The Hunted

by Gloria Skurzynski

  Sure enough, the little bear’s eyes were opening. Frightened, it began to yowl, at first in a little whimper, then louder in a hooting noise as it came more fully awake.

  “I’m sorry, little baby,” Ashley crooned. “We’ll get you out real soon.”

  “We’d better. If it starts thrashing around, we’re in big trouble. We need wire cutters.” Jack tried to visualize the various things in the tailgate of the Jeep—cooler, battery cables, ponchos, two folded-up tarpaulins, a bucket, a roll of paper towels—but he couldn’t remember seeing his dad’s toolbox. “Ashley, go inside the trailer and check the compartment under the bench. If the toolbox is there, bring it.”

  The awakened baby bear was now howling up a storm, protesting louder and louder, making so much racket its sibling had begun to stir.

  “Jack—the other one’s waking up, too. It’s starting to move.”

  “Hurry, Ashley. Get me those wire cutters!”

  Before she could move, they heard it. In the trees behind them, a rustling, snapping, then a shaking as if a storm were blowing through, except, Jack realized, there was no wind. The air was still and hot. The sound started up again, louder this time, as if a car were rolling toward them.

  Miguel, eyes wide, stared in the direction of the noise and whispered, “Dos hombres.”

  “I see something,” Ashley said shrilly. She seemed rooted to the ground, unable to move even when the crashing grew louder, as though an armored tank were breaking through the brush.

  “There—where the branches are—ohmygosh! I think it’s the…. It is! It’s the grizzly!”

  A shock like electricity jolted though Jack. Instantly, he was on his feet. “Into the Jeep!” he yelled. He grabbed Ashley’s arm and yanked her hard. “Go, go, go! Miguel—the Jeep!”

  “Run!” Ashley screamed. Her sneakers churned underneath her as she shot toward the Jeep. Praying that at least one of the doors was unlocked, Jack ran one step behind, commanding his legs to go faster, but his body felt trapped in a tangle of muscles and joints that wouldn’t work together. The Jeep seemed a mile away. He heard the bear breaking through brush, and then she reached the clearing. Their camp.

  Ashley ran full force into the Jeep: Her hands slapped the window to stop her headlong dash. She yanked on the back passenger door, but it wouldn’t budge. In a split second she moved to the front, wrenching the handle and leaping inside in one continuous motion. Jack dove into the driver’s seat and slammed the door hard behind him. Over the pounding of his heart he could hear the baby cubs cry in a cacophony of high-pitched cries and lower-pitched hoots. The mother grizzly roared her response. She barreled into the fire pit, teeth bared. Still drugged, staggering, she lurched out of the pit, her head wagging on her massive shoulders, guttural sounds exploding from her throat. She was less than ten feet away.

  Ashley’s hand gripped Jack’s so hard he almost cried in pain. “Miguel! Where’s Miguel?”

  In the rearview mirror, Jack spotted him. Miguel was still beside the cubs, unmoving, frozen with fear.

  Opening the door a crack, Jack screamed, “Miguel! You can make it! Come to the Jeep! Get in Ashley’s side!”

  Ashley’s shriek was loud enough to penetrate her unopened window. “Miguel! She’ll kill you! Come on!”

  If he’d run toward Ashley’s side, he would have made it. But, he ran in another direction, his feet kicking puffs of dirt as he raced toward the woods.

  How many times had Jack been told that a human couldn’t outrun a bear? “No human alive can run faster than a grizzly”—he’d heard it repeated since his first trip to Yellowstone, when he and Ashley were just toddlers. But Miguel didn’t know that. Who would have told him? So Miguel raced, agile, wild, his arms pumping the air like pistons, his feet beating into the ground, his black hair flying.

  Rising on her hind feet, her front paws dangling in front of her, the grizzly watched Miguel. Then, with an infuriated roar, she dropped on all fours and headed after him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Though the grizzly was still too groggy to run as fast as she normally would, within seconds the gap between boy and bear narrowed to yards, then to feet.

  “No!” Ashley screamed. “Miguel!”

  It wouldn’t help. Nothing could help. Miguel, Jack knew, was a dead man. There was nothing to be done. Miguel was about to be ripped apart, soft flesh to bone, and all Jack could do was watch as the bear overtook the boy. He heard a piercing scream from Miguel, whose eyes opened wide in terror as the bear caught up from behind.

  “He’s going to die!” Ashley cried hysterically.

  Suddenly, the grizzly stopped her charge. Rearing once again on her haunches, she shook her head in confusion, as though not understanding what was happening to her. It’s the drug, Jack thought. Go, Miguel!

  Sensing he couldn’t outrun the grizzly, Miguel took the only escape route that might work: straight up! As nimble as a monkey, he grabbed a rough branch of a Douglas fir and heaved himself up to his hips, then swung his legs up and over the bough.

  With her face pressed into the glass, Ashley yelled, “Yes! Hurry, Miguel! Go higher!”

  Rocking and weaving, the bear swiped at Miguel, barely missing his leg. Miguel grabbed the next branch, but it broke off in his hands. When he reached for a higher branch, that broke, too. Wrapping his arms around the trunk, he wedged both feet against the rough bark, pressing hard with the soles of his ragged tennis shoes. Then, laboriously, moving only inches at a time, he began to shinny up the tree.

  The female grizzly roared in fury. Raising herself to her full height, she lunged upward at Miguel, her claws missing him but leaving deep gouges in the bark of the trunk. “¡Jesús, María!” Miguel cried out. He struggled up to a safe branch just barely beyond the bear’s reach; panting in fear, he clung there.

  The grizzly circled the base of the tree, exhaling in great gusts of air like a bellows, growling, rearing up, ripping at the air before dropping back again to all fours. The drug in her system seemed to make her flounder between rage and confusion; she would stop, shake her head back and forth, then pace again. Leave, Jack prayed. Just go.

  As quickly as she’d begun, she stopped pacing and stood on her hind legs again, this time positioning her front paws against the tree trunk.

  “She’s climbing after him!” Ashley shrieked.

  It was true. Hesitantly, then furiously, the grizzly sank her claws into the tree. She began to ascend, her back haunches thrusting as she pushed up through the bough spikes, snapping the smaller ones as if they were twigs. Screaming, “Help me!” Miguel shinnied even higher, but the top of the tree began to sway beneath his weight. There was nowhere left to go. The grizzly, though not adept at climbing, moved higher.

  With her hind toes splayed against the trunk, she used her long claws to dig into the bark. Front paws cupped around the trunk, she climbed paw over paw, but at 350 pounds, her weight was too great for speed. Still, she climbed.

  “She’s going to get him! We’ve got to do something!” Ashley cried.

  “Do what? We can’t go out there—”

  “We can’t just sit here, either! Jack, he’s going to die!”

  “I know, I know, I know!” Jack pounded the wheel of the car. The car. He caught sight of the cup holder, where the keys lay. Without thinking it through enough to talk himself out of it, he grabbed the keys, inserted the Jeep key into the ignition, turned it hard and gunned the engine. The gearshift lever projected between the bucket seats like a letter T. Pressing his thumb into the button on the side of the gearshift, just as he’d seen his father do, he released the handle and slipped the arrow onto R.

  “Jack—what are you doing?”

  “Driving!”

  “You don’t know how—”

  Whipping his head around so he could see behind him, Jack cried, “Put on your seat belt and shut up!”

  The car lurched as he gave it some gas, moving faster than he thought possible in such a short distance. He was out o
f control, bumping over rocks and barely missing a stand of trees. When he slammed on the brakes, both he and Ashley whiplashed toward the dashboard before crashing back into their seats. Ahead of him, he saw the grizzly, her massive bulk struggling as she inched up the tree.

  The shaft popped as Jack yanked the gearshift into Drive, then jerked the wheel to the right. Taking a breath, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and immediately spun out of control. Too far! He’d bounced into the woods, snapping a small aspen tree at its base. Reversing again, he heard the tires sputter as he backed up onto the road.

  “Jack!”

  He jammed on the brake. Slower this time, he put his foot on the gas and eased the Jeep forward. His plan was simple—drive at the tree without hitting it in the hope that the motion of the car would scare the bear. A thousand things could go wrong, but he couldn’t worry about that now; he had to focus on the one strategy he hoped would scare the bear away and save Miguel’s life.

  The steering wheel wanted to wrench from his hands; he gripped it, hard. Sweat moistened his palms. He was moving, heading for his target dead ahead. The grizzly was only 40 feet away from the Jeep, but it had climbed dangerously close to Miguel.

  “What are you doing?” Ashley screamed. “If you hit the tree Miguel will fall out!”

  “I’m not going to hit it.”

  She leaned into him hard and smacked the horn in a ferocious punch. “Scare her with the horn!” she cried. “Blast it!” The sound blared through the trees like a gunshot, and the bear, eight feet up now into the tree, reared back her head.

  If he’d ever driven before in his life, his sister’s sudden movement wouldn’t have mattered. But Jack barely had control; Ashley’s motion threw him off. In an instant he was bumping across the ruts on the road, and then, with a crash, he rammed up and over a log that had fallen on top of a boulder. The Jeep tilted at a crazy angle, its right front tire spinning helplessly in the air. The other three tires whined against the dirt, useless. Jack’s shoulder jammed into the driver’s door. Ashley flew into him, her head hitting his rib cage with a thud. Breath burst out of his chest, and for a split second Jack thought he would suffocate, until air sucked back into his lungs in a painful rush.

  So this is what his plan had gotten him. The Jeep was wrecked, and Ashley—when he looked down, he saw she wasn’t moving. Her head lay still, a round, dark circle against his chest. “Ashley,” he gasped, “are you OK? Ashley!” He shook her harder than he meant to, and when he heard her snap at him he almost laughed with relief.

  “Quit pushing at me. I’m fine.” She righted herself, rubbing her elbow as she peered out the windshield. “How about you?”

  “Fine. Sore. Where’s the bear? Where’s Miguel?”

  “I don’t know. I’m all turned around. Wait—over there. I see them! In the tree!”

  Straining to sit up, Jack followed his sister’s finger. It took a moment for his eyes to focus before he saw her—a large shape descending the tree, making its branches shake wildly as she moved down, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

  “Look, Jack! It worked! You actually did it!”

  “We did it,” Jack answered softly.

  All four legs moved paw under paw as the grizzly worked her way downward in reverse, slipping the last few feet like a fireman sliding down a pole. Her fur—paler across the hump and the shoulders, darker on the rump—rippled as she shook herself, finally standing on all fours at the base of the tree. Then she walked away from it, stumbling as she moved, her steps uneven, her front paws toeing in like parentheses.

  “Oh, man, that was close. But Miguel—I think he’s safe. As long as he stays up there.” Ashley’s breathing was rapid, shallow. One of her braids had come undone, coiling around her shoulder like smoke, and Jack could see white commas of fear around her nose and mouth. “OK, bear, you’ve scared us all half to death. Now go away.”

  But the bear’s snout snuffed the air, as if searching for a scent. Wagging her head, she stopped directly in the path of the Jeep. Jack could see her eyes zero in on them, her stare as straight as a laser beam.

  “She’s looking our way. Jack, I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t like it either.”

  “Well, get us out of here.”

  “Ashley, I can’t. We’re stuck.”

  “But I don’t like the way she’s staring at us. Put it in reverse! Back us out!”

  “The Jeep’s stuck on a log. We’ve only got three wheels touching the ground. Listen, we’re not going anywhere.” Gunning the engine, Jack heard the tires grind into the dirt. He saw dirt clods spit into the road in a heavy shower. The noise and motion caught the attention of the grizzly. Her black nose moved as she sniffed the exhaust; she snorted.

  “Stop it, Jack. The sound is making her mad!”

  “I’m trying!”

  The grizzly shook her head again and woofed, sounding like a very loud big dog. Ashley’s fingers clamped on Jack’s forearm so tightly her nails dug into his skin like four tiny daggers. “Jack, Jack, Jack—she’s coming toward us! It’s like Night of the Grizzlies—she’s—looking right at me!”

  “It’s OK,” Jack assured his sister. “She’s probably just heading for her babies. Listen, they’re making an awful racket. She’ll walk right past us and go for her babies, that’s all. We’re safe in here.” He wished he knew that for sure. The Jeep ought to protect them, but what did he know? This grizzly’d been shot with some kind of drug that seemed to be causing volatile, unpredictable reactions. And she’d had her babies taken away. Jack knew that no animal on Earth was more dangerous than a mother bear protecting her cubs. In the background, hooting their fear in an unending series of wooooohs and howls, the cubs kept up their pathetic cries for their mamma. Everything was at its most explosive, like sparks dancing around a stack of dynamite. Anything could happen.

  “I’m so scared,” Ashley whispered.

  “Just stay in the car,” Jack told her as calmly as he could. “She can’t hurt us.”

  “Don’t let her get me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “She’s coming!” Ashley’s voice rose in pitch. “Look at her, she’s nearly—Lock the doors!”

  All Jack’s weight was against the driver’s side. Pulling forward, he pressed the small silver button to click down the locks. Jack never knew if it was that tiny sound or his movement, but something angered the grizzly. Instantly, she began to charge the Jeep, chewing up the distance like a train, her long claws scoring the ground as she ran straight toward them, mouth open, teeth bared.

  Over his sister’s scream, Jack barely heard his own voice as he whispered, “We’re dead.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The grizzly slammed into the Jeep with a force that jarred Jack’s teeth. Staggering, the bear took two steps backward, her head swaying from side to side like a toy dog’s. If Jack hadn’t been so scared, he might have felt sorry for her. Whatever Terry had drugged her with was affecting her behavior. She seemed unable to focus. Confused, she backed up farther, stopped, and then charged again.

  “Go away!” Ashley screamed, as the grizzly rammed the passenger side. The Jeep tipped lower on its left. Jack was smashed into the driver’s window, his weight bearing down on his sore shoulder, his view a crazy jumble of the steering column and patches of sky. Ashley, trying to right herself, pushed off from Jack’s headrest, her unbraided hair dangling like a rope ladder.

  “We’re going to tip over!” she cried.

  “I—can’t see—” Jack stammered.

  “She’s backing up. She’s coming at us again—”

  Wham! The grizzly’s fury seemed to unleash itself against the Jeep. Roaring, she stood up to look into the passenger window. Now Jack could see, all right, and the vision made his heart freeze. Three hundred pounds of fury; a huge head with wide nostrils in a black nose pressed hard against the glass; two small, black-rimmed brown eyes staring; mouth open to reveal knifelike canine teeth that could tear through wood. />
  With a swipe of her claw, the grizzly savaged the hood of the Jeep, leaving deep, two-foot-long scratches. Illogically, Jack thought, I hope Dad won’t blame that on me.

  “The horn,” Ashley whispered. “Blow the horn again. Scare her away.”

  The bear did flinch when the horn sounded, but instead of frightening her, it seemed to inflame her further. She began hitting the window on Ashley’s side with both front paws, harder and harder.

  “Ashley, climb into the backseat!” Jack yelled. If the bear shattered the front window, his sister would be dead meat.

  For once, Ashley obeyed without arguing. Clambering over Jack, she jammed herself into the floor space between the front seat and the back, her spine pressed tightly against the far door, her arms twined around her legs. She’d made it just in time.

  With one final thrust, the grizzly broke through the front window, right where Ashley had been sitting. Because it was safety glass, the pane shattered into a cascade of diamond-shaped pebbles, spraying Jack and the whole interior of the Jeep. A few of the glass bits stuck to the bear’s foot; while she huffed and sniffed and investigated her thick black paw, turning it up and nudging it with her nose, Jack pulled himself into a crouch. He grasped the rearview mirror with his left hand, balanced his right hand on the headrest behind him, and pressed his body into a curve against the car door: feet on the floor, stomach crowding the steering wheel, and head angled into the roof of the car.

  With the window gone, Jack could clearly hear the sounds from outside: the hooting and yammering of the baby cubs, mostly, but there was something else—a louder hooting, sounding just like the cubs, but closer. Jerking his eyes to stare through the windshield, he saw—Miguel.

  The boy had come down from the tree and now stood a dozen feet in front of the Jeep, making noises like the bear cubs, darting forward and then running back again, a few steps at a time. The big grizzly looked at Miguel, then at the Jeep, unsure which one deserved her attention. She picked the Jeep, and thrust her massive foreleg through the broken window to reach for Jack.