Christmas Bear

The bear dreamt of sunshine warming his thick black coat. He dreamt of splashing into the great river and pouncing upon a fat salmon, its juices slick and oily on his tongue. He dreamt of his mate and his cubs and as he slept, tears ran down his muzzle. Equally sad were the dreams of his world as he knew it now. All his ten years he wished the humans would go away, and they did, mostly, but in their wake, they left a toxic wasteland, and the joke was on him.

Mostly, though, he dreamt of the girl. She’d become the beacon that brought him out of the dark. Without her, he might have decided to simply hibernate forever. As he slept, he dreamt he felt her small but strong hands rubbing his ears, stroking his snout, and massaging his toes; as he slept, he smiled again.

Marie massaged the bear’s toes. In his sleep, he spread them wide and sighed happily. It was cold as the moon the cave, after the fire went out, she’d cuddle into the bear and sleep. She stroked Bubi’s snout one more time and smiled as he chuffed softly in his sleep. In her head she heard his voice, ‘Is it Christmas yet? I don’t want to miss it this year…’

She sighed. Bubi would sleep through Christmas again. She got up and left the cave, missing her companion as she did so, he had two and a half more months to sleep.

She stepped outside in her fleece-lined boots, they were cramping her toes now, it was time to forage for larger ones. She shuddered at the thought of entering the ruins again. Her layers of clothing were wearing thin, and the sleeves had gotten shorter along with her pant legs.

Growing was a frustrating thing. To the best of her knowledge, she had recently turned eleven. She figured she had four to six more years of growing and that kept her within ten miles of the fallen city. After those years were past, she could move on. Her goal was to find utter seclusion from people, to exist without the threat people dragged along with them like Titanic anchors. Everyone she’d ever encountered since escaping The Place had been selfish and threatening and crazy. She was thankful she’d not developed boobs yet, life was safer as a boy so she cropped her hair close to her scalp and plodded along ungracefully just as a boy would. If they moved somewhere temperate, Bubi would shed the need to hibernate.

Two miles from the city, she softened her snow-crunching steps to sharpen her hearing. She pulled the crossbow out from her backpack and carried it in her left gloved hand, in her right she held a bolt. Marie climbed the last rise and beheld the ruins another mile in the distance. Curls of smoke rose from six different places over the mass of snow-covered rubble below- it was as if a giant or a god had scooped up the city like pick-up-sticks and tossed them down in a heap. Some piles were stacked, some piles spread. The snow was grey with soot and the sky growing darker as clouds amassed and piled; it was as if the sky and the ruins were mirroring each other, like a Rorschach test. Marie pulled binoculars from her backpack and studied the smoke streams, plotting a way to her destination while avoiding human contact. She spotted the half billboard sign- ‘a-Cola’ in white against dirty red. Under the corner of it was the sporting goods store completely entombed by rubble and secreted away by falseness she’d built to keep her stash a secret. The closest smoke stream that curled and dissipated into the low clouds was perhaps six blocks- a quarter mile- from her secret tunnel.

She stashed her binocs and pulled her scarf up over her nose and crept as quietly as possible down the hill, her ears alert for any sound unnatural in the wilderness- the sounds of humans.

As she passed the huge green sign propped against guardrail that announced the city’s border- ‘Billings’, it began to snow again. She had walked another eight miles through the ruins towards the Coke sign when she heard the soft click of a trigger being engaged.

She froze. Then slowly moved her hands together…

“Stop that.” A woman’s voice, raspy and threaded with age. “Hold still.”

The woman came out from the ground like a trap-door spider, a rifle in her hands.

Marie turned towards her while subtly bringing the bolt closer to the bow.

“Why yer jus a kid. Hahaha! Whatchoo got in yer pack little boy?”

Marie looked down and slumped. As the woman drew closer, the rifle grew lower, just by a couple of inches…she was clearly overconfident. Marie turned to her, and quick as a roadrunner flits over sand, she’d knocked the bolt and fired.

The bolt took the woman in her right eye, her mouth an O of surprise, one yellow square tooth prominently displayed…as she fell backwards, the woman wheezed out a sigh, “ththth-ankuuuuuuu.”

Marie shook her head to release the emotions welling there. If the woman was a scout or a sentinel, there would be more like her coming, she dragged the body back into the hole she’d sprung from, wincing at the tell-tale drag marks.

She made her way to the old red and white sign and paused. Her keen ears heard nothing; her sharp eyes saw no one.

Marie crawled under the sign and found her markers untouched. They were boards and mailboxes and heavy metal vehicle parts, all made to look like they’d fallen across her tunnel. She’d fabricated it when she was eight.

 ***

Marie Claire was six years old when the world fell apart.

 ***

She had not been born to a mother and father but created in a laboratory. She had been concocted like a recipe in a scientist’s cookbook- an ovary egg, whipped up with some gourmet sperm, a pinch of this DNA and a pinch of that.

As a baby, she’d felt the hands of people but had no connection to them, they were brisk and cold and on a mission. Milk she drank from bottles, never a teat. It was warm and nourishing but as she grew, she detected faint unpleasant odors to it…they said, “drink your vitamins.” She had thought, ‘yeah right.’  And as she thought those thoughts, she’d never uttered a peep. But she had waved her little baby arms as if climbing a great wall and kicked her feet in frustration at not being able to will her little body to actually do it. She slept very little and spent her long days listening to every voice and word, filing them away, and then taking the fragments out and turning them over and over in her mind until they made sense.

At first the white-coated people where excited by her electroencephalogram readings, they’d study the printouts and digital screens in amazement, then look down to find her staring, unsmiling, and silent as a corpse. Excitement was replaced by apprehension in most of them…and then fear.

The lead doctor, The Creator, Dr. Manax, was no less agitated by her existence, but concealed his feelings from the others…only she read his true terror through his eyes. The eccentric, curious nature that made him an eminent scientist, was the thing that kept him from tossing her into the incinerator after all those hundreds of failed experiments. He called her by her number, Five-Oh-Three. The others called her CG503…Creepy Girl 503.

She spent her days and nights thinking. She was a brain that longed for her limbs to grow strong and taught herself patience as she was aware she was stuck in the weak and dependent vessel of a baby’s body.

One night she heard the lock disengaging. It was well past midnight, the doctors were all long gone, she grew ever so curious and excited by a change in a mind-bogglingly monotonous routine. Even if it was the doctor coming to throw her down the chute…she’d do her darndest to make sure she took a finger or an eyeball with her.

The person who came into the room opted for the small desk light on the stainless-steel side table over the brash white overheads she hated. The shadow came closer, in the soft light it morphed into a woman in a pale grey dress. The woman smiled and reached into the metal barred, cage-like crib and picked her up. Five-Oh-Three cried for the first time in her short life. Her first embrace.

The woman held her close in gentle but firm arms against a soft warm bosom. “There there little one,” she cooed. “My little Marie Clairessa.” She was weeping silently as well.

Marie understood instinctively that she was not the first Marie…and this poor woman was not quite sane. She also felt joy at being of some use. The first Marie was not long gone, for the woman’s breasts were flowing with milk. As Marie suckled, she smelled the woman’s sweet, natural motherly musk…and the scents of Pinesol and lemon furniture polish.

She tried to stay awake to savor every moment, but her first true and deep sleep overcame her like a tidal wave.

Dr. Manax noticed the subtle change in the baby and relaxed a bit in her presence though the others kept their distance. At two months old, she was crawling…and fast…and always towards the door. A renowned female pediatrician monitored her advances and claimed them to be remarkable. At four months she was walking, and the specialist talked excitedly about writing a paper for Stanford.

The pediatrician was slain by a hit and run driver three days later. Another doctor was not hired.

Marie was sad, she had liked the specialist, and her days grew monotonous once again. But the cleaning woman, Jane was her name, came every night just after midnight.

 ***

Marie’s eyes adjusted to dark cavern-like store. Like the hidden entrance, there were many crawl-throughs in the rubble that only a very small human could negotiate. When safely entombed deep into the clothing section, she clicked on her old-timey battery-operated flashlight. On her last visit, she’d stored a vast quantity of clothing into plastic shopping bags and weatherproof duffles. She wasted little time sorting and picking out her new wardrobe of clothes a couple sizes too large and boots she wore two pairs of socks in so they wouldn’t flop around and trip her. She found crossbow bolts and more batteries and, on a whim, grabbed a crossbody bag and filled it with supplies for a special project she had in mind. She was perspiring profusely- partly from the layers she wore, and largely in trepidation of what may lay in wait outside. She peeked out between a mailbox and a muffler…

…and jumped as something brushed against her leg. She stifled a scream with her hands.

She turned and glimpsed the bushy black end of a tail disappearing into the shadows. ‘Just a fox.’

The snow that was falling was in sharp white contrast to the blackened cloud bellies. The air was thick with stink and smoke and ash, the wind had turned west, and the closest fire’s waste product was wafting over her. It seemed closer than it had just the forty minutes before. But she saw no people during the full fifteen minutes she watched and waited.

She headed out. The farther from the city she got, the easier she breathed. A mile out, at the top of the hill, she turned and scanned the land she’d left with her binoculars. She was dismayed as the snow petered off. Her trail through it on the ground was too visible. Should she double back a way and hide somewhere else? It was getting dark quickly, that she was glad of. She decided to keep going. When she returned to the bear’s cave, she would sit sentinel all night if she had to.

She did not see the three figures crouched in the trees. She turned back to her trek and the tallest man stood, training his own binoculars on her.

Bundled in her new layers, she felt warm and dry as she sat watching the snowy landscape. She did not risk a fire; it would only hinder her darkness-adjusted eyes. She nibbled rabbit jerky and figured by the sky and the nature noises around her it was about an hour before dawn.

A rope lasso dropped over her shoulders and yanked her forward before she could raise her arms. A heavy body landed on her back and held her face in the snow. She felt another yank the crossbow out from underneath her body, the string caught on her nose and skinned it. The weight on her lifted and she was yanked upright by the rope, hot blood coursed down her frozen face.

The man who held the rope tightened it, so her arms were hobbled. He said, “Spade. Search the cave.”

The third man said, “Why, he’s just a little boy.” He wore a white puffy coat with a dark scarf wrapped and layered about his head so only eyes burning with insanity bulged from his face.

The tallest man wore a heavy dark fur cloak and tall boots to his knees. Amidst the hood and thick black beard, his face was skull-like with sharp angles. It appeared his nose had been chewed off. “He killed Janelle. She weren’t no prize but she knew them weeds an stuff.”

Spade came out the mouth of the cave carrying his rifle. “Empty. Gotta nice stash of canned food…and candles.” The pockets of his brown jacket bulged, and he hefted a heavy bag.

Marie felt violated and furious. She was confused as well and felt in her heart an aching loss. But she was happy her friend was somewhere else and alive. She scanned the ground in the weak dawn light and saw no large prints.

“…alone.” The big man finished. Then he backhanded her across the face. “Answer me! Are you alone? And where did you come from? You got people nearby?”

Marie only stared.

Spade said, “Trev. C’mon. Let’s get going. You’ll get him to talk back at the camp.”

Trev nodded and Spade added, “Cave stinks of bear. Makes me nervous.”

Trev said to man in white, “Spook. Take the rope, drag im if you have to. I’ll grab whatever’s left in there.”

Spook and Spade started down the slope, with Marie plodding between them.

An enormous roar reverberated behind them, and the ground shivered as a thump followed. The three turned to see Trev’s head rolling sloppily over the ground, leaving red gore in its wake.

Spook dropped the rope to raise his rifle and Spade dropped the heavy bag to raise his. Marie kicked upwards like a professional soccer player, nailing him square in the groin. The kick lifted the man and put him on his back but put her off balance; she rolled with it and stuck her boot knife into Spook’s left calf. Then she rolled back and plunged it into Spade’s howling mouth.

Spook was on his hands and knees reaching for the rifle. She lunged at him and threw him off balance. He kicked out and nailed her head. From eye level against the snow, she saw his leg kick out again. Then both legs began kicking in a sort of spastic rhythm. Death throes of a man with no head.

Marie blacked out. Bubi licked the blood from her face.

 ***

She was in Jane’s arms. Warm and happy. Not a baby anymore, but six years old. The floor in the soundproof cell vibrated and Jane’s heart beat faster. The lights went out but that was okay because she liked the dark. Jane sang her favorite lullaby and as always it put her to sleep.

She was cold when she awoke. She must have lost her blanket. She kicked it off often after Jane was gone for the night. As the sleep cobwebs disintegrated, she realized that she was still in Jane’s arms. Jane was ice cold. Her head was crushed on one side, the drying blood on the chunk of concrete was black in the dim light seeping in from the doorway where the door hung askew.

Marie scrambled from the body and looked around. The walls were cracked, and the ceiling looked ready to fall. She knew that the little room that was impossible to escape from had saved her.

The bodies that she encountered were white humps like snowmen…covered in red roses, with puddles of red petals pooled under them.

She awoke smiling.

The bear was asleep curled around her to keep her warm and she could tell from his heartbeat that it was just sleep and not in hibernation.

Amongst her supplies she found the cross-body bag and quietly went about unpacking it.

After two hours, her project was complete. She lit a fire and warmed some canned stew and green beans and made fresh biscuits. The smells and the warmth awoke Bubi. When his eyes opened, they opened wide. Then they watered with joy as he took in the decorated cave. Paper snowflakes hung from fishing line; boughs of evergreen were adorned with flowers fashioned from red flannel shirts and twinkled with a hundred tealights. In the center was a Marie-sized tree adorned with shiny fishing lures and glittering mirrors that caught the tiny lights like stars come to earth.

“Merry Christmas my friend.”

‘I didn’t sleep through it this year.’

“I don’t understand that. When that man went into the cave my heart was already breaking. How did you know to wake up?”

‘Your hands…they weren’t there.’