'Shh.'
A growl broke the night above them and both women screamed. The growling increased in volume and moved down the length of the tent. On this circuit the bear leaned in, no longer brushing but caving the tent walls in with its weight. Formless, terrifying, Anna felt the nylon push hard against her shoulder, the side of her head.
Hands-Joan's-fumbled over the front of her sweatshirt, closing on the cotton. 'Down,' she was hissing. 'Fetal position.'
Anna's training came back to her. Play dead. Try and protect the soft white underbelly. Curling in on herself when every ounce of her being urged her to break out of this North Face sarcophagus and run, actually hurt, stomach and leg muscles trying to cramp.
The growling ebbed and flowed but remained in one direction as if the animal stood outside the front-zippered fly talking to itself, deciding whether they were to live or die.
Anna flipped through her brain looking for anything she'd done to attract the animal, to hold its attention for so long. Nothing. Under Joan's watchful eye she and Rory had put everything that could be of any interest whatsoever to bears into the red bear-pack: lip balm, insect repellent, sunscreen, deodorant, toothpaste, virtually anything liquid and/or scented. Even if it was sealed in glass, Joan insisted it go in the bear-bag, which was hung with the food fifteen yards from camp.
The mental listing was cut off. The bear was roaring, raging. 'Holy shit,' Anna said. Her own voice scared her. 'Is it hurt, you think? Wounded?'
'God, I hope not,' Joan said fervently.
A blow struck the tent then and they heard nylon ripping.
'Shit,' Anna said.
'Quiet.'
Nylon tearing. Roars that cut through the dark and tore into Anna's bowels. Joan breathing or crying on her neck. Her, gasping or sobbing on Joan's.
Noise from without went on for what seemed like forever but was probably only half that long. Crashing. Roars. Fabric ripping. Thumps as if the bear threw or batted things from one place to another. Swooshing and flopping. Digging. Bass gutteral grunts pushed out with the sound of frenzied destruction. Impacts against tent and earth as if the beast tore at the ground.
'What in hell?' Anna whispered.
'Beats me,' Joan whispered back.
Soul splitting, a roar broke close and vicious. Blows began falling first to one side of the tent then the other. Anna felt a cut through to her right shoulder.
Blood. Now there would be the smell of blood.
The lightweight metal tent frame collapsed with a second blow and Anna felt weight slam down on the back of her neck. Habit or instinct, she threw her arm over her face and pushed down tighter around Joan.
The animal had gone mad. The deep-throated anger of nature turning on humankind. Then came crunching and a prolonged rustle. Rolling on the downed tent? Burrowing through the thin stays in the fabric? A high wild roar, a shriek in gravel and glass.
'Rory,' Joan whispered.
'Shh.'
A crack. Maybe a tent pole, maybe a peg jerked from the ground by the elasticized cord and shot into a tree.
Abruptly everything stopped. Deathlike stillness. Anna was dizzy with the quiet. The rage of the attack ended as a candle's light is ended when the wick is pinched.
Nothing moved: not Anna, not Joan, not the bear. For what seemed a very long time, Anna waited, muscles in body and mind drawn tight, waiting for the slash of claws to rake blood from her back, the smell of an omnivore's breath before the puncturing canines pierced skull and bone.
The crunch never came.
Fear did not diminish but increased. The fear that if she moved, even so much as an eyelash, if her pulse fluttered or her skin twitched, the narrowly averted disaster would be brought down upon them. Either Joan felt the same way or she'd fainted.
After a while Anna thought she heard the passage of a large creature a few yards away. Maybe the bear had crossed the meadow soundlessly and now pushed into the underbrush at the edge of the clearing.
'Gone?' Anna whispered. Her throat was dust-dry. The word came out as a croak that sounded scarcely human.
'Wait,' Joan replied.
Handfast like children lost in the wood, Anna and Joan lay in the wreckage of their tent. Anna could feel the nylon fallen over the side of her head and neck. A cold draft came in through a tear someplace.
Unmeasured, time passed. With no new horror to stimulate it, the fear response began to wane. Anna's heart rate dropped, muscles unclenched, breathing slowed and deepened. She began to be embarrassed by her hold on Joan's hand and pulled free.
'I've got to move,' she whispered. 'See what's going on.'
Joan thought about it so long Anna feared she was going to have to prove insubordinate their second night out. She couldn't lie there any longer, unable to see, to move, to think.
'Okay,' the researcher said at last. 'One at a time. Move slowly. You see the bear, stop. Stop everything. Just lie wherever you are.'
'Got it.'
'Don't fight.'
'No.' 'Don't run.'
'No.'
'Okay.'
Trussed in tent, fly and sleeping bag, Anna found escape impossible without some squirming and thrashing. An unpleasant image of her cat, Piedmont, waiting in total stillness till an unwitting mouse or squirrel thought in its silly little rodent brain that the world was safe once again. Then, as the helpless nitwit began to creep from its hidey-hole, Piedmont would pounce. The ending was seldom a happy one for anybody but Piedmont.
With each twitch and rustle she made as she turned her body around and pushed her way feebly toward the end of the tent that held the zippered entrance flap, Anna was reminded that it was infinitely better to be predator than prey.
The front of the tent had suffered the worst. Poles were bent or broken but still strung together by the elastic cord running through the sections of hollow tubing that fitted together to form the tent's infrastructure. The result was a laundry basket of funhouse corners and shredded walls.
Without a light, finding first the tent zipper then the fly was proving impossible. Spending more time head-down in the suffocating folds of night and nylon was unthinkable. Anna was not yet so far gone that she slept with her Swiss army knife in her pajama pocket. She regretted that inconvenient sign of sanity.
Then she discovered that the bear had done for her what she could not do for herself.
A long gash had been opened through tent and fly. Resisting the impulse to fight her way clear of the entrapping ruin of fabric, she pulled the nylon open a finger's width and peeked out.
After the pitch dark of the tent, the clearing, lit by a half-moon and stars, appeared as bright as a staged night for actors. When she'd satisfied herself the bear was gone, she crawled out.
For a long moment she crouched just outside while the shakes took control of her body. She felt like laughing and wanted to cry. Breathing deeply to dispel the hysteria, she let it pass. Having pushed herself to the balls of her feet, knuckles down in a runner's starting position, she turned a slow circle, searching the black woods pressing close-surely closer than when they'd retired for the night-seeking any sign of movement or sound.
Finding none, she said, 'All clear.' It came out in a weak kitten's mewl. Clearing her throat, she said it again. Better.
