The snow obscured the three prone figures and the bear, bigger than any grizzly Ryan had ever seen, failed to pick them up. But the fleeing sec men, trying to run over the treacherous trail, were still yelling and screaming. The monstrous head moved slowly in their direction, and the snarl turned into a deafening roar of terrifying anger.
For a second or two it rose to its hind legs, towering close to twenty feet in height, eyes glowing in the storm like beacons of insensate rage.
Then it dropped to all fours and lumbered down the trail, in pursuit of the humans that were responsible for the slaughter of its cub.
In five seconds it had vanished.
“Now what, Ryan?” Trader asked, standing up and brushing powdery snow from his knees.
“See if we can get down the other side.”
“Will it catch the sec men?” Thea Gibson asked, trying to remain calm and thumb more shells into her rifle, her shaking fingers betraying her attempt at coolness.
“Probably,” Trader replied. “Big grizzly can out swim and out sprint and outlast any man ever born over any distance you can think of.”
The three of them stood close together, waiting and listening in the thick snow.
“There,” Ryan said, holding up his left hand. “Hear that scream?”
Trader and the woman shook their heads. “The wind overlays everything,” Thea Gibson said. “But if you say” This time the cry was louder, more desperate. “I hear it now. Nothing we can do?”
Trader shook his head. “Nothing, except go and die along with them.”
“It might come back to its dead cub soon as it’s finished the butchery,” Ryan told them. “Sooner we find an alternative way out of here, the better.”
THE PATH WOUND around the side of the cliff, becoming markedly more narrow. As Ryan, in the lead, reached the sharp turn, the wind increased, blowing whiteout snow into his face and eye, blinding him.
Trader was following right at Ryan’s heels and bumped into him when he suddenly stopped, knocking him a couple of clumsy steps forward.
His left foot slithered on a patch of ice, his right foot landing on nothing.
Ryan was aware of the heart-stopping reality of the emptiness of eternity hanging below him. With a violent contortion that nearly pulled muscles in his back and shoulders, he spun on his left foot, the sole of his combat boot whispering on the ice, teetering on the brink, his vision and brain filled with a tumbling, swirling whiteness.
“Got you, buddy” Trader’s voice was in his ear, and he felt a tug on the strap of the Steyr across his shoulder. Pulling him back from the endless fall to the sightless crags below him.
Once he’d recovered, Ryan dropped to his knees and tried to see if there was any way across the divide. But a rock slip had carved a slice out of the granite, clean as a razor cut, taking away the path for as far as he could make out.
“No,” he said, straightening. “No chance at all.” He patted Trader on the back. “Thanks.”
THEY HAD RETURNED as far as the corpse of the young grizzly, now dusted with fresh snow, when Ryan caught the sound of death heading their way.
“Mother’s coming,” he said.
“Can we hide back along the path?” the professor asked. “Might not scent us.”
Trader had readied his Armalite. “No fuckin’ way, Jose! It comes after us, we’re in a single file. Can’t shoot back. It’d swat us off like flies.”
“The cave?” she asked.
Ryan considered the question. The massive mutie bear was lumbering ever closer and would be on top of them in a matter of seconds. If only they knew how big, deep and wide the cavern was, whether it would give them enough room and options to try to take out the animal.
His combat mind raced through all of the alternatives, weighing and balancing them all, rejecting most of them, accepting just the one.
“I’ll go in the cave,” he yelled. “You each take a side. Chances it won’t spot you when I draw its attention. Soon as it’s real close, open up on it with everything you got.”