Free Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta

have no problem with us hiking through their territory, assuming we understand them. That’s our job. In this situation, understanding them is largely limited to one word: surprise. We do not want to surprise the bear, because then he will not have the chance to react with his true personality. He’ll turn aggressive even though he’d prefer to be passive, because he will feel that’s what we’re forcing him to do. So we make a little noise to advertise our presence in the right areas, and we pay attention to our surroundings so we don’t go into areas that we should avoid.”
    “All our surroundings look the same to me,” Ty said.
    “They won’t in time. And it requires all of your senses. All of them. You watch, of course, you keep scanning the landscape. Drew, back there, he’s key, because he’s guarding the rear for us. He’s got to turn around and double-check for us now and then.”
    Drew seemed to puff up at that, and Jace wondered if he realized that being the guy in the back also meant you were the first guy the bear ate.
    “We have to listen,” Ethan said, “because the last thing we want to run into is a tangle between bears, and if that’s happening, we should be able to hear it. We have to use our sense of smell—”
    “You can probably smell bears at, what, two miles? Three miles?” This was from Ty, another of the jokers, contending with Marco, and he said it seriously but while winking at Connor, who gave him dead eyes in response. Jace Wilson would have laughed, but Connor Reynolds wasn’t a laugher.
    “I cannot smell bears,” Ethan said, “but I can smell crap. That helps. Sometimes, you see, a bear takes a crap in the woods. I’ll let you check it out as soon as we find one, Ty. I’ll give you plenty of inspection time.”
    Now Jace really wanted to laugh, and the rest of them did laugh, but he stayed silent. He’d decided that was Connor Reynolds—strong and silent. And fearless.
    “I’m also interested in the smell of something rotten,” Ethan continued. “A carcass gone bad. If I can smell it, you better believe a bear can—they actually can detect odors from over a mile away—and we need to stay far from that, because what smells nasty to us smells like a free meal to them. No hunting required. Bears are lazy; they appreciate free meals. We’ll be talking a lot about this once we set up camp and store the food.”
    “That’s three senses,” Jeff said. He was one of the few who’d dared to express any real interest so far; the rest were maintaining their wilderness-camp-is-bullshit attitudes, for the most part. “And if I have to taste one or touch one to know it’s a bear, I’m a pretty huge dumb-ass.”
    The rest of them burst into laughter, and even Ethan Serbin smiled with them.
    “I won’t argue that point, language aside,” he said. “But you might taste a few berries along the trail. Might see a thicket of berries and try one and think, Dang, these taste pretty good. Remember—if it tastes good to you, it does to the bear as well. Be more alert, because you are in a feeding ground.”
    “What about touch, then?” Jeff asked.
    “Feel the wind. Always, always, always be aware of that wind. Because bears rely mostly on their sense of smell, and if you are downwind of them, you’re going to be able to get pretty close before they can smell you. What else is wind taking away from them?”
    “The sound of us,” Jace said, and regretted it immediately. He wanted to avoid all attention, but sometimes out here he got caught up in things despite himself. This was the sort of thing he loved, which was where the whole idea had come from. All the survival books, the adventure stories, the way he’d taught himself how to tie more than thirty knots with his eyes closed—his parents thought that they could hide him up here and have him be happy. And, he had to admit, there were moments when they were almost right.
    Then the voices of the men in the quarry