Endgame (Agent 21) (16 page)

A third roar. It seemed to echo through the trees. The dark silhouette of the bear fell down onto all four paws, then began to lumber towards them.

‘Get to the far side of the fire!’ Zak shouted. ‘
Now!
’

Quickly, Zak, Ricky and Malcolm circled round their tiny fire, so that it stood between them and the approaching bear. Zak checked the branches again. The ends in the fire were beginning to smoulder, but they were not yet flaming.

The bear stopped five metres beyond the snow barrier that Zak had dug. It reared up on its hind legs again. Zak had underestimated its height. It was easily three metres high, and almost as broad. Its paws were enormous, its eyes mean and hungry. And when it roared yet again, the noise seemed like it was going straight through Zak’s body. The bear thumped down onto all four paws once again, slamming into the wall of snow that Zak had built and slipping down into the trench beneath it. This seemed to enrage it even more. It swiped a front paw aggressively at the space blanket that was still erected between it and the fire. It ended up in a crumpled heap five metres away. Snow spat up into the air and hissed as it landed on the fire. The glow of the embers dulled slightly. The bear started to pad heavily round the fire, clockwise towards them, growling ferociously.

Zak, Ricky and Malcolm also circled the fire clockwise, in an attempt to keep that burning barrier between them and the snarling bear. Distance between it and them: barely four metres.

‘We should run,’ Malcolm whispered.

‘Run and you’re dead,’ Zak said bluntly. ‘It’ll chase you down in seconds.’ An image of three badly mauled teenagers flashed across his brain. They were face down and surrounded by blood-streaked snow . . .

Zak checked out the branches he’d laid in the fire. Their ends were burning now. He bent and grabbed two of them with trembling hands, before handing them to Ricky and Malcolm to hold like swords. Then he bent down again for the third branch. His fingers just touched the bark when the animal bared its teeth and took a sudden pace forward. Zak jumped back, out of reach of the burning branch. The bear was padding clockwise again. They had to do the same to keep the fire between them and it. Ricky and Malcolm waved their branches in the bear’s direction. But Zak had no such weapon. He felt naked without it, and now it was out of reach, unless they performed another full circuit of the fire.

The bear stopped. It moved a little closer to the blaze again. Zak could sense that it was feeling braver. The fire was becoming less effective as a barrier. And when the animal kicked up another shower of snow that fizzed and hissed on the flames, Zak had an instinct that the animal knew what it was doing. In which case, they wouldn’t have the fire for much longer.

They continued to stalk around the circle. A quarter-turn . . . a half-turn. Zak was sweating badly, but also shivering. The trio continued to move about the fire in this terrifying game of round and round.

Ten seconds later, he was alongside his burning branch. He stepped forward to pick it up. But as he lifted it from the fire, he heard a whimper from behind him. He glanced back. Malcolm’s branch had gone out. He let it fall to the snow. He was staggering backwards, terror etched on his face.

‘Stay with us,’ Zak hissed, trying to keep himself sounding and looking as unruffled as possible. Not easy. ‘Just stay with us!’

But Malcolm was still retreating.

Zak knew it was coming. So, clearly, did Ricky who, still waving his burning branch in the direction of the bear, shouted: ‘
Stop!
’ But Malcolm ignored them. He turned tail, then ran into the darkness.

Zak’s stomach plunged as the bear, with more agility than he would have thought possible from such a large animal, gave yet another roar, then lolloped away, curving round to intercept Malcolm.

‘
NO!
’

Neither Zak nor Ricky hesitated for a second. Brandishing their burning branches, they sprinted through the snow after their friend. They didn’t have to run far, because he had slipped and fallen fifteen metres from the fire. He was splayed out in the snow. The bear had moved fast. It was just five metres from him.

It launched itself up on its hind legs, front paws outstretched, ready to strike. Another great roar cracked through the air.

Zak’s muscles burned as, with Ricky alongside him, he sprinted the final few metres through the snow to position himself in the space between Malcolm and the bear. Shouting loudly, they waved their burning branches at the beast. It seemed to flinch backward. It landed heavily back on all four paws, but it was still snarling and Zak could smell a rotten stench on its breath now he was only a couple of metres away . . .

‘Get back to the fire!’ he yelled at Malcolm, thrusting the burning branch, sword-like, in short jabs towards the bear.

No movement from behind. He looked over his shoulder. Malcolm was still lying there. Maybe he was frozen with terror. Maybe he was unconscious. Zak couldn’t tell. All he knew was that if Malcolm couldn’t move, none of them could retreat. And the only things stopping the bear attacking them all were two burning branches. Zak and Ricky held them aloft, waving them at the snarling bear. But . . .

‘
They’re going out!
’ Ricky shouted. His voice was high-pitched with stress.

He was right. The flaming ends of the branches were flickering. Tendrils of thick smoke were curling up from them.

‘
Malcolm!
’ Zak yelled. ‘
Get up! Get back to the fire!
’

But there was no reply, and no movement.

Zak’s was the first branch to go out completely. It was as though someone had blown out a birthday candle – a sudden rush of smoke, then nothing but a charred stump.

‘
Get behind me!
’ Ricky said.

Zak didn’t like retreating, but he knew he had no choice. While Ricky continued to wave his barely smouldering branch at the bear, Zak jumped backwards towards Malcolm. The bear roared shockingly as Zak bent down and, with a great effort that made him realize how weakened he was by the cold, scooped Malcolm up in his arms and hauled him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. ‘
Walk backwards to the fire!
’ he shouted at Ricky. But his companion was already doing this. With a sudden surge of hope, Zak saw that the bear itself was staying put.

They retreated ten paces. The end of Ricky’s branch flickered weakly. It was little more than a glowing stump now, but it seemed to be doing the job. The bear was still snarling, but it wasn’t moving forward. Perhaps they’d done enough to discourage it . . .

Zak looked back. They were halfway to the waning fire. He looked forward again.

His heart stopped.

Ricky’s branch had gone out.

The bear had noticed this too. It had started to lumber forward. Ricky was staggering back. ‘Run!’ Zak bellowed. ‘
Run!
’

Too late. The beast was building up speed. Ricky had turned to sprint back to the fire, but it was clear he wasn’t going to make it. Zak lowered Malcolm back down onto the snow, then sprinted towards his other companion, not quite knowing how he was going to help him ward off the bear’s attack, but realizing that he had to do
something . . .

The bear was three metres from Ricky when it reared up onto its hind legs once again. It loomed alarmingly over him . . .

It roared.

Time slowed down.

There were no screams or shouts of alarm. The bear made no sound as it raised both its enormous front paws and prepared to go in for the kill. Ricky didn’t scream. There was a horrible, dread silence.

But the silence was suddenly broken by a loud, echoing, cracking sound that caused Zak’s ears to ring and snow to fall from the treetops.

He knew immediately what it was.

Gunshot.

He looked down at himself to see if he’d been hit.

– This is it
, said the voice in Ricky’s head.
This is the moment you die.

He felt like his whole body was screaming as the bear drew itself up to its full height above him. As the seconds flashed by, he had a premonition of those ugly claws ripping into his flesh. He could almost feel the bear tear open his abdomen to scavenge his soft organs.

He tried to scamper further back to the fire, but his legs weren’t doing what his brain was telling them to . . .

Crack!

Ricky knew it was a gunshot. Had the authorities found them? Were they firing on Zak and maybe even on Ricky and Malcolm?

But then another strange sound hit his ears. An angry whimper, and it was coming from the bear. By the flickering orange light of the fire, he saw a flash of dark liquid streak across the snow. The bear toppled and fell to its side, no more than four metres from where Ricky was standing.

Silence. He looked around to see where the gunshot had come from.

The great beast roared again. The sound was filled with pain.

‘
Get back!
’ Zak hissed from behind him. ‘
It’s dangerous when wounded . . .
’

‘But who just shot—’

‘It doesn’t matter.
Get back!
’

As if confirming Zak’s fear, the bear suddenly lashed out a single paw that missed Ricky by only a few centimetres. Ricky jumped away, and was preparing to sprint back to the fire when another shot rang out.

The bear’s whole body juddered. There was another spatter of dark liquid across the snow. Then it fell still.

‘
Hit the floor!
’ Zak hissed. But Ricky was already dropping. Whoever had just shot the bear was still armed. There was nothing to say that the three teenagers weren’t next in the firing line.

‘We need to get out of here,’ Ricky whispered, panicked sweat dripping down the nape of his neck. Zak was lying a metre behind him. Just beyond Zak, Malcolm – immobile.

‘Not without Malcolm,’ Zak said. He squinted beyond the bear to the far side of the clearing. ‘Look,’ he breathed.

Ricky followed his gaze. Through the darkness and the still-swirling snow, he could just make out the silhouette of a person and a dog. The person wasn’t particularly tall, nor did they move very fast. But they were definitely walking in this direction – distance about fifty metres – with the dog trotting calmly by their side. Ricky could just see the outline of a gun barrel slung across the person’s chest. Ricky found he was holding his breath as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on these strange figures emerging from the darkness. With a sick feeling, he wondered if it was the driver from earlier, here to finish them off. But the driver had been taller than this person, and his gait was very different.

A great deal of blood was oozing from the bear’s two gunshot wounds. It melted the surrounding snow. Ricky felt a sudden pang of sadness that this amazing creature had lost its life, even though it had been on the point of killing him. But his real attention was on the figure, now twenty metres away. He could make the clothes out a bit better. Tey wore a fur overcoat, very similar to the pelt of the dead bear, and a heavy hat, covered in loose snow. The rifle that had just fired two rounds looked old, and was slung casually across the figure’s front. The dog seemed to glow in the dark, brighter and whiter than the snow. Ricky squinted harder. It was definitely not the driver. And he didn’t think it was the authorities, because surely there would be more than one of them and they’d have their weapons raised.

When the figure was ten metres away, and Ricky could see the face, he got another surprise. It was a girl, with black tendrils of hair tumbling out from under her hat, and a thin face with a pointed nose. It was hard to tell exactly how old she was, but Ricky didn’t reckon she was much older than him. The dog looked like a husky, with shockingly white fur.

The girl walked up to the bear, which she kicked casually with one foot. Without looking at Ricky, Zak or Malcolm, she called out through the snow-filled air: ‘You’s lucky I was in the neighbourhood.’ She spoke very slowly, with a pronounced American drawl. ‘This ol’ bear would’ve had ya.’ The dog sat down obediently by her side as she pulled out a very large hunting knife. ‘What you doin’ in these parts, anyhow?’ she asked, as she bent down and plunged the knife expertly into the bear’s belly.

Ricky and Zak pushed themselves up to their feet. ‘We, er, we got lost,’ Ricky said carefully. He had the very distinct feeling that the dog would pounce if the girl told it to.

The girl gave a cynical snort. ‘You bet you got lost,’ she said, as she sliced carefully up the dead bear’s belly.

‘We’re, er . . . we’re trying to visit our grandparents.’

Their cover story sounded pretty unconvincing here in the middle of nowhere, and it was met with a disbelieving look from the girl. She glanced over at Malcolm. ‘What ’bout that one? He dead?’

Her words were like an electric shock. Ricky and Zak rushed over to where Malcolm was lying. Zak checked his pulse, while Ricky put his hand an inch above his mouth to check for breath. As he did so, Malcolm’s eyes opened. ‘Cold,’ he whispered.

‘Get him to the fire,’ Zak instructed. They grabbed their friend, one end each, and quickly hauled him over to where their small fire was rapidly fading. They laid him on the ground, then Ricky carefully started adding more fuel to the fire, while Zak tried to get Malcolm to sit up. All the while, the strange, fur-clad girl continued her quiet, efficient butchery of the bear.

After a couple of minutes she walked over to them, the dog trotting along beside her. She was holding something in both hands. Only when she was close to the fire, and lit up by its orange light, did Ricky see that it was a glistening, bleeding organ. Her hands and furs were smeared in blood. She held it out, as though she was presenting a gift.

‘What is it?’ Ricky asked.

‘Liver.’

‘Not a fan, to be honest.’

‘Then you ain’t never been hungry before.’ The girl looked around at the drifting snow. ‘Weather like this,’ she said, ‘you gotta eat. Hold it.’ Without waiting for a reply, she handed the liver to Ricky. It was heavier than he expected, and his skin crept away from the warm, wet flesh. The girl examined what remained of their firewood, then pulled her hunting knife from inside her furs and expertly whittled away three thin sticks. Each was very straight, about thirty centimetres long, and two had a forked end. She dug these into the snow right next to the fire, forked end pointing upwards, then balanced the remaining stick between them to make a small spit. As Ricky held the liver, she started to cut thin slices off it. Once she had six, she threaded them onto the stick. Blood dripped from the slices onto the ground, and the meat began to sizzle.