Yellowstone Standoff

by Scott Graham

  “You weren’t expected until dawn.”

  “The storm broke. We came on in. But something went wrong with the rotor. Thank God we were so close to landing.”

  “You came too early,” Randall said.

  “No,” the man said. “You don’t get it.” He pointed at the injured man on the ground beside him. “Ted’s a flight nurse. I’m the pilot. Just tell me what’s going on. We can radio back—” He stopped in mid-sentence, looking at the blazing helicopter.

  “Get your nursey-nurse on his feet.” Randall pointed at the cabin with the rifle. “That way.”

  The pilot clamped his mouth shut and grasped one of Ted’s arms. Chuck took hold of the other. Together, they hoisted the nurse and helped him toward the cabin.

  “What’s going on?” the pilot whispered to Chuck.

  “Silence,” Randall commanded from behind.

  Chuck glanced back. Randall’s fingers flew across the face of the console at his waist. The five wolves of Stander Pack reemerged from the woods, their eyes bright in the light of the burning helicopter. The rumbling growl of a grizzly came from the woods. The bear stepped out of the trees, its light brown hump aglow in the firelight. The grizzly stood apart from the wolves. It held its head high, one foreleg raised.

  “Number 11,” Randall said. “There you are.”

  44

  Chuck hurried toward the cabin with the pilot and limping flight nurse. Smoke from the burning helicopter bit into his lungs.

  “Run, Chuckie, run,” Randall ridiculed.

  “Inside,” Chuck yelled ahead as they neared the cabin. “Everybody inside. Now!”

  The scientists crowded through the cabin door.

  “As if that’ll do you any good,” Randall called. “When I put a match to the place, everyone will come right back out.”

  Clarence and Lex met Chuck and the pilot in the arc of lantern light at the front of the cabin. They took the flight nurse between them and guided him inside, the pilot following. Chuck spun, his back to the cabin, his eyes on the rifle in Randall’s hands, ten feet in front of him.

  “Time to let nature do its thang,” Randall said. Behind him, the bear and wolves approached camp, keeping their distance from one another. The bear lifted its snout, testing the smoky night air. The wolves spread apart, on the hunt.

  “One more pulse,” Randall said, his hand poised over the console, “and it’ll all be over for you.”

  “Which will prove everything you’ve been working toward to be wrong,” Chuck said. He pointed at the animals. “You claim you’re setting them free, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’ve turned them into robots. Automatons. You’re forcing them to serve you as their master.”

  “No,” Randall said.

  “Yes. Everything you’ve done is about you. You’ve taken control of the park ecosystem for your own sick reasons, with your computer-chipped animals as your slaves.”

  “You’re wrong,” Randall insisted, raising his voice. “I’m freeing the park’s predators to do what comes naturally to them.”

  “What comes naturally to them is being left on their own—not being turned into test subjects controlled by some megalomaniac.”

  “No!” Randall cried out. He tapped furiously at the console. The wolves surged past him toward Chuck. The grizzly charged, too, trailing the wolves.

  Chuck crossed his arms over his face as the wolves struck. He toppled backward, their paws digging into his chest. He rolled to his stomach, peering over his shoulder, as the grizzly entered the melee.

  The bear swatted the wolves aside with its massive forepaws, sending first one wolf tumbling away, then another. The grizzly stretched its long neck and bit into the hind leg of a third wolf, the one with white fur. The white wolf yowled as the bear lifted it off the ground by its hind quarters and flung it away.

  “Stop!” Randall yelled at Number 11. “Stop it!”

  The last two wolves ran off. The grizzly charged after them, dragging one to the ground with an enormous paw. It bit into the downed wolf’s back. The bear clenched its jaws until a crunch sounded, then released the wolf and raised its head.

  The wolf lay on its side, pressed to the ground by the grizzly. It craned its neck, failing repeated attempts to rise.

  “What are you doing, 11?” Randall screamed at the bear. His fingers flew across the face of the console. The four remaining wolves formed a semi-circle around the grizzly. The white wolf balanced on three legs, its injured hind leg lifted off the ground. The wolves snarled, their eyes on the bear. The grizzly slashed at them and they fell back, remaining just beyond the bear’s reach.

  The bear took the downed wolf’s neck in its jaws and ripped powerfully upward. The grizzly lifted its head high, clutching a length of the wolf’s windpipe in its teeth.

  “No!” Randall screeched. “Don’t!”

  He raised the rifle and fired pointblank at the bear. The grizzly collapsed. A red blotch on its shoulder marked a gaping exit wound. The bear’s eyes remained open, its legs trembling.

  Randall worked the rifle bolt, ejecting the spent brass casing to the grass beside the fallen grizzly. He rammed the bolt home and aimed down the barrel at Chuck, who sat upright a few feet away.

  “You,” Randall said through tight lips, his eyes narrow with fury. “All of this is your fault.”

  He centered the barrel on Chuck’s forehead. Chuck held still as Randall pulled the trigger. A metallic ping sounded as the firing pin struck the gun’s empty chamber. Chuck exhaled. He’d counted correctly. Randall’s pointblank blast into the grizzly had been the last of the rifle’s six rounds.

  A pistol shot rang out from the front door of the cabin. Randall dropped the rifle, clasped his upper chest, and fell to the ground.

  Clarence stepped from the cabin with the .357 in his hands, his bandaged chest showing between the folds of his open shirt. “That’s for Sarah,” he said.

  He looked down the gun’s barrel at Randall as the four remaining wolves of Stander Pack charged.

  45

  Chuck dove to Randall’s side. The wolves darted around him, skirting the control console’s force field. Clarence had no time to aim and fire the .357 before the wolves lunged at him and he went down beneath their growling mass.

  Chuck drove a fist into Randall’s nose and clawed the console from its holster. He worked its controls madly, pushing buttons and throwing switches, but the wolves continued to rip into Clarence. Chuck tossed the console to the ground, grabbed the rifle by its barrel from where it lay in the grass next to Randall, and brought its heavy stock down on the console’s housing. The console shattered and the green diode light in its upper corner blinked out.

  Instantly, the wolves’ growls died in their throats. They released their grips on Clarence, backed a few feet away, and stopped.

  Clarence rose on an elbow and aimed the .357 at the nearest of the four wolves. The wolf, Stander Pack’s alpha, did not move. Clarence did not pull the trigger. The three other wolves spun and surged around Chuck and Randall and past the downed grizzly and their dead pack mate. The alpha held its position until the three wolves were out of the lantern light. Then it turned and loped after its fellows, headed for the cover of the forest.

  At Chuck’s side, Randall’s eyes blinked open. He drew a deep, rasping breath that turned into a choked sob. “Help...me,” he gasped.

  The grizzly, lying atop the wolf it had killed, struggled to its feet, a string of saliva dangling from its mouth. The grizzly huffed when its close-set eyes came to rest on Randall’s prostrate form.

  “No,” Randall moaned. “Dear God, no.”

  Keeping his eyes on the bear, Chuck dragged Randall toward the cabin by the ankles.

  Blood dripped from the exit wound in the grizzly’s shoulder. The wound was on the same side of the bear as the rifle shot’s entry; Randall’s bullet had struck the creature’s scapula and ricocheted out of its body, stunning the animal but causing no lethal damage.

>   Clarence aimed the pistol at the grizzly as Chuck drew even with him.

  “Don’t,” Chuck said. “If your shot isn’t perfect, you’ll only enrage it. It’ll rip us to pieces.”

  Clarence set the pistol on the ground and held out his hands to the bear placatingly before shoving himself backward toward the cabin alongside Chuck and Randall.

  “Faster,” Randall whimpered.

  The grizzly pounced. It took Randall’s skull in its jaws, yanked him from Chuck’s grasp, and flung him from side to side. Popping noises issued from Randall’s flailing body as his neck and spine snapped.

  Chuck tumbled to a sitting position next to Clarence. A cry rose from the cabin. He looked back to see Kaifong squirm her way past Janelle and the researchers crowded in the doorway. She scooped the .357 from the ground and strode toward the grizzly, extending the gun before her in both hands.

  “No, Kaifong!” Chuck barked. “The pistol’s not enough.”

  The bear went still, its eyes on Kaifong, its grip vice-like around Randall’s head. Kaifong aimed the pistol at the grizzly, then lifted the gun higher and pulled the trigger. The gun blasted, spitting fire, and the bullet passed harmlessly above the bear. Kaifong took another step forward and fired past the bear a second time.

  The creature opened its jaws, dropping Randall. The grizzly looked at Kaifong without blinking, much as Notch had eyed the Territory Team camera after its attack two years ago. Then, the bear pivoted lightly on its paws and ambled away from the cabin.

  Kaifong sank to her knees beside Randall’s unmoving body, her back to Chuck and Clarence, her shoulders bowed, the .357 clasped in her lap.

  Blood seeped into Randall’s curly hair from a flap of scalp ripped from his skull. His open eyes stared upward, unseeing, at the smoke-smudged sky.

  Chuck pushed himself from the ground and stepped toward Kaifong. She stiffened when a twig snapped beneath his foot with a subdued pop. She turned on her knees to face him and raised the pistol, centering it on his chest.

  46

  Whoa there,” Chuck said.

  Kaifong’s shoulders slumped even as she kept the gun trained on him. “Randall,” she murmured.

  “He was a murderer,” Chuck said.

  She studied the ground, her lips pressed together. Then, she squared her shoulders and looked up at Chuck, her eyes shining. “I won’t have you think that of him,” she said. “Not Randall. Not my Randall. He did whatever I told him to do. Always. He was the perfect soldier.”

  Chuck gaped at her as she continued.

  “We didn’t want this.” She waved the gun around her, taking in Randall’s body, the burning helicopter, and the cabin, where Sarah’s body lay. “He didn’t want this. Any of this. He only thought about the animals—the wolves, the bears. That’s why I brought him in.”

  “Wait,” Chuck said, astonished. “What? You brought him in?”

  “He was everything I needed, everything I’d been searching for. He had the technical skills, the physical abilities, and, most of all, the desire.”

  “He told me he met you at a conference, that he convinced you to join him.”

  She inclined her head in the affirmative. “That’s exactly what I wanted him to think. I studied up on him. He was an open book—his beliefs were in everything he wrote, everything he posted online. When I saw he was coming to the conference, I arranged to bump into him.”

  “He said you only knew about the wolves. He made it sound like he was running things.”

  “That’s what I let him believe. The power of suggestion is an amazing thing. I barely had to mention an idea to him and he was on it, thinking it was his brainchild the whole time. It was even better than that, actually. He thought he was protecting me, when, in fact, it was me constantly protecting him—putting out the piece of meat to be sure the bear and wolf came in close to camp when he pulsed them, herding the dog back across the basin when he got carried away and tried to kill it. I protected him every time, always.”

  “But he tried to kill you,” Chuck insisted, “on the lake.”

  “I know. I deserved it.”

  “What do you mean, you deserved it?”

  “He knew what I was capable of. He knew I...I...”

  Chuck recalled what Randall had told him just minutes ago in the forest: “I’m not a killer.” His animals, yes. But Randall, himself? No. He’d even admitted he hadn’t fully committed himself to pushing Kaifong at the back of the boat, that he’d barely touched her shoulder.

  Chuck gaped at Kaifong. Her grip on the pistol was firm, her hands steady. Her small body was muscle-packed after her summers of work in the park, her shoulders sturdy, her biceps pronounced. She was more than capable of using the folding knife sheathed at her waist as a murder weapon.

  “Sarah,” Chuck breathed. He looked into Kaifong’s dark brown eyes. “You.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Me.”

  “But why?”

  “What I’ve been doing with Randall is critically important. But you’ll never understand that. You’re not a biologist; you don’t work with living creatures. It’s different than with your old, rotting baskets. You can’t possibly comprehend the deep understanding those of us who work with animals come to have of their needs, the awareness we develop for how debased they’ve become in our modern world. Here in Yellowstone, people are nothing but a blip on the evolutionary timeline of the wolves and grizzlies. But humans are threatening to destroy the foundation of their existence nonetheless, a foundation they’ve developed over thousands and thousands of years.”

  Kaifong’s voice grew cold, steely. “We needed more time. I needed more time. I took the phone. I thought no one saw, but she came up behind me, demanded to know what I was doing. She ran, but I caught her. I just...I just...”

  “You killed Sarah,” Chuck finished for Kaifong, his words hard. “You stabbed her to death.”

  “I did what I had to do,” Kaifong said, “for the wolves, the bears. My wolves, my bears.” She looked behind her, taking in Randall’s broken body. “Our wolves,” she said, her voice softening. “Our bears.”

  While Kaifong’s head was turned, Janelle passed Chuck with purposeful strides. She lashed out with her booted foot, kicking the pistol from Kaifong’s hands. The gun spun away into the darkness. Kaifong swung her head toward Janelle, who centered her foot on Kaifong’s chest and drove her backward to the ground next to Randall.

  “Like Clarence said. That’s for Sarah,” Janelle said. She leaned forward, pressing Kaifong into the wet grass.

  Chuck whipped off his belt and knelt beside Kaifong. Janelle lifted her foot, and he rolled Kaifong to her stomach and strapped her wrists together at the small of her back.

  She grunted as he yanked the belt tight. “That’s for Joe and Rebecca,” he said.

  He hoisted Kaifong to her feet and turned with her toward the cabin as the researchers spilled out the front door. Carmelita and Rosie ran to Janelle and buried their faces in her torso.

  Lex approached Chuck and Kaifong. “I’ll take her from here,” he said. He pulled the knife from the sheath at Kaifong’s waist and stuck it in his pocket, then pushed her ahead of him across the patch of muddy ground to the cabin. She twisted in the doorway, craning to look at Randall before Lex thrust her forward and they disappeared inside.

  Justin, the rookie grizzly researcher, edged past Chuck and Clarence. He extended his cell phone, aiming it at Randall’s body.

  Chuck stepped in front of Justin’s phone camera. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Yeah, dude,” Clarence said in a decent imitation of Randall’s voice. “What are you up to, man?”

  Justin lowered his phone. “Nothing. I’m not doing anything.” He slipped the phone into his pocket.

  Chuck went to Janelle. Carmelita and Rosie put their arms around him, including him in their embrace. Janelle turned her face to his.

  “That’s some kick you’ve got,” he told her.

  “Let it b
e a warning to you,” she said. Her face shone in the flickering light of the burning helicopter.

  Chuck smiled as he looked at her. Beautiful.

  He drew her to him, along with the girls, and looked up at the stars. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, its cry at once mournful and triumphant, and wild and free.

  ABOUT SCOTT GRAHAM

  Scott Graham is the author of Canyon Sacrifice and Mountain Rampage, books one and two in the National Park Mystery Series from Torrey House Press, and Extreme Kids, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. Graham is an avid outdoorsman and amateur archaeologist who enjoys mountaineering, skiing, hunting, rock climbing, and whitewater rafting with his wife, who is an emergency physician, and their two sons. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First and foremost, my thanks go to my earliest reader, my wife Sue, my additional early readers, Mary Engel, Anne Markward, Chuck Greaves, Kevin Graham, and Pat Downs, and Torrey House Press editors Kirsten Johanna Allen and Anne Terashima. Their selfless work made Yellowstone Standoff far better than if it had been the product solely of my own efforts.

  With each additional book in the National Park Mystery Series, I respect all the more the crucial role independent booksellers play in helping new writers of fiction like me find a place in the American literary scene. To indie booksellers across the country, and to my hometown team at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, thank you all.

  My appreciation goes to the countless scientists dedicated to studying the West’s incomparable wild lands and creatures with the aim of their protection and preservation. In particular, former Yellowstone wolf researcher Molly McDevitt provided me great insight into her work in the field, which I used—and abused—liberally in Yellowstone Standoff.

  In conjuring the fictionalized version of Yellowstone’s remote Thorofare region featured in Yellowstone Standoff, I am indebted to Gary Ferguson and Tim Cahill for the precise, dead-true descriptions of the region in their respective nonfiction books, Hawks Rest (republished by Torrey House Press in 2015) and Lost in My Own Backyard. In addition, Fort Lewis College professor of history Andrew Gulliford was forthcoming with his vast store of knowledge of Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.