Beyond the Bear by Dan Bigley, Debra McKinney Page A

this was it, she was dead. She was in no mood for heroics.
    “Please don’t go,” she pleaded.
    “You can stay here. You’ll be okay, the bears are gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
    She didn’t want him going alone so she climbed out after him. They scanned the parking lot, then dashed to the nearest rig in the campground.
    Frank and Celeste Valentine, former Alaskans visiting from Georgia, had driven their RV up the Alaska Highway and were spending the summer bouncing between their favorite fishing spots up and down the Kenai Peninsula and visiting family in Anchorage. Colonel Valentine, a former US Army Ranger who’d fished Alaska rivers religiously the years he was stationed at Fort Richardson, had also fished The Sanctuary that night. He’d come up that same trail not long before we did, just long enough to put the three reds he’d caught into the RV’s freezer, wash up, and get ready for bed. He and Celeste had just settled in when they heard all the commotion, first a lot of yelling from atop and below the bluff. Then, not much later, somebody blasting a car horn over and over and over.
    Celeste raised her head off her pillow. “I wonder what that’s all about.”
    Some kids having a party, they figured. Then they heard footsteps running through the woods getting closer and closer, then someone banging on their door.
    “I don’t know if we ought to answer that,” Celeste whispered.
    The colonel felt otherwise. He got up, climbed into a pair of jeans, grabbed the .44 Magnum he’d borrowed from his son-in-law, hid it behind his back, and slowly cracked the door. Jaha and Emily stood there wide eyed and out of breath.
    “Please, can you help us? We just got charged by a sow with cubs, and that same bear got somebody down by the stairs.”
    Colonel Valentine left the door open as he set down the gun, slipped into a pair of tennis shoes, picked his cell phone up off the table, and dropped it into his pants pocket. He holstered the .44 and strapped it around his hips, then pulled a sweatshirt over his head. Although there was still enough light to read by if you had to, it would be darker down below the bluff, so he grabbed a flashlight on his way out. The three of them joggedover to the parking lot.
    “No way am I going down there,” Emily protested .
    The men left her at the restroom; she locked herself in, and they headed down the stairs. John heard them coming and stepped out onto the trail to meet them.
    “John!” Jaha gasped upon seeing him standing there in a daze. “John, where’s Dan?”
    John led them to the spot. “This is Dan.” He lifted the T-shirt covering my head. Jaha reeled.
    To Colonel Valentine, a combat veteran who’d pulled three tours in Vietnam, it looked as though a bomb had gone off in my face. My god, this kid’s had it. He’s going to die right here. He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, dialed 9-1-1, and was surprised he was able to get through.
    “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
    “My name is Frank Valentine. I’m at the Russian River at the bottom of the Grayling parking lot. I have a fella down here who’s been attacked by a bear. We need a medevac down here right away. We’re . . .”
    He lost the connection before the operator could acknowledge she’d heard what he’d said. He tried to redial but reception was too sketchy. He tried again. The call failed. He tried again. No good. Several minutes later, his phone rang.
    “I’ve got the troopers on their way from Soldotna, and EMTs coming from Cooper Landing. Can you tell . . .”
    Again his phone went dead. But at least he knew help was on its way. By then, John was looking thoroughly spent.
    “Hey, man, let me take over for you,” Jaha said. They traded places. John stood by in silence, shoulders slumped, frozen in disbelief. “Why don’t you go up and wait with Emily? She’s hiding out in the restroom, and I’m sure she’d like to get out of there. Tell her what’s going on