Christmas, Pursued by a Bear Read online

  Ryann Fletcher

  Christmas, Pursued by a Bear

  Copyright © 2020 by Ryann Fletcher

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  ISBN: 978-1-9163750-7-9

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  To all the women who want to be Bears. Roar loud, and scare the neighbors.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Ryann Fletcher

  CHAPTER ONE

  Andie gave the last tent peg a final smack with the mallet and sat back on her haunches to admire her work. Finally, some peace and quiet. A chance to get some real shots in, maybe one good enough to submit to the wildlife photography of the year competition. The clouds overhead were threatening rain, and her leaky tent wouldn’t last in a big Midwest storm. She shivered in the cold November air and pulled her hoodie tighter around herself. Freezing rain wasn’t a good recipe for the perfect photo.

  The sun was about an hour from setting, if the app on her phone was right, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be out wandering in the dark this far off the path. She wasn’t technically supposed to be camping here, not with the public pitches near the front of the reserve, but they were all crammed full. It used to be rare to see any campers this time of year in their local county’s park, but some goddamned website that aggregates the most picturesque places for Instagram influencer photos had drawn them all here in droves, packing the reserve weekend after weekend, many of them unaccustomed to camping, leaving their crap everywhere.

  She hooked a flashlight to the carabiner on her belt loop and slung her camera bag over her shoulder. Even though it was unlikely she would have time to set up a tripod for a long exposure shot, she never was quite able to leave parts of her equipment behind. Besides, if someone stumbled on her trespassing tent, she couldn’t risk her gear being taken. It would cost her at least a month’s salary to replace the lenses alone.

  Her worn-in hiking boots scraped softly against the wet leaves, damp from the frigid autumn rain. She climbed over the rusty fence with the No Trespassing sign and spun around to memorize the location. Big birch tree, jagged stump, mushroom ring. She knew better than to go too far this close to sundown, but she only had the weekend to get the perfect photo, the one that would put her pictures in front of the people that matter, and catapult her from the painfully repetitive business of product photography, that soulless, mind-numbing job that made her hate her camera, some days.

  The phone in her pocket buzzed weakly. It was on its last legs, too - but she’d put off upgrading in favor of getting a new set of lens filters, instead. She hoped it would be a text from one of her best friends, Mercy or Parker, but it was a reminder that her gas bill was due. Annoyed, she set it to silent and shoved it back in her pocket. She wished she’d known that going paperless meant they’d always be harassing you for money, even before it was time to pay. Between the check engine light on in her old car, and her laptop on its last legs, she could really use a win.

  She stepped through a hedge of thick bushes into a small clearing, where the waning light was illuminating the dust particles in the air. Reaching for her camera, she hesitated. Dust wasn’t going to win a competition, and she couldn’t be wasting time on meaningless pretty shots, not when talented photographers were a dime a dozen. Andie waited, straining her ears to listen for signs of some wildlife. Hell, she might even settle for a raccoon or an impressive buck. It wouldn’t be enough, though - last year’s winner was a wolf on a ledge, howling at the biggest blue moon she’d ever seen.

  The trees shot into the rapidly darkening sky, all but bare now that the weather had turned. The leaves that once graced their branches were crunching under her feet, layers and layers of yellow, orange, and fiery red foliage. Even an owl would be nice. Or a red-tailed hawk, sometimes they frequented this area, though it was getting too dark to get a good snap of one in flight, despite the cool glow of the full moon overhead.

  Blowing out a frustrated sigh, she squinted into the growing darkness. The app wasn’t wrong about the time of sunset, but the dense forest filtered out more light than she’d hoped. Hell, even just a few weeks back, she would have had almost a whole extra hour to get photos before heading back to camp. If this weekend was a bust, she might not have many more opportunities to get the perfect photo. Winter was on its way, and deep snow wasn’t ideal for camping - besides, it was harder to sneak around when you were leaving footprints all over the place.

  Andie turned to leave, and heard rustling behind her. A big rustle, like something taller than a five-point buck. She reached for her camera pack but the tail of the strap got snagged on the flashlight hanging at her hip. “Come on, goddamnit!” she hissed, yanking at the zipper. The bag flew open, sending her camera sailing into a pile of leaves. She scrabbled through the undergrowth, scraping her ungloved hands against hidden thorns. Her fingers brushed against glass and she pulled the camera from the brush triumphantly, and turned to see what her subject was.

  A huge, scruffy, pissed off grizzly bear was staring her down.

  Thoughts raced through her mind. What the hell were you supposed to do when faced with a bear? Run? No, it would catch her. Climb? Wasn’t there a type of bear that could climb? Was it a grizzly? The bear roared so loud, it echoed through the empty woods. Her racing heart was in her throat, and blood pounded in her ears. This was how she would die. Mauled by a bear.

  She raised the camera to her eye and snapped once, twice, three times. It was too dark, the settings were all wrong, and she knew it. The bear stepped back and looked at her with an almost quizzical expression, before roaring again, rising up on its hind legs.

  Andie ran as fast as her legs would carry her.

  * * *

  She crashed into the fence, sending herself flying headfirst over the waist high rusted iron into the wet leaves on the other side. She reached for her camera - gone. Andie bit back a sob of frustration at the loss of her camera, the way she paid rent and the only one she had, after trading her old one in for store credit. Whipping out her phone, she searched for ways to deter bears. She couldn’t pack up and leave, not with her camera out there somewhere.

  “Fire,” she whispered, shoving her phone, with its cracked screen, back into the pocket of her hiking pants and zipped it in. She didn’t want to lose anything else on this cursed weekend trip. It was supposed to be an opportunity to get the photo of the year, but she’d blown her chance. What in the hell was a damn grizzly bear doing in the Midwest, anyway?

  She snatched the flint striker from her pack and scraped sparks into the waiting tinder in
her fire pit, bordered with rocks. She hadn’t put it there, so it was obvious she wasn’t the only one camping in prohibited areas of the reserve. Probably more influencers, maybe even headed for that clearing she’d seen the bear in. It would be pretty at sunrise. Fire caught the dried out pine needles and thin twigs, devouring the kindling and licking at the larger logs. It was lucky that the threatening rain had held off, or she’d be spending the night in her tent, shivering half from the cold, and half from fear that a bear was about to eat her for a midnight snack.

  The fire roaring now, she set her foil pack of vegetables and chicken atop the grate and sat back on the log near the edge of the fire pit. As it turned out, running from a bear made someone hungry. The aroma of the food filled the air, and the realization that her camera might be lost forever sank in her gut. She’d have to make her way back to that clearing at first light. The bear would have moved on by then, wouldn’t it?

  Curious about the bear, Andie pulled her phone out again. Grizzlies shouldn’t be in the area, not for thousands of miles, so what was it doing here? She scrolled through her news feeds, looking for news of a zoo breakout, but found nothing. Probably a private exotic animal collector, then - someone who thought a baby cub was cute, and quickly became overwhelmed by the immense size. Should she report the bear to the park ranger on her way out of the park, hopefully after finding her camera? Even if it was water damaged, she could get it repaired.

  The thought of the bills piling up on her counter at home made her grimace. Money was going to be tight this month, and even more so if she had to back out of her contract work if her camera was broken or permanently missing. Andie cursed herself under her breath. What a wasted opportunity. No wonder she was still taking boring pictures of boring crap people wanted to list on eBay for more boring people to buy. Wooden picture frames, plain white coffee cups, fake houseplants in matching concrete planters. She did photograph a salt and pepper set shaped like wolves, once.

  A rustle near the fence froze her in her seat. The bear. Panic flooded into every muscle and she willed her legs to lift her off the log and start running, but it was like something inside of her was pinning her to the bark, unable to move. With trembling hands, she reached for the pepper spray she always took on trips by herself. It wasn’t bear spray, but it might buy her time. Or it might piss off the bear even more.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” a delicate soprano voice said softly, as a woman swung her leg over the fence.

  “Oh my God, I thought you were a bear,” Andie said, relieved.

  “A bear?” the woman snorted. “No bears around here.”

  Feeling returned to Andie’s legs, and she stood. “No, really, there was a bear in a clearing not far from here, you must have heard—”

  “Are you feeling okay? Did you eat some weird mushrooms, or something?”

  “What? No, I—”

  The woman approached the fire, her red plaid shirt peeking out from under a thick black hoodie. “Sometimes people eat weird shit out here, you find them tripping out, claiming they saw Jesus, or their inner galaxy wolf.” She laughed. “Or a bear.”

  “No, I swear! It scared me so much I dropped my camera, I came running back here to start a fire to try to keep it away.”

  The woman laughed again. “And you immediately started cooking food, because everyone knows bears hate food, right?”

  “Oh…” Andie mumbled. The woman was right. She was stupid, cooking up food that would draw any bears straight to her tent. “I didn’t think about that. I was hungry, and I guess I thought the campfire would be enough to keep it away from my campsite.”

  “My campsite, actually,” the woman said, sitting on the opposite log. “Who do you think built this fire pit?”

  A blush crept up Andie’s neck. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see a tent…”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I can move if you want me to.”

  “Nah.”

  The tense silence was heavy in the air, but the warm glow of the fire showed off the woman’s high cheekbones and petite figure, a beautiful face in stark contrast with her torn up hoodie and muddy hiking boots. She looked like she should be on a glossy magazine cover, not traipsing through the woods in the dark.

  “Did you… um… should I… do you want some of my dinner?” Andie offered.

  “Yeah, that would be great, actually.”

  “I’m Andie,” she said, tossing the next day’s foil pack on the fire. She’d worry about tomorrow’s dinner later.

  “Cat.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “No. Some folks do, but I don’t.” Cat shifted, stretching her legs out in front of her. “You better not rat those people out to the park ranger, by the way. Just leave them alone.”

  “I’m hardly about to narc on illegal reserve camping, given I literally climbed over a ‘No Trespassing’ sign to set up here.”

  “Fucking rangers,” Cat grumbled. “They stomp around out here, disturbing all the wildlife, telling people like you and me we can’t camp in the forest, public land, meanwhile the pitches are packed full of assholes who can’t manage to throw their garbage away, but no one ever says a damn thing to them.”

  “I know, right? It’s nuts. Here I am just trying to do my job, and I’m debating if I should even bother reporting seeing a bear to the ranger because I know they’ll get pissy that I was even camping this far off the trail.”

  Cat eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not with the hunting and fishing department, are you?”

  “No, I’m a wildlife photographer.” That wasn’t strictly true, not yet anyway.

  “Did you get any pictures of the bear?”

  Andie shook her head. “Too dark. Besides, I dropped my camera, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to find it.”

  “Not even, say, a blurry outline? Nothing that might prove there’s a bear out here?”

  “I’d have to look at the SD card, but no, probably not.”

  Cat took one of the foil packs off the fire with a large stick and plopped it into the dirt to cool. “That’s a shame about your camera.”

  “Yeah, if I can’t find it, I’m screwed. I have contract work next week to photograph some shelving, and if I can’t find it, or it’s broken, it’s gonna be hard to make rent this month.”

  “Shelving? I thought you were a wildlife photographer.”

  Busted, Andie thought. “Well, more of an aspiring one, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering what the hell a wildlife photographer was doing in a Midwest park reserve, and not, you know, out in Yellowstone, or up in Denali, or something.” Cat smirked. “You might find some actual bears in those parks.”

  “It’s so expensive to travel when you’re not being sponsored, or you don’t know if you’ll be able to sell the pictures.” Andie sighed. “Truth is, I’m kind of a nobody.”

  “Aren’t we all? Anyway, I couldn’t name a single wildlife photographer. Who knows, maybe you accidentally got an amazing shot of that imaginary bear you saw.”

  “I did see a bear!”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it will go eat all the jerks having a rave in the parking lot.” Cat picked up the foil pack and peeled it open. “Funny how the rangers never do anything about that.”

  “You really don’t like park rangers, do you?”

  Cat scowled, her mouth full of food. “No.”

  “What are you, some kind of… anti-government libertarian?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Let’s just say there are no current or future political parties that would represent the issues that most affect me.”

  “What kind of issues?” Andie pressed, her years in student government coming back to haunt her.

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s rude to talk politics?”

  “I just feel like its something that affects all of us.”

&
nbsp; Cat crumpled up the now empty foil and set it into the zipped trash bag tied to the supply pack. “What next, are you going to grill me about religion, too? Is this how you make all your friends?”

  “Sorry,” Andie mumbled. She didn’t really have many friends to speak of, and maybe this was why. “Just curious.”

  “Are you going to eat that?” Cat asked, pointing at the smoking foil pack still on the fire.

  “Er—yeah, I had planned on it.”

  “Well, you’d better get it off the fire then,” she replied, disappointed, sitting back on the bench.

  “Sorry, I don’t bring that much out with me.” She wasn’t about to mention that Cat had just eaten tomorrow’s dinner. “There’s some granola in the pack, though.”

  Cat brightened. “Great!” She dove into the pack and came out with the big bag of granola, and began to funnel it into her mouth.

  “Weren’t you planning on camping out here this weekend? Where’s all your stuff?”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot to bring anything with you?”

  Cat set down the bag, now mostly empty. “Yup. Lucky for me you’re out here, right?”

  “Sure.” Andie took a bite of her slightly charred food and let the warmth radiate through her chest. Damn, it really was getting cold in these woods this time of year. “So what do you do?”

  “Do you always interrogate strangers?”

  “You know what my job is.”

  Cat shrugged. “Bit of this, bit of that. Not everyone’s life is centered on a career, you know.”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Asking people about their jobs is a quick way to make them feel shitty about where they’re at in life.”

  “Sorry,” Andie apologized again, aware it was her fourth apology since meeting Cat. This really wasn’t going well at all. “Hobbies?” she tried.

  “I am an amateur horticulturist!” Cat replied enthusiastically.

  “Oh, plants.”

  “What do you mean, ‘oh, plants?’ Plants represent the basic building blocks of life, they’re so incredibly diverse and fascinating, and—and that’s why I’m out here this weekend, actually. I’m researching some threatened species, like the yellow dogtooth violet, also known as the trout lily, which is probably more apt since it’s not actually a violet, I’m hoping to find some to relocate to safer areas where they won’t be stepped on by the half-ripe avocado dense-heads we have running around these woods.”