“It looked like a crazy scene from one of those Jurassic Park movies,” Gertie said. “You know, where all the plant eaters suddenly race off because a meat eater has arrived.”
I stared at Ida Belle and her eyes widened. We whipped around to look back at the trees we’d fled, just in time to see a huge mama bear with two cubs come racing out of them.
“It’s T. rex,” Gertie said.
“Flatten!” Ida Belle yelled and dropped down onto the hot metal.
I dropped beside her, cringing as the metal burned through the thin cotton I was wearing. I tucked my arms behind my back and kept my head lifted, noticing Ida Belle and Gertie were doing the same. We looked like a lineup for handcuffs on one of those reality cop shows. But the burns could be fixed with some aloe vera. Maybe a skin graft. A single bear claw across your body left it shredded beyond repair.
“Why don’t these things ever happen in the winter when we’re wearing jeans and jackets?” Gertie asked.
“These things aren’t supposed to happen at all,” I said. “I’m starting to believe in curses. On me, one of you, this town, the local wildlife…something is clearly wrong.”
“It’s just another day in the bayou,” Ida Belle said, looking completely relaxed. I swear, if she were a smoker, she would have pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
“How is it there’s a killer bear coming right toward us,” I said, “and you’re lying there like we’re sunbathing, but you were scared to marry Walter?”
“I wasn’t scared,” Ida Belle said. “I just wasn’t ready.”
“Well, it wasn’t because you hadn’t found your perfect dress,” Gertie said.
“Shhhhh,” Ida Belle said. “She’s getting close.”
We all went silent and I heard the bear lumbering toward us. I prayed that she’d go past with her cubs, chasing the trail of tasty nutria. Did bears eat nutria? Now that I wasn’t able to ask, I desperately wanted to know. But at least we’d solved the mystery of how the trash cans disappeared. Mama probably hauled them into the woods to give her babies a snack. And with Molly running a catering business at her house, I imagined her trash cans had a fair share of goodies.
The bear slowed and I silently cursed. Could she smell us? Probably, right? Heck, it was July in southern Louisiana. Humans could probably smell us over in Mississippi, and it didn’t help that we were all wearing gloves that had been holding stinky paper. I looked at Ida Belle and now I could see the worry in her expression. We were sitting ducks. Pistols might take the bear down, but how quickly? And we couldn’t outrun her, so making a dash for the boat was out. I could send a text but if she decided to attack, no one would get here in time to help. And where was that rain that kept threatening to come down? At least that would help with the smell thing, not to mention the burning skin thing.
Deciding it was better, at least, to let someone know where to start looking for bodies, I eased my phone from my pocket to send Carter a message that we had a life-and-death emergency at Molly’s house, knowing full well that if we lived through this, I’d never, ever hear the end of it. That whole trailer hitch story of Ida Belle’s wasn’t even going to fly.
But just as I started my text, Mama Bear decided she knew the location of the enemy.
Her roar coursed through my body, making my hair stand on end. Then her entire weight hit the side of the van and she started pushing. I spread my arms out, trying to maintain my balance, and my cell phone slipped from my hands and fell to the ground. With every hit by the bear, the van swayed farther and farther to the side, then violently rocked back in place. It was probably the first and only time in my life I gave serious consideration to the monumental importance of a luggage rack on a minivan.
I heard a worried cry and glanced back to see Gertie losing her balance and tipping to the side, almost rolling over the rack bar. The van rocked back into place and she flopped back on top, but part of her body was over the rack bar. Another push like that one and things would be dire. I had to do something but had no idea what. I couldn’t