THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear’s skull. Susannah’s bullet struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering fragments. The pole itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue fire which reached out in a net and seemed to grasp the sides of the bear’s face for a moment.
It rose on its rear legs with a whistling howl of agony, its front paws boxing aimlessly at the air. It turned in a wide, staggering circle and began to flap its arms, as if it had decided to fly away. It tried to roar again but what came out instead was a weird warbling sound like an air-raid siren. “It is very well.” Roland sounded exhausted. “A good shot, fair and true.” “Should I shoot it again?” she asked uncertainly. The bear was still blundering around in its mad circle but now its body had begun to tilt sidewards and inwards. It struck a small tree, rebounded, almost fell over, and then began to circle again.
“No need,” Roland said. She felt his hands grip her waist and lift her. A moment later she was sitting on the ground with her thighs folded beneath her. Eddie was slowly and shakily descending the pine, but she didn’t see him. She could not take her eyes from the bear.
She had seen the whales at the Seaquarium near Mystic, Connecti-cut, and believed they had been bigger than this—much bigger, proba-bly—but this was certainly the largest land creature she had ever seen. And it was clearly dying. Its roars had become liquid bubbling sounds, and although its eyes were open, it seemed blind. It flailed aimlessly about the camp, knocking over a rack of curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with Eddie, caroming off trees. She could see the steel post rising from its head. Tendrils of smoke were rising around it, as if her shot had ignited its brains. Eddie reached the lowest branch of the tree which had saved his life and sat shakily astride it. “Holy Mary Mother of God, he said. “I’m looking right at it and I still don t beli—“
The bear wheeled back toward him. Eddie leaped nimbly from the tree and streaked toward Susannah and Roland. The bear took no notice, it marched drunkenly to the pine which had been Eddie’s refuge, tried to grasp it, failed, and sank to its knees. Now they could hear other sounds coming from inside it, sounds that made Eddie think of some huge truck engine stripping its gears. A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at its own face. Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making the ground tremble with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir—the world beneath the world—was dead.
EDDIE PICKED SUSANNAH UP, held her with his sticky hands locked together at the small of her back, and kissed her deeply. He reeked of sweat and pine-tar. She touched his cheeks, his neck; she ran her hands through his wet hair. She felt an insane urge to touch him everywhere until she was absolutely sure of his reality.
“It almost had me,” he said. “It was like being on some crazy carni-val ride. What a shot! Jesus, Suze—what a shot!’
“I hope I never have to do anything like that again,” she said . . .but a small voice at the center of her demurred. That voice suggested that she could not wait to do something like that again. And it was cold, that voice. Cold. “What was—” he began, turning toward Roland, but Roland was no longer standing there. He was walking slowly toward the bear, which now lay on the ground with its shaggy knees up. From within it came a series of muffled gasps and gurgles as its strange guts continued to slowly run down. Roland saw his knife planted deep in a tree near the scarred veteran that had saved Eddie’s life. He pulled it free and wiped it clean on the soft deerskin shirt which had replaced the tatters he had been wearing when the three of them had left the beach. He stood by the bear, looking down at it with an expression of pity and wonder.