Northern Lights: A Scorched Earth Novel

by Boyd Craven III

  “Bait? I don’t know what to use for bait.” I said.

  “Grass? Berries?”

  “Ahh yeah, there’s some of that, and it’s close by.”

  “I follow,” she told me.

  Brian had told me about that one night. That ASL doesn’t always have a direct translation into English. There are a lot of connecting words that are left out and context was conveyed with expression and body language. I understood her easily enough, and I wasn’t about to make fun of her. I honestly didn’t know anybody who would. There are plenty of assholes in the world, though.

  “Let’s go,” I said bowing, with a mock flourish.

  She smiled and we headed out towards the meadow.

  * * *

  There we were, picking blueberries again. I leaned the camp gun on a tree next to what had become a stomped down row from previous pickings. I’d given Tonya a clear plastic food bag from the stash I always kept on me, and we were picking. She was eating about half of what she picked, saving the other half. I didn’t know if her idea about baiting the snares with berries would work on anything more than a bird, but it was worth a try. I’d done a ton of experimenting as a kid and the only real cost to it was time.

  I moved further up the hill and started picking in a spot I hadn’t gone through before, turning around to check on Tonya from time to time. She kept smiling and giving me a thumbs up. They probably had been low on fresh fruit as well up there. I warned her about cramping her stomach up by eating the not quite ripe ones, but she was going to town, ripe or not. I moved to my right a bit and smelled something familiar. I moved my knee where I’d been kneeling. A small plant low to the ground had been the source of the scent.

  The leaves of the plant made me hesitate, so I pulled out my knife and moved it in case it was poison ivy or something in the family. Instead, what I found were small white flower blossoms on some of the plant, with long runners and red berries. Strawberries to be exact. They were small, almost the size of a dime. I picked one and bit into it, seeing if it did something funny to my tongue. Nothing but the awesome flavoring of strawberry jelly. I picked some and looked at the hillside in front of me.

  The berry plants were everywhere. I wondered how we hadn’t really noticed them… unless they were only just starting to fruit? I started going slower in my picking and mixed both berries together in the bag. Everybody was going to have a field day when they found out! I was turning around to get Tonya’s attention to show her the strawberries when I heard a grunt and something large moving up the hill.

  The mother bear without her cubs was loping up the hill of the berry meadow. The gun, where was the gun? I screamed for Tonya, waved my arms. The gun was down towards the front of the meadow, closer to Tonya and the mother bear than me.

  “Tonya!” I screamed and started to run.

  Running towards her, I dropped the bag of berries and worked on getting her attention, screaming to hopefully scare the bear and trying not to fall on my face. She still hadn’t looked up. I was perhaps two seconds away when the bear sped up, its body covering more distance as it hung close to the ground.

  At the last second, Tonya looked up, startled by me running and screaming as the bear clipped her side, sending her sprawling. Tonya hadn’t been the target? Or was I the—

  Our bodies collided. I was running downhill off balance to try to keep to my feet, but at the last moment, I lowered my shoulder like I would in football. When we hit, my world exploded in pain and I went up and over the bear. It had been like hitting a charging rock, and all the breath left me. I landed on my back hard to see Tonya running towards the base of the hill. Good, she would get away.

  The bear, on the other hand, was getting up, and it didn’t look impressed. It hadn’t landed on its back or had its breath knocked out of it, it’d been merely stopped. It rose on two legs and roared at me loudly before taking two steps and bringing its front paws down hard, on my stomach. I rolled into a ball, suddenly nauseous. I always read that if attacked by a bear, protect your vitals and play dead.

  That didn’t work.

  I curled my knees up to my stomach and held my arms over my face but when the bear bit into my left shoulder I let out a blood-curdling scream of pain. One big paw smacked me in the head, I could feel the claws ripping into my flesh and like that I couldn’t see in my left eye. The pain was huge and so terrible I didn’t know how I was even conscious of it.

  The teeth sunk deeper and the bear tried to pick me up by my upper arm and shoulder. When it couldn’t, it started smacking and clawing at me. On my right hip was the knife, if I could get to it—

  Claws and teeth tore into me, everywhere. All at once. I was blacking out and I couldn’t help it. I heard a tiny, popping noise. It went off six or seven times. Maybe more. Then something heavy hit me and forced all the air out of my lungs, muffling my screams, muffling my breath.

  Darkness.

  13

  “Hey, there you are,” somebody told me. Female voice.

  I couldn’t open my eyes or, if I could, I couldn’t see anything. Every part of my body was wracked with pain from head to foot. My left hand was a throbbing mass of pain and even trying to flex the fingers left me gasping. What didn’t hurt, though, was the warm wet feeling of somebody slowly washing my face.

  I couldn’t talk. The pain was too much. I worked on breathing.

  “He must have stopped when he got across the border. He’s got Tylenol 3s with codeine,” I heard Jordan say.

  I had stopped. Why wouldn’t I? I didn’t need a prescription there for it and it was the strongest pain killer I could buy. I couldn’t say that, though; the pain was too intense. I felt a soft hand open my right palm up. Apparently my fist had been clenched and clenched tight. I felt the blood start to flow into the fingers as they started to tingle.

  “Tom, listen, man, take these. I’ve got more stitching to do,” I heard Jordan tell me and two pills were pressed to my lips.

  I took them in, using my lips and tongue. A straw was put in the edge of my mouth and I took enough of a sip to swallow. It left me feeling breathless and the pain—

  * * *

  Muted light, voices. The pain was huge, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been a day ago. Was it a day ago? A week?

  “I don’t know if you’re awake,” I heard Tonya’s voice and felt a hand tousle my hair, “but you saved me. Thank you.”

  I felt a gentle kiss on the top of my head and I tried to move.

  “Don’t,” I heard Tracy say, “you’re going to give Denise and Tonya a complex if you get up and get hurt.”

  I tried to talk but my mouth was dry, my tongue sticking to my mouth. I knew my lips were cracked, but I imagined they’d had a hard time getting me to drink when I was awake. I coughed.

  “Squeeze your right hand if you can hear me.”

  I squeezed and was surprised to feel a soft hand squeeze back.

  “Do you want a drink of broth?”

  Oh yeah. Despite the pain, my stomach felt hollowed out and it had an ache of its own. I squeezed the hand. I felt whoever it was let go of my hand and then get up off the bunk. I managed to open my right eye and everything was a muted orange gauzy glow. I couldn’t open my left eye; I could feel the heavy gauze padding over it now. It must be bandages that I was looking through. Even muted, the light hurt as if my whole body—

  * * *

  I felt a straw in my mouth and sipped. I was mostly awake. I could feel a pair of rough hands working on the bandages, probably dressing them. Whenever somebody had pressed pills to my mouth I’d taken them, I’d lost track of how many times it had happened but it’d been a few. I opened my eyes.

  This time it was both, and I could see out of both. My left eyelid felt funny, gummy.

  “Hello,” I said after I sipped a good amount of water.

  “Hey, you’re back.”

  “Feel like I got run over by a Mack truck,” I said, my throat so dry the words made me cough.

  I teste
d my legs and found they worked easily enough but weren’t in terrible pain. In fact, my shoulder and head were the worst of it, along with the dull aching thud of my heartbeat that I could feel in my temples.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “It’s been three days,” Denise said, kneeling down so I could see her face.

  She sat Indian style in front of me. “We’ve all been taking turns taking care of you.”

  “What happened?” I asked, reaching my good right hand out towards a water bottle with a crinkle straw.

  “Tonya never heard the bear coming. She said she saw you charging down the hill and then she was knocked to the side and you tackled the bear.

  I cracked a smile, which made the side of my face hurt. I winced, and that made it hurt.

  “Wasn’t a tackle meant for the bear. Was trying to get her out of the way.”

  “Well, that’s what we figured because you don’t have ‘crazy’ or ‘stupid’ tattooed on you anywhere. Trust me, I looked.”

  That made me grin. If I’d been out for three days, somebody had to have been cleaning me up and taking care of me. Gross.

  “So then what?” I asked.

  I remembered part of the attack, curling up, teeth, pain.

  “She said it kept pounding into you with its front paws and then started clawing and biting at you. She ran for the gun and was coming back as the bear was lifting you up by your shoulder and slamming you around. You’ll have some nice scars.”

  “How bad is it?” I asked her.

  “He almost scalped your forehead. He missed your nose but you got raked on the left side. It missed the eyeball but split the eyelash and scratched the eyelid. I thought you were scalped when Jordan and Brian brought you in.”

  “The bear?” I asked.

  “My sister put the barrel of the gun to its ear and kept pulling the trigger. It fell on you and she couldn’t move it, so she ran back here and got us. Nobody would let Tonya and me see how bad you were at first. I thought… I mean it was my fault. You were…”

  “Am I going to live?” I asked her when her tears slowed.

  “If you don’t get an infection. It’s a good thing you brought up antibiotics and that Tylenol 3. As it is, Jordan had to operate on your hand. The bear’s tooth broke off when it bit through the bone. He had to get it out.”

  “I don’t remember much.”

  “What were you thinking?!”

  That was the big question. Had I been thinking anything? I was in terrible pain, but I had a beautiful woman sitting in front of me and I had just enough medicine in me to take off the edge so I didn’t scream. What had I been thinking back then?

  “I remember thinking that if I let something happen to your little sister that you would kill me,” I answered her truthfully, “and I’ve already got one ex-wife up here…” I paused to take a sip of water. “And there’d be no way I’d survive with two angry women under one roof. I’d have to take my sleeping bag to the outhouse.”

  The words were meant to be truth and humor, but her mouth pulled tight, her lips into a thin line. After a moment, she put her head down on the edge of the bed. I wanted to run my hands through her hair, but I was holding the water bottle. I was trying to find a place to sit it down when the door to the cabin opened, sending a brilliant flash of white light straight through my skull and making me wince in pain.

  “Oh good. How are you doing?” Tracy asked.

  “I feel like hammered shit,” I told her.

  “Can you walk?” she asked.

  “Give me a hot meal, a shot of Jack Daniels and a month in a beach resort and I might be able to manage a wobble,” I admitted.

  I felt weak on top of the pain, but I didn’t know if I could walk or not.

  “Well, we have to get you up and move you, or you’ll get bedsores. I am not helping with bedsores.”

  Denise got up and took the water bottle, putting it on the kitchen table, and joined Tracy at the edge of the bed. I moved my legs, but as soon as my ribs and stomach muscles tried to move, it was agony.

  “Careful,” I heard Tracy say and then she had my right arm over her shoulder.

  Gently, taking me under my injured shoulder, Denise got under me and together they helped me get my balance and take the worst pressure off my torso as I stood.

  “Did it,” I said, sweating and swaying.

  “I’ve rigged up something from my preps that you’re going to love. It’ll even make your soreness go away some,” Denise said.

  Being this close to the girls, I could smell their hair; they both had recently been shampooed and none of it smelled like lake water. Curiosity made me wonder. With much fumbling cursing and resting, I made it out of the cabin to another four pole tarp wrapped contraption closer to the fish cleaning station than the smoker and dehydrators.

  “What’s that?” I asked, dreading the steps it would take to travel the thirty some odd feet to it.

  “I made an outdoor shower. We’ve been waiting for you to be awake enough to get you in there. When the pain was too bad, you’d just pass out. Give you too much medicine, you slept. We started cutting the medicine back last night to see what kind of shape you were in,” Denise said in a rush.

  “Yeah, the shower thing... it’s lovely,” Tracy said smiling, running her hands through her hair.

  “We fill a black solar shower bag from the filtered cistern water and then when it’s warm we take a shower. We’ve been running buckets to the filter for the cistern for ages now to make sure it's topped off. I think we’ve got five gallons of hot water for you.”

  I tried to smile, but I did manage a grimace. It hurt my face too much otherwise.

  “Ok, let’s go,” I said. “But I want Jordan or Brian around in case I fall down.”

  “Can’t,” Denise said with a shrug.

  “Why is that?” I asked, smelling a rat.

  “Jordan, my sister, and Brian took the boat and your lock pick gun to finish emptying out our cabin and the old shack. There’s even a shed back there.”

  “Let’s stop at the picnic table then,” I told them after we took a couple steps, “and I’ll wait for them.”

  “Listen,” Tracy said, the snark out in full force, “it’s not like we want to watch you bathe. You need to and you need to not fall on your ass. We have to make this quick because that bear meat is greasy and it’s causing issues in the smoker. The whole damned thing is full, and we’re about to have a bunch of meat go bad if we don’t…”

  “Ok, ok,” I said, too tired to argue.

  We made it to the shower enclosure. The stakes had been dug or driven into the ground and backfilled. They were lashed together with cross bracing that looked like nylon rope that made a web-like structure through the top which was open to the sky. A black water bag and a shower head coming out of the bottom awaited.

  “There’s no door,” I said.

  “Actually, we do have one like what you made for the smoker and dehydrator,” Tracy said. “But you’re not steady on your feet.”

  “But you’re not…”

  “Come on, Brian, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. This isn’t creepy; you need to clean up or you may get an infection.”

  “Denise?” I pleaded.

  “I told you already and I agree, it isn’t anything I haven’t seen before either. Just let us help.”

  The wind picked that moment to blow and I shivered. I was wearing a cotton button up plaid shirt. One of half a dozen I packed. It hadn’t been buttoned and as I worked my way into the 4’ by 4’ shower the shirt fell open. My entire torso and side from belly button to nipples was bruised.

  “I only remember him stomping on me once,” I said.

  “When my sister shot him, he fell on top of you. I think it was the nerve endings firing off that kept the legs twitching for a minute. Or he got you more than you realized.

  That was possible.

  I reached up with my good hand and grabbed the rope support above me as the girls h
elped me strip down to my boxers.

  “Those can stay on,” I said.

  “You’ve been in bed for three days. Trust me, you don’t want those on.” Tracy said.

  I sighed and stepped out of them. Denise held onto me and Tracy reached across me and turned the shower valve till a steady stream of water fell. The first drops shocked me by how warm they were, and then it was just bliss. Hot water. I closed my eyes and let it run over my body and was about to wipe the water out of my eyes when Denise grabbed my left wrist.

  “Can’t get that hand wet yet,” she said.

  “How am I going to wash up with just one hand?” I asked, feeling a creeping sense of horror.

  “Oh come on,” Tracy said. “We’ve all seen each other naked. This isn’t going to be weird.” Which made it weird.

  Ok, it wasn’t weird, but it was a bit humiliating. Still, I put up with it and I found more places that hurt than I knew I had places. Still, the hot water slowly relaxed me and many parts of me that had been screaming in agony reduced their wails to a dull throb. Until the washcloth and soap was introduced. I endured that as well and was wrapping myself in a towel when I heard Brian call out.

  “Hey Tracy, you’re never going to believe what we found!”

  I made sure the towel was pulled tight. The last thing I wanted to do was to walk around bare-assed in front of anybody else.

  “Hold on, we’re getting Tom dried off.”

  “Need a hand?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just have Jordan and my sister take a quick walk,” Denise shouted.

  “Got it,” Jordan said.

  It wasn’t long after Brian showed up and the four of us stumbled our way into the cabin. I was put on a chair near the table as Brian helped me get on a pair of boxers and sweat pants. When he was done the ladies turned around and went out to call for Jordan. With me awake and upright, they wanted him to check me out again.

  “Dude, when we used to joke that you were all Davey Crocket with this prepper shit, I never thought you’d go and tackle a bear. Why didn’t you have the gun on you?” he asked.