Great Soul of Siberia by Sooyong Park

Author:Sooyong Park
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-771641-14-2
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2015-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

By the Skin of Tiger Teeth

BLOODY MARY HAD not left. The footsteps moved away and suddenly stopped. She lay quietly hidden somewhere, spying on me. She would be sitting in the sphinx position, with her eyes on me. But I couldn’t tell where she was. The cubs were as still as their mother.

I instinctively knew this was a real crisis. Whoever moved first would lose. Just in case the situation worsened, I carefully boarded up the entrance with the panel and pulled out the cannon flare to wait. Unless they came into the bunker, I wouldn’t use the cannon flare. I’d made it this far, so I figured I might as well keep up the ruse.

Twenty minutes went by without either man or tigers making any move. Frighteningly cold wind poured in through the collapsed roof. I wanted to rub my hands together, but I couldn’t manage to lift a finger. I was getting colder faster because I couldn’t move. The tigers frightened me, but the brutal power of physics, the temperature of -30°C, was becoming more worrisome. I was freezing from head to toe and sat as stiff as a rock.

Thirty minutes later, I heard footsteps slowly approaching.

Crunch, crunch. The squeak of paws on wet snow was as unnerving as an awl piercing my brain. Bloody Mary had indeed been cunning and tenacious enough to lie in wait just behind the bunker for thirty minutes, testing me.

She came by the entrance again for a sniff. I thought I felt her breath on my left cheek. I was relieved that I’d had the presence of mind to block the entrance during the brief time she’d been gone, but I was worried about the collapsed roof. What if she came in that way? Knowing tigers, I didn’t think she’d venture into a dark hole without knowing what was inside. But what if one of her silly cubs were to fall in? If I was trapped in this space with a tiger, I would have nowhere to run. The tiger, also with no place to run, would instinctively attack me. I prayed that this would not come to pass.

The cubs also circled and sniffed the bunker. I could hear sniffing coming from all sides. They were all grown up and as big as their mother, but they still did only what she did. They stopped when she did and started moving again when she moved. Fortunately, none of them climbed on top of the roof. They must have been scared too, remembering how the ground had given out and swallowed a paw.

After all that poking around, there’s no reaction from inside. I saw something move and I smelled human, but there’s nothing... Bloody Mary must have been confused now. What if I had moved, thinking she was gone? I calmed my racing heart in relief.

The attack resumed. They scratched, bit, dug, and made a huge racket before the sounds suddenly stopped. All I heard were cold blasts of wind coming in through the collapsed roof.

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