The First Time in Ten Years
I'd been at this for ten years… and I'd never seen anything like it.
How much time had passed?
I couldn't take a single step from where I stood.
Dominic was still down. From here I couldn't even tell if he was breathing. I wanted to go to him. I just… couldn't bring myself to move.
Please be alive.
Then a sound carried from far off.
Bark bark bark bark—!!
Dogs. More than one. And behind them, the growl of engines.
Vrrroooom—!!
A rescue vehicle?
Hope flared for a second. The cameraman must have called it in. Then Dominic might still make it.
But… rescue teams don't bring hunting dogs.
What came thrashing through the mountain trail wasn't an ambulance. Three black SUVs. And the men who stepped out of them weren't paramedics either.
Black gear. Masks over their faces. Tranquilizer guns in their hands. And out in front of them, four hunting dogs already running hard — big ones.
Hunting dogs?
I flinched without meaning to, a twitch through my front paws. It wasn't that I hated dogs. Four of them just charging at me all at once set something off on pure reflex.
That one little flinch, and all four hunting dogs slammed to a stop at the same time.
A second ago they'd been baring their teeth and barreling in. The moment they halted, the sound changed.
"Kang! Kang! Kang…"
"Grrrr… whine…"
"Wheeeiiine…"
Tails curled tight and tucked fully between their hind legs. Ears flattened back. They dropped low, whimpering as they scrambled backward and hid behind their handlers. One went all the way down on its belly. Its legs were shaking.
…Surrender?
Trained hunting dogs, scared on pure instinct.
What, am I that terrifying?
Well… yeah, I probably was. When a one-ton bear flinches, from a human's point of view it's like a compact car lunging at you.
As the dogs fell back, the silhouettes of the men behind them came into focus.
"Target confirmed."
"Don't shoot. Wait for the signal."
"…With a bulk like that, how many darts are we talking?"
…Korean?
Dominic had been speaking English, so I'd assumed we were somewhere overseas. These men were speaking Korean. This was Korea.
Come to think of it, something about the place had felt familiar the whole time. Ferns growing between the pines. A rusted iron stake driven into the rock. The damp smell of the soil. Things you only got in Korean mountains.
Wait.
There was no way a bear like this was roaming wild in a Korean mountain. Asiatic black bears were endangered; they were barely managing a reintroduction program on Jiri Mountain. And a one-ton monster bear was just… wandering around?
One of the men glanced at Dominic lying there, then spoke into a radio.
"One casualty. Looks civilian. We'll deal with him later — priority is recovering the Kodiak brown bear."
What did he just say?
Deal with?
Recover?
Kodiak?
…I'm the Kodiak?
The Kodiak brown bears that lived in Alaska? The ones they called the biggest bears in the world?
I was big, sure. But didn't even Kodiaks top out around seven hundred kilos?
I felt a lot bigger than that right now.
The man's eyes flicked over Dominic again. Cold. Not the way you looked at a person on the ground — the way you looked at a scene that needed cleaning up.
These people hadn't come to rescue Dominic.
They'd come for me. A crew sent to recover an escaped bear. Which meant they were the ones who'd brought me into this country in the first place.
"Hold distance and surround. Three darts should be enough."
The one who looked like the leader moved his team with a single gesture of his hand. Six men, every one of them carrying a tranquilizer gun, fanned out in silence into a half-circle. Trained movement. Only the dogs were scared; the people were calm. The eyes of pros who'd done this more than once or twice.
…What do I do?
Run?
I was a one-ton bear. Even if these guys were pros, if I ran for my life I might punch through a cordon like this.
But if I ran… what about Dominic?
I looked at him lying there. What had that man said a moment ago?
— We'll deal with him later.
I wasn't stupid enough to miss what that meant. They were going to treat Dominic as a witness who needed handling.
…Damn it.
I couldn't run. If I ran, Dominic died. I'd already beaten my favorite person half to death. If I failed to save him and ran on top of that, it would go past worst and into worst-of-the-worst.
All right.
I was a one-ton bear right now. What was there to fear from six humans with tranquilizer guns?
…No. Honestly, I was scared. Scared as hell.
I'd seen it in documentaries. Even massive animals — hippos, African elephants — staggered and went down after two or three darts.
But I still couldn't leave Dominic.
What had they said? Three darts would be enough?
Fine… try me.
I rose onto my hind legs on pure instinct. Just standing was enough to cast a shadow between the trees. The men's heads tilted up. And up. And still up.
Then the sky went dark.
Clouds rolled in over what had been clear sky a moment before, and fat raindrops began to fall. One drop, two — and then it poured.
Shhhhhhhhhh—
A cloudburst swallowed the mountain. Vision blurred; cold water ran down through my fur.
Grrrrrrrrr…
Something climbed up my throat and the air started to tremble with it. I drove my front paws hard into the earth.
BOOOOM—!!
The ground shook. Dirt sprayed like the soil itself had cracked, and the hunting dogs screamed all at once —
KRRAAAAKOOOM—!!
—and in the same instant the sky split and lightning hammered the ridgeline, I roared into the flash.
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!!!!
Park Sang-do had been doing this work for ten years.
He'd taken tigers. He'd recovered escaped captive bears. When it came to capturing wild animals, he was as confident as anyone alive.
The report said the escaped specimen was a Kodiak bear, estimated weight nineteen hundred kilograms. Unprecedented size. The largest recorded Kodiak sat in the seven-hundred-kilo range, so nearly three times that. But elephants ran past four tons, and even elephants went down to darts. In the end it was still a beast. So he'd judged three tranquilizer rounds would be enough.
That had been five minutes ago.
What was unfolding in front of him now was not a capture.
"Kang—!!"
"Wheeeiiine—!!"
"Whine! Whine! Whine!"
"Kek—!!"
Four hunting dogs were neutralized in a matter of seconds.
The first one went flying from a single front-paw swipe that hit like a shell going off. The second tumbled from the shockwave of a stomp. The third was shoulder-checked and rolled. The fourth never even charged — it just fled.
…Hunting dogs cut down in seconds?
They'd already put three darts into it. Shoulder, back, flank. On a Kodiak, the effects should have hit within five minutes. The thing had only given the impact sites a single shake, the way you'd scratch an itch.
The bear turned its head. Looked their way.
Those eyes.
Park Sang-do's breath stopped.
Those weren't a wild animal's eyes. Not the instinctive rage of a beast, not the frenzied glare of something cornered by fear. Those were — eyes that were deciding. Choosing who to hit first.
"Front fire!!"
He snapped the order. His voice stayed level, but his men wouldn't have known his fingertips were shaking.
Thump thump!!
Two more darts punched into the creature's body. In that same instant, the bear charged.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The ground shuddered every time its four paws drove into the earth. The vibration climbed up through the soles of their boots.
One of his men swung a gun up in a panic. Too late.
WHAAAM—!!
The bear's front paw scythed through, and the man's body tore free of the ground and went airborne. It looked like a traffic-cam crash — the kind of flight you only ever saw when a person got hit by a car.
Another man fired a dart. The bear simply drove its bulk into him.
CRASH—!!
The darts aren't working?
No. They would be working. Five rounds. Enough to drop an elephant. Given time, the effects would come.
But was this thing going to give them that time?
"Get to the vehicles!!"
The remaining four ran for the SUVs. Get inside a two-ton SUV and hold out. Just buy the minutes for the darts to spread.
Earthquake footfalls chased them from behind. Closing in.
One man yanked open the nearest door. The second he tried to climb in —
BANG—!!
The vehicle slammed sideways. The bear had hit the flank with its shoulder. Two wheels left the ground. Then the bear braced on its hind legs, hooked both front paws under the chassis, and shoved up.
Screeeeeee—!!
A two-ton SUV flipped.
Park Sang-do couldn't believe his own eyes. It had lifted two tons on a pair of front paws. He'd told himself it was smaller than an elephant. That it was still just a beast. That three darts would be enough…
All of it wrong.
"Everyone in!! Get out of here!!"
The remaining men scattered into the other two vehicles. Park Sang-do climbed into the driver's seat of the one parked furthest back. Key, engine, accelerator — he floored it, racing down the mountain road alongside his men's cars.
They could make it. Once they cleared the mountain path —
He checked the rearview mirror.
It was coming on all fours. A brown mass growing larger and larger in the glass.
He was doing fifty kilometers an hour, and the distance was shrinking.
…No way.
The bear caught the lead car first. Ran alongside it, then slammed its shoulder into the side.
BANG—!!
The vehicle with his men inside skidded off the mountain road and buried itself into the slope. Wheels spun uselessly in empty air.
What had he just watched…?
Right after that —
BOOOOM—!!
The bear launched off its hind legs and vanished from the rearview mirror.
And the next instant —
CRASH—!!
—it landed on the roof. The ceiling caved, glass blew out, the steering wheel wrenched, the tires sank into mud, and Park Sang-do ducked on pure instinct.
BOOOOM—!!
The car flipped.
What the hell had just happened.
Park Sang-do crawled out through shattered glass. Fragments were embedded all over his body. He was bleeding. None of that mattered.
The second he dragged himself free, the sky was gone.
A shadow swallowing the whole of it.
He looked up without thinking.
Ah…
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr—!!
In the rain, the bear stared down at him, grinding its teeth. Rainwater ran along its brown fur, and behind it lightning struck once more.
Their eyes met.
In that moment, Park Sang-do felt something he had never once felt in ten years of this work.
Awe.
This wasn't a beast. This was a natural disaster.
The bear raised a front paw.
…It's over.
In the instant Park Sang-do shut his eyes, the bear's paw stopped.
The focus was going out of its eyes. That massive body listed to one side; the raised paw sank slowly, and its hind legs folded.
The tranquilizers had finally started to work.
A one-ton body collapsed, slow, so very slow.
BOOOOOOM—
The ground shook when the bear went down.
Among three wrecked SUVs and the scattered bodies of his team, the enormous bear closed its eyes.
Park Sang-do stared at the fallen animal. His hands were shaking hard.
He'd been at this for ten years… and he'd never seen anything like it.