Grizzly (6 page)

Kelly said, "Come on, Allie. Get vour gear together, and let's go, I'll take you down to the lodge."

She yelped, "You'll what? Kelly, don't you realize what we've got here? I've found a subject for my book."

"It's going to be a long night," be said.

"I don't mind. Come on, move. You're blocking my shot."

"Okay," he said. "But stay out of our way too. There may be some real shooting."

He went over to another ranger, instructed him to go down to the station for coffee and sandwiches, and began to supervise the gruesome task of gathering together the blood-covered back-packs and torn clothing that had belonged to the two girls.

Allison, who had been using a boulder as a seat, decided to move further away from the flood-lit area. She lifted the camera and moved around the big rock, into its shadow.

Her foot sank into suddenly porous ground. She drew back at first, surprised by the unexpected give to the earth.

But she had trouble pulling her foot out. Something warm and sucking seemed to surround her ankle.

At that moment, a ranger p!ugged in another bank of floodlights, and sudden brilliance illuminated what had formerly been in shadow.

Allison managed to move her foot. And as it came out of the surrounding earth, it brought with it bits of torn flesh and blood.

She screamed and threw herself over the boulder, knocking her camera to the hard rock and smashing its three-hundred-dollar 200 mm. lens.

Doctor Samuel Hallit was in charge of the High City clinic, which doubled as emergency ward and coroner's office. He had lived here for almost thirty years, and had taken on certain aspects of the hard, craggy mountains which surrounded the town. He was a small man, a bachelor who had never been tempted, a compulsive worker whose attention to minor detail was legendary. He was also one of the best doctors in the state.

His face was weathered by lines that resembled the crevices in the glaciers that crawled down from the big mountain. His hair and moustache were as white as the ice that hung from the rock outcroppings. And, from so small a man, his voice came like the howl of the January wind.

The bodies of both girls were on examination tables, draped with coverings. But blood clotted through the cloth.

Dr. Hallit finished washing his hands.

"Bear?" Kelly persisted. He had asked the question four times, and four times during the examination, Hallit had brushed it aside.

"I had to be sure," said the doctor. "Yes, bear. And a big one. I've never seen such damage."

"How big?"

"Big as a grizzly, at least. Kelly, you don't have any grizzlies in the park, do you?"

"No."

"Well, one of your blacks must have gone crazy. Or maybe it was a sow, with cubs, and these girls got too close. Might even have tried to take the cub home."

"Cubs would have left sign," Kelly said. "We didn't find a trace. In fact, we didn't even find any bear sign."

"Bad mannered sort," said Hallit. "Ate and ran."

Kelly didn't appreciate the joke. Death was a closer companion, apparently, to Dr. Hallit than to the ranger.

He said, "We hauled every goddamned bear in the park up to the high country this spring. Why would one come down now?

"To find food," said the doctor.

"There's plenty of food up there. The streams are brimming with fish."

"Maybe this one got tired of fish."

"Doc, I'm in no mood for sick jokes."

"This isn't a joke, Kelly. Your bear was hungry enough to kill those two girls and eat them. You saw what was left."

"Yeah," Kelly said. "But bears don't eat people."

"This one did," said Hallit.

Kelly shook his head. "It's a mess. Listen, do me a favor. Put this all down in your report? We're going to have ourselves one hell of a public relations problem."

Hallit nodded. "And your first one is going to be assigning some poor bastard to call the victims' families."

Kelly looked at the floor. He said, "I couldn't stick anyone with that one. I guess I'm the poor bastard you mentioned."

Hallit sighed. "It's a crummy world sometimes." He slid open a desk drawer and took out a flat bottle. "Here. I keep this for those occasions when the world is too much with me."

Kelly took a welcome swig, and choked.

As he handed back the bottle, the door opened, and a well-dressed man in his late forties hurried in. He

was slim, with a pale face that saw no more of the sun than could hit him as he hurried from his office to his automobile.

He sniffed the aroma of the good brandy.

"Drinking, Kelly? On duty?"

"Mr. Kittredge," Kelly said patiently, "It's nearly midnight. I went off duty at five. I'm working on my own time right now."

"Oh, all right," said the park supervisor. While Kelly Gordon had effective control of the day-to-day operation of the park, Avery Kittredge had the title on his door. He was anything but popular with the field rangers; the previous director had spent more time on horseback and climbing ridges than he did indoors. But that wasn't Kittredge's style. He was handier with a memo than a mule prod. "Why wasn't I notified of this appalling accident?"

Kelly said, "We called your home and left a message. You weren't at either of your clubs."

"I had a speaking engagement," Kittredge said harshly.

"Well, you're here," Kelly said. "Obviously, one way or the other, you got the word."

"Yes," Kittredge said angrily. "I got it on the radio, headlined in the news. Why wasn't the report held back until I approved it?"

"Because," Kelly replied loudly, "We don't want any climbers heading up into the high country until we get the situation under control."

The doctor cleared his throat, looked at his watch. "If you gentlemen will excuse me? I have quite a lot of work ahead."

He nodded toward the two examination tables.

For the first time, Kittredge saw the bloodied clothes covering the terribly still bundles of deformed flesh. His face whitened.

"Thanks, Doc," Kelly said. "We were just leaving, weren't we,
Mr.
Kittredge?"

Kittredge made a choking sound and almost ran from the room.

"Don't push it, son," warned the doctor.

"I'll try," said the ranger. He went out into the night, and found the supervisor leaning against the porch, making gagging sounds.

Kelly turned away. It wasn't fair to watch any man at such a moment.

But Kittredge sensed his presence and whirled.

"Hold it, Kelly!" He managed to regain his composure. "Let's have it. What the hell happened up there?"

Kelly tried to keep it loose. "We're still searching. But it looks like one of our bears got lonesome up in the high country, and came down looking for some real action."

Kittredge snapped, "I suppose you think that's funny."

"No, I don't. But what the hell good does it do to stand around crying?"

"Well?" demanded the supervisor. "What are you doing about it?"

"I've got men up in the field tracking him down, and we've put R-Three and R-Four off limits to campers. I think he's in one of those areas, and with luck we can contain him there."

"I want hourly reports," said Kittredge.

Kelly scowled. "Really? Do you want us calling you every hour on the hour all night?"

Kittredge realized the insanity of his request. "Well . . . no. But keep me informed all the way."

Kelly crawled into the Toyota. The jeep was still up on the mountain. Kittredge had followed him over. "And keep this in mind, Kelly. After this is over, I want an investigation."

"Investigation? What kind of investigation?"

"We have a responsibility to the public."

"And we carry it out. We've had a perfect safety record."

"Until
tonight!
Don't snow me, Kelly. It's my head on the block. How could this happen? Those bear are supposed to be in the high country."

"That's where we put them," said the ranger. "But remember, we don't have any fences up that way."

"Granted," said Kittredge. "One of them may have come down. Or maybe you didn't do your job. Maybe you didn't move them all."

Kelly said, "We tagged every goddamned bear in the park. Ask Arthur Scott. He knows every bear in this forest by first name. There's no way we could have missed one."

"Now, that's a good idea you just had," Kittredge said. "Get hold of Scott. Get him down here. I want to talk with him."

Kelly turned the key and the Toyota's engine turned over.

Kittredge hardened his voice. "Kelly, I hope you don't think I've been talking to myself."

"No," said Kelly Gordon. "I read you loud and clear."

He mashed down the gas pedal and !eft Avery Kittredge fuming in a cloud of smoke and scattered gravel.

The beast, unaware that a massive search had been started to track him down and kill him, awoke in his shelter and gave a contented yawn. His belly was still full, and dimly he was aware that he had stumbled on a rich source of food that seemed inexhaustible. Until now, the two-legged ones had been only vague enemies, to be avoided and hidden from. But now that he had learned they were red meat, the beast had lost all fear of their strange scent and noisy ways.

He had never heard a gun fired, or seen an arrow launched. He had no way of knowing that these weak creatures had powerful ways to protect themselves.

So, as he rolled and scratched in the first gray light of dawn, his mind turned to the juicy, easy food he had discovered, and his crafty mind began to form a plan of action.

Don Stober whirled the helicopter through the still morning air. With him, as observer, Gail Nelson scanned the forest below with field glasses. She had insisted on taking her regular shift in the chopper patrol against Tom's wishes.

"Nothing," she reported. "Not a thing is moving."

"It's early yet," he said. "Keep your eyes open."

"I will," said the young ranger. "How awful for those poor girls."

"They won't be the last," Don said grimly. "Not unless we luck into finding that bear."

"How can you say that?" she said. "It was just an accident."

"He's tasted blood," he told her. "From now on, he'll be a killer. Until we kill him."

He shoved the yoke to one side and the Hughes chopper banked violently and slipped around the edge of a steep cliff.

Although only two camping areas had been closed off, the word of the killings spread through other areas, and by mid-morning, a mass exodus from the woods had begun.

Back-packers streamed down from the low-slope areas they'd been exploring. In more congested areas, tents were struck—often by cutting the tie ropes rather than waste time in pulling up the stakes.

The rangers, most of whom had only managed to grab an hour or so of sleep, were anything but popular this morning. The general attitude seemed to be that they were somehow responsible for what had happened.

It would take days to restore the camp sites to their original condition.

But, somehow, that didn't seem very important just now.

To a ranger, the rifle is an enemy except for authorized practice and licensed hunting. To a man, they have come upon too many wounded and slaughtered animals abandoned by careless hunters, many taking game out of season, to appreciate the loudly declared right of every citizen to bear arms. Many citizens should not even be allowed to drive a car, let alone aim a high-powered weapon.

But the rangers on the sides of the mountain this morning all carried rifles, and chambered in them were soft-nosed, expanding 30.06 220-grain slugs, which hit with more than two tons impact and blew up inside the body of the target. Even this was considered lightweight ammunition when going up against an enraged bear.

Today, the rifle was a welcomed tool . . . an implement that might save a ranger's life before the day was over.

Not all campers had fled the park. Some welcomed the "adventure."

In one high country site, near the edge of R-Three, two young back-packers sat, sipping beer, and listenlng to a transistor radio.

The announcer said, "Today there's news of another tragic accident—this one in the National Park. Most years, we hear of unnecessary deaths caused by careless campers. This year has been free of such mishaps. But now a double death has been caused up near the timber line by what appears to be a rogue bear. Two young women were slain by a berserk bruin, and the official opinion is that they may have appeared to threaten a bear cub and were killed by the angry mother. Search teams are on the move, and the hopes are they will either capture or kill the bear shortly. Private sources say the young women were so badly mutilated that the evidence points toward a dangerous animal—a killer bear, using all its cunning and wiles to destroy the enemy . . . man."

Tom Cooper, riding Tex, paused near the edge of the clearing.

He addressed the two young men. "Hey, guys. Didn't you get the word about evacuating this area?"

"We just got in," said one camper. "You mean about that bear?"

"Yeah. I know it's a hassle, but we've got to move everybody out of this area until we bring that rascal down. He's killed two girls already."

"Hell," said the other camper. "Bears don't hurt you unless you mess with them. We hiked all the way up here and we just spent an hour pitching our tent."

"Sorry," said Tom. "Areas one and two down the mountain are safe. Set your rig up there."

"Sure they're safe," said the first camper. "They're filled with noisy brats and TV sets at full blast. What bear in his right mind would ever head that way? No thanks."

"Well, mister," Tom said, hardening his voice, "You just don't have any choice." The camper finished his beer can, almost threw it into the woods, and saw Tom watching. Instead, he stowed it in a black plastic garbage bag.

"On your way down," Tom added, "Make a lot of noise. You don't want to surprise any bears. Give them plenty of warning you're coming, and they'll usually move away. They're very dangerous if you jump them."

"Yeah, sure," said the second camper. "Okay, Harry, let's break camp."