Page 35

Steph tried to roll over. She couldn’t; her legs were trapped. The best she could do was turn her torso and try to look over her shoulder. Her torch had spilled from her hand when she fell so there was precious little light shining in her direction. Even so, she was sure she’d been right, it was a bear. It had to be, being that size.

Rushed footsteps came towards Steph. Two rough hands grabbed her under her arms, a torch hanging from the belt of the person so that all Steph could see were legs and boots. She was dragged out from underneath the dead weight atop her.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

She recognised the voice.

“I was following you! Where are the others?”

“Just over there,”

Davey replied. Steph had no idea where he was pointing in the dark. She got to her feet and shone the torch on the bear. It was, now that she could see it up close, a huge grizzly. Blood dripped down its flank, matting the fur underneath.

“We were trying to keep ahead of this thing,”

Davey said, brushing Steph off.

“Anyway, we need to go. Goodness knows how the other animals will react to the gunshots.”

“Wouldn’t it scare them away?”

“You’d think! Who knows for how long though! I’ve never used my revolver before so it’s an unfamiliar sound to them.”

Davey turned and ushered for Steph to follow. She took one last look at the bear, ignored how close she’d come to death and pushed on.

They had not gone more than thirty or forty feet when Davey started coaxing two figures from their hiding place. In the torchlight Steph could see the tall frame of Calum being supported by the determined figure of Martina.

“Where’s Roger?”

Steph asked.

“Dunno,”

Davey replied.

“Not with you?”

“No.”

Davey shrugged.

The news worried Steph. She had liked Roger, what little she knew of him. Of course, ‘dunno’ was not a guarantee of a fatal ending, but in the current circumstances not being accounted for was not a good sign. She shook her head. Now was not the time for emotions.

Wanting to feel that her catching up with the others had at least some use, she went to support the other side of Calum.

Davey looked at her for a moment, hesitated and then said.

“This way.”

Contrary to Davey’s fears, the gunshots brought them some space, or so it appeared. For half an hour they encountered nothing. Completely unmolested, they meandered through trees and eventually onto a track. Davey shone his torch – one that Steph noticed was considerably more powerful than her own – into the distance, illuminating the back of a cabin.

“There!”

Davey hissed.

They limped on. Calum was whimpering quietly with every step, his right knee failing to bend as it should. Considering his size he was surprisingly light, his frame beneath his clothing clearly thinner than it appeared.

Steph put her head down and ground out the last few steps. It was only on reaching the porch of the cabin that Steph realised where she was.

“Isn’t this Roger’s cabin?”

she asked.

“Yeah,”

Davey replied, taking over from Martina who was moaning about her shoulders dislocating.

“But why are the lights on?”

Davey stopped trying to move Calum forward for a moment and looked at the cabin again. They had all seen the cabin in the distance, but nothing had clicked. The situation seemed to have robbed them of rationality.

“Maybe he left the lights on when he left?”

Davey suggested, still not moving.

A figure suddenly passed by the window. Steph’s heart stopped. Calum tried to make a step backwards, cursed and then clung a little tighter to his supports. The door opened.

“Are you coming in or are you planning on continuing your nighttime stroll?”

It was Roger.

“Oh, so you did make it out then?”

Davey said, helping Calum over the porch.

“So it would seem. Thanks for your deep concern. What happened to him? Are you all right, Calum?”

“Splendid!”

Calum grimaced as he passed by. Roger raised his eyebrows.

Martina didn’t say anything to Roger. She didn’t even look at him. She did give him a one-handed, single pat on the chest as she walked past but that was about it.

“What happened?”

Steph asked, approaching Roger.

“Oh, there will be time for all that in a moment. I think for now however, we should get inside, don’t you?”

Steph looked over her shoulder, bit her lip and walked in past Roger, who shut the door behind them both, locking it.

Roger handed out towels and made tea. Davey was quite at ease stripping off his wet clothes and putting them on radiators in the few rooms that made up Roger’s cabin. Steph supposed, from a practical standpoint, he had the right idea, although was surprised at how comfortable he was displaying his sodden Batman underwear. Martina, frowning at Davey, sat and shivered in her wet clothes under her towel. Steph was surprised to find that Thomas’s borrowed coat had actually done a good job keeping most of the wet out. Unfortunately, it had done an equally good job at keeping sweaty moisture in. She wrinkled her nose a little. She had been sure that water was dripping in; to find out that she was, in fact, just incredibly sweaty was an unwanted revelation. Pale-faced, Calum was lying on the sofa with his trouser leg cut open to reveal his knee was a swollen blackish-purple mess with a red graze running down the outside.

Despite the situation, Steph had just enough wits about her to contact Kelvin. He began by asking whether Michael had been in touch. Steph confirmed he had not. Before Steph could relay what information she actually did have, Martina took the radio from her and walked into Roger’s bedroom shutting the door. For a minute or two, everyone looked in the direction of the shut door, from where Martina’s fast-paced angry buzz could be heard. When it began to settle – Steph assumed she had either gotten off her chest what she wanted to or Kelvin had managed to placate her – everyone began to relay their own stories of what happened after the lion had ripped Thomas from the face of the earth.

“So Michael just went off to the house and Kelvin was fine with that?”

Davey asked, leaning forward.

“Well, if he wasn’t, he didn’t say,”

Steph shrugged.

Davey frowned and looked at the floor. Steph was not sure whether he was moving his lips, but he definitely seemed to be going through some sort of internal monologue. Deciding to leave him to it, Steph turned to Calum who seemed to have gained a little colour back in his face.

“What happened with you and Martina?”

Calum turned his head towards her, looking at her as if he was just noticing her for the first time. Then he turned his head back to look at the ceiling.

“An interesting story,”

he said before stopping. Steph waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she began to ask why, but she had no sooner uttered the first syllable when he cut her off saying.

“Martina is not best pleased with me about it all, truth be told. She said that if it wasn’t for me, this wouldn’t have happened. A bit rich if you ask me.”

Roger came over from the kitchen area with a bag of frozen peas and some ibuprofen which he handed over. Calum gingerly placed the peas on the puffy knee and swallowed the tablets without water, making Steph wince.

“I thought I’d be safe inside,”

Calum began again – Steph noted how he flicked his eyes guiltily towards her for a moment.

“I cannot say I’m proud, but I panicked and shut the door on the others.”

“Calum!”

Roger gasped.

“I said I’m not proud!”

Calum retorted, reddening.

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t have shut the door so quickly.”

“Quickly? At all! Until you knew that you had done all you could have done!”

“That’s what I was insinuating! Besides, it isn’t you who should be annoyed, it should be her!”

Calum jerked his head towards Steph. The other two looked at her. To her surprise she was not annoyed. The looks of the others suggested she should be, but she wasn’t. Maybe the anger would come later. She suspected not though.

“And are you going to apologise?”

Davey asked quietly.

“I will!”

Calum snapped, testily.

“But properly. Not some forced thing now in front of you all otherwise it won’t mean anything.”

In a strange way there was a logic to what he said. However, Steph felt it was also the type of answer a politician might give; difficult to say it was definitely wrong even though it certainly felt that way.

“So what happened when you shut the door?”

Steph asked.

“Inside the house. Obviously, I know what went on outside the house.”

Calum gave her a sideways look before turning to the ceiling once more.

“I wasn’t especially sure what to do, to be honest. I can’t claim to know the house very well, so I sort of stood by the door for a moment… I wish I hadn’t.”

Steph grimaced, remembering the sound of Thomas’s scream slowly choked off by blood and teeth.

“Anyway, I knew there was meant to be some underground bit somewhere (not that Kelvin ever showed me), so that sounded safest. I had half thought to lock myself in a toilet somewhere but then I would never have known when to come out – strange how your mind thinks in a panic. So I looked for the underground bit.”

“You mean the labs and things?”

Davey asked.

“If you say so. But I couldn’t find them. You would have thought it would be obvious for signs or something to have been erected, but instead, the house just looks like… well… a house!”

“There’s a lift though,”

Roger pointed out.

“We had literally been in it the day before! It doesn’t just go to the top floor you know.”

“But what if it had got stuck? All these images were going through my head of getting trapped halfway down and then some giant lion thing jumping on the top and gnawing its way in. Like opening a can of tuna!”

“But the lion was outside, not in the house?”

Steph said.

“Yes, it was outside, but at that point, Calum’s stupid brain had at least been partly right to panic!”

Everyone turned their heads. Martina had opened Roger’s bedroom door without anyone noticing.

“I had seen on the monitor what was happening. I had planned to go and get a tranquillizer – the right dosage – but then I saw this idiot milling about whilst the lion leapt in through an open window. I assumed Kelvin had had one of his moments again about ventilation.”

Steph turned to Davey who mouthed the word later.

“Anyway, I didn’t have long to get Calum from what I saw, so I parked the tranquillizer idea for a moment and went up in the lift to get him.”

“Yes, but when the lift opened and you had beckoned me towards it, the lion was already behind me and there would have been no time for the lift door to shut before we were turned into cat food,”

Calum said, folding his arms where he lay.

“True,”

Martina said, walking over and sitting on an arm of the sofa and looking at the others.

“So we ran through the house, slamming doors behind us and then locking ourselves in a bathroom.”

Calum turned his head a moment to give everyone a look of satisfaction at the word bathroom.

“Goodness knows how long we were in there for. You could hear the thing outside the door. It knew we were in there but never tried to break the door down. At one point we thought it had gone as it was so quiet. I chanced opening the door and the fucker came leaping round a corner as if it had been waiting the whole time. Eventually it really did go but we waited a long time. Not knowing where it was, we didn’t risk going through the house with all its hidden corners. We jumped out the nearest window instead. Then we went to get a buggy, saw they were both gone, went to get a quad bike and that is basically when Davey met us.”

Steph could see that Davey was about to pick up the thread of the story, but she had a question first.

“One thing I don’t quite get is why would the lion bother getting into the house if it had already made a kill?”

“Already hidden it,”

Davey said.

“Well, half-hidden it, I assume. Sort of a rushed job probably. I arrived back – I didn’t find any more of poor Daniel – to what looked like an abandoned buggy with a trailer. It was dark by the time I got there and there were no lights on in the house which I thought odd. I turned them on and saw the blood on the floor and the drag marks.”

“So you followed where you thought the lion had gone?”

Steph asked.

“Of course, I bloody didn’t! I went the opposite way around the house. I wasn’t going anywhere near that thing – not that I knew it was there. I was looking for a way in on the other side thinking I could get down to the basement where all the equipment was. Best place to get a handle on things.”

Calum made a noise of agreement in his throat. Martina shot him a filthy look that missed its mark as he continued to stare at the ceiling.

Davey continued.

“Next thing I know, these two are tumbling out of a window telling me to turn around… so I did.”

Roger then made a noise suggesting he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“But why didn’t the lion just eat Thomas? Why bother going into the house? I don’t think Steph’s question has been answered.”

A moment’s silence. It was Steph who broke the brief pause in the story by slowly answering her own question. She suspected a narcissistic part of her subconscious wanted to be the one to answer it in the first place.

“Competition.”

“Competition?”

Roger frowned. Martina rolled her eyes and got up, heading for the kitchen area.

“Well, there is competition with the other animals due to the overlapping territory.”

“Surely the cave lion doesn’t really have anything to worry about?”

said Roger.

“Well, one of the grizzlies can definitely hold its own against him. But more obvious would be the cave bear,”

said Davey.

“Exactly,”

Steph shrugged.

“The other night when that lion killed Daniel, it lost its kill almost immediately. The wolves too. They lost a kill to the cave bear. I suppose it could mean that one kill does not always feel enough. Usually, a predator won’t make more than one kill at a time. The prey is too fast, too agile or too strong. But us…”

“You’re basically saying that you think the animals are panicking into making numerous kills because they’re worried they won’t get to eat what they kill?”

Davey asked.

“Sort of… more that if an opportunity is there, why not take it?”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve seen any of these double kills.”

“No! That’s not what I am saying! I don’t mean animals are roaming around like crazed mass murderers. I mean that if the opportunity arose…”

“They’d become mass murderers,”

Martina sniggered.

Steph sighed and sank into her seat. She could tell she wasn’t going to win. She wasn’t even sure what point she was really trying to prove anyway. She decided to go back to Davey.

“So what happened next then? After you stumbled into Martina and Calum?”

“Well, they were screaming and shouting, acting like the cave lion was hot on their tail!”

“It could have been for all we knew,”

Calum squeaked.

“Whatever the case, we bolted for the buggy and tried to put some distance between us and the house. Just a bit of breathing space. It was then I found out they had no idea where the lion actually was and that it could have been long gone.”

“Or still there,”

Calum added.

“However, they also said they had no idea where you were.”

“So what did you do?”

Steph asked.

“Well, they said Michael was with you so I assumed that his first call would be to get you and Kelvin to safety… especially Kelvin.”

“Why Kelvin?”

“He is where the money comes from,”

Davey smiled, ignoring Martina shuffling on the sofa arm and looking away momentarily.

“I guessed that he was heading to Thomas’s cabin or possibly out to a fence exit judging from some footprints we stumbled across.”

“Well, they were in Thomas’s cabin so good deduction on your part I suppose,”

Roger said.

“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, fucking his 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 her hair 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 surprised us if 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 mug of 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?”

“You don’t just go for casual walks in the woods here!”

Davey continued, clearly agitated by Roger’s calm demeanour.

“It’s not safe! You know it’s not safe! You were clearly concerned by the wolves when Steph and I came around the other night, so it is not like you’re blind to the danger!”

“Yes,”

Roger grimaced.

“I must admit I don’t trust the wolves. There are too many of them and they are rather incorrigible.”

“And what about the other animals?”

Davey continued.

“I treat them with a bit of respect and I seem to do OK,”

Roger replied, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Besides, the cave lion had been detained as far as I was aware, so I was even safer. I would ordinarily take a few more precautions…”

“Precautions like what?”

Martina asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Ah, you see, Davey! This is why I kept my forest jaunts to myself!”

“Forest jaunts?”

Davey spat.

“What precautions?”

“Well, I usually make sure I carry a deterrent with me when I walk,”

Roger replied.

“Like?”

Roger sighed and walked over to a free-standing wardrobe by the front door that Steph assumed was used for coats and shoes. He opened it, reached inside and came out brandishing his deterrent.

“It is just a little machete,”

Roger said.

“That thing is more than a machete,”

Davey said, puffing out his cheeks.

“It’s basically a Scottish claymore!”

“Well, yes, it is a little larger than a machete, but then so are some of the animals here.”

Before Martina could voice her objections, Steph said.

“But would that really put off some of the larger animals? I mean, you might get a swipe or two in, but it is a lot tougher to kill something than one would imagine.”

“Ah yes well, I did think about that,”

Roger said, suddenly smiling.

“Really the machete is a last resort. My first line of attack is a concoction of mine. I came up with my own bear mace. I made it from a few everyday sources; incredibly easy to make, very natural ingredients. And then, just to be sure, I also lace the machete in it when I go out.”

Roger began to chuckle to himself as he looked past everyone to the opposite wall.

“The one time I did have to use it, it certainly gave the lion something to think about.”

“What?”

Martina snapped.

“Oh, calm down,”

Roger said.

“It was just a bit of a bloody scratch on the arm to go with some of his other scars. Honestly, you wouldn’t know I’d done anything. He did, obviously. The mace saw to that. The surprise on his face was something else. Not that I think it would work again – surprise is a powerful weapon, but it is hard to garner the same response using the same method.”

Ignoring an indignant-looking Martina and a speechless Davey, Steph asked.

“What was in the mace, exactly?”

“Oh, like I said. Basic things one might find in a kitchen or somewhere. Chilli sauce from those really hot chillies you see on television. Ghost chillies, I think they are called… and a bit of watered-down sulphuric acid.”

“Sulphuric acid!”

Martina squealed, standing up.

“You have been attacking my work with sulphuric acid? You said it was natural ingredients!”

“Watered down,”

Roger reminded her holding his hands up.

“And remember, it was him who attacked me! Hasn’t done it since though. Besides, sulphuric acid is natural. Read a book!”

Lost for words, Martina sat down again. Davey also looked like he still needed time to digest what he’d heard. It was not a particularly life-changing revelation that had any real consequences, it was more that it broke a preconceived notion of who Roger was.

“Anyway, do you want me to finish my story or not?”

Roger asked.

“Yes, go on,”

Steph said, suppressing a smile at the twinkle in Roger’s eye.

“Right, well, as I said, I saw Michael was back, left the house and headed out – bear mace in my pocket but no walking machete. Nobody seemed to notice me leave as Thomas was busy running his mouth again.”

Calum jerked his head in Roger’s direction and narrowed his eyes. Roger ignored him.

“I hadn’t gone more than fifty yards when I heard a commotion. I turned and saw the lion had become a little more animated than was ideal. You know, no longer lying down. So I scarpered and came back here. And that, I suppose, is that.”

Martina continued to scowl at Roger who appeared to be enjoying the attention from her. Davey sat quietly staring at his empty mug and muttering to himself about machetes and lions.

Steph looked down at her own mug to find that she had drained hers as well. It was interesting filling in the blanks of what happened. But did it help? Did it help direct any future plans? Probably not, or so Steph thought. Then again, with a little more reflection, maybe there was a nugget buried there somewhere. Either way, what to do now?