The Icarus Effect Read online

  The Icarus Effect

  MP MacDougall

  Nick Thacker

  Contents

  1. Ursus Horribilis

  2. Amisso Patre

  3. Iter in Principio

  4. Princeps Fugae

  5. Super Alis ex Cera

  6. Igne Iudicii

  7. Ex Cinere

  8. Non Bene Factum

  9. Intemerata

  10. Mirum Ursi

  Want More?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  The Enigma Strain

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Afterword

  About the Authors

  Also by MP MacDougall

  Also By Nick Thacker

  1

  Ursus Horribilis

  Buffalo Woman Lake

  Glacier National Park

  Spring 2001

  The sow grizzly moved slowly through the underbrush, her broad head swaying back and forth, nose constantly sampling and categorizing a thousand scents on the ever-shifting breeze. Her two-year old cub frolicked nearby, kicking up a racket in the underbrush as he overturned logs, chased butterflies, and gnawed on anything within his reach. He paid no attention to the wind, scampering around his mother in circles and giving her fits as she struggled to keep the wind in her face while keeping her cub safely at her back. The sow sniffed the air again, then cautiously lowered her head to feed on some berries from a low bush.

  A sudden startled cough from her cub snapped her head up. She looked across the clearing in the cub’s direction, and saw a young human standing not three strides away from her cub. The human had his back to her. The cub was standing still, head cocked to one side, trying to look past the human to his mother, looking for reassurance. Then the human took a step in the cub’s direction.

  Instinct told the sow that humans were to be given a wide berth. She knew they could be dangerous, and though she’d seen many of them in her life, she’d never been this close to one. She’d always gone the other way, fast, any time she smelled them. But this was different. This one was dangerously close to her only cub, and moving closer. The sow ignored the warning tugging at her flight instinct, and charged.

  She burst from the brush and crossed the clearing in a blur of hair and teeth, the only sound a low, guttural ooorrh-uh that escaped from deep in her throat right before she hit the child full in the back and sent him sprawling, the momentum of her charge carrying her past. The child let out a yelp as he went down, and before she could spin around to face him again, he caught his breath and let out a high pitched cry that sounded like a dying rabbit.

  The sow grunted and charged again.

  Johnson Bennett had brought his two sons on the camping trip as a means of drawing closer to them, but at the moment he felt they were further apart than ever. Harvey, his oldest at nineteen, was already a decade past the stage of thinking that his father was bigger and stronger than anyone on the planet, but he was still years short of outgrowing the teenage tendency toward open disdain for his parents. Harvey tended toward long periods of silence peppered with conversations that were little more than one-word responses on his part, no matter how hard his parents tried to engage him. He carried himself with an air of self-assurance that bordered on surliness, behaving as if being around his parents was an act of self-sacrifice and patient suffering worthy of a medal.

  Harvey’s little brother Zach was another story. Nine years old, he idolized his older brother and still looked to his mom for love and comfort, but he always seemed a little guarded around Johnson. Zach was timid where Harvey was confident, but the younger brother watched the older with an unrestrained sense of awe, always hoping for a chance to win his approval.

  Johnson didn’t really mind that so much. He knew that both of his sons were good kids, and a lot of parents had much worse problems than his. But his own difficulty in relating to his sons in a meaningful way left him feeling slightly hurt that Zach looked up to him less than he did to Harvey. During the two-day hike in to Buffalo Woman Lake, Zach had been in constant motion, chattering to Harvey about all the things they could do when they arrived.

  “Do you wanna go swimming, Harvey? I’M gonna go swimming! I’m gonna swim across the lake. Do you wanna come with me?”

  “I wanna cut down a tree, Harvey. You wanna help me?”

  “Maybe we should climb a mountain, Harvey. You wanna climb a mountain?”

  “I bet I can dig a cave, Harvey. You can help me if you want!”

  And on, and on.

  Harvey had plodded along, mostly ignoring Zach, or responding with single syllables or the occasional bored grunt. He was never openly hostile toward Zach, but he didn’t go out of his way to hide his disdain, either.

  Johnson couldn’t help wondering if every parent of teenaged boys went through this, or if there was something specifically wrong with just him. His job kept him away from the boys more than he liked, and he had little doubt that his extended absences were hurting his relationship with them. Now he was trying to compensate by being more permissive; he allowed Zach to roam as far as the boy’s inner caution allowed, and he hadn’t bothered to ask Harvey to help with setting up camp. As soon as they’d arrived at the campsite, Harvey had wandered down to the lake and started idly skipping rocks across the glassy surface, while Zach had headed toward a small clearing south of camp.

  “Stay in sight of us, Zach,” Johnson had cautioned.

  Zach hadn’t answered. He wandered away on a random track, swatting at butterflies with a long stick.

  Harvey’s bad attitude is rubbing off, Johnson thought. He sighed as he dropped his pack and stretched his back. This might be a long weekend.

  Minutes later, Johnson was setting up their tent when a piercing shriek came from Zach’s direction. Johnson looked up, horrified to realize that Zach was nowhere in sight. He jumped up and started running, not thinking, just bent on getting to his son right away. In his rush he ran right past his rifle, strapped to his pack next to the abandoned tent.

  Harvey’s response to Zach’s first scream was less urgent. Little goof probably got stung by a bee, he scoffed inwardly, flinging another rock across the water. This trip is gonna be one long babysitting job…

  Then Zach screamed again.

  This time, Harvey looked up. He was just in time to see his dad vanish into the brush at a dead run, heading away from camp. Something in the urgency of his dad’s movement made the small hairs at the back of Harvey’s neck stand up. He had a sudden feeling of dread, drawing him against his will to follow his dad, to see what was wrong, in spite of an almost visceral fear of what that might be. He took a few uncertain steps away from the water, not sure what he should do. Then his dad’s voice boomed out, deep, commanding and full of threat.

  “HEY, BEAR!! HEY!!”

  Harvey’s reluctance vanished in an instant. An unbidden picture of a massive, angry bear dragging Zach off into the woods by his head leapt into his mind as he sprinted up the slope in the direction of the noise. Zach screamed again, followed by his dad’s voice, shouting, drawing attention away from the boy.

  “HEY BEAR! OVER HERE!! HEY!!”

  Harvey reached their campsite. His legs felt like he was running in knee-deep mud. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t seem to make them move faster. Panic was welling up from his gut, threatening his resolve, screaming at him to run the other way. He almost didn’t notice his dad’s rifle as he passed, but when he saw it out of the corner of his eye, he grabbed it without breaking stride. It was still tied to his dad’s pack. Harvey struggled to get the we
apon free as he ran, scattering food and gear from the open pack as he went, hoping and praying that it was already loaded.

  His dad was still shouting, but now his voice was full of fear and exertion, his cries nearly drowned out by a low, vicious growling and the sickening noise of a huge predator wrestling with its prey. Zach’s screams had gone up a couple of octaves, each note broken by a short intake of breath, the intervals combining in a rapid staccato of terror. Harvey tripped, barely managing to keep the muzzle of the rifle from driving into the dirt. He smashed his knee and ribs against a downed sapling as he fell. Struggling to his feet, he finally separated the rifle from the pack. Flinging the pack away, he kept running.

  His dad had stopped shouting. Harvey couldn’t hear Zach any more, either - the sudden absence of human noise was unnerving in a very primal, frightening way. All he could hear now was a heavy, whoof, whoof of breathing and growling, mixed with the sound of rustling brush and snapping twigs. Harvey’s mind suddenly brought up an unbidden abstract picture of a cartoon bull, snorting and pawing the ground, while a wholly unconcerned Bugs Bunny directed sarcastic comments at it. A detached part of his mind was saying, That’s weird, in a strange, dreamlike way. Everything seemed crazily surreal all of a sudden.

  Then he broke into the clearing.

  The scene was chaotic, but for a moment it seemed frozen, like someone had hit a pause button on a movie. Harvey took it in all at once, his hyper-alert mind cataloging everything in vivid detail. On the far side of the clearing, a good-sized grizzly cub stood on uncertain feet, staring at him with its tiny brown eyes. Twenty feet away to Harvey’s right, Zach lay curled in a ball on his side, his eyes staring into space, his breathing coming in rapid gasps through his gaping mouth. His face looked like it had been frozen in mid-scream.

  To Harvey’s right, another bear, much larger, stood over the limp, mangled remains of his dad. Johnson Bennett’s head was clamped firmly in the bear’s jaws, and there was blood everywhere. Harvey’s hindbrain told him this was the mother, and filled in the details of what must have happened as best as raw animal instinct could. Zach surprised sow and cub, Dad came running, sow killed dad. Simple.

  The sow snorted, but didn’t let go of Johnson’s head. She stared at Harvey, every muscle in her body tensed. An ominous, guttural snarl came from somewhere deep in her belly. Harvey noticed the collar on his dad’s shirt fluttering with the force of the bear’s expelled breath.

  Harvey wanted to scream, or cry, or puke, but he was pretty sure none of those would help. Watching his dad’s lifeless body under the bear’s legs left him feeling utterly alone. What will Mom say? he wondered. Who will take care of the family? What if Zach can’t walk? How will we get home? For some reason, Harvey couldn’t stop the stream of mental questions from flowing. He was sinking into despair and panic.

  Then the bear whoofed again, loud. Harvey looked at her as she abruptly opened her mouth. His dad’s head and shoulders, released from the powerful jaws, sagged to the ground between the bear’s front paws. Harvey was transfixed, staring into the bear’s eyes and wondering what now?!? when he thought he saw his dad’s chest rise and fall. He took his eyes off the bear’s for a split second to look closer.

  Yes! There it went again! Johnson Bennett was still breathing. Harvey was astonished. The amount of blood and the visible damage to his dad’s body clearly meant that he should have been dead, but he was still breathing. Maybe it’ll be all right after all…

  Harvey looked back up at the bear. She was already halfway across the clearing, coming at him fast. He hadn’t even noticed her move, and she was almost on top of him. He fumbled with the bolt on the rifle, getting it halfway open, then catching himself before he ejected a live round in his excitement. He slapped the bolt closed again and yanked the butt stock to his shoulder. He didn’t have time to aim. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had - the iron sights on the rifle were completely filled with snarling bear face. Harvey couldn’t have missed if he’d tried. He pulled the trigger.

  And nothing happened.

  He realized in horror that the safety was still on, and as he struggled to flick it off, he inadvertently lowered the muzzle a couple of inches. He fumbled around, finally managing to flip the selector to FIRE, but he didn’t have time to raise the muzzle again.

  The bear plowed into him, and the rifle went off.

  When Harvey woke, his mouth tasted like copper, and his head was pounding. It took a moment to remember what had happened, and once he did, he had no idea how much time had passed since. All he remembered was struggling with the safety on his dad’s rifle, then his vision had been suddenly filled with snarling, slobbering, angry bear. Then everything had gone black.

  Harvey levered himself up onto one elbow and looked around, his eyes almost level with the top of the tall meadow grass. Zach was still lying motionless in the grass off to his right. His dad hadn’t moved either, but Harvey had a foggy recollection that he’d still been breathing right before the bear charged. He needed to get to Dad and figure out how badly he was hurt. Harvey sat up slowly, then got to his knees and stood. The world suddenly spun around him, and he collapsed again, vomiting in the long grass. His head was really pounding now, and the wave of nausea had left him feeling weak. Touching the back of his head, his hand came back covered in blood and dirt. He rolled over onto his back and took a few ragged breaths. His head cleared slightly, before a terrible thought occurred.

  Where’s the bear?

  Ignoring the pain and nausea, Harvey forced himself to his knees again. He listened carefully. There was only the steady drone of insects, and the slight sighing of wind through the trees above. The sun was warm, but there was no comfort in it. Harvey was gathering his nerve to try standing again when he heard the breathing.

  It came in slow, drawn-out puffs, like an old steam engine sitting at a railway station, letting off excess pressure while it waited for someone to pour the coals to it. By the sound of it, the bear couldn’t be far off. The fear rose up again, unbidden, clamping Harvey’s heart in a vise. He felt frozen to the spot.

  He flicked his eyes back and forth over the clearing, frantically trying to see where the rifle had fallen in the knee-deep grass. He didn’t know why the bear hadn’t continued her attack; he was almost positive that the one shot he’d got off had gone straight into the dirt. Even so, he wished he had the rifle handy, just in case another chance presented itself. He didn’t want to go toe to toe with an angry bear without some kind of weapon.

  Another sound floated over the clearing now, coming from the same direction as the bear’s breathing. It was an almost-growl, with much less depth to it, mixed with a slightly higher note of - was it pleading? Fear? That had to be the cub. Harvey reasoned that if the cub was with its mother, the mother might be less likely to press another attack. He had to find the rifle and get to his dad.

  Slowly, careful not to make any noise, Harvey got his right leg under him, then his left. He stood there, wobbling, for a few seconds, willing his gut to behave. He looked over at his dad’s crumpled form, and realized that one of his eyes was open, looking straight at him. Something was wrong with it, something Harvey couldn’t quite rationalize. His dad’s eyelid looked huge and misshapen. It draped over his eye at an odd angle, and it was slowly dripping blood onto the ground in front of his face. Harvey stared at his father, but couldn’t be sure that Johnson even noticed him. His eye was just staring, not actually appearing to register anything. Harvey took a shaky step toward him, then spotted the rifle, laying in the grass ten feet away to his right.

  He felt a flush of relief. As he slowly forced his feet to carry him toward the rifle, he thought for a moment that everything was going to be OK. Get the rifle, get to Dad, get Zach, and get help. One thing at a time. But again, he’d forgotten to consider the bear. Any plan he made, she was certainly going to get a vote.

  Two steps. Almost to the rifle now. A sudden, menacing growl from behind threatened to make him sick all over a
gain. Harvey didn’t want to turn, afraid to learn just how close death was. He felt certain she was right behind him, licking her lips and getting ready to take his head in her jaws like she had with Dad.

  The fear of death works as a safety mechanism for most creatures; a means of self-preservation that causes humans and animals to instinctively flee from or fight off unnecessary dangers. The fear of being eaten, however, is another level of fear entirely. The idea of being consumed, bite by agonizing bite, is a horrifying thing to face when you’ve considered yourself on top of the food chain for your entire life. That brand of fear is primal, palpable - and overpowering.

  When faced with that particular threat, most animals (and humans) will do the same thing. Run. Get away. Do whatever is necessary to put distance between yourself and whatever is interested in how you might taste at that moment.

  Some react differently, though. Some will stand and fight, either accepting or resigning themselves to the intersection of their sudden arrival on the menu and impending death, while at the same time refusing to go down without taking a bite out of the biter on their way. Harvey surprised himself at that moment by joining the second group.

  He dove for the rifle, rolling over in the grass as he brought it to his shoulder, aiming behind him. He remembered to cycle the bolt, ejecting the spent casing and chambering a live round in a smooth motion as he brought the muzzle up, keeping the stock firmly tucked in the hollow of his shoulder just like his dad had taught him. As he brought up the sight, the view was again nearly obscured by the bear. She was already five feet away and closing fast. Harvey squeezed the trigger, this time managing to keep the muzzle up. The bear let out a pained grunt, like a heavyweight fighter taking a body blow to the liver. She staggered and plowed into Harvey again, but this time, instead of running right over him, she only clipped him with her left shoulder as she collapsed in a massive hairy pile, pushing dirt and twigs in front of her as she slid to a stop. Harvey spun around from the impact and fell on his face again.