by Lynn Red
It tasted all right, though a little salty. She took a chunk of what was either potato or meat, and chewed slowly, trying her best to avoid smelling the can. The taste was fine, but getting a nose full of that strange, almost cat food-like aroma was definitely not conducive to eating, she’d learned.
Something about the shape, and the afterglow she felt, took Jill back to about halfway through her sophomore year at MIT. She’d gone on scholarship, and if it weren’t for that, she wouldn’t have gone at all. Not that she grew up poor, but because her father was the sort who believed people only value what they earn for themselves. At first, she’d resented it a little. Her friends didn’t have to work as hard as she did, or they had more spending money or free time, or whatever.
After a while though, she started to understand. She ground herself into dust those first two years of school. She had to, if she wanted to keep up. She’d never been any sort of natural talent. She wasn’t ever the smartest or the fastest, and to her mind, she most certainly wasn’t the prettiest.
The one thing she did have, that even she couldn’t deny, was tenacity. Once Jill got her mind set on something, she never relented until she met the goal, or aced the class or... well, or fought to get the grant that had put her right here in the middle of the woods – in the midst of her destiny.
She sighed heavily and stood up, her knees popping as she straightened. Jill tossed the bullet onto the sheets she’d slept on top of – another remnant of her childhood – and got busy stretching. A few squats, a handful of deep knee bends, and then a long time spent bent over with her knees straight and her palms flat on the ground had her all limbered up.
With another sigh, this one of relief at how much the stretching helped, Jill sat down at her desk, flipped open her massive, ancient laptop and jotted some notes. She knew whatever she recorded was going to be subject to all sorts of review – hell, she’d promised at least an article about these bears if not a full book – so she had to be judicious about the details she shared.
Lupines in the area are aggressive, she noted. But not abnormally so. They howl at night, they carry on for hours, as wolves tend to do. The bears I’ve come to study continue to – she at first typed ‘amaze’ and then deleted it. Continue to evade me. So far, no sign of the new sub-species of Ursus arctos appalachia, aside from standard remnants – scat, some fur left on tree bark, that sort of thing.
She wanted to write so much more. She wanted to tell everything about these incredible creatures and whatever it was that was truly their nature, only she couldn’t. She wouldn’t do anything that could ever possibly turn unwanted eyes on this forest, on her bears.
I better watch out. Thinking like that’s going to get me feeling like a mama... Jill laughed at the mere thought of being a mama bear, but there it was – and she’d never felt anything stronger.
Daily notes made, daily half-truths recorded, Jill closed her laptop and pulled out the notebook she kept in the desk. This was where she wrote the real truth.
It rips me up, she began. Hell of a way to start a journal entry. She chewed her lip, laughed at the melodrama of what she’d written, and then smiled, accepting it as truth. Lying about all this. Pretending I’m not seeing what I’m seeing. These creatures are incredible, they’re amazing, and they’re utterly, completely impossible.
That word – impossible – stuck in her mind as her pen scratched across the paper.
Not impossible, just... not supposed to exist. They can change shape apparently at will, they are led by two massive, beautiful alphas, and, again, she trailed off, tapping her pen on the desk. Writing these things made them feel more permanent, more real.
Back in graduate school, when she was finishing her dissertation – a long examination of the effects of illegal human involvement – known to the normal human world as poaching – bear populations in Wyoming, she managed to keep cool and detached. Jill was a scientist after all, and she knew feelings were fleeting, emotions often untrue. Except... now? She was beginning to question everything she’d ever thought she knew. Sticking a missive about her personal biases in an article was one thing, but personally mating with the population she observed? That might be a little tough to sell to Science.
The safety, the relief, she felt, when Rogue and then King appeared the night before were more intense and incredible than any experiment she’d done. There was no observable variable, no experimental constant, just raw terror that was replaced by raw... love? She shook her head, smiling again and then laughing at herself, as if laughing at her feelings made them easier to swallow.
The two alphas came to me in the night. One of them came during the day, taking care of me as I healed from a bunch of bruises, strains and scrapes I got when I’d been surrounded by wolves and attacked on my way in. That one is called Rogue. Whether that’s really his name, or just what he calls himself to humans, I’m not sure.
Then another thought occurred to her. Was she really the first? The first human that had ever been a part of their clan?
Rogue left a gun. He left me alone when the wolves started howling. He told me to take care of myself, and I sure did. A wolf tried to break in, so I opened the door and shot him. Shot him right in the chest with a silver bullet.
Reading back over her words, she laughed again.
This sounds like a crazy person rambling at some late night talk radio show host. But unless I’ve gone from completely sane to completely bat-shit nuts, all of this is actually happening. I actually shot two fuckin’ werewolves with silver bullets. One of them just sizzled and disappeared. The other turned into a man first and then went through the same deal. They’re gone. The one called King – he’s bigger than the other one, but not by much – he seemed either amazed or upset that I was a human. He went on and on about mating this, fate that. And then he said something about how he didn’t know how I was going to be able to carry his children.
She looked off in the distance, out the window over her desk. The trees outside were still. No wind blew right then, no rain fell. Jill sucked a deep breath through her nose.
The only proof I have that they were here is that I can still smell them in the room. I smell their sweat, and our, she paused, giggling and then immediately feeling stupid about the giggling. Our sex in the air. I’ve never felt anything like that before, never felt more alive, more protected. Maybe there really is something to all that fate business in the first place.
Her hand went to the mark on her chest that tingled every time she thought of Rogue or King. This mark on my chest, she wrote, King said it was some kind of alpha mark, something that marked me as the fated mate of the two alphas. He said a lot of things though, and some of it seemed a little out there. But still, I have always wondered about this thing.
Without thinking about it, she realized that she was thinking about them. Her mind naturally went to Rogue and King, and whatever it was they were protecting in the forest.
They mentioned cubs, she wrote. But I don’t know if that means there are cubs already, or if they are the last members of a dead... tribe? Actually, as I write this, I realize I don’t know the first damn thing about them at all. But in the moment, details and sociology hadn’t been very important. The only thing on my mind was giving in, letting my animal instincts take over. Feral, wild, unreasonable. Maybe that’s the lesson here?
Her thoughts trailed off again, briefly back to those two strange men. Why would they want anything to do with this place? With these bears? They both certainly acted like they knew more than they were letting on.
Been here two weeks, she wrote. And I haven’t done anything. Jacques will be here – shit!
She wrote the curse, and then said it out loud. It had been almost a week since his previous visit. Another delivery was coming; food, water, medical supplies, medicine. And she needed to send something back with him to convince her colleagues, and her grant-givers, not to pull the project out from under her. Like a contractor with a half-finished house that he ha
dn’t worked on for a month, she needed to prove that she was actually doing something with the resources she’d been given.
“Well,” she said, “I guess for once in my life, it wouldn’t hurt to bullshit a report. I’m probably the only person I know who never has. First time for everything,” she said as she opened the laptop again and began to type out a bunch of horseshit observations.
Including threesomes with werebear alphas.
She laughed, then bullshitted the best bullshit she’d ever seen.
*
“Jill!” it was Jacques, shouting in his thick Louisiana drawl. “I thought maybe you’d been kidnapped by wolves or something!”
The trek back to the landing zone was uneventful, but even so it took several hours to hike the miles through undergrowth and brush. And, knowing what she did about the local populations, she had to make sure she wouldn’t have any trouble getting to her gun if something happened along that demanded attention.
She waved as she emerged from the forest, smiling and trying her best to hide the slight limp she’d taken on from soreness in her hip. “Nope,” she called back. “No wolves.”
Her skin crawled just saying the word. “What do you have for me?”
Mission stop talking about myself, accomplished.
The pilot started going over the shipping manifest. Nothing out of the ordinary – powdered milk, military style rations, fire starters, some bacteria to put in her composting toilet, the bare necessities, so to speak.
“Anyway, ain’t much this time,” he said as he finished going over the backpack full of stuff she had to lug back into the woods. “But it is enough that you shouldn’t be carrying it on a bad hip. What happened?”
Shit. I’m terrible at faking pretty much everything. I hope that report isn’t too transparent.
“It’s nothing,” Jill said. “I stepped wrong over a root a couple miles back. No big.”
“You sure? Don’t seem like a very good idea to be out here alone with a screwy hip.”
“I’m not alone,” she said, before she thought. Immediately, a questioning look crept over her pilot’s face. “I mean, there’s plenty of supplies, the hike isn’t a big deal. It takes a while to get to camp, but it’s mostly flat ground. I just need to be more careful.”
He was nodding, slowly. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked again. “I don’t wanna...”
“What?” Jill asked, before she noticed his eyes were focused on the butt of Rogue’s pistol, which was sticking out the top of her shorts. “Oh,” she said with a grin. “Indiana Jones never traveled without insurance, right?”
Jacques laughed. “Indy was a smart one, so are you. You’d have to be crazy to be out here without some way to fend off the bears if they get unruly. Can I see that thing?”
Not able to think of any way to avoid letting Jacques look at the gun without seeming weird, she shrugged, and handed it over. As the heft of Jill’s impeccably cleaned pistol left her hand, her pilot whistled in appreciation. “Nice piece, this. A .357, huh? That’s gotta kick like hell. You shoot this thing much? I mean, it’s a pretty hefty ol’ piece for a—”
“For a girl? Don’t try it, wiseass. I’m a foot taller than you. And anyway, I’ve used it plenty. In fact, I ventilated a couple werewolves with it since I got here.”
No lie like the truth, huh?
“You know why I always liked you, Miss Jilly?” he said, quirking a smile.
“My charm, my wit?”
“Yeah, that,” Jacques gave the gun a final looking over and handed it back. “And the fact that you can somehow make the most ridiculous stories sound absolutely true. Werewolves, huh?”
She shrugged, stuffing the gun back in her waistband. “Silver bullets, too,” she offered. “Gotta use the right tool for the job.”
“You sure you don’t want me to help you with this stuff this time?” Jacques asked, chuckling. “Bum hip and all?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
Nodding slowly, Jacques stepped back up into the helicopter’s pilot seat, sped up the blades, and lifted off. “Stay safe!” he called down. “Bring me some werewolf hides next time! Oh, here, take this, you need it more than I do – don’t keep that thing in your pants! Not saying you sweat all the time, but...” He unhooked something from his belt and hurled it toward her.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jill shouted over the thrumming rhythm of the chopper’s propeller. She bent over and plucked a holster off the ground, vaguely aware of it as she yelled: “They disappear though, right after you shoot them.”
“I’m sure,” he shouted back. “I’m sure they do. See you in a week!”
As he lifted off, he gave her a loud “Arroooooo!” that faded into whipped up cloud of dust that blew up from the gusts of his chopper blades.
Nodding, and squinting against the sun and the dust, Jill waved at her old friend as he took off over the treetops. “Shit,” she muttered, turning back to the path. “If only you knew.”
-11-
“Sometimes, the woods really are just the woods.”
-Jill
At some point you start to question whether or not the things you think are real, really are.
For Jill, that took three days. A week of nothing – no contact from her bears, no wolves howling, no nothing. She spent her time poking around for the thing she wanted the most: Rogue and King.
Or, at least, some sign that the strange, secretive bears she’d always thought existed, actually did. Or some clue that maybe she wasn’t insane, or that she hadn’t just wasted a four million dollar grant with a bunch of made up bullshit slightly less ridiculous than Bigfoot.
The self-doubt was starting to crush her.
Then again, it always had.
As she packed for another day trek into the woods to find... anything, Jill’s thoughts turned back to her first days working for Fred.
“And this,” he’d said, “is why you don’t say too much when you propose a grant for some edge project that you think no one is going to care about.”
He’d plopped the newest issue of Science, just about the only journal that matters to an explorative biologist, onto Jill’s desk about eight minutes after she’d walked in with a head full of dreams. She’d had these ideas about a population of bears in Yellowstone. The problem was, that for whatever reason, this small group of grizzlies had stopped breeding. They weren’t in any danger, they had plenty of food, they’d just stopped.
“This is why you don’t go to conferences. And if you do, it’s all lip service.” Fred sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say, but just take a look.”
When she saw the cover of the magazine, her heart hit the pit of her stomach. This was everything. Every shred of energy she’d poured into getting this grant all went to utter shit.
“How?” she asked, flipping to the Awarded Grants section. “I mean... how did this happen? How did I get undercut so fast?”
“Fungal growth in forest floor causing Yellowstone grizzly breeding problems? New grant issued - $5m, Dr. Dan Lindemann, GlasCorp Pharmaceuticals.”
Fred looked like he was going to either comfort her or shake his head disapprovingly. Thankfully, he went with the first option. He usually did, which Jill always appreciated. He shrugged. “Well,” he’d begun, “GlasCorp is as close to an evil empire as you’re going to find. They have teams of scientists who do nothing but go to conferences and snipe projects. Especially things that they can somehow twist into extremely expensive drug research.”
“But,” Jill had cut in, “what’s the point? Five million is worth about a buffalo head nickel to those guys. GlasCorp is worth... what? A hundred billion?”
Fred pursed his lips again. “Yeah, well,” he’d said. “The thing is, they aren’t interested in the money. They’re interested in keeping people from figuring out ideas that might compete with them someday.”
With that, Jill pushed back from her desk, in a huff. “This is stupid!” she’d said. “
I’m trying to get some bears back to making babies. What the hell does that have to do with drug patents?”
He was still just shaking his head. “They think they found something – or rather, you did, and so they stole it. That’s kind of what they do. But anyway, no reason to be upset. There will always be something else that comes down the pipe.”
Shaking her head, Jill laced up her boots and looked over at the pistol she had laying on the bed. Little did Fred Stanton know, when he told her that something else would come down the pipe, he was sending her down a rabbit hole that would take three years to dig through.
And then, when she did? She let out a bark of laughter. When she did, she ended up in the middle of the Appalachian forest, in some weird place between the two Virginias, mated to a pair of werebears. It ended with her shooting a goddamn werewolf and then being comforted and sexed up by a pair of bears, and—
Before she knew it, tears were rolling down Jill’s cheeks. It was too much. Too absurd, too ridiculous.
“I’ve got to be fucking crazy,” she said to herself, grabbing two handfuls of hair and shaking her head. She sat, heavily, on the bed, then slid down to the floor, shaking her head the whole time. “I’m nuts, I imagined everything, I’m fucking nuts.”
She focused on the beam of sunlight coming through the closed blinds, letting her brain fixate into tunnel vision. “None of this shit makes any sense,” she said under her breath. “None of this is real. It’s all make believe, all a bunch of bullshit kid stories that I think I’m living in.”
The mark on her chest tingled, then itched, but she forced herself to ignore it. “An itchy birthmark? That’s supposed to convince me that shape shifting bears are real? Holy...”