Between a Bear and a Hard Place(39)

“The werewolves got plenty of numbers,” Jacques said, when he sensed she was upset about the shots she’d fired. “But we only got one Jilly. Right, so, I think I have a bead on the bears, but they movin’ slow. Movin’ to the east, south-east, but like I said, real slow. I think you can catch ‘em if you get a move on.”

The radio went silent for a moment. Jill gathered herself, reloaded Claire’s gun and handed it back. “Safety’s on the handle. Push it in until you need to kill something else.” The smile Jill cocked finally had the effect she wanted – Claire cracked half a grin, and her shoulders sagged slightly in relaxation.

“I’m gonna circle,” Jacques said over the radio. “Gonna guide you to ‘em, got it?”

“Yeah, gotcha Jacques,” Jill said. “How far away are they?”

“Mmm,” the Cajun always made that noise when he was deep in thought. “Lookin’ like about a mile from where you standin’. Actually I got a better idea – come to the clearin’ where I dropped you. After Lupines frenzy, they don’t rest for long. Over and out.”

The radio went dead. She’d instinctively wanted to argue about getting back in the air without her bears, but she knew it was for the best. For a moment, the two women watched one another, Jill and Claire both studying each other for the first time. Claire was shorter and heavier than Jill, but looked strong – she had wider shoulders, rounder hips, and bigger arms.

“Claire?” Jill asked, as the other woman averted her eyes and started turning the .38 over in her hand. “You okay?”

“They said... they said they wouldn’t let anything hurt me.” The younger woman was starting to understandably shake again. “When we first got out of that building, they said they’d keep me safe, that no matter what, they’d—”

Jill cut her off. “If there’s one thing I know about bears, it’s that they don’t lie. And trust me,” Jill cracked another smile, leading Claire in the direction Jacques had indicated, with a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me. I know a thing or two about bears. Come on, we got a chopper to catch.”





-12-


“Just point at what you want to kill and pull the trigger? Really, that’s your advice?”


-Claire


“They wouldn’t lie,” Claire said. Her will was beginning to waiver slightly, not that Jill blamed her. “They told me they’d—shit.”

As the chopper swooped low again, casting a shadow against the moonlight that drank in the tops of the pines, Jill figured the look of nausea on her new friend’s face was telling her the story. But the girl chewing her lip nervously said there was something else.

“What day is it?”

The question caught Jill slightly off guard. “November?”

“That’s a month.”

Jacques laughed his rounded, warm laugh. The few seconds of levity were desperately needed, judging from the wave of it that swept through everyone.

“Uh,” Jill checked her phone. “Wednesday, and turns out, it’s December, so I’m wrong all the way around.”

With a heavy sigh, Claire fished her miraculously still-working phone out of her back pocket and fiddled with the screen. After a moment, she realized Jill had her head cocked, watching her. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, it’s just... you’ve been out here almost a week, how the hell is that thing still charged? Idle curiosity in the face of extreme danger is sorta my thing.”

“Ultra power-saving mode. Turns the screen black and white. It’ll last three weeks on a charge,” the younger woman, hair dirty, face lined and hard despite her obviously young age, had her eyes crinkled up.

The lines in the corners were from laughing, but as Jill watched, she knew there was more to this innocent-seeming person. There was something back there, something in the background that she had been hiding for a long, long time.

“Is everything okay?” Jill asked, in a voice purposefully calm and low in tone. “I know you’ve been through a lot in the past few days but—”

“Murder!” the woman shouted. “I’m going to be a murder suspect! I probably already am! Jesus shit, you’re asking me what’s wrong, like it isn’t the most obvious thing in the world, I,” she trailed off, apparently forgetting her own worry as the chopper swooped again, and the woman’s stomach looked like it lurched into her throat.

For a moment, no one said anything. The only sounds were the wind blowing through the vents in the helicopter, and the steady pulsating thump of the blades above them. Every now and then, Claire thought she heard a howl – to be fair, she almost certainly did – but that seemed so absurd that she could hardly stand the thought.