“After the immune system shows up, it sort of defines what sort of enemy it is up against and then starts making millions of copies of immune-system soldiers that are specifically built for this enemy. When the immune system gets overwhelmed, it can mean that the foreign organism, say, a virus, is not just powerful but novel.”
He got quiet. Everyone did, even the girl in the back.
“Can’t the immune system be dangerous, too?” It was Alex.
“How so, Alex?” Eleanor said.
“Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and on and on. All sorts of autoimmune disorders,” Lyle said, picking up Alex’s thread. He seemed lost in thought. “It’s a very good point. I—how do you…”
“When I was younger, I had arthritis,” Alex said. She held the odd gold object in her hand.
“The limp,” Eleanor said.
Lyle turned his neck around and was looking at Alex. With her bangs, she looked like a member of a girl punk band. She met Lyle’s eyes and she tilted her head just a touch to the side.
“Did I get that right?” she said, sounding full well like she knew she had.
“It’s a fair point, if likely off topic,” Lyle said and turned forward again. He paused. “But not necessarily.”
“Somebody explain what the hell is the point, then,” Jerry blurted.
Lyle wanted to wring his neck. “You love guns, right?”
“I love the right to own a gun, my constitutional right.”
“Why?”
“Get this guy. So I can defend myself, like when the shit goes down, like right now.”
“Okay, so this is a way of thinking about the immune system. Guns are a defense system but also dangerous in their own way. If we run amok with guns, we destroy ourselves—”
“Pinko.”
“Let him finish, please,” Eleanor said. “What’s that have to do with—”
“The immune system can spin out of control. That’s why one of its most important features is its brake.”
He explained that immune systems have two key switches, a brake and an accelerator. When the immune system is needed, neurochemicals cause the accelerator to get switched on. But when it’s done, the brake starts. “The immune system must be stopped in its tracks, a fast, immediate cease-and-desist,” Lyle continued. “It will consume the body faster than any foreign organi—”
Before he could finish, Eleanor slammed the truck brakes.
They were paused in front of the Sleepy Bear Mobile Home Park. It was fed by a paved road with snow-draped trees on either side. A dozen cars parked at an angle near what looked like a front office. Mostly hidden behind the trees, mobile homes jagged at various angles. A floodlight from somewhere in the middle of the camp gave more visibility than the group had had in miles.
“I saw a bear,” Eleanor said. She paused. “Do you see it?” She stared in the direction of the front office.
“Can you scare it off, Jerry?”
“Why?”
“If it’s in the camp, it might…” She didn’t finish the thought.
“I don’t think it’ll eat people, Eleanor. It can’t get into the homes.”
“Right.”
“Can you pull in there, anyway?” Lyle asked.
“Why?”
“I’m curious how it moves.”
“To see if it’s sick?”
“Just to be clear,” Jerry interrupted the flow between Eleanor and Lyle, “I’m not taking any chances.” Meaning: I will shoot it.
Eleanor exhaled with her growing loss of patience at his bravado. She did pull into the driveway. Trees loomed overhead, the most beautiful mobile home park setting they’d ever seen. Lodgepole and Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and the backdrop, the gray outline of mountains. The bear stood at a metal trash bin. It tried to shove a paw inside an opening too small for its arm. Lazily, it looked back at the pickup.
“Is that a bear?” said the girl. Her inner child had surfaced.
“Black, probably a mom,” said the boy, perking up. “You have to bundle up your food and can’t put out compost or anything like that. Sometimes, my dad…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, the thought of his father too much to handle. Then: “He’d just shoot in the air.”
“A honk should suffice,” Lyle mumbled.
Eleanor honked. The bear seemed largely unfazed but put its heavy haunches on the ground and ambled away from the pickup, in the direction of the trees and two yellow mobile homes beneath them. It moves naturally, Lyle thought, so very likely not sick. Anyway, why would it be? It’s not like animals died off when the flu came in 1918.
“Shit!” Jerry exclaimed. He opened the car door.
They could see why. There was a person who looked like he was sitting on the ground next to a white-and-gray mobile home. The more they looked, the more they realized the man was surely another victim who had slid to the ground with paralysis, or with whatever he was suffering. The bear walked near, sniffing the air.
“Be careful, Jerry,” Eleanor said.
“Honk again.”
Eleanor laid on the horn. Now, though, the bear had moved beyond twenty yards away and was half hidden by a tree. The truck horn no longer dissuaded it. It ambled forward toward the mobile home and the man slouched next to a ladder with the brand name Hitch Hiker in black letters on the top. Jerry made his way toward a lodgepole pine that was slightly to the left and between the pickup and the bear. The bear seemed to speed up. Lyle slipped to the right of the seat and out the door. Lyle shut the door to protect the people inside. It was freezing. He moved absently, curiously, almost an automaton, looking through a scientific lens. Part of him wandered, without him fully realizing it, thinking about whether the man on the ground might awaken if attacked. Part of him wondered whether the bear might ultimately ignore the man. Most animals don’t eat people if they’ve not had the taste.
Jerry stood behind the tree and leveled his gun.
“You could hit the man,” Lyle said, quickly catching up now. Snow already burned at the exposed parts of his neck and licked through his thin shoes. Jerry turned back to him and, inadvertently or not, turned the gun in Lyle’s direction. “Do not tell me what to do again.” He turned back to the bear. He whistled.
The bear half turned and then resumed its approach, albeit more slowly. It was ten feet from the man now and seemed as curious as hungry. Jerry pointed the gun at the ground and pulled the slide back. He looked up into the sky in the direction of a collection of trees and seemed to make a calculation. He aimed over the trees and pulled the trigger.
The bear froze.
“Scat,” Jerry mumbled, as if speaking to himself, hoping.
The bear turned and looked in the direction of Jerry and Lyle. Big, not huge, 225 pounds, Lyle thought. The paws, though, that was the scary part. The big prints made gaping wounds in the snow, giant mitts with razors on the edge. The bear growled. Low.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Jerry said to the bear and sounded like he very much meant it.
The bear turned back to the man felled against the mobile home.
Jerry aimed at the bear. “Please stop.” The bear took another step. Jerry tipped the gun slightly at an angle, over the bear’s head.
Jerry fumbled with the gun. It slipped from his hands. “Shit, shit.” He dropped to his knees and he recovered it and wiped the snow off and felt it sliding, frozen, in his hands. He regripped the trigger. He looked up. The bear was practically on top of the man now.
“No choice,” Lyle said.
Jerry, hand shaking, aimed at the bear’s left buttocks, as far away as he might from the direction of the man. He squeezed a bit more, steadying his arm. Then he saw a flash of movement to his right.