Isla Vance's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Isla stood up from the gouged log with the antler club in one hand and the kitchen knife in the other. Her sleeve was torn where the wolf's teeth had caught her. The wolf's blood was on the fabric too, smeared dark across her cuff and down the front of her jacket. She had not noticed it during the fight. She noticed it now because the forest had gone wrong around her. The small fox by the root was gone. Nothing chirped. Nothing moved. Something else had come. She heard it before she saw it. A heavy step in the brush to her left. Then a second step, behind her. Whatever circled her was big enough to break twigs without trying. She turned a slow circle with the flashlight. The beam caught a pale shape low between the trunks, then lost it. She smelled wet fur and something sour under it, like meat left out. She ran. She picked the downhill slope because it was faster, and she kept the club up across her chest. The ground dropped into a clearing she had not seen from the path. In the middle stood a hump of gray rock taller than she was, streaked with old blood that had dried black in the cracks. Bones lay scattered around its base. Ribs. A jaw. Something with a long skull she did not want to name. She had run straight into the place the predator brought its kills. Isla understood then. The blood on her jacket was the invitation. As long as she carried it, she was meat walking. She dropped the flashlight in the dirt and stripped the jacket off over the club. Her fingers shook on the zipper. Inside the pocket, against her hip, sat a dagger she had picked up off the log without remembering — a short blade shaped like a fang, the leather grip dark and tacky. It had been lying in the wolf's blood too. She pulled it out and set it on the rock. The brush behind her cracked open. A bear pushed through, black coat marked with pale spots, head low, nose working the air. It was not looking at her. It was looking at the jacket in her hands. She threw the jacket hard across the clearing, toward the far treeline. The bear's head swung after it. The bear ran past her, four feet from her boots, and crashed into the brush on the other side. Isla stayed on her knees by the bloodied rock until her breathing slowed. She picked up the flashlight. She picked up the fang-shaped dagger and wiped the grip on her jeans until it was dry. The jacket was gone. So was the smell that had drawn the bear. But she was deeper in the forest now than she had meant to go, and she had no idea which direction the trail was anymore.