In addition to the huffing, I hear a crunching sound. As quietly as possible, I retrieve the watered-down smoothie bottle and slide it into the hand warmer pocket of the sweatshirt, then make my way back to where I placed all my own loot. I pick up the other smoothie bottle and begin making my way back to the room with the double doors. When I get to the two hundred thirty-two room straight stretch, I pick up my pace. I take out my phone and study my picture of the route instructions, visualizing each turn and I continue straight, occasionally looking back over my shoulder.

  As I get to the end of the straightaway, I look back again and I think I see a small black speck moving across the yellow. I switch to running pace, keeping my phone in my hand so I don’t make any mistakes. At the next long eighty-one room straight step, I sprint at my top speed. Looking over my shoulder at the turn, I don’t see anything in the distance. I keep a quick jogging pace until I get to within thirty-seven rooms of my destination. Behind me, twenty-seven rooms away is the black bear. It makes a deep, loud bellow.

  I run.

  I don’t see the bear behind me at the next couple of turns, but after the fourteen-room straightaway, I see it again. Eight more rooms to go, not even a hundred meters. I pull open the nearer of the double doors, and duck behind it, just as a huge weight crashes into it. The force throws me back into the side of the other door which is closed. The impact drops me to my knees, and I feel a sharp pain on the side of my head as the bear’s claw reaches for me at the same time, I roll myself into the room and pull the panic rod with all my strength to close the door. The bear growls and moans and pushes on the doors. Luckily, they open outwards, but there is no apparent way to lock them. I hold both doors closed with my left arm by hooking it up under one bar and down under the other. With my right hand, I remove my hydration belt and wrap it between the two push bars to secure the door. I buckle it and tie the loose ends, then take of the sweatpants and remove the drawstring to tie around the door bars as reinforcement. I do the same with my shoelaces too.

  The bear struggles to pull on the door. The metal handles are meant for human hands, not a black bear’s maul or paws. It pushes and pulls on the doors for some time, but they do not give and I see no sign of the door buckling or the hardware pulling apart. I try to relax my panic, lying on the floor breathing heavily.

  With adrenaline still pumping through my veins, my flight response slowly settles into acceptance that I am as secure as I can be under the circumstances. My back is bruised from the impact with the door, but I don’t think anything is broken. I gingerly bring myself to my feet. My legs are numb from the run.

  I retrieve my water bottle that I dumped from my hydration belt and notice that blood is running down my arm to my still shaking hand. My phone and the watered down smoothy bottle both landed in the room. I pick up my phone and turn on the camera, afraid what I will see. There is no medical facility in this place if it’s very bad. I take a deep breath and then look at myself in selfie mode. Red blood is welling through my brown hair and running slowly down my neck, shoulder, and arm. My scalp seems fine; I do not see any skin peeled back. There are some deep scratches to my head through the hair above my right ear, but I should be okay if it doesn’t get infected. I know I should apply pressure to stop the bleeding, but I’m afraid anything I press to my head could be full of germs, so I decide to try and just stay standing to keep the wounds elevated. If I don’t touch it, the bleeding should stop on its own.

  I still hear the sounds of the bear outside, but I try to stay as calm as possible. There’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. What can I do against a bear that must outweigh me by two or three hundred pounds? I guess I should be relieved it is a black bear and not a polar or a grizzly bear; the doors will probably hold. Tears well up in my eyes and I begin to cry. It’s too much. What now?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  I wonder if that bear was already stalking me when I was on my run on the dead-end road. It’s too large to be a female, so it must be a hungry lone male bear. Why didn’t it charge me on that first day in the rooms like it did in the warehouse or today? Maybe it was distracted by the sudden change of environment coming into the rooms. It wouldn’t have been as hungry yet then either. I should have been preparing. I knew that bear was wandering around somewhere. I probably was keeping ahead of it for a while, but I’ve been staying in the same area since I found Amy in this room. It was stupid to just assume it would never find me because I was a few thousand rooms away.

  I consider my situation. Running away is not an option. The bear is faster than me, can track my scent, and there’s no cover. I was ahead of it by more than a mile and it closed the distance without even having me in sight. I would also be abandoning the only known source of food, not that it will be providing me with anything if I can’t get far enough away, but I could lose it completely running randomly to escape pursuit. Even if I managed it, I would have to come back, and the bear might find me as I search for the smoothie room again. If there’s another one, Amy never found it. How likely is it that I would?

  They say you should fight off a black bear because they really don’t intend to attack humans, but here I am its only prey. It has nowhere else to go and no alternative source of food. I can’t fight the bear unarmed. Could I fashion some sort of weapon I can injure it with when it comes to the door? It’s a possibility. I look at my meager supplies. I have the remainder of a watered-down smoothie and the new one I brought back with me. Fortunately, it didn’t break during the altercation. I look over at the counter and there is the new bottle that generated while I moved Amy to the man and dog room. I have no water aside from what is mixed with the smoothie and what is in my water bottle.

  The bear has unlimited water from the nearest leak, but no food. Would eating the long dead bodies provide any nourishment? Was that the crunching I heard? How many calories are there in a mummy? Those bodies must have some sort of nutritional value. Wouldn’t they be like old bacon jerky? I know I will never eat them, but there is nothing to stop a bear. It is more likely that it knows of those food sources but would prefer something fresher and juicier like me. It couldn’t have eaten all three bodies in the writing room yet but still left them to stalk and attack a living human being.

  It would be wishful thinking to expect the bear to move on. Can I outlast the bear and possibly come up with a safe way of killing or at least injuring it? I think about what resources I have that could be effective against the beast. Could I somehow use an electrical outlet to make fire? Are bears smart enough to stop, drop and roll? It would probably know to find water, which wouldn’t be far away. How could I deliver the fire? A burning carpet roll? It seemed impractical. Could I electrocute the bear? How? I’d be more likely to burn the room I’m in or electrocute myself.

  Any injury would make hunger more debilitating. I still had that pocketknife. Could I somehow swing it at the bear through the crack in the door? I took it out of my pocket. It’s such a tiny knife and probably wouldn’t get through the fur. Could I get broken glass in its eyes? I wish I was still in the loot room. I’m trapped in a place with no resources.

  First thing’s first and that’s water. Since the reset, I don’t even know where the nearest leaking sprinkler is to this room. Surely the bear will have to find water at some point, but I’m too much slower to use that time to my advantage. I look up. I think I can figure out a way to damage a sprinkler to give me a water supply here. It will mean living in damp, but death by thirst would be much worse. I’ll need to come up with a bathroom solution as well.

  My body still aches and I’m feeling a little dizzy. I need to rest before I tackle the water problem. I do not think I can stand any longer, so I sit down and lean against the wall under the counter. This was right where Amy died, which weirds me out, but I’m too fatigued to move. I soon doze off.