But just as I started my text, Mama Bear decided she knew the location of the enemy.
Her roar coursed through my body, making my hair stand on end. Then her entire weight hit the side of the van and she started pushing. I spread my arms out, trying to maintain my balance, and my cell phone slipped from my hands and fell to the ground. With every hit by the bear, the van swayed farther and farther to the side, then violently rocked back in place. It was probably the first and only time in my life I gave serious consideration to the monumental importance of a luggage rack on a minivan.
I heard a worried cry and glanced back to see Gertie losing her balance and tipping to the side, almost rolling over the rack bar. The van rocked back into place and she flopped back on top, but part of her body was over the rack bar. Another push like that one and things would be dire. I had to do something but had no idea what. I couldn’t even keep my pistol in my hand with all the rocking, much less get off a perfect shot, and a perfect shot was exactly what was called for because anything less would just piss her off long enough to reach me and shred me like tissue paper.
Then I ran out of time to decide.
The bear hit the van so hard that I thought it was going to topple completely over. It held suspended in midair for what seemed like minutes. I stretched my pinkie finger over, because it was the only thing I could risk moving, trying to get every bit of weight I could shifted to bring the van back down. That whole pinkie thing must have worked because finally, the van left its stationary hold and crashed back down upright.
Unfortunately, Gertie did not make it with the van.
I heard the impact and jerked my head back to see she was gone but had to give her enormous props for not making a sound when she went. Other than hitting the ground, that is, and that one couldn’t be helped. If we all lived through this, I was going to have to tell her just how impressed I was. But I couldn’t linger on top of this carnival ride any longer.
I jumped up, yelling at Ida Belle to cover me then get to the boat, and leaped off the top of the van as far from the bear as I could get without drawing her attention to Gertie, who was on the opposite side from the bear. Mama Bear took one look at me, stood on her hind legs, and roared. If I had not been trained to mock death, I probably would have had a heart attack right on the spot. She was absolutely terrifying.
Since I couldn’t run for the dock without coming too close to the bear, I took off down the driveway to the road. There had been another house about a mile away. I didn’t think I could outrun a bear for a mile but I was about to find out. In any event, I needed to draw her away long enough for Ida Belle and Gertie to get safely to the boat.
I heard a gunshot behind me and glanced back but all I saw was fur and teeth bearing down on me. I cranked up the speed and pulled my pistol from my waist, then I fired over my shoulder. I couldn’t afford to slow down and aim and I really didn’t want to have to kill the bear. But if things came down to me or her, we were going to be calling social services for those cubs. I fired again and glanced back but it hadn’t slowed her one bit. In fact, she was gaining on me. And I didn’t have any more turbo left to crank in.
I heard an engine racing behind me, clearly straining to keep up with its driver’s demands, and a second later, Molly’s van flew past me. The back door swung open and I saw Gertie staring down at me, a tie-down strapped around her waist. Ida Belle hit the brakes, and I dived into the back of the van, did a quick roll, then grabbed the back of the passenger seat as Ida Belle floored it.
The bear had just reached the van and had the door in her giant paws when it launched forward. The sound of twisting and scrunching metal filled the air and with a final roar, the bear ripped the door clean off and then stood there, holding it up like a game show display.
“Got it!” Gertie yelled and triumphantly waved her cell phone.
Then Ida Belle hit a huge hole in the road and the strap that had secured Gertie to the side of the van came loose. She stumbled toward the opening, flinging her phone backward and trying to find something to grab on to. I leaped forward, snagged the strap, and yanked her to the bottom of the van.
She sat up and shook her head. “Do you know how much makeup I’m going to need to cover the bruises on my thighs for the wedding?”
“Wear longer clothes,” Ida Belle said. “No one wants to see your thighs.”
I looked behind us and saw that the bear had managed to ditch the door and was coming after the van again.
“That is one determined bear,” I said. “She’s still coming.”
“We’ve got another problem,” Ida Belle said and started honking the horn.
I peered over the dash and saw Carter’s truck approaching and since neither he nor Ida Belle showed any sign of slowing and the road didn’t exactly hold two larger vehicles side by side, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Hang on!” Ida Belle yelled.
I grabbed Gertie’s strap and hugged the passenger’s seat, hoping I had the strength to keep both of us from bouncing out of the van. The van swerved to the right and Gertie and I slammed against the side. Ida Belle yelled for Carter to move as we went by, and I looked back to see his truck throwing up grass and dirt from the side of the road. Then he must have reached the bear because the truck swerved hard to the side, hit the ditch, then flew into the woods. The bear stopped running, looked at the truck, and decided either she’d accomplished her goal or we were no longer worth her time. She turned around and sauntered off into the woods on the other side of the road.
Ida Belle slowed to a stop and looked back at me. “I guess we have to go check on him, right?”
“We can’t exactly head back to Sinful in a stolen van,” I said, just noticing the windshield was gone. “In a stolen, really broken van. What happened?”
“I shot out the windshield so I could hot-wire it,” Ida Belle said. “We weren’t going to leave you. You’re fast but you wouldn’t have outlasted that bear.”
I sighed. “You got a good story for this one? Because that whole trailer hitch thing isn’t going to work.”
Ida Belle shrugged. “He can’t prove anything.”
“You mean besides trespassing and grand theft auto?” I asked.
Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “It was an emergency situation. These things happen.”
“Maybe in Sinful,” I said.
Gertie nodded. “Remember the time Lester thought he was being chased by rabid raccoons and stole Sheriff Lee’s horse? Everyone headed downtown to watch him circle around, trying to get the horse to go faster. Sheriff Lee was limping after them, yelling at the top of his lungs.”
“So what was chasing him?” I asked.
“A couple of dachshunds,” Gertie said. “He was drunker than Cooter Brown.”
“Who is this Cooter Brown you keep mentioning?” I asked.
“It’s a saying,” Gertie said.
I shook my head, no longer trying to keep up. “We might as well head back and face the music before Carter adds assaulting law enforcement vehicles to our crimes.”
“I’m still going with the trailer hitch story,” Ida Belle said. “Trust me on this one. Carter is not going to throw me in jail when I’m about to marry his uncle.”
“Oh, that’s a great angle,” Gertie said. “Shame we can only use it once, but there you go. Instant out.”