approached him, a large white-haired figure launched itself on the Shadowed Man. Penny watched as the bear with three black scars on his right cheek dragged the limp man away from her, the man’s head in the bear’s great jaws. She awoke to Blue standing above her, his nose in her neck. Blue curled up against Penny, and she was grateful for the warm dog to cuddle.
Flare
The day after the dance, a frazzled Penny tried, but failed miserably, to be upbeat.
While she rushed between her many errands, her mother sent her a “Good Morning - full day at clinic. Love you” message. Lucy had tagged along with their mother and was out of reach. Noah sent her numerous messages, but nothing indicating his undying love for her. No date requests. Well, what was she to expect? Besides, on the edge of her mind something important waited, something she needed to tell Noah. But she failed to recall what it could be.
After finishing up the reports that Army wanted her to run, she met Vale for guitar lessons, which ran late. Then, she discovered Fjord had shredded her favorite pair of running shoes. And apparently he liked studs, too, as she found the pair Lucy gave her in a pile of his poop. They were shitty, no way around it. And now, she needed to run back to the station for a zip drive that she was always supposed to keep with her.
And so, in the dark, with Blue riding shotgun, she found herself heading back to the station in the purpling twilight. Noah wanted her to wait so that they could go together, but an independent streak sparked within her and she wanted to get it done. He needed to focus on his aunt, whom Noah and Army had rushed into the hospital for her heart. They didn’t need to oversee her every move.
The truck bounced along over the rough road and snow drifts that had re-established themselves since her trip earlier in the day (when she forgot the zip drive behind). Stupid wind. Noah called to update her on Dolores’ condition. She was going to be fine. It had been nothing more than heart burn. Déjà vu flooded her mind when she spotted a lone vehicle on the empty road.
“There is someone stopped on the road,” she told him through her phone connection via earpiece.
Noah’s voice muffled as he spoke with someone on his end, then she heard, “What?”
She repeated what she had said then read off the unfamiliar license plate. “Dark color, maybe grey? No, it is a very dirty, white van. Hood is propped up.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. It is a guy?” He meant the guy. The Shadowed Man. She didn’t know, but an ominous weight seemed to have settled on her chest.
She lowered the passenger window once she was next to the driver’s side of the van. A shadowed face sat within the van as the driver’s side window rolled down half ways. Common sense warned her against helpin
g whomever it was, but the road was only traveled on by those who worked at the research station, and the weather was brutal.
“Hey,” she called. “Need any help?”
The face nodded and a hood was pulled up over his head as the window rolled shut. The man stepped out of the vehicle.
“Noah, I can’t make out his face. His hood shadows it. He is about six feet tall,” Penny began her description quietly as she placed her vehicle in park to idle.
“Penny, stay in the truck,” Noah warned.
The man turned and smiled. “Good evening, darlin’.”
The voice brought with it recognition. “Oh wait, it’s Sam,” she told Noah.
“Don’t hang up. Keep this line connected,” Noah demanded.
She exited her truck into the dark cold, tucking her phone in her pocket and wishing she had turned off her headlights so she could adjust to the dim light and see the situation better.
“Vehicle overheated. Trying to cool it off. Think I'm low on antifreeze,” came Sam’s voice. It sounded duller than his normally animated voice. But then again, Penny found it hard to hear him over the wind. She repeated what she thought he said more to calm herself than to repeat to Noah.
The hair stood on the back of her neck.
“I’ll grab a flashlight. How about you open the hood, if it seems cool enough.” She kept an eye on him as best she could as she walked around to the back of the truck to look inside the toolbox. Noah warned her to be careful. Blue jumped out, and she probed his thought, asking him to stick close to the truck. She didn’t want Sam to see Blue.
As she returned and approached the front end of the van, he shook his head and gestured with his gloved hands. “Can you do it? Sorry, my hands are painful, too cold.” There was Sam’s normal, charming voice.
She sensed Lucy brush her thoughts to get a grasp of the situation. How are his hands too cold if he has been sitting in a warm vehicle?
“So, where are you headed?” she asked as he moved out of her peripheral view. “The research station is really the only building out here.” She removed a glove and touched the hood while trying to keep him in view. It felt warm, but not abnormally so. As he slipped out of view again and she repositioned, she felt her hood yank back. She gasped in the cold air, dropping her glove.
His arm went around her neck, tugging her earpiece out of her ear. Something hard and sharp poked into her back. Her mitten-covered hands clawed at the arm around her neck.
She paused as he spoke. “If you don’t struggle, it will be so much easier for you.”
“Is that a gun, Sam?” she asked, hoping Noah could still hear over the wind what was going on although she could no longer hear him. She silently cursed the wind and its seemingly ever-desperate course at annihilation of life.
“Shut up!”
A glinting item shone in front of her, the hard poke in her back gone. A long knife, its grey metal gleamed in the headlights.
“Put your hands on the hood. Slowly.” Below the arm wrapped around her neck, the knife edge contacted her skin. She didn’t feel any pain, but warmth trickled down her neck. The bastard had cut her.
“I sure hope you didn’t cut through my new jacket,” she said calmly. She pictured Blue attacking the man from behind. The guy gave a sharp, startled cry and slightly released his hold on her.
“What the—” he said.
She started raising her hands, ready to attack. Out of the corner of her eye, Blue darted away from Sam.
“I said hands on the hood!” He screamed as his attention returned to her.
She slammed her head back into his nose. With the same burst of speed, she grabbed the knife hand and jerked it down away from her neck. She spun around, punching him in the throat and kicking him in the stomach. He lunged for her, but she dodged, grabbed his closest arm and bent it around behind his back. As she did, she swiped her leg around behind his knee closest to her, knocking him to the ground. She slammed her cowboy boot down into his crotch and backed away. Somewhere during the struggle, she lost her mittens.
After readjusting her earpiece, she regained full connection with Noah. He sounded breathless as he shouted, “I am on my way. Under the seat. Check under the seat.”
She looked over to see the man rolling back and forth on the ground. Blue padded up and set up point, his hackles high. She felt his growl in her chest more than heard it with the wind. She ran to the truck and checked under the driver’s seat, finding a small handgun.
Handy but illegal, she thought.
And potentially lifesaving, her sister quipped back.
She put it back and instead pulled out the flare gun. As she returned, Sam started to roll up on all fours.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
He mumbled, and she yelled at him to speak up.
He spit as he continued to try to stand. She fired a warning flare into the ground beside him. He shouted unintelligibly as the flare momentarily blinded him.
From behind the man, emerging from the black belly of night was a very hefty, very red bear, illuminated by the flare’s light. Blue retreated to Penny’s side, whimpering. The bear towered above an unsuspecting Sam. It dropped his front legs down onto the man and grabbed him by the back of the neck. He shook his head once, snapping the neck, and Sam went limp. The bear dropped the man on the ground and grabbed him by the head. Penny stared after the bear as it slipped back into the night, Sam’s feet trailing behind, departing the flare’s circle of crimson light. She retreated to her truck and locked the doors, describing the events to Noah, who remained connected to Penny via their cell phone link.
Blue leaned into Penny on the seat of the truck as the music on the radio fell into static.
Noah and Army arrived moments later with a police vehicle, its lights and sirens blaring, not far in the distance. Penny exited the truck and handed the flare gun to Noah as he approached.
“I’m fine. Can you check the back of my coat? I need to know if the knife ripped through it,” she asked in the bright lights of their vehicle.
“Let me check your neck first. It’s bleeding,” he said and tugged at her collar. As he poked and prodded gently, Penny winced. “It’s alright, only superficial.”
He checked her coat quickly and told her it was fine.
“Where is he?” Army called.
She described the bear attack once again. When she mentioned the three black scars on its cheek, Noah’s look was intense.
The law enforcement spotlights managed to locate a body several hundred feet away from the vehicles. His head no longer attached. Bloody tracks led away from the scene. The bear was not to be seen.
“It was Sam? Are you sure?” Army asked.
“Yes, it was Sam.”
She inhaled slowly, released the breath and repeated this several times, her eyes closed as she tried to find a calm space in the current chaos. She knew the arrival of the police would lengthen her time in the dark cold of night. She felt Lucy’s warm presence and took another steadying breath. When she opened her eyes again, Noah was standing in front of her, anxiously searching her face with troubled eyes.
“I’m okay,” she breathed.
His arms wrapped around her, pulling her close in the cold night air.
“Of course, you are,” he said.
Army called to them to go meet the officers approaching. Penny was more than happy to oblige. The officers placed Penny and Noah into the back of one of the two police SUVs while they took stock of the situation.
The outside sounds were muffled inside the vehicle. The high heat thawing Penny and her emotions. It was Sam. How could it have been Sam? What were the warning signs she missed? They all missed?
“What the hell?” said Noah as he hit the back of the driver's seat with his fist. “It was him, wasn’t it? The Shadowed Man in your visions.” Fortunately, no one was in the driver's seat.
Penny moaned. “Where is Blue?” He had been at my side since the bear…since Noah came…she felt th
e world tip as the strong, solid ground beneath her crumbled.
The door opened, and the heat that leeched out was replaced by a large, furry body. As Blue wedged himself between Penny and Noah on the floor, he placed his head on Penny’s lap. In that small movement, the world rebalanced. She sensed his discomfort, his tension and his confusion infuse her own similar thoughts, but now she calmed him with the strength that still flowed through her. Noah’s reassuring embrace further aiding in settling her.
Knowing the killer had been discovered and stopped became the talk of the town. It even made national news as following his identification, additional murders outside of Utqiaġvik were being linked to Sam. Who knew how many the total would end up?
No matter how busy Penny made herself, flashes from that night cut through any peaceful moments, blinding her with violence. Thoughts of what the victims went through flooded her mind. She growled and bristled at her family and friends more than her polar bear before blinking back surges of tears, pulling it all inside and forcing an act of complete interest in whatever task was at hand. She shouldn’t have survived. She had survived. The man was a monster. What had she done differently than the others? Had it mattered that she knew him? How had she not known he was the killer? She knew him!
Her mother fought with similar emotions having worked closely with him. Penny did not see Rose in the first few days following the incident, but she wondered how she was coping since she had dated Sam. When Penny had moments alone with Army, he suggested she was faring as well as expected. So, not well.
“And, how are you?” he had asked.
Penny shrugged.
“We owe you our thanks,” he had said.
“We?” she was confused.
“The town.”
“I didn’t do anything, Army.”
“You stopped Sa—the killer.”
“No, the scarred bear did.” She knew she had immobilized him before the bear attack came, but it still felt unreal.
“Do you still have visions?”
“No.”
Army grunted. “That’s good. If you have them again, like before…well, please let me know right away.”