Page 67
Story: The Rewilding
“Thanks. However, then things went a little wrong. We came around a corner and straight into the cave bear, which was like driving towards a large furry brick wall.”
“Should have run the bloody thing over!” Calum said, taking a sharp inhale of breath and clutching his knee.
“Idiot!” Martina spat. “It would have caused too much damage to the bear!”
“Precisely!”
“Less damage than you think,” Davey said. “Those buggies are ridiculously light. Economical, but not built for crashing.”
Martina ignored him; she was still glaring at the top of Calum’s head as he stared at the ceiling. Davey gave Roger and Steph a tired look.
“Anyway, I swerved and, cutting a long story short, crashed and overturned the buggy.”
“Fucking my knee in the process,” Calum added.
“Yes,fuckinghis knee in the process.”
Steph waited. Roger was leaning in, clearly also expecting more.
“Well, I have gathered that you got away, but how?” Steph asked. “Surely it doesn’t make sense that the bear just let you go, but that’s what the tracks suggested!”
“You read the tracks in the dark?” Davey asked, his tone betraying mild admiration.
“Despite my current forms of revenue, I am actually trained for field work – including tracking!” Steph replied, flicking herhair back and realising that half of it stuck to her damp cheek. She thought it best not to say it was Michael who had made the assessment on the bear and not her.
Davey smiled slightly and continued, “It surprisedusif truth be told. We didn’t really hang about to find out why we weren’t followed. Maybe the bear was startled. Maybe it couldn’t be arsed to chase us despite us having to help hop-along over there. I don’t know. Maybe it just wasn’t hungry.”
Steph had not really considered the cave bear before and what made it tick. It was certainly the apex of the whole sorry project. How that impacted its actions was unclear – everything underneath it was desperate. Maybe it didn’t need to worry about chasing every food source yet. It could, for now, let the peasants fight for scraps whilst taxing them on their kills.
“Of course, it didn’t matter that the big bastard left us alone,” Calum said.
“It’s not a bastard,” Martina sniffed.
Calum ignored her. “It wasn’t long before we started being followed by another bear.”
“The one you shot?” Steph asked, turning to Davey.
“Yeah. It started trailing us as we left some trees. We weren’t going to get away because we needed to help Calum, that much was clear, so I hid us. I sort of hoped that, given the weather, the bear might lumber past us. But then you came along and stuffed that plan right up.”
“How was I meant to know? I was trying to find you to help you. Michael would have left you to die! In fact, he basically did!”
“And what a help you were,” Davey said rolling his eyes.
“Oh, come on now,” Roger tutted. “You can’t fault someone for trying to help others… even if they do end up becoming the one in need of help instead.”
Steph turned to Roger who was smiling at her behind his mugof tea as he lifted it to his mouth.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“What’s your story in all this? You’re the one enigma nobody can account for.”
Everyone turned to Roger who shrugged. “I’m afraid my story is not actually that interesting. I saw Michael arrive back with the thing whilst looking out of the window. I assumed that was that and everything was taken care of so got my bag and started walking back to my cabin.”
“What?” Davey spluttered. “You thought that you would just walk back to your cabin?”
“Yes,” Roger replied, raising his eyebrows in surprise to the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67 (Reading here)
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102