things. It won’t complicate ‘em now.”
“You don’t need to know everything.”
“How about after we catch your bear? Then you can tell me why we’re out on a night like this tracking a bear. I know that you don’t work for the zoo? I just want to know. Why is it you that’s out here tracking a polar bear?”
“Let’s have a little music or a report on the storm. Is there a radio on this ship?”
“It’s still just like it was when we were dating. Why do you have a goat in a cage marked specimen, Hunter? I don’t know. Why are you dressed like a milkman, Hunter? Can’t tell you. Was that a briefcase full of money, Hunter? Money? What money?” She sighed. “Always reasonable questions that went unanswered. Whatever, Hunter. Let’s go find your stupid bear.” She reached out and pushed a button and a local radio station came on. He followed her hand with his and turned the station with the babbling DJ down a little bit.
“I can’t give you the details you ask for, Norma, and I couldn’t then. Not because I didn’t want to tell you sometimes, even though the fact that you felt you had a right to know every detail of my life drove me insane. I asked you for help tonight because you’re my friend. Can’t you just help me tonight because you’re my friend without demanding to know everything that’s going on?”
“You want to know something, Hunter? You never said that you loved me a single time. Not the entire time that we dated. You had to have known that. I always told you that I loved you.”
“I didn’t need to say it, Norma. You always knew how strongly I felt about you.”
“Well, maybe I needed to hear it once in a while.”
Paul remained silent.
“Do you still love me?”
“I feel strongly about you.”
“No. You do, Hunter. You love me. I know you do. You do but you still can’t say it.”
“Listen to me, don’t get weird. We’re about to deal with a big game animal, a cunning, dangerous wild animal that could fool us and rip us apart limb from limb before we ever even knew what happened. Rip your heart right out of your chest and take a bite out of it. “
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“Norma, we need to stay focused. Please. Snow Ball’s a man eater.”
“I have no problem with that. He’s welcome to eat you.”
Paul got tired of arguing and turned the radio back up.
You’re listening to Bobby -the Barnyard Animal- Barnes and I’ve been trapped in the studio in downtown Duluth so long that I’ve been drinking my own urine. And not because there’s anything wrong with the water cooler. Hiiiiyoooo! Stay with me here while I venture out into the storm and broadcast back to you live. Then one of our listeners is going to call in and win a bagobblygoit. Hiiiiyoooo!-
Norma snatched the radio off.
“I’m sorry. If I’d had to listen to any more of that I would’ve just opened the door and leapt out into the storm.”
Paul just nodded. He knew that he was creeping through a landmine with her now. Just one false word.
Norma sulked for a while but seemed better by the time they arrived on Lake Avenue. They saw three men on snowmobiles but they didn’t see any sign of the polar bear. When the men noticed them they drove up to the truck. Paul rolled down the window so they could talk.
“Where’s the polar bear?”
“We lost him. We’ve taken a couple shots at him but we can’t get a good look because of the conditions. He charged us a couple of times. After that we made sure to keep our distance. We followed him to a monster of a drift, like thirty feet tall, and suddenly he was coming back over the top at us, and he was pissed, all teeth and claws. Then he just disappeared. He’s so white and everything is white out here. I don’t know. We lost him.”
“Did you locate all of the tranquilizer darts that you fired at him?”
“All but one.”
“We’ll need to find that.”
“In this?” He waved his arm at the massive dunes and swirling snow. “This is far beyond a needle in a haystack.”
“We’ll need to find that last dart. There’s a metal detector in my bag. Before we leave we’ll find it with that. You have a pretty good idea of where it went?”
“Yeah, I guess,” answered the man.
“Is there something to call you by?” asked Paul.
“What?”
“Names.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m Lester, this here’s Johnny, and this other fella’s Jack. No last names, right?” the man said, referring to the policy. Jack nodded toward him.
“Right.”
“This seems like we’re making a pretty big deal out of a man purchasing a zoo. I don’t really get it.”
“We do what we’re told. Whatever it is,” said Paul. “And we don’t discuss it with anyone.”
The men nodded.
“I’m real sorry we lost track of him. Can’t manage to follow his tracks because of the wind erasing half of them, burying ‘em in drifts.” Lester said.
“Okay,” Paul said, knowing that scolding them would serve no purpose. “Have either of you dealt with big game animals before.
“No. We’re all here because we’re required to stay. Same as Jeff and Frank. They’re playing janitor two blocks up.” He reached around his back and took the straps off of two rifles. He turned around and braced them against the handlebars of the machine. Then he handed one of them up to Paul. “The tranquilizers are already loaded and ready to fire. I’ve got more in a couple of packs.”
“Give me one of them,” said Paul.
The man extracted a pack of tranquilizers from a saddle on the side of the machine and handed that to Paul also.
I brought this just in case,” the man that was introduced as Jack said, holding up a handgun.
“What on earth do you think you could do with that?” Paul said. “If you got stupid and shot him Snow Ball would swipe the bullets from that thing off of his hide like you would mosquitoes. Then, he’d bite your hand right off, along with the gun, and he’d chew the entire mess like it was a piece of bubblegum. Put that thing away and don’t let me see it again.”
Suddenly a wide-eyed man looking out from the tunnel of his parka hood walked up from behind a dune with a portable broadcasting pack attached to his back. He stopped next to Jack. Paul got out of the snow taxi and jumped down into the snow, trying to figure out what he was going to do about this man.
“Were you just holding up a gun? I mean, I know you were because I saw it.” He looked at the others. “You all got guns. What have you got them for?” Everyone was looking at the microphone in his hand. Bobby looked down at it too. “This isn’t on yet. It’s gotta charge for a couple more minutes before I can use it.”
Norma turned the heavy spotlight that was mounted on her machine down and focused it on the man in front of them. She leaned out of the window. “We’re here to protect the businesses from looting. You can’t be out here right now. It’s against the law. Get in here with me and I’ll drive you back to wherever you were holed up.”
“I just walked out from the radio station up the block to see if there was anybody out here. I’m Bobby Barnes the radio celebrity. You’ve probably heard my show.”
“Well, Bobby, I’m sorry but you can’t be out in this. This city has just been declared a national disaster and put under martial law. Get up here.”
The man climbed up on the track and wrestled around with his broadcast pack until he could get into the machine. Norma drove away with him.
“She’s a good agent. Fast thinking.” Johnny said, but Paul didn’t answer him.
“No cell phone calls. You boys carrying our closed channel security communicators?”
“Yeah,” answered Lester.
“Turn them on and leave them on. Talk only when it’s important. We’ll head over the drift where you last saw the bear. You cruise the street one block above, Lester. And Jack and Johnny, take the street one block below. Then we’ll all move up three bloc
ks and repeat. Don’t let him pop out of a drift and ambush you. We’re in his world now. Be careful. Stay away from him just as you had been doing. Call me with your location as soon as you see him.”
Norma came back and Paul climbed into the machine with her. Everyone sped off in different directions.
Norma and Paul cruised along, peering into the whipping snow. Norma reached behind into the back seat and handed Paul a pair of binoculars.
“That a girl.”
She stomped on the brake, causing Paul to swing foreword and bang the binoculars on the dash. He shouted and came up rubbing his eyes. He shook his head angrily and she started driving again.
“You’re in a mood tonight, Norma.”
“Three years, Hunter. You wasted three years of my life.”
“This really isn’t the time, Norma. Come on.” He rubbed his face again and then searched the terrain from side to side with the binoculars.
“There never really is a time, is there, Hunter?” She pulled the pack of gum from her pocket and offered him a stick. When he finally noticed her holding it out he waved it away. “This is actually the perfect time. We’re stuck together. You can’t just run off like you always do when I bring up the subject of our broken relationship.”
Paul pushed the button on his communicator. “Everyone move up three blocks so we can start heading back west. Let me know when you’re in position.”
Three men, one after the other, answered, “Ten four.”
Norma parked at the beginning of the block and waited until the other men were in position and then Paul instructed them all to begin the search of those blocks maintaining a steady