Operation Z-Day (The Raven Falconer Chronicles) by Dennis Larsen Page A

. . . where?   Raven tried desperately to remember where she’d seen it on a previous visit.  On her hands and knees she scooted to the table and lifted the small candle with its lingering glow.  The orange flame flickered and bent against the air’s faint resistance.  It trembled and feigned being snuffed out but recovered quickly, dancing as she shuffled across the floor.  Hot wax ran from a small, molten pool at the wick’s base, covering her fingers and numbing the tissue.  “Bedroom, has to be in the bedroom,” she whispered under her breath, the sound of her voice calming her briefly.  Outside on the landing she heard the squeaking of planks as they rubbed against each other.  She stopped and whispered a quick prayer, before the sound of something against the door sent her flying into the bedroom.
    Inside the room , she looked under the bed but found nothing except dust balls and a stack of old puzzles.  A large upright armoire stood against the wall, where only days before she’d unpacked her belongings.  It’s not in there , then she remembered and jumped to her feet.  Raven dripped some wax from the base of the wick onto the nearest bedpost and secured the shortened candle to free her hands.  Standing on her tiptoes she ran her fingers over the top of the furnishing, first across the front, finding nothing, and then the back where her hand touched something cold and metallic.
    Encircling the steel of the shotgun, she wrenched it from its hiding place and swung it toward the door.  Sweeping her left thumb across the weapon’s release, the chamber pitched open as the double barrels angled downward, exposing the brass ends of two shells.  With her right hand she bent the rifle back into alignment, closed the breach and cocked the hammers.  Her faint shadow, cast by the fading light of the vanishing candle, stretched out before her as she moved through the bedroom's entrance to the single window that would provide a view out the backside of the cabin.  Shaking, but trying to muster her courage, she used the end of the gun to move the floral drapes away from the opening.  She squinted into the darkness but could see nothing.
    Raven moved to her right, keeping the material swept back so she could see through the window and onto the back porch.  Moonlight , glinting off the newly fallen snow, provided some contrast and it immediately became apparent to the shaken young woman that something had disturbed her groceries.  Wrappers and partially ingested food items littered the ground but the culprit was nowhere in sight.  Without warning, the door shook, almost giving way, as something pressed firmly against it.  The author’s attention was drawn to the door, but only briefly, as seconds later, a couple of quick steps brought the creature directly in front of the window, where it stood inches away and growled at Raven’s image.
    Teetering on the edge of hysteria and with adrenalin coursing through her veins, Raven pulled back on both triggers, sending a hundred lead BB’s through t he window and into the foraging black bear.  It wailed and crashed a paw through the broken window before it dropped onto all fours and ambled away from the cabin.  Raven peered through the shattered glass, a marked trail of blood that appeared black in the moonlight lead away from the porch.  “Damn!  What have I done,” she yelled.
    Taking a couple of deep breaths she tried to clear her head.  What do I do?   What can I do? she thought.  “What if it comes back?  Oh man, what if it comes back?”  She hurried through the almost pitch black of the cabin to the bedroom where she felt for a box of shells she knew must be on the top of the armoire.  Finding it, she pulled it down and extracted a couple of live rounds, which she used to reload the shotgun.  She returned to the main room and stood near the broken window, holding the barrel in such a way as to deliver another blast, if need be.  Twenty