Survive

by David Haynes

  The comment wasn’t lost on Jonesy. Was he trying to imply he was a coward? He thought about replying but Lisa beat him to it as she turned away. “More likely he thought the meat looked rotten.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “What’s that?” Olin asked.

  “I’m putting a lock on the cache,” Jonesy said, ignoring Olin’s question. “That way we all know where we stand. No confusion.”

  “Kinda obsessive, man.”

  “Obsessive?” The anger came right up to a rolling boil. “You ever been hungry, Olin? I mean really hungry?”

  “Err…yeah! When you found me I hadn’t exactly been chowing down on prime rib, you know?”

  “Well maybe you should appreciate what we’ve got here a little more then. It’s not obsessive wanting to keep everyone alive. So you have to stop your midnight feasts for a while, eat like us two. It isn’t going to kill you to lose a few more pounds.”

  Olin shuffled his feet and spat into the dirt. “Maybe we should go and hunt then. Stock up that cache of yours then I won’t have to.”

  Lisa turned back around. “There’s nothing moving around out here except for that grizzly and I don’t want to run into him in a hurry.”

  Olin shrugged. “We could shoot that big fucker and eat him. Wouldn’t have to worry about locking the pantry then.”

  “You can’t just go shooting bears,” Lauren said. It was rare to hear her speak. To disagree with Olin? Unheard of. “It’s out of season.” She looked at Lisa. “Right?”

  But Olin ignored her. “You can shoot anything if it’s in self-defense. Bear, dog or a man. Doesn’t matter a shit if they’re trying to eat you.”

  “But you want to go out looking for it, you want to hunt it when it’s not doing...” Lauren stopped short under Olin’s stare.

  “She’s right,” Lisa jumped in. “We’re not going to go and hunt the bear or anything else. The cost of hunting in this weather is too high. If he comes back...” She looked at Jonesy. “We’ll try and scare him off before we do anything else.”

  “What about goats?” Olin asked. “If bear’s off the menu, what about goats?”

  “Goats?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, I saw a whole heap of them on a ridge, halfway up the mountain. All white with these big old horns. Couple of them looked almost as big as that bear. Make a good rug but can’t say I ever tasted one.”

  Jonesy raised his eyebrows at Lisa. They had never seen any mountain goats, not around here anyway.

  “Where?” he asked.

  He pointed behind them. “Over there, I guess.” He closed one eye and moved his arm to the right, like he was taking aim. “More like, a little more that way, maybe.” He dropped his arm and opened his eye. “I can show you. Must’ve been twenty of them. At least.”

  “You’re sure about this, Olin?” Jonesy started. “If we go out there in this we need to know we’re going in the right direction. We need to know you’re not...”

  “Bullshitting you? Why the hell would I do that? I want to eat too.”

  Jonesy couldn’t argue with the logic. “How long ago was this?”

  “Few weeks, few days before Lauren left.”

  Lisa turned to Lauren. “You saw them too?”

  Lauren nodded. “He shot at them but they were too far away.”

  “Damn right I did!” Olin shouted. “Bastards didn’t even move, didn’t even lift their heads to see who was shooting at them.”

  Jonesy turned to Lisa. “They might’ve moved on?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but it sounds like too good an opportunity to pass up. Livestock isn’t exactly growing off trees round here. We need more food, Jonesy.” She turned to Olin. “How far?”

  He shrugged. “Three, maybe four hours. I don’t know for sure.”

  “We’d need to go before it got light,” she said to Jonesy. “Not ideal, is it?”

  “Neither’s what’s left of the food supply,” he replied. “We don’t want things to get desperate.”

  20

  Jonesy finished loading the sled, securing it as meticulously as he always did. Wind whistled through the dark tunnel of spruce, buffeting the woodshed and making it groan. It didn’t seem possible but the temperature had dropped ten degrees overnight. It was 9am, but it might as well have been midnight such was the darkness.

  “You guys ready?” he called over his shoulder. He clipped the headlight around his hat and shone it directly it at Olin.

  Over in the corner, Olin was dressing himself in another layer of clothes that Jonesy had given him. He looked comical as he hopped around in the long underwear. Jonesy tried to stifle a smile, unsuccessfully. He looked at Lauren but she didn’t notice, she was helping Lad into the harness. She was whispering to him, smiling and stroking his head.

  “Almost,” Olin shouted back. “Do I get one of those rifles? Reckon I’d be a decent shot.”

  “No,” Jonesy replied. “You just need to concentrate on getting us there.”

  Olin grunted something in reply. He was treating it like a fun day out rather than a matter of survival. The same attitude had landed him and Lauren in trouble in the first place.

  A moment later, Lisa appeared. She fastened a few supplies to the sled. “Ready?”

  “Just waiting on Olin.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes. “We need to get moving,” she said.

  “Alright, alright, I’m ready.” Olin moved toward them. “Can’t get used to these though.” He kicked his leg in the air. The snowshoes were old but perfectly serviceable.

  “You’re welcome to try it without them. I can guarantee you won’t get far though.”

  “And if I don’t get you there, there’s no goat, nobody eats,” Olin replied. He clearly thought he was holding some good cards.

  “Including you,” Lisa replied. “Let’s go, Lad!” she shouted.

  Lad didn’t need further encouragement and set off toward the trail. Jonesy watched Lauren’s face as he set off. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Maybe I’ll show you how to drive the sled.” Jonesy walked a few steps beside her. “Like that?”

  She turned toward him. “Really? Wow, I’d love it. Look at him, he’s so strong.”

  They reached the top of the rise and turned right, heading away from where they normally hunted. Jonesy stole a quick glance at Lisa. He’d traveled this direction when he looked for Olin but Lisa hadn’t turned right since last winter; the morning they left the safety of their camp and went looking for help.

  If she was thinking about that day, she didn’t show it. She kept her head down against the wind, against the snow that blew straight at them. They walked two abreast along the trail. Jonesy walked alongside Olin at the front with the flashlight fastened to his head. Lisa walked with Lauren at the rear. Olin didn’t like the setup but he had no choice. He glanced over his shoulder at Lauren at frequent intervals.

  Jonesy kept hold of the sled as Lad tried to race everyone, and everything, to wherever he thought they were going. He was full of energy, and his enthusiasm at being back at work was wonderful to watch. It wasn’t infectious. They should be back at their cabin, just him and Lisa, sitting in front of the fire reading paperbacks, sipping coffee. The world shouldn’t exist beyond that space. That was why they were there. But everything had changed and however temporary that change was, it was uncomfortable. It frustrated Jonesy.

  He thought he knew where Olin had seen the goats. There was a craggy outcrop farther long the plateau that might look like a mountain to Olin. It wasn’t as far as the cabin but it was the only place that made sense given where he’d holed up.

  Progress was tortuously slow. Olin’s snowshoes were old but there was nothing wrong with them, and yet he walked as if he were auditioning for a role at the circus, a role his personality was not suited to. Jonesy tried to show him how to slide his feet a couple of times but Olin either didn’t want to learn or he couldn’t.

  Two hours in and the sun rose. It gave no warmth and precious
little light. It was like peering through a bad static storm on an old television. Lisa opened the Thermos, pouring each of them a cup of sweet coffee. She handed out strips of jerky.

  Jonesy tapped Olin on the shoulder, pointing into the distance. “That the ridge you meant?”

  “That’s a cloud,” he replied. Only a small square of his face was visible. He was wearing a balaclava to protect his cheeks.

  It was only experience and a little local knowledge that told Jonesy the swirling gray mass was the outline of the ridge and not a weather formation. It banked steeply and disappeared into the grim abyss above. He took the binoculars from around his neck and handed them to Olin. “Take another look.”

  Olin moved them from left to right, moving far too quickly to pick anything up. “Can’t see any goats.”

  As he passed them back with his good hand, the wind carried the reek of his festering flesh into Jonesy’s nostrils. It was nauseating. Olin rarely lifted the left arm now and a strange discharge stained the fabric of the gloves. Even more nauseating was to consider what lay beneath the material. Or indeed, beneath his shirtsleeve.

  “But that’s the ridge? Where you saw them?”

  Olin shrugged. “I guess.”

  “You guess? You can’t afford to guess, Olin. If we take off in that direction we’ve got another hour’s hike across the plateau, then we have to find the goats. We need to know for sure.”

  “Then I’m sure,” he said. He didn’t sound convincing.

  Jonesy turned around. Ice had crystallized on Lisa’s eyebrows. She had given her balaclava to Lauren. The girl looked small, tiny in comparison to Lisa, even though she too was wiry now. Dark rings around Lauren’s eyes created hollows almost as deep as those on Olin’s cheeks. She looked pathetic.

  “We have to turn off the trail now,” he said.

  Lisa looked relieved. If they continued another mile the way they were going they would run alongside the other cabin, maybe even spy it through the trees. Neither of them wanted that.

  “Not far now.” He smiled at Lauren.

  “Oh, she can walk for miles. Can’t you, honey? She made it back to your place, didn’t she?”

  Jonesy ignored Olin’s comment and steered the sled off the trail onto the plateau. The wind whirled across the wide-open expanse, sending snow devils twisting through the air. It was a barren and unforgiving place with no cover in which to hide from either the weather or their prey. If there was any.

  An hour later, they entered a small aspen thicket that grew in the shelter of the ridge. The trees were bent against the wind but grew in a dense, elongated clump around the base of the hill. They edged forward until the trees thinned enough for Jonesy to take another look through the binoculars.

  “See anything?” Lisa asked. She came up beside him, crouching down and peering up the slope. The very top of the ridge was hidden by cloud, but a collection of jagged rocks jutted out from beneath the snow a little lower down. He scanned from one side to the other.

  “Nothing,” he whispered. He handed the binoculars to Lisa.

  He turned around. Olin was talking to Lauren. Her head was bowed but when Olin grabbed her chin and jerked it upward he could see fear, real fear, infecting her eyes. He was about to yell something at Olin but Lisa stopped him short.

  “Over there,” she hissed.

  She was looking to her right, lower down than he had focused, on the edge of the alder thicket.

  “Two of them,” she whispered, handing him the binoculars.

  He took them from her. There were two beautiful mountain goats working their way slowly back up the hillside. “What is it? Two hundred yards?”

  “Closer to three,” she replied, sliding the Winchester from her shoulder.

  He winced. “Too windy to make it from here?”

  She lowered the rifle and put the scope to her eyes.

  “Told you.” Olin was crouching behind them, his rotten stench preceding him. If the goats caught his smell, they would be up the mountain and into the clouds before Lisa could get a shot off.

  “You need to keep your voice down,” Jonesy said without turning.

  “They’re miles away. We need to get closer,” Olin replied without quietening his voice.

  Both goats turned and looked in their direction and then trotted back down on the edge of the thicket again. The trees gave a modicum of protection for the moss and lichen the goats liked to eat. One of the animals was limping, almost hobbling on a foot that seemed to be facing the wrong way. That might explain why they were down off the safety of the hillside. Mother and son maybe? The injured one was larger and the smaller one followed a short distance behind.

  “Can’t you just take them both out? Then we can get out of here.” Olin’s voice was really beginning to grate on Jonesy.

  “Just keep quiet.” He turned around. “Can’t you just shut up for one minute?”

  Lad emitted a long rumbling growl. It seemed to travel through the earth and vibrate all the way through Jonesy’s knees. Lauren was kneeling beside the dog. She had her arm around him.

  Olin looked over his shoulder. “Keep that fucking dog quiet!” He spat the words at her like a swarm of mosquitoes.

  “Hey,” Jonesy grabbed him, realizing too late it was Olin’s bad arm he was pulling.

  The man let out a howl any of the resident wolves would be proud of. Jonesy saw the tears pool in his eyes.

  “Jesus, sorry, I didn’t...” he started.

  Olin grimaced, bunching his good hand into a fist. He fixed Jonesy with a stare so full of malice it made his skin crawl.

  “I didn’t mean to grab you so hard,” Jonesy said. He’d grabbed him on the forearm just below his elbow. Whatever was happening under his clothes was spreading. It wouldn’t wait until spring.

  “Yes you did,” Olin said. His smell even stronger now there was venom in his voice. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

  Jonesy held his gaze. “We need to do something about that arm. You know it as much...”

  “She can’t climb,” Lisa interrupted. She was still staring through the scope at the goats. “I think her leg’s broken. She can’t get up the slope.”

  For a few more seconds Jonesy stared at Olin. Should he feel bad for not feeling sorry he’d hurt him? He turned back to Lisa.

  “Have you got a shot?” he asked.

  She didn’t reply, just settled her body. The steaming vapor funneling from between her lips steadied into a slow, regular pattern. This was not the Lisa he had fallen in love with, it was another version of that woman: focused, single-minded and one hell of a shot. He loved this identity equally.

  He felt Olin slide in beside him. “I want to see,” he whispered.

  Behind them Lad rattled his harness, straining to break free of it. Jonesy had just enough time to register the sound before something hit the goat like a train. A giant brown blur barreled into the animal, knocking it off its feet, throwing it into the air like broken twigs. It was followed by the sound of a lunatic playing an off-key note on a broken accordion.

  “Grizzly,” Lisa breathed. “We need to get out of here.” She slid backward on her belly, keeping the scope on where the goat had just been. The smaller goat fled up the icy slope, threading its way through the jutting rocks. In just a few seconds it was gone.

  There was hardly a breath of wind in the thicket but all around them it sounded like a storm was raging, rendering the aspen to kindling. It wasn’t the weather that was making the noise. The goat was being dismantled, ripped apart.

  “Back away,” Jonesy whispered to Olin.

  But Olin ignored him, remaining where he was, transfixed. “You see that?” he whispered. He was grinning.

  “I saw it, Olin. Now we have to leave. That’s his now.” Jonesy slid back another foot. “Olin!” he hissed.

  But Olin wasn’t listening. He vomited onto his boots, Jonesy’s boots, wiped his mouth as though it was as normal as coughing and then unzipped his top layer.
He reached inside and pulled out the Glock. He turned to Jonesy.

  “Aren’t you going to shoot him?” A yellow thread of stomach bile dangled from his beard.

  The bear was almost completely hidden now, hunkered down within the thicket, devouring the goat.

  “No,” Lisa replied. She was already back at the sled. “Not if I don’t have to. We haven’t got a ...”

  “License, yes I know,” Olin snapped. He turned back to the bear. “That’s the bastard that tried to take me down.”

  “Why isn’t he hibernating?” Lauren asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “Some lone males just don’t, don’t ask me why. They’re the ones you need to be careful of.”

  “Careful, my ass.” Olin stood up. “That bastard just ate my dinner.” He crouched down, taking a few shuffling steps toward the animal.

  Jonesy jumped up. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Olin looked at him as if he were crazy. “I’m going to shoot the bastard. What do you think I’m doing?”

  He tried to take a another step but Jonesy caught his arm, the good one that was holding the Glock. “Don’t be stupid. We’re going back. Now.”

  Olin leaned closer, his putrefying fetor growing stronger by the second. A bead of sweat rolled from under his balaclava and along his nose. He wiped it away.

  “Are you scared, Jonesy?”

  “You dick,” Jonesy replied.

  Olin winked. “Thought so.” Then he was off, shuffling through the trees toward the bear.

  Jonesy turned to Lisa and shrugged. What he should do was let the guy get eviscerated by the bear, let him see that respect wasn’t the same thing as fear. Lisa raised her eyebrows; she was thinking the same thing but they both knew Jonesy wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  He set off, far more adept with the snowshoes than Olin, reaching him with only a few strides. Olin had a wild look in his eyes, standing with his back to a tree, gun pointing downward.

  “You’ll get us all killed,” Jonesy hissed.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” Olin replied. “Lisa’s got your balls so tightly packed away in her purse you don’t know what they look like anymore.”