Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(5)

He could put his hand inside a paper bag and pretend to be holding a gun. He’d probably have to hold something, to make it more realistic. Maybe a banana?

Hell, now he was just embarrassing himself.

Any respectable liquor store employee would just laugh at him. Hopefully they’d still call the cops, who would put him in the back of a squad car, then at least a holding cell. Maybe overnight, maybe for a few days. It was a calculated risk.

The problem was these woods. They were so dense and dark, and the coastal cloud cover so thick and low, that he hadn’t seen the sky for weeks. The white static wouldn’t leave him alone, even out here, miles from so-called civilization. It pissed him off. He’d wanted to walk in this ancient forest for years. Now he was here in this green paradise and he couldn’t enjoy it.

Peter Ash was tall and rangy, muscle and bone, nothing extra. His long face was angular, the tips of his ears slightly pointed, his dark hair an unruly shag. He had wide, knuckly hands and the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change. Some part of him was always in motion—even now, hiking in the woods, his fingertips twitched in time to some interior metronome that never ceased.

He’d been a Marine lieutenant in Iraq and Afghanistan, eight years and more deployments than he cared to remember. Boots on the ground, tip of the spear. He’d finished with his war two years before, but the war still wasn’t finished with him. It had left him with a souvenir. He called it the white static, an oddball form of post-traumatic stress that showed up as claustrophobia, an intense reaction to enclosed spaces.

It hadn’t appeared until he was back home, just days from mustering out.

At first, going inside a building was merely uncomfortable. He’d feel a fine-grained sensation at the back of his neck, like electric foam, a small battery stuck under the skin. If he stayed inside, it would intensify. The foam would turn to sparks, a crackling unease in his brainstem, a profound dissonance just at the edge of hearing. His neck would tense, and his shoulders would begin to rise as his muscles tightened. He’d look for the exits as his chest clamped up, and he’d begin to have trouble catching his breath. After twenty minutes, he’d be in a full-blown panic attack, hyperventilating, the fight-or-flight mechanism cranked up all the way.

Mostly, he’d chosen flight.

He’d spent over a year backpacking all over the West, trying to let himself get back to normal. But it hadn’t worked. He’d finally forced himself outside his comfort zone to help some friends the year before, and it had gotten a little better. He’d thought he was making progress. But they’d gone back to their lives and Peter had gone off on his own again, and something had happened. Somehow he’d lost the ground he’d gained.

Lost so much ground that even walking through the foggy redwoods in the spring was enough to get the static sparking in his head.

Which is why he was contemplating the best way to get himself locked up. Get this shit out of his system once and for all.

He wasn’t thinking it was a good idea.

Then he saw the bear.

? ? ?

IT WAS ABOUT THIRTY YARDS ahead of him, just downslope from the narrow trail that wound along the flank of the mountain.

At first all he could see was a mottled brown form roughly the size and shape of a Volkswagen Beetle, covered with fur, attempting to roll a half-rotted log down the side of the mountain.

It took Peter a few more steps to figure out that he was seeing a bear.

The trail ran through a deep pocket of old-growth trees in an area too steep for commercial logging. It was mid-March, and Peter assumed the bear was looking for food. There would be grubs under the log, which would provide much-needed protein in that still-lean time of the year. The bear grumbled to itself as it dug into the dirt, sounding a little like Peter’s dad when he cleaned out the back of his truck. The bear was focused on its task, and hadn’t yet noticed the human.

Peter stopped walking.

Black bears were plentiful in the wilder pockets of the West, but they were smaller, usually three or four hundred pounds when fully grown. Black bears could do a lot of damage if they felt threatened, but they usually avoided confrontation with humans. Peter had chased black bears out of his campsite by clapping his hands and shouting.

This was not a black bear.

This bear was a rich reddish-brown, with a pronounced hump, and very big. A grizzly. At the top of the food chain, grizzlies could be very aggressive, and were known to kill hikers. Clapping his hands wouldn’t discourage the bear. It would be more like a dinner bell, alerting the bear to the possibility of a good meal.

The most dangerous time to meet a grizzly was in the fall, when they were desperately packing on fat to make it through the winter.

The second-most dangerous time was spring, with the bear right out of hibernation and extremely hungry. Like now.

Peter was lean and strong from weeks of backcountry hiking. His clothes were worn thin by rock and brush, the pack cinched tight on his back to make it easier to scramble through the heavy undergrowth. His leather boots had been resoled twice, the padded leather collars patched where mice had nibbled them for the salt while he slept wrapped in his ground cloth.

He’d walked a lot of miles in those mountains.

Now he wondered how fast he could run.

He took a slow step back, trying to be as quiet as possible, then another. Maybe he could disappear in the fog.

Peter had once met an old-timer who’d called the bears Mr. Griz, as a term of respect. The old man had recited the facts like a litany. Mr. Griz can grow to a thousand pounds or more. Mr. Griz can run forty miles an hour in short bursts. His jaws are strong enough to crush a bowling ball. Mr. Griz eats everything. He will attack a human being if he feels threatened or hungry. Mr. Griz has no natural enemies.