Between a Bear and a Hard Place(34)

She didn’t know how he did it. Flying the Cessna was one thing, but the way Jacques managed to weave the twenty foot chopper they picked up to fetch all the bears between pine spires, between massive oaks and firs, and somehow not hit anything at all blew her mind. She made a mental note to ask him how he was able to navigate those spaces at some point, although she wasn’t sure she’d like the answer, given how much experimentation and weird, comic book stuff she’d found out was reality.

“Nobody seems to mind that Captain America was made by drugging the shit out of someone,” she mumbled.

Jacques, apparently, heard because he cracked a smile, though he said nothing in response.

Claire strapped on a pair of heavy, awkward, black goggles that hummed and whirred for a second before flooding her vision with green light that let her see. Sometimes she hated being the one normal human in a field of superheroes. Other times, like when she got to play with stuff like this? She didn’t mind so much.

“It’s them, right?” she whispered back to the pilot, who had stuck his head out the same side as hers. “We’re not walking into a trap? We may or may not have had this experience once before.”

She heard the click of a revolver’s cylinder rotate twice and then set into place, ready to fire. Then, she felt the rubber grip press into her palm, which she accepted. The warmth of the rubber, the heft of the metal, even though she wasn’t sure why she had a gun, it did make her feel a little more secure.

“Indiana Jones never travelled without insurance. Didn’t someone say that to me?” Jacques said with a grin, recalling what Jill said when she appeared with an enormous pistol the first time she met Rogue and King – it seemed like an eternity before, even though it was actually only six months, going on seven.

Suddenly, just as she was laughing and checking the pistol for its safety, the telltale sign of a beeping radio made Jill spin her head. “Hey, Miss Jilly?” Jacques called. “We got some company.”

“How?” she asked. “There were only the five of them. And anyway, I can’t see anything. Not out—”

A whoosh of air, blasting past Jill’s pants leg, interrupted her. She spun, catching only a glimpse of something puffy, something furry, something...

“Lupines,” she hissed, recalling the name that Rogue and King had used to describe the feral, savage werewolves that lived in their forests. “But they’re not on the radar?”

“Nothin’ is!” Jacques shouted. “Whole thing just went black!”

But then she heard a crunch, and another shout – this the mixture of pain and surprise that only happens when a person hits the ground and gets the wind knocked out of them unexpectedly. Just like a quarterback who didn’t see a linebacker coming straight at him from behind, Jacques grunted and writhed and moaned afterwards, hissing out pain between clenched teeth.

“Som’bitch!” he snarled, the swamp accent becoming bitter, angry. “Where are those damn bears?”

Swooping her head from side to side, Jill could hear nothing, could see nothing. That’s when she remembered the strange thing about lupines, and took her goggles off, laying them gently on the floor of the chopper as she stepped down, her boots crunching into the leaves. Silently, she opened the catch on the revolver and lifted the cylinder to her nose, drawing a whiff.

Steel, iron filings, gunpowder, the scents filled her nose. And silver. She smiled, clicking the cylinder back into place. “You’re good at insurance policies, Jacques.”

He laughed, but was still in pain. “I can’t tell how many there are,” he said as she drew to his side and lifted the thin, old pilot to his feet. “Two hit me though.”

“You bleeding?”

He shook his head, which she could only see because of the cabin lights in the chopper, streaming through the windows. The slow whop-whop-whop of the idling blades deadened most of the sounds around them. “Can we turn it off? Be easier to hear.”

“No way, no how,” he said, barely loud enough to be audible. “We need to get our bears and get the fuck outta ‘dis place. We ain’t here for huntin’, Miss Jilly.”

She nodded. “You said you lost them though?”

“No, I said the radar went dead. Something’s blotting it out. They’re close though, and I’m sure they heard the chopper. Can’t be more than a half mile away, maybe closer. Hard to tell though.”

Another whoosh of air. They’re close, Jill thought. A grim look crossed her face, but she squeezed her gun, feeling ever so slightly better.

The next one didn’t miss.