Guerilla Bears

Alternative Culture Magazine

Alternative Literature

Guerilla Bears - a fable

Horace came bounding out of the meadow, three mongrel dogs barking wildly at his heels. "Idiot yappers," he grumbled to himself as he loped finally over the bank into a steep creek draw, which he would follow to join up with Johnny the headman and his yearling son Omar. It was apple season, and though the Macs were not quite ripe, it was now or never for this year’s crop. The smallholders would be out with buckets and boxes, ladders and trucks as soon as the moon turned; this the veteran bears knew. Horace himself had lobbied for today’s raid, knowing that some of the young humans had already begun sampling the reddening fruit, leaving cores in the long grass for the squirrels and mice. The season might be late for the humans this year, he said with just reasoning, but with so few berries to work from, I, for one, aren’t taking any chances. I suggest the same for us all. Are you with me on this?

Omar had shrunk from the challenge. Horace called him out: "What’s it gonna be, cub scout? Coming with us this year, or are you gonna ask for handouts from the squirrel tribe, prunes and fungi?" The other bears had laughed at his jibe, half-good-natured as it was.

Omar shuddered a little and spoke up in a squeaky small voice. "What about g-g-guns? Will there be guns?"

Horace blustered. "Fah! We go at night, see, and then there’s nobody the wiser. Until the morning, that is."

"Excuse me," Omar’s mother Gertrude said as she shambled forward and sat upright on her vast haunches. "But my son has brought up a valid point that is not dismissed so easily. What about the dogs? I’m thinking particularly of the Robertson’s bitch that sleeps outside by their porch steps, ever since the freezer party we enjoyed there in the spring. Old man Robertson could be out of bed with a flashlight and rifle in no time, when that birddog starts singing."

The other bears nodded soberly.

"Okay, okay," Horace said. But he didn’t have a solution, and so deferred to Johnny Burntoe the Elder, acting chief of command. Johnny was getting lazy in his old age, and complacent with his honorific duties, and so more and more had allowed his sergeant Horace Beamwood to serve as acting band leader--though only for practice, Johnny reminded him from time to time. The position of headman, as we all know, is a lifetime appointment.

Johnny stepped forward with almost no trace of the limp that had once crippled him, his wound from a getaway slash burn across Hamill Creek when he was a svelt three year old bucking for his first command. His face was dished almost like a grizzly’s, and with the frosting fur of old age he passed, in many of the human’s accounts of him, for a genuine silvertip.

"The way I see it is this. As you all know, I’ve seen a lot of these humans in my day, and I don’t imagine as we’re close to seeing the end of ‘em anytime soon. It doesn’t always help to look just at the next orchard over, the next day’s meal. We’ve got to take some of the long view with it. Now, I don’t claim to know the future, but my sources tell me that the Empress Gaia is only starting to kick in with some of our backups. I’m talking major quakes, ozone disturbance, ice-cap melting, maybe even a pole shift thrown it. And I’m not saying we’re immune to her way of dealing with it, either. In all honesty I’d say we need to be prepared to take some losses. But that’s nothing new. The pale-faces have been picking us off like rabbits for centuries. And unfortunately"--he winked at Omar’s mother, the sow Gertrude--"we don’t pick up the slack like rabbits do." Some others in the company tittered. "The point is this--"

He was interrupted by the staccato clatter of a helicopter overhead. The group crouched into the foliage, eyes skyward. The chopper seemed to pass over going northeast into the mountains, then looped back. Sunlight glinted on the bubble cockpit and sent Johnny reeling away into the shadows. Maybe his movement, highlighted with silver, caught the eye of a pilot or the honcho riding shotgun--who would ever know?--and so like a huge, predatory insect the aircraft swooped back down overhead, its skids seeming to brush the very treetops. Bright flashes erupted from the open side window and thunderous, repeating noise cracked the heavens. Omar was hit, and screamed terribly as blood bubbled from a chest wound. Johnny scrambled out from cover to pull the youngster back beside a log. The he took a hit himself, and another, three shots in the same leg, and he felt the bones shatter. Beside him Horace groaned and collapsed forward into the dirt, his tongue lolling out of foamy teeth. The chopper was coming back. It was all over for them now. It was…hard to say…a story…that never should have ended…like this.