Page 75 of Raised By Wolves

“He woulda made a nice rug,” Hardy says, after they’re all clear.

Chester gives him a dark look. “Shoulder your weapon and let’s go,” he says. “Let’s get out of its territory as quick as we can.”

They move out, making more noise now. If the bear’s listening, they want it to know they’ve got numbers.

“Hey, bear,” Waylon calls as he walks. “Hey, bear, we’re just passing through, bear! Be cool, bear!”

Sam’s jangly and nervous. “Damn,” he says to Chester, “I ain’t ever seen one so close.”

“Hopefully you’ll never see one closer,” Chester says grimly.

“You got that right.”

They cross the meadow. Hardy follows a track that only he can see. The hawk still arcs through the sky above them.

They’re almost across the clearing when they hear a crashing sound. It’s coming from the trees to the north.

Chester whips around. The bear’s charging toward them at full speed. The animal’s head is low, its ears are back, and its stride eats the ground. Terror floods Chester’s body, paralyzing him. Hardy reaches for his gun but somehow stumbles sideways. Ray Farley screams as he grabs for his bear spray. The bear’s thirty feet away, then twenty. Chester’s never seen anything so huge in his life.

Ray holds the can out, still screaming, and fires a white cloud into the bear’s face. The mist of hot pepper extract sears Chester’s eyes. The bear, hit with the full blast, stops and veers away. For a second it looks like it’s going to run off into the woods. But then it whirls back, skirting the billows of bear spray. It goes after Sam Dean. A huge hairy paw sends the skinny farmer flying. Then the bear’s on top of him. Sam Dean screams and curls into a ball and covers his head and neck with his hands.

Chester’s mind is short-circuiting, but he finds that he can move. And he doesn’t need to think. He’s got his pistol out and he’s aiming by instinct.

Crack!The bullet hits the bear’s flank.

The bear turns and snaps its jaws in confusion at the wound.

“Go!” Chester shouts at the top of his lungs. “Go!”Go before someone else shoots to kill!

The bear runs.

Vanishes.

Jimmy shoots a distress flare into the sky—Where the hell did he get that?Chester wonders—and it explodes like a firework over their heads. And Chester races over to Sam Dean, who’s sobbing and bleeding on the ground.

CHAPTER 57

HOLO AND I wake early. We get up quickly and immediately start walking. We don’t speak—because we don’t want to make a sound, and because we know where we’re going.

In a little while, the trees start to thin. Pines give way to alder and buckthorn. Soon we find ourselves at the edge of a small, hidden meadow. A creek runs along the north edge. Mist curls low through the grasses. I feel different than I have in weeks. I feel light.

Free.

“I’m freakingstarving,” Holo says.

The familiar complaint cuts through my sleepy happiness. “That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it?” I hold up my foraging basket, which I wove last winter from birch branches. “I was thinking a nice mushroom and nettle sauté…”

“With trout,” Holo agrees.

“Of course with trout,” I say. “But the fish isn’t going to catch itself, is it?” Playfully I shove him toward the stream.

Holo rolls his eyes at me before jogging away, calling, “Here, fishy fishy!”

I know that this makes it my job to gather the mushrooms and the nettles. But first I have to soak everything in. First I have to lie down in the clearing, feeling the prickly grass under my back. I prop my head up on a tuft of Idaho fescue and listen to the sounds of birds and wind and water.

It feels so good to be back. This is where I belong.

In the wilderness. The sky for a roof, the sun for a lamp.

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