Lindsay McKenna - The Loner

The SIG Sauer bucked in his hand. Dakota held his intense focus, aiming for the bear’s thick, massive skull. The grizzly roared with fury as the first two bullets struck his skull. They ricocheted off! Dakota felt the grizzly’s paw strike his left arm. Pain reared up his arm and jammed into his already torn-up shoulder. He grunted as he was struck and tossed up in the air like a puppet. The massive power of a pissed-off thousand-pound grizzly was stunning.

As Dakota tumbled end over end, all of his SEAL training came back by reflex. He landed and rolled, the cold glittering frost exploding around him on impact. He leaped to his feet. The bear roared, landed on all fours, whipped around with amazing agility and charged him again. Only ten feet separated them.

Dakota cooly stood, legs slightly apart for best balance, hands wrapped solidly around the butt of the SIG Sauer. This was not a bear gun, but if he aimed well, he’d strike the charging grizzly in one of his eyes and kill him before he was killed himself. His breath exploded from him as the bear leaped upward, its jaws open, lips peeled away from his dark pink gums to reveal the massive, murderous fangs. Dakota fired three more shots and saw the third one strike into the right eye of the bear.

Too late!

As he threw up his left arm and spun to avoid the grizzly pouncing on him, the bear’s massive teeth sank violently into his forearm. There was instant, red-hot pain. The bear grunted, fell downward. Dakota was flipped over and dragged down with the bear, his arm still locked in the animal’s massive mouth.

The grizzly landed with a thud, groaning heavily as it sank into the yellow grass. Dakota wrested his forearm out of the bear’s teeth. Breathing hard, he staggered to his feet. There were fifteen cartridges in a SIG Sauer.

He held it ready and stumbled backward, stunned by the ferocity of the attack. He watched the bear breathe once, twice and then slump with a growl, dead.

Dakota gasped for breath, felt the warmth of his own blood trickling down into his left glove. Would the bear move? No, he could see the eye socket blown away by his pistol, the bullet in the animal’s brain. The grizzly was dead. Wiping his mouth, Dakota looked around, his breath exploding in ragged gasps into the freezing air. His heart hammered wildly in his chest. The adrenaline kept him tense and he was feeling no pain.

Once he was finally convinced the grizzly wasn’t going to get back up and come after him a third time, he created distance between him and the beast. He saw Storm come trotting up to him. She whined, her yellow eyes probing his. She was panting heavily. Dakota looked her over to make sure the grizzly hadn’t hurt his wolf. There were some mild scratch marks across her left flank, but that was all.

“We’re okay,” he rasped to the wolf.

Dakota holstered the pistol and drew up his left arm. He always wore thick cammies. The bear’s fangs had easily punctured the heavy canvas material, sunk through the thick green sweater he wore beneath it and chewed up his flesh. There was no pain—yet. But there sure as hell was gonna be.

He sat down and jerked off his gloves. There was a lot of blood and, chances were, the grizzly had sliced into a major artery in his left arm. He went into combat medic mode, one of his SEAL specialties. This meant he never left on a hunt without his H-gear, a harness he wore around his waist that had fifteen canvas pockets. Dakota jerked open his camo jacket. His hand shook as he dug into one pocket, which contained a tourniquet. Quickly, he slipped the tourniquet just below his elbow and jerked it tight. Pain reared up his upper arm, but the bleeding slowed a lot at the bite site. Tying it off, Dakota dug in another pocket, which contained a roll of duct tape. From another, he pulled out a pair of surgical scissors, sharper than hell. He straightened out his right leg out in front of him, then dug into the deep cargo pocket above his knee. In there, he grabbed a battle dressing.

He had to get to the hospital in Jackson Hole. Sooner. Not later. Dakota hated going into town. Hated being around people, but this grizzly had chewed up a helluva lot of his arm in one bite. He quickly placed the battle dressing across the wound, then wrapped it firmly with duct tape. Not exactly medically sound, but duct tape saved many a SEAL from more injury or bleeding to death over the years. After cutting the duct tape with the scissors, Dakota jammed all of the items back into his H-gear.

He was in shock. Familiar with these symptoms, Dakota picked up his rifle and signaled Storm to follow. She instantly leaped to her feet and loped to his side. Looking up, the sky lightening even more, Dakota knew he had a one-mile trek back to where his pickup was parked. Mouth thinning, he shouldered the rifle and moved swiftly through the thick grass. When the adrenaline wore off, he’d be in terrible pain. The shock would make him drive poorly and he could make some very bad decisions behind the wheel. It was a race of ten miles between here and the hospital to get emergency room help.

Cursing softly, he began to trot. It was a labored stride, the grass slick with frost, but he pushed himself. His breath came out in explosive jets, and he drew in as much air as he could into his lungs. Anchoring his wounded arm against his torso, he moved quickly up the slope and onto a flat plain.

Dakota could feel the continued loss of blood. Arteries, when sliced, usually closed up on their own within two minutes of being severed. However, the only time they wouldn’t was when they weren’t sliced at an angle. Then he knew he was in deep shit. A major artery could bleed out in two to three minutes. His heart would cavitate, like the pump it was, and then he’d die of cardiac arrest. Fortunately, the tourniquet was doing its job. It bought him time, but not much.

As he lumbered steadily toward the parking lot at the end of a dirt road in the Tetons, he thought it would be a fitting end if he did bleed out and die here. Some poor tourist hiker would find what was left of his body days or even weeks from now. The grizzlies in the area or the Snake River wolf pack might find him first. The shocked hiker would find only bones, no skin or flesh left on his sorry-assed carcass.

Mind spinning, Dakota continued to slip and slide through grass and drifts of knee-deep snow. Soon, the sun would bridge the horizon. It was a beautiful day, the sky a pale blue and cloudless, unlike yesterday. The snow from the blizzard was knee-deep in places. Several times, Dakota stumbled, fell, rolled and forced himself back up to his feet. As he ran, he discovered something: he wanted to live.

Why now? his soggy brain screamed. All you wanted to do before was crawl away like a hurt animal into the mountains, disappear from civilization and live out the rest of your life. Why now?

Dakota had no answer. He’d hidden for a year. And he’d healed up to a point. He wanted nothing to do with people because they couldn’t understand what he’d been through. No one would get that that was a life sentence—to spend the rest of his days on the fringes of society.

His heart pumped hard in his chest. Ahead, he could see his beat-up green-and-white rusted Ford truck. Only a little bit farther to go. Gasps tore out of his mouth, his eyes narrowing on the truck. With no idea where this sudden, surprising will to live came from, Dakota reached his truck. Storm halted, ready to jump in. He staggered, caught himself and then jerked the driver’s door open. The wolf was used to riding with him since he’d found her as a pup.

Dizziness assailed Dakota as Storm jumped in. He shook off the need to collapse, and glanced down at his arm. The battle dressing was a bright red, blood dripping down his hand and off his curved fingers. The cold was numbing, so he felt nothing, not even the warmth of his own blood. Struggling, he climbed into the truck. Dakota knew it would be a race to reach the hospital in time. The tourniquet stood between him and death right now. That gave him relief as he put the truck into gear and drove slowly down the wet, muddy road.