by Scott Blade
He ran.
The bear’s heavy weight echoed with each step it took. And then it got worse. The old man heard the bear’s steps get louder and louder and faster, like it was starting to gallop.
The short amount of time he had bought himself gave him the chance to remember something about bears. Bears could run fast—very fast. He recalled a show on the Discovery Channel about grizzlies. They could clock in at thirty-five miles an hour on foot. He couldn’t beat that. No man could. He had to find a way to escape. Outrunning it wasn’t going to work.
The old man took a sharp left at a huge rock and headed for some tall trees. He kept going, but he heard the bear gallop harder and harder, faster and faster. He turned sharply in the mud, and the bear did the same with no problem. The bear turned like it was the easiest thing it had ever done. He wasn’t going to outrun it, and he wasn’t going to outmaneuver it.
The old man’s heart raced. His chest heaved. His legs burned. His knees ached. His one bad knee felt like it was on fire. The trees were right there. He had one chance. Maybe he could lose it in the trees. Maybe he could climb one. Not that it would save him. He also remembered from that same Discovery Channel special that bears could climb. And if they didn’t feel like climbing, they could shake a tree with so much force and power just by pounding on it that they could uproot a tall tree out of the ground. They could knock an entire tree over. It happened all the time.
The old man heard the bear’s breathing getting heavier and heavier. Now it sounded like it was on his heels, like it was right behind him.
The old man turned his head and glanced back. He couldn’t help it.
He saw the bear. His eyesight was hazed over by the gloom and the running. The detail was fuzzy, but he saw fifteen hundred pounds of evolution's most fearsome land predator.
With his eyes staring back at the bear, he wasn’t watching where he was running. And he made a huge mistake, one that could be the end for him. He slammed right into a thick, hard tree and fell back on his butt. The wind knocked out of him. His eyes stayed on the bear even as he struggled to catch his breath.
The old man thought the bear was going to pounce on him right then. He thought it was all over. He had lost. He was bear food. It was the end.
But the bear didn’t pounce on him. Not yet. It stopped right in front of him. It dropped its mouth open wide and roared in his direction.
This is it. Feeding time, he thought.
3
The Kodiak bear could’ve eaten him right there. The old man slammed his eyes shut, expecting it to. He breathed in and breathed out. His heart raced. He waited to feel the teeth and the claws. He expected to hear the heavy breathing over his dying corpse. It was going to happen. There was no equation where he walked away from this. No sense in resisting. No chance to run. He hoped that it killed him before it started eating him and fast.
But the bear didn’t kill him. It didn’t eat him. There were no claws, no teeth, no heavy breathing over his dying body.
He opened his eyes.
The bear wasn’t eating him at all. Instead, it reared up on its hind legs again. This time it stretched all the way out as far as it could. It raised its paws and roared. Its head was the size of two bowling balls. The mouth opened wide. The old man could see down the bear’s massive throat. It was like looking into a black hole with razor-sharp teeth on the end of it. The mouth opened so wide it appeared it could swallow most of the motor on his four-wheeler easy.
He tried to remember that Discovery Channel documentary again. He remembered seeing something about bears doing this to intimidate other bears or other large predators. But why? He wasn’t a predator. He wasn’t a threat to the bear. He was nothing, barely a whisper to the bear.
Just then, the old man felt something else, like a third presence looming behind him. The third presence was the tree that he slammed into when he was running at full speed with his head turned back to see the bear. He had thought he slammed right into a tree, and it had knocked him on his butt, knocked the breath out of him. It wasn’t a tree. It couldn’t have been because it walked. The tree moved into view. It walked out in front of him, stopped, and stood there at his feet, facing the enormous bear.
His first instinct told him it was another Kodiak bear. He looked forward at it. His vision still blurry from the running and panting. The thing in front of him that knocked him over wasn’t a bear either. He knew that because it didn’t move like a bear. It was a living, breathing thing that walked upright and was bipedal. The thing in front of him raised up its paws and stretched them up to the sky like the bear was doing. It was another beast—that was for sure—but not a bear.
The beast stretched its body out to full height, same as the bear. It mimicked the same kind of aggression and rage, and it was like two bears encountering each other out in the wild. It was a turf war. They could’ve been fighting over who would eat the old man.
The thing at his feet roared back at the Kodiak bear, only the roar didn’t sound like a bear at all. It sounded like a man—a savage jungle man, but a flesh-and-bone man. It was a beast man.
“Arrrrrgggggghhhh!” the beast man roared.
The Kodiak bear responded with another earth-shattering roar. The roar echoed over the trees and rocks. It was heard beyond the grass and the river. More terrified birds launched from out of the trees and scattered into the air.
The beast man at his feet wasn’t like any creature he had ever seen before. He knew that because it was too humanlike. His first thought was it might be the legendary Bigfoot come up out of the woods. The thing was massive. From the ground, it looked somewhere between six foot five and seven feet tall—hard to tell with it fully stretched all the way out like it was.
The beast man was all muscle and bulk. He had broad shoulders, like he was wearing NFL armor. His arms were solid, like tree branches. His fists were thick, like the business end of a Louisville Slugger. He had a long reach, like the wingspan of a California condor. The reach from shoulder to fingertip made it appear nearly the same height as the bear from the old man's perspective.
Abruptly, the Bigfoot did something unlike any Bigfoot legend he ever heard of. It spoke.
“Go away!” the Bigfoot shouted to the bear.
The Kodiak bear didn’t roar back this time. It stayed standing but looked back at the beast man. Confusion streamed across its face. It pawed at the air with one mitt like a dog might. It was utterly perplexed.
The Bigfoot glanced over one shoulder, keeping one eye on the bear, and spoke to the old man. “Toss your satchel,” the Bigfoot said.
The old man stared up at the Bigfoot. His vision came more into focus, and he realized it wasn’t a Bigfoot either. It wasn’t some legendary creature from out of the woods. It was a man—a very large man but a human man.
The old man could see how he was confused at first. Not only from his blurred vision and his seated perspective, but also, the guy was so big. That part hadn’t been an illusion. The guy’s frame was large and muscular, like he was born with a suit of armor instead of muscle and bone. His face was covered in a thick beard, not as long or thick as a mountain man who’d never stepped out of the woods before, but like a beard that had grown over weeks. His dark hair was disheveled, and his eyes were ice blue. They pierced through the old man like heat-seeking missiles. For a brief moment, only a moment, he feared the guy more than the bear. After all, man was more dangerous than any apex predator on the planet, and this guy seemed at the top end of chain.
The old man had seen scary men before. He knew scary men all too well. He knew more scary men than he cared to remember. This guy seemed different. This guy was something out of a horror comic like the ones his grandad had read to him as a child. He mostly paid attention to the pictures. Out of all the terrifying men the old man had known in his life, this guy took the cake as far as physical appearance went.
The large man snapped his fingers, fast, snapping the old man out of his train of thought.
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br /> He said, “Hey! Pay attention! Throw the bear the satchel!”
The old man looked at the Bigfoot man and then down at his satchel. It hung around his torso. He paused a beat and stared at it like it held great sentimental value. Then he nodded without looking up and reached down and fumbled with it. One of the fins from a silver salmon poked out of the opening. He pulled the satchel off him and got up on his feet, slow, and stared at the bear.
The Bigfoot guy spoke again. He said, “Throw him the satchel! He wants the fish!”
The old man nodded and haphazardly tossed the satchel at the bear’s feet. The fish came half sliding out of the top, along with a cold pack he kept inside to keep the fish fresh.
The bear stared at the Bigfoot guy for a long second. Then it dropped to all fours and sniffed the fishtails and the satchel. Slobber came out of its mouth and over its massive lips. The bear opened its jaws and snatched up both the fishtails and the satchel in one bite and turned and ran off into the woods. It didn’t stop. It never looked back.
They watched it run off with the old man’s fish and bag until it was lost to sight.
4
Jack Widow had had enough. He spent the last several years sleeping in motel rooms and riding buses and hitchhiking, wherever necessary, across the United States. He had wandered aimlessly. Sometimes he had a general plan of action. Sometimes he had a simple notion of where to go to next, a destination, and sometimes he had nothing. Sometimes he simply went where the going took him. Widow was always moving, always living carefree. But no one on the face of the earth lived completely carefree. Everyone faced problems. Widow didn’t run from them. He didn’t cower to them. He solved them. Get a problem; solve a problem—simple.
Widow was a former SEAL. Navy SEALs were problem solvers with firearms. You can take the man out of the SEALs, but you can never take the SEAL out of the man.
Wandering and roaming aimlessly wasn’t the thing he had had enough of. He loved that part. The freedom, the choice, having no commitments, no taxes, no luggage, no deadweight, no debt to anyone or anything—it was the driving force of his life. The thing that he had had enough of was people. Not a particular person, the problem was just people in general. He was sick of them.
The world seemed to go crazy, and every year got worse, crazier and crazier, but this year, it seemed particularly crazy. The world was so interconnected now because of the Twitters and Facebooks and Instagrams and iPads and iPhones and the i-this and the i-that. He had simply had enough.
While riding on a bus out of Austin, Texas, about a month ago, he decided that he had had enough. That was the exact moment. It hit him like a ton of bricks. He needed a break. It wasn’t a forever thing. He knew that. He wasn’t going to live in a cabin in the woods for the rest of his life. He just felt like he needed a vacation. He was burnt out on people. He wanted some peace and quiet. Even a man who lives a life of leisure needs a break every once in a while. Right? Where was the perfect place to go? What was the last place in America he could find solace? Widow remembered being in Alaska about a year back with NCIS Agent Sonya Gray, a young NCIS cop who basically took his old job. She was new to Unit Ten, the secret undercover unit he helped pioneer. Widow had met a lot of people on his nomadic odyssey, but none were harder to forget than Gray. Alaska wasn’t the thing that Widow couldn’t stop thinking about. It was Agent Gray. She was definitely a woman he would never forget.
The perfect place for him to go and escape the world for a while was Alaska, America’s last frontier. The last time he was there, it had been cold, right at the beginning of winter, nearly a year ago. But not now. Now it was the beginning of fall. The temperature was much better. It was what people further south would call "sweater weather," only it was more like light coat weather. Right then, the temperature was a cool forty-five, not as good as summer but better than freezing.
Widow wasn’t wearing a sweater. He wore a comfortable outdoor coat, not anything overly dramatic, and a flannel underneath and a pair of comfortable blue jeans. There were hiking shoes on his feet. The coat was more for the nighttime necessity than anything else because the days were warm enough, but the nights were a whole different story, depending on wind and rain.
Three weeks ago, Widow trekked up from Texas, mostly by bus, up over and through the Rocky Mountains, and on until he got to Seattle, Washington. The whole trip until then took him a few days of bus depots and bus transfers, including one bus breakdown, which happened in the northwestern corner of Colorado. From there, he hitched a couple of rides until he made it to another bus depot, where he bought a one-way ticket to Seattle. There, he booked a flight up to Anchorage. The airport had been fresh in his mind from the last time he was there with Gray. They had flown into and out of that very same airport together. They sat on the plane together. They did a lot together.
Even though he hadn’t seen her since they said their goodbyes in Virginia, he still pictured her standing at the car rental counter trying to get a sporty car to rent. The thought made him smile. It led him into other more intimate memories of her—some with clothes on, some with clothes off. The thoughts put a smile on his face.
Widow liked Gray. After they got back to DC, he spent time with her. He stayed at her house. He slept in her bed. He walked her dog with her. She taught him some things about horticulture. She taught him a about her Bonsai tree hobby.
With Gray, he felt something different than he had with other women. For once in his life, he understood why people get together and stay together. Once, he had viewed it as two people shacking up. Now his view had changed. He could see the appeal of having a home life. There was even a moment of what married life must be like that occurred to him.
He stayed with Gray longer than he had stayed with anyone else in years. He stayed nearly two weeks, a world record for him. She had taken some time off from Unit Ten and the NCIS. For two weeks, they lived their lives together like one of those happy married couples. She had taught him plenty, and he had taught her nothing. He couldn’t. There was no skill that he had that she didn’t already have. She knew how to throw a right hook. She knew how to shoot straight. She knew how to check the exits. She knew to check the corners of a room before clearing it. She knew criminal investigation. She knew undercover methods. There was nothing for him to add to her life, which made him feel a little lame, a little useless.
Widow hated three things with extreme prejudice. The first was injustice. He couldn’t stand for wrong things to be overlooked. The second was being stuck. And the third was feeling obsolete, outmoded, and outdated—useless. There was nothing for him to add to her life. Nothing that he could see. For him, the writing was on the wall, as it usually was. Therefore, he started to feel both stuck and useless.
Gray was a fine woman and a fine investigator. She would do great in Unit Ten. No question. One day, when his old boss Rachel Cameron retired, Gray would make a fine choice to replace her as director.
Gray didn’t need Widow. She didn’t need anyone. She never did.
The only thing he did in his career that she couldn’t do, not yet, was infiltrate the Navy SEALs as one of them. He did that and remained a SEAL for sixteen years. He was damn good at it. In most ways, he felt more like a SEAL than an NCIS agent. He went out on every mission and every assignment that was ascribed to him. The other SEALs never knew who he really was. No one did. No one outside Unit Ten ever knew that he was a double agent. Even his friends inside the unit didn’t really know him.
Unit Ten had assigned him to the SEALs. He was the only agent ever to pass all the obstacles that they threw at him. Once he was on a SEAL team, he became one of them too. No question. In many ways, he was more SEAL than undercover cop. He was always undercover, always taking on two imperatives at once. The SEALs gave him orders, and the NCIS gave him directives. He lived a lie. He was always juggling one lie over the other. He still completed both of his missions. He was a SEAL. But he also was their investigator.
The only way h
e could explain it to an outsider was to compare it to working in Internal Affairs in the NYPD. The scope of his larger obligation was to investigate crimes either committed by bad apples or around SEAL missions. Sometimes the culprits were foreign agents, and sometimes they were his teammates. Like an Internal Affairs agent, who was first and foremost a cop, Widow was first and foremost a SEAL and a cop. Neither one ever really outweighed the other. Not in his mind. He swore an oath to the Constitution—twice, in two different ceremonies. One was out in the open, and one was in a room behind closed doors. Being an undercover agent for so long took a toll on him.
Then, one day, while he was in deep cover, his mom was shot in the head in a small town in Mississippi. She wasn’t dead, but she was bad. He was pulled off assignment and given leave to return home. She died holding his hand. After he found the responsible parties and brought his own brand of justice to them, he couldn’t go back to his old life. He couldn’t endure another sixteen years of living two lies. He wanted the one thing that he had never known—freedom. And nothing made him feel freer than the open road. In the same way that a caged bird covets the open sky, Widow coveted the open road. He was never going back. He would never give it up.
Gray was so tough that she probably would make it as a SEAL. No doubt about that. The SEALs had never had a woman. Not yet. Widow heard of a few women getting into Hell Week, but so far, none had made it into BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school.
Widow knew that Gray had what it took to make it. But that wasn’t the issue. She would never make it because they wouldn’t let her. The Navy brass liked to give the impression of being progressive without being progressive. No woman would ever make it into BUD/S as long as the old pointy heads in Washington were still in uniform.
He didn’t tell Gray any of this. He didn’t need to. She knew it. Widow stayed out of all that stuff. He let the paper pushers on the Navy side of the Pentagon deal with their own insecurities. Not his business. Not his fight. He served his country.