Chuck hurried toward the cabin with the pilot and limping flight nurse. Smoke from the burning helicopter bit into his lungs.
“Run, Chuckie, run,” Randall ridiculed.
“Inside,” Chuck yelled ahead as they neared the cabin. “Everybody inside. Now!”
The scientists crowded through the cabin door.
“As if that’ll do you any good,” Randall called. “When I put a match to the place, everyone will come right back out.”
Clarence and Lex met Chuck and the pilot in the arc of lantern light at the front of the cabin. They took the flight nurse between them and guided him inside, the pilot following. Chuck spun, his back to the cabin, his eyes on the rifle in Randall’s hands, ten feet in front of him.
“Time to let nature do its thang,” Randall said. Behind him, the bear and wolves approached camp, keeping their distance from one another. The bear lifted its snout, testing the smoky night air. The wolves spread apart, on the hunt.
“One more pulse,” Randall said, his hand poised over the console, “and it’ll all be over for you.”
“Which will prove everything you’ve been working toward to be wrong,” Chuck said. He pointed at the animals. “You claim you’re setting them free, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’ve turned them into robots. Automatons. You’re forcing them to serve you as their master.”
“No,” Randall said.
“Yes. Everything you’ve done is about you. You’ve taken control of the park ecosystem for your own sick reasons, with your computer-chipped animals as your slaves.”
“You’re wrong,” Randall insisted, raising his voice. “I’m freeing the park’s predators to do what comes naturally to them.”
“What comes naturally to them is being left on their own—not being turned into test subjects controlled by some megalomaniac.”
“No!” Randall cried out. He tapped furiously at the console. The wolves surged past him toward Chuck. The grizzly charged, too, trailing the wolves.
Chuck crossed his arms over his face as the wolves struck. He toppled backward, their paws digging into his chest. He rolled to his stomach, peering over his shoulder, as the grizzly entered the melee.
The bear swatted the wolves aside with its massive forepaws, sending first one wolf tumbling away, then another. The grizzly stretched its long neck and bit into the hind leg of a third wolf, the one with white fur. The white wolf yowled as the bear lifted it off the ground by its hind quarters and flung it away.
“Stop!” Randall yelled at Number 11. “Stop it!”
The last two wolves ran off. The grizzly charged after them, dragging one to the ground with an enormous paw. It bit into the downed wolf’s back. The bear clenched its jaws until a crunch sounded, then released the wolf and raised its head.
The wolf lay on its side, pressed to the ground by the grizzly. It craned its neck, failing repeated attempts to rise.
“What are you doing, 11?” Randall screamed at the bear. His fingers flew across the face of the console. The four remaining wolves formed a semi-circle around the grizzly. The white wolf balanced on three legs, its injured hind leg lifted off the ground. The wolves snarled, their eyes on the bear. The grizzly slashed at them and they fell back, remaining just beyond the bear’s reach.
The bear took the downed wolf’s neck in its jaws and ripped powerfully upward. The grizzly lifted its head high, clutching a length of the wolf’s windpipe in its teeth.
“No!” Randall screeched. “Don’t!”
He raised the rifle and fired pointblank at the bear. The grizzly collapsed. A red blotch on its shoulder marked a gaping exit wound. The bear’s eyes remained open, its legs trembling.
Randall worked the rifle bolt, ejecting the spent brass casing to the grass beside the fallen grizzly. He rammed the bolt home and aimed down the barrel at Chuck, who sat upright a few feet away.
“You,” Randall said through tight lips, his eyes narrow with fury. “All of this is your fault.”
He centered the barrel on Chuck’s forehead. Chuck held still as Randall pulled the trigger. A metallic ping sounded as the firing pin struck the gun’s empty chamber. Chuck exhaled. He’d counted correctly. Randall’s pointblank blast into the grizzly had been the last of the rifle’s six rounds.
A pistol shot rang out from the front door of the cabin. Randall dropped the rifle, clasped his upper chest, and fell to the ground.
Clarence stepped from the cabin with the .357 in his hands, his bandaged chest showing between the folds of his open shirt. “That’s for Sarah,” he said.
He looked down the gun’s barrel at Randall as the four remaining wolves of Stander Pack charged.