Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(6)

The bear was still focused on the rotting log. Peter took a third step back, then a fourth. A little faster now.

Call it a retreat in the face of overwhelming force. No dishonor in that, right? Even for a United States Marine.

The California grizzly was supposed to be extinct. But this bear looked big, and big males were known to travel long distances in search of mates. He was only sixty miles south of the Oregon border, and in this dark primeval forest, anything seemed possible.

Five steps, now six. Peter didn’t care how much this particular grizzly weighed, or what he felt like eating. He didn’t want to find out. He was almost back to the bend in the trail. This would be a good story to tell someday.

Then he felt a slight breeze move the hairs on the back of his neck. The wind, which had been in his face, had shifted.

He was in trouble.

Grizzlies have fair eyesight and good hearing, but their sense of smell is superb. And the mountain breeze carried Peter’s weeks-long hiking stink, along with the smell of his supplies, directly to the bear’s brain. The supplies included a delicious trail mix made of cashews and almonds and peanuts and raisins and chocolate chips.

Much better than grubs under a log.

The bear’s head popped up with a snort.

Peter stepped backward a bit faster, feeling the adrenaline sing in his blood, reminding himself of the old-timer’s advice on meeting Mr. Griz.

You don’t want to appear to be a threat, or to look like food. Running away is a bad idea, because bears can run faster than people. And running away is prey behavior.

What you were supposed to do, said the old-timer, was drop your pack to give the bear something to investigate, then retreat backward. If the bear charged, curl up into a ball, protecting your head, neck, and face with your arms. You might get mauled, but you’d be less likely to be killed.

Peter was not exactly the curl-into-a-ball type.

The bear stood upright on its hind legs, now a good eight or nine feet tall, swung its enormous head toward Peter, and sniffed the air like a Silicon Valley sommelier.

Mmmm. Trail mix.

Peter took another step back. Then another.

The bear dropped to all fours and charged.

Peter shucked his pack and ran like hell.

? ? ?

HE’D GROWN UP WITH ANIMALS. Dogs in the yard, horses in the barn, chickens and cats wherever they felt like going. He’d kind of inherited a big dog the year before, or maybe the dog had inherited him, it wasn’t entirely clear. In the end the dog had found a better home than Peter could provide.

But he liked animals. Hell, he liked grizzly bears, at least in theory. He certainly liked how it felt to know a big predator was out there. It made him feel more alive.

The backpack distracted the bear for only a few seconds, barely long enough for Peter to round the corner, find a climbable sapling, and jump up. The bear was right at his heels at the end. Mr. Griz chomped a chunk of rubber from the sole of Peter’s boot. Peter was glad he got to keep the foot.

He scrambled higher, finding handholds in the crevices of the soft, deep bark. This was a redwood sapling, tall and straight as a flagpole. He hugged the trunk with his arms and legs while the bear roared and thumped the sapling with his forepaws, apparently uninterested in climbing up after him. The young tree rocked back and forth and Peter’s heart thumped in his chest.

Alive, alive, I am alive.

Would you rather be here, or stuck behind a desk somewhere?

“Bad bear,” he called down. “You are a very bad bear.”

After a few minutes, Mr. Griz gave up and wandered back toward the smell of trail mix. Peter had to climb another ten feet before he found a branch that would hold his weight. He was wondering how long to wait when the bear returned, dragging Peter’s backpack. It settled itself at the base of the tree and began to enthusiastically disembowel the pack.

After an hour, Peter’s two-week food supply was working its way through the entrepreneurial bear’s digestive system, along with his emergency phone, long underwear, and fifty feet of climbing rope.

“Mr. Griz, you give the word ‘omnivore’ a whole new meaning,” Peter said from the safety of his high perch.

The bear then proceeded to entertain itself by shredding Peter’s sleeping bag, rain gear, and spare clothing. Peter said a few bad words about the bear’s mother.

Mr. Griz was tearing up Peter’s new featherweight tent when it began to rain again. Big, pelting drops.

Peter sighed. He’d really liked that tent.

For one thing, it kept the rain off.

? ? ?

HE’D SLEPT IN many strange places in his thirty-some years. His first six months, he was told, he slept in a dresser drawer. As a teenager in fairly constant and general disagreement with his father, he often preferred to sleep in the barn with the horses, even during the severe winter weather common in northern Wisconsin. He’d slept in tents, on boats, under the stars, and in the cab of his 1968 Chevy pickup. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he’d slept in a bombed-out cigarette factory, in a looted palace, in combat outposts and Humvees and MRAPs and anyplace else he could manage to catch a few Z’s.

He’d never slept in a tree before.

It wasn’t easy. The rain fell steadily, and soaked through his clothes. As the adrenaline faded, the static returned to fizz and spark at the back of his brain, which added to the challenge of sleep. His eyes would flutter shut and he would drift off, arms wrapped around the trunk of the sapling, serenaded by the snores of Mr. Griz below. Then he’d abruptly jerk awake to the sensation of falling and find himself scrabbling for a handhold, shivering in the cold and wet.