Alice Henderson - Voracious

“Noah?” she asked softly.

No response. He was far away.

Each breath shook his body, his lungs not yet recovered from the weeping. She continued to lie next to him, her arm cradling him, body spooning him. Soon she drifted off to sleep.

A little later she startled awake, lying next to Noah. He still lay in the same position, still staring at some fixed point in the distance. Her outburst hadn’t even made him stir. His eyes, dry and bloodshot, didn’t even blink. “Noah?” she asked.

No response.

She looked at his watch. Five hours had passed. Beyond the curtains, light gleamed.

“Noah.” This time she shook him gently. His eyes slowly closed, but he said nothing. She decided she should leave him alone for a while, give him some space.

She rose, straightening her rumpled clothes. Quietly she picked through Noah’s clothes and grabbed a clean turtleneck and a fresh pair of Noah’s jeans. They were big on her, hanging low on her hips, but it was the only pair of clean pants she could find. In the front room, she scrubbed up as much of the creature’s dried blood as she could, using a towel and water from Noah’s water bottle. She couldn’t get it all up, though, especially where it had seeped into the wood, creating a dark stain.

She was careful not to touch any of it.

After a brief, lukewarm shower in the camp bathroom, she stood in front of the steamy mirror brushing her teeth. Her cut looked a lot better, and she didn’t think she needed a new bandage. She gently touched the cut and thought about Noah. If he was still lying there motionless when she finished, she’d go out and get them some food. Then she’d have to think of a plan.

They may have lost Noah’s weapon, but she still had her ability to sense where the creature might be heading next. Was she no longer in danger? He certainly could have killed her yesterday, but he hadn’t. Maybe he was just playing games as Noah said.

She rinsed, gathered up her things, and returned to the cabin. In the bedroom, Noah still lay motionless, his eyes still closed. But the rapid rate of his breathing let her know he wasn’t sleeping.

She stared at him worriedly. Was he having a nervous breakdown? Or just a moment of futility? Maybe food would help. She didn’t think he’d eaten since breakfast the day before.

She looked at his watch: 1:30 p.m. Grabbing the cabin key, she left, locking the door behind her. The store lay just a quarter mile away on the narrow campground road. For a moment she stood on the porch, eyes darting nervously from side to side. But she was tired of being terrified, and now that they’d lost the weapon, she didn’t know how they could kill the creature, anyway. She was in just as much danger trapped inside the cabin as she was on the move out here, surrounded by people.

Screwing up her courage, she stepped off the porch, heading for the store.

Around her she heard the typical sounds of summer in the forest, the chirping and trilling of Douglas squirrels, the chee-dee-dee of mountain chickadees, the occasional police whistle-like call of a varied thrush. And always the scent of sun-warmed pine. It was a comforting smell, one that reminded her of endless happy hours spent hiking in the wilderness. She found herself smiling in spite of the dire situation. Sometimes nature reminded her of bigger things than her own problems. It whispered of ancient forests, the advancing and retreating of glaciers, the everyday foraging of birds and squirrels in the underbrush. Here these animals were, carrying on with their lives day after day. They foraged and gathered and stored, slept through winters and explored the springs. Trees weathered countless snowstorms, fierce winds, and mild summers, with the chattering of squirrels in their branches. They did this, year in and year out. The constancy of nature.

It always calmed her mind, the chaos of her problems seeming smaller, the panic subsiding. Time was she had worried about how to hide her gift, about not having any friends, about her parents’ aversion to her gift.

Today she worried about her own death. But still, even that seemed smaller, just one organism in the cycle of life, born one day and returning to the earth the next, her body food for coming generations of flowers and worms and trees.

This thought didn’t make her sad; it liberated her. The best she could do was make the most of the time she had left, whether that was seventy years or a day. She would live every moment to its fullest, and she would fight until the very end.

Madeline padded along the paved road until she reached the camp store area. A pack of kids rushed by her, screaming and running this way and that, attacking each other with robot action figures. A woman in a St. Louis Cardinals sweatshirt yelled after them, “You all better be back for lunch! I ain’t gonna say it twice!” She piled into a monstrous RV and slammed the door.

Ah, camping, thought Madeline, feeling a little better, her spirits brighter than they’d been in days.

She strode up the four wooden steps to the camping store, only to find the place overflowing with tourists buying suntan lotion, cedar boxes sporting coyotes, and walking sticks decorated with bear bells. It was one of those stores that sold both souvenirs and groceries and was perpetually packed from June through September.

This day was no exception. The line for the register ran the length of the store, and everyone in it looked sweaty and impatient. She did notice one couple, though, happily kissing in the middle of the line, somehow miraculously able to tune out the droning masses, the wheezing of vacationers who’ve spent their last recreational dollar on postcards and gimmicky T-shirts, the whines and pleas of kids who want just one more gobstobber to stick in their sibling’s hair.

A family at the end of the line was buying bear bells for each of its five members. The three kids whined and complained about who got which bell until they got distracted by a bin of rubber spiders and scorpions and began dumping them on each other. She cast an annoyed look at the parents, who were jangling the bells, as if giving them a test run. Many times she’d encountered bell wearers on what she had hoped to be peaceful, rewarding hikes.

The clanging of the bells now rankled her memory.

Jangle jangle jangle up the trail.

Jangle jangle jangle down the trail.

And the real crime of it was that there was no solid evidence bear bells even worked; some specialists believed they were nowhere near as effective as the human voice. As predators, bears exercised a certain degree of curiosity, and sometimes were even attracted by the bells, wanting to know what they were. One Canadian boat captain Madeline had met called bear bells “dinner bells.”

She squeezed down the aisle between a cluster of people eying glass tankards with grizzly bears and walked to the refrigerated section. Grabbing a couple of turkey sandwiches and two cans of soda, she steadied her nerves for checkout.

She got in the end of the long line. Shoppers swarmed in every aisle and around every display shelf, pawing ceramic bells that touted Glacier National Park and digging through bins of enough cheap rings to turn every American finger a deep shade of gangrenous green. One portly woman in her fifties, wearing a polyester pantsuit sporting butterflies, couldn’t decide between a monkey made entirely of seashells and a Day-Glo orange apron that proclaimed, Kiss the Cook.

Frankly, Madeline didn’t see what either trinket had to do with Glacier National Park, but that was her own tastes. In the end, the woman chose both. Madeline pictured the woman’s house, shelves bulging with bric-a-brac and kitsch, worm-eaten Indian corn necklaces and fake rubber spears with yellow and green chicken feathers. The woman looked completely stressed about the whole buying endeavor, graying black hair escaping in wisps from her ponytail, her brow furrowed.