Chapter 2

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The road lay like a dead serpent in the warm twilight. The trees on either side whistled in the wind and the pinkish-golden treetops basked in the receding light from the setting sun. The shadows lurking on either side of the road made by the invisible forest beings were the only company to the lone Toyota truck that made its way across the woods. Drunk, garish voices filled the evening calm as the four men in the truck with their rifles strung across their arms, bounced over the mud roads. Beer cans clutched in their sweaty palms the men used their other hands to smoke marijuana and simultaneously shoot grouse in their noisy inebriated state. The couple of grouse that lay half-dead at their feet, after a whole day of hunting, were proof enough of how drunk they were. The driver of the truck would hit pot holes that lay on the mud road really fast on purpose, so everybody would fly up in the air and spill their beers and scream and yell at the driver. It was a traveling pandemonium that made its way through the woods. A lone bear cub scuttled behind its mother as she tried desperately to get it back to their den before nightfall. The runt of the litter, the cub was both small and weak. But it was the only one that had survived the attack of the wolf on their den, as it had run after its mother to be with her. As it tried to keep pace with her now it tripped several times falling on its brown face, getting muddier and muddier with each fall. Each time mother bear would come back for her cub, trying to urge it to move faster. She had heard the sound of the truck coming towards them and she knew it was trouble. But try as she might she could not get junior to move any faster. When the Toyota truck came speeding towards her cub, as it tripped for the umpteenth time over the mud path, mother bear let out a grunt along with the sound of a rifle going off. The driver had seen a shape on the road ahead but with no headlights and with ten cans of beer making their effect felt on his judgment he couldn’t care less about what he was going to hit. Whatever it was he was sure it would only add more mirth to his company. It felt like hitting a soft pillow that was accompanied by the sound of a low menacing grunt. It seemed like one of the guys at the back had gotten trigger-happy as he heard the sound of a rifle go off simultaneously. As the driver slowed the truck and brought it to a halt a few feet away from what looked like a hurt animal, he saw the lurking shape of a much larger animal at a little distance that even to his dulled senses looked like an adult bear. The shape on the road began to move slowly towards the large bear. As the drunken travelers of the truck slowly began to make sense of what had happened, they caught sight of the two bears trying to make off into the woods. An evil smile spread across the driver’s face as he heard his friend’s mocking voice fill the night air. “Hundred dollars that says you can’t get the mom.”The woods that had been drowned in silence just moments ago, was now filled with the sound of gun shots and wicked laughter. The mama bear had doubled her speed but her cub was slowing her down. She needed to get them both safely away from this group of hunters. She had seen many before in her lifetime and had always been lucky enough to survive their menace, but this time, with the added responsibility of her cub slowing her down, she was not so sure that she would live to see the next day. Mama bear and baby bear scuttled along as fast as they could but were no match for the five blood-thirsty hunters that had their guns pointed on their trail. The drunken hunters were having a good day, for in spite of their drunkenness soon one of them had found his target. As one shot pierced her large, brown behind and then another bore through her neck, the mother bear fell like a lump of clay to the ground. The little cub unaware of what had befallen its mother instinctively sped towards her with every last ounce of energy it had in its tiny under-developed body. When it reached its mother’s body which lay dying on the warm forest floor, it lifted its tiny snout into the night air and let out a death-cry. It was a cry that dripped of pain, of love, of a deathly loneliness, of helplessness, and of vengeance. It ripped through the night sky, tearing through the air of the woods, making itself known and heard to every creature which had silently witnessed the gruesome murder of the mother bear. It was a siren, recognized by animal-kind but one that humankind was completely oblivious to. The cub’s death cry was a promise of more death. The hunters who had seen the mother bear fall were gleeful in their victory. They now busily exchanged dollars, their drunken mirth making them completely oblivious to the cub’s cry. As the cub sat beside its dead mother moaning in pain, the hunters having finished their exchange, coolly boarded their truck and headed back into the darkness.

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