Samuel was leading them toward the tree line and without another option, Austin followed and emerged out onto the road beside his friend. But the bear wasn’t far behind. While the road was a more familiar terrain for them both, Austin knew they stood a chance of losing the bear in the trees and he was hedging his bets on that. Samuel was capable of doing nothing more than following his friend as Austin took the lead, running for his life becoming quite a frequent pastime by now.
As they entered the forest, Austin tried to recall whether black bears could climb trees or not. He’d once encountered a grizzly in the wild and remembered that had stayed firmly on the ground, but was that because it couldn’t climb or because it simply hadn’t chosen to on that occasion? Glancing back over his shoulder, Austin saw the bear was still giving chase, though thankfully not yet at full pace. It sort of ambled along behind them as if it were toying with its prey, swaying through the trees like an intoxicated child, but one that could switch to a deadly killing machine in an instant if it chose to.
Weighing up his options, Austin decided that whether the bear could climb trees or not, he and Samuel stood more of a chance on the ground. At least with their feet planted in the soil they could always run away, there was no telling what they could be forced to do if they became trapped up in the branches.
“Arrghhh!”
Looking back over his shoulder once more, Austin this time focused in on Samuel rather than the bear. His friend had tripped over a protruding tree root and lay on the ground clutching his ankle. Austin stopped and moved toward Samuel to help him, before he noticed the bear had also seen the fall and had changed its angle of pursuit. While it had been focused on Austin before, it now moved in on Samuel, the man on the ground the easier target of the two victims. In a split second, Austin knew what he needed to do.
“Hey! Hey! Over here you big, dumb bear. Come and get me!”
Waving his arms around and jumping up and down to make as much noise as he could manage, Austin did everything he could to get the bears attention. The beast stopped in its tracks toward Samuel who was desperately scrambling to his feet, and cocked its head to one side, listening to the racket Austin was making.
“Yeah, over here,” Austin goaded the animal. “Come and get me.”
Austin was just starting to wonder whether what he was doing ever really worked when the bear blew a huge huff of air out of its nose and changed its path again, charging toward Austin. His plan had been successful and Samuel was no longer a target, now he just had to figure out what to do next as he started sprinting further into the forest, the bear hot on his heels.
Samuel finally climbed back onto his feet just in time to see Austin disappearing into the darkness of the trees ahead of him with the bear just behind. It looked like the animal was making up ground with each second, much faster on four legs than Austin could ever hope to be on two. He opened his mouth and shouted after his friend, but his voice disappeared into the trees along with any sight of Austin and made no impact on the chase. The bear had lost all interest in Samuel now and was focused solely on his new target, Austin enforced into a particularly deadly game of cat and mouse.
Looking into the forest with his mouth hanging open, Samuel tried to figure out what to do. He couldn’t see or hear Austin or the bear now, the forest falling back into silence just as quickly as the sound had erupted in the first place. Bending over, Samuel checked his ankle and put some weight on it to test how badly he had been hurt. It twinged slightly as he walked, but nothing was broken – it was a sprain at most, something he could deal with.
Hobbling back in the direction he thought the road was, he kept his eyes and ears open, glancing around the forest for any sign of his friend or other animals. Austin had the Glock 19 with him, but Samuel had no idea whether a gun was any match for a black bear. Despite everything Austin had told him, he hadn’t mentioned a word about bears or what they were capable of; Samuel could only hope it was knowledge Austin just hadn’t decided to share. If his friend was as clueless as he was, then he didn’t feel like he stood a chance, bullets or no bullets.
All the beauty of the forest was long gone now as Samuel tried to retrace his steps and find the road again. If he could at least make it there, then maybe Austin would try and circle back around and they could regroup. He didn’t want to entertain the idea of his friend not returning; they had no car and Samuel didn’t even have a map in his rucksack. His odds of survival in this forest were drastically reduced if he didn’t have Austin by his side and Samuel was painfully aware of that fact.
With time and daylight running out for the two men, all Samuel could do was keep walking and hope that he wouldn’t be alone for much longer.
Chapter 19
After almost a week of the new regime in Hawaii, the magic of it all had faded away and the remaining residents of Kauai were facing a harsh reality that this truly was their life now, for
