“I don’t think—”
A series of crashes broke through the trees above us, cutting me off, and a bird hit the ground not ten feet from where we stood.
I crouched down, my eyes shooting to the sky above us, but I didn’t see anything up there. Nothing that would have struck a bird, at any rate. I moved at a crouch toward the bird, crouching down to look at it when I arrived. It was an owl of some kind, now flapping on its back in the snow. At least one wing was broken, and maybe its neck. It couldn’t seem to turn over. First the deer, now an owl.
Was every animal in this forest losing its damn mind? Something about this didn’t feel right. The instincts that had got me safely through many situations in Afghanistan were absolutely screaming that something was wrong.
“John…”
A note of fear in Angie’s voice pulled my attention away from the wounded bird. She was standing slowly from her place at the deer’s side, eyes trained on the sky to the east, jaw dropping toward the frozen ground. I followed her gaze to see that the silver sky was cut through by a thin, orange-red laceration, slicing a looping path from the sun’s hazy outline, along the horizon and back again. It spread an unnatural discoloration through the clouds, staining the atmosphere with a sickly yellow bruise.
“What is that?” Angie whispered.
I shoved the broken deer antler into my back pocket and took the rifle off my shoulder, chambering a round. The peace of the lovely morning in the woods soured in my stomach, replaced by a rising sense of dread.
“We need to get back to the truck.”
The day darkened quickly after that.
Heavier cloud cover moved in as we traveled the short distance to where we’d parked the truck, and the snow redoubled its efforts. The sky retained its strange yellow hue, tinting the world around us into a strange alien landscape. The temperature seemed to have dropped as well, solid snow crunching underfoot to break the silence of the woods. I found myself searching the shadows at the base of every tree, jumping at the rustle of each small animal that moved through the brush. I was on edge, my skin crawling the way it used to under the Middle Eastern sun, my back itching at the nameless sensation of unseen danger.
This wasn’t who I wanted to be anymore. This wasn’t who I had expected to be here, in the safety of Michigan.
A twig snapped to my left, and I jerked my rifle barrel up, shifting my body to address the threat and moving on instinct to place myself between Angie and danger.
A rabbit hopped out of the underbrush, fat and slow in its winter coat, and I lowered my weapon.
“Easy, soldier.” Angie rested a calming hand on my shoulder. “Wanna tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”
I passed a rough hand over the dark stubble on my face. The beard was still growing in. It had been Angie’s idea to grow it, a way to keep warm against the bitter Northern Michigan winters, but I still wasn’t used to feeling the hair on my face.
One more thing that made me feel off-balance.
“I just have a bad feeling,” I said. “I’ll feel better after I can make a phone call. Find out what’s going on out there.”
We’d left our cell phones in the cab of the truck, thinking they’d be safer there. Besides, there wasn’t much of a signal way out here anyway. Now I needed to talk to someone who knew what was going on. If I could find a place to get enough coverage, I might be able to get in touch with the local police station. Find out what they knew about that thing in the sky.
“Well let’s keep moving then.” Angie gave my shoulder a final squeeze, then shouldered past me to take the lead. “We’re almost there. Stay with me.”
I followed my wife, grateful for her calming influence, but kept a tight grip on my rifle all the same. Our truck was parked in a gravel parking lot at the bottom of the trail we’d taken up into the forest. It was the only vehicle around—or it had been when we’d arrived that morning, leaving in the darkest hours of the morning to make the three-hour drive from Ellis Woods. We’d been planning on establishing a camp later that evening, after the hunt. Most of our gear was still in the back of the truck, including all our food supplies.
When we arrived, the parking lot was still empty of people. But it quickly became apparent that we weren’t actually alone.
A huge, dark shape was moving around in the open bed of the truck, hunched and fur-covered, rocking the truck on its hinges.
“Holy shit,” I said. I’d thought things were weird already. Now they were about to get a whole lot more dangerous.
“Wait, is that a—”
“Yep.” I put a hand out and pushed her lower. “Keep down. Try not to attract its attention. I don’t want a fight.”
We watched as the bear stood to its hind legs, growling and tossing one of the bags from the truck, then shaking its head wildly before returning to its task. It was a large black bear, shaggy with winter fur. The ground around the truck was littered with our possessions—mostly clothes and the broken pieces of various camping items. It looked like it had just begun digging into our food.
I hoped that was all it was after. But I wasn’t going to take any chances. Given the behavior we’d been seeing from the other animals in the woods, I didn’t think we could count on this bear to eat and run.
I raised my rifle again and sighted down the barrel, but a hand on my arm stopped me.
“John, no,” Angie hissed. “You can’t.”
“I’m just gonna scare it off.”
“It might not scare off,” Angie said. “This guy should already be sleeping for the winter. And it doesn’t look too happy to be awake. What is it doing here in a place that smells like humans? What’s it doing raiding a truck when it should already be hibernating?”
She was right. There was something seriously wrong with the animals in this forest. First the deer and the bird, and now this bear. And the thing with the sun… I needed to be smart. Use my head, not years of paranoia bred from fighting in Afghanistan.
Angie wasn’t going to be safe if I went around making stupid, dangerous decisions.
I turned to her, seeing that her eyes were wide with fear, her breath coming short and shallow. She was one of the most level-headed people I had ever met, braver than some of the battle-hardened soldiers I’d served with, but she knew as well as I did that something was very wrong here.
We needed to get the hell out of the forest. Not start a fight with a bear.
I took a slow breath, allowing my lungs to fill completely, trying to tamp down on my need for violence and focus on how to get out of there.
“We need to get to phones, Ange.”
I fixed my eyes on the bear. We needed that truck. And the bear was in the way. The question was… what was I going to do about it?
2
I moved toward the truck with slow, heavy steps, nearly stomping, just to make myself louder and scarier. More like someone a bear didn’t want to mess with. I also shouted at the top of my lungs and fired a couple shots in a safe direction, my heart hammering away inside my chest.
This was the stupidest possible thing. The stupidest possible situation to have to deal with. But we didn’t have a choice. We had to have that truck, had to get back to safety. Whatever was going on out there, I wanted to be with people, rather than caught out here in the woods.
I chambered another round and fired it off, watching to see how the bear reacted. I’d never chased off a bear before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I knew this was the way to do it, but I’d never even seen it done. Never seen it work.