The Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  Bugs.

  Sunburns.

  Sunscreen.

  Freckles, freckles, freckles.

  * * *

  The morning after the shit storm with Conrad, I got up early, dressed, and trudged out into the snow. Couldn’t stand to be around everyone. I was in one of my moods, the ones that can be changed only by long bouts of solitude. Strange, the things that survive the apocalypse. My need to be by myself apparently outlives any flu. Back in the old world, I used to run off to the river and climb this one willow tree that hung over the moving water. I’d read, listen to music, or just sit there and watch the leaves spinning in the wind. Needed to be away from everyone, everything. That’s what hunting became for me. I liked being on my own. The quiet of it, the stillness of the snow, the familiar spruce, fir, and pine trees, the challenge of the hills, finding footprints of large and small game. All of it a world I understood and one that didn’t need to understand me.

  It had stopped snowing sometime in the night, but not before another inch of fresh powder was added to the ground. There was about a foot and a half in all. We had to stock up on what meat we could before the deep snow and deep freeze set in. Grow our winter coats. Ramsey used to beg Jeryl to move us all south to warmer weather, friendlier environments. But Jeryl always said no in his most I’m-in-charge voice. He didn’t want to go south where the big cities were, where whatever was left of the world sat like a crumbling, rusting parasite, where even if everyone was dead, the air was probably still thick with the flu. We were people of the Yukon now.

  When I crested the first hill, just southeast of our homestead, I stopped and sat in the snow, pulled out a bit of deer jerky, and munched on it for breakfast. Remember fluffy scrambled eggs? Crisp bacon? Blueberry pancakes? I don’t.

  The sun blinked over the horizon, rubbing its sleep-crusted eyes. Trees, snow, mountains, as far as I could see. I inhaled the frozen air, trying to remember what warmth felt like. Being truly, comfortably warm. Then I realized that I didn’t care. I’d gotten used to the cold, the uncomfortable. Maybe a part of me—hell, maybe a large part of me—liked it.

  The jerky was too salty, but it was filling. I stuffed a handful of snow in my mouth and started down the other side of the hill. I’d hunt east today, head for the river. I wasn’t going to check my traps, so I’d left my sled at our cabin, and despite the snow, walking felt light without it. If I made a big kill, I’d have to butcher the thing and hang the meat in a tree with the rope I’d brought in my backpack. Dad had shown me how. Then I’d head back and get my sled and maybe Jeryl to help retrieve it. All I had on me was the rope, my Hän knife, a bottle of water, more deer jerky, arrows, and my compound bow.

  A healthy part of me wanted to head to Conrad’s place, stake it out, hide in a tree or the hill just behind his cabin, and wait for him to step out the door. And then, thwang, arrow through the neck. It’d be easy. That’s the thing the fat bastard didn’t understand. He was bigger, stronger than me, but if I wasn’t such a nice person, I could kill him as easy as bringing down a moose. Easier. I knew exactly where this particular moose lived.

  * * *

  Conrad was the opposite of my dad. Loud, selfish, fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, while Dad was boisterous without being loud, kind, smart, and strong. Dad used to let me ride on his shoulders, let me put makeup on him when no one else was home, let me stay up late watching movies, let me pick out my own clothes, let me throw temper tantrums without interrupting me or telling me to go to my room. He’d fix my lunch for school and give me money when he knew that he’d made a crappy lunch. He taught me to hunt and fish and trap and how to drive a stick shift in the church parking lot even before I got my license. And when I was really little, in Chicago, he’d sing to me before bedtime or when I woke from a nightmare. I can still remember the feel of his beard against my cheek, his strong arms holding me up. I even remember lines from some of the songs.

  Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

  merry merry king of the bush is he . . .

  It didn’t make sense that the world could spin on when people like Dad died and people like Conrad lived.

  The fat oaf joined us the first year. He found our settlement after we’d put up the first few walls of Mom’s and my cabin. Jeryl had known Conrad back in Eagle, but they hadn’t exactly been friends. He told us he was thinking of settling nearby, and Jeryl said that we’d be happy to have the company, that sticking together, hunting together, would make survival all the more possible. But I could tell even then from the way Jeryl eyed him that he was suspicious.

  Everything started out fine. Jeryl, Ken, and Ramsey helped Conrad build his cabin, and they all hunted together for a while. Then we got a few winters under our belt. The first few tastes of hunger. Conrad didn’t show up as much anymore. I heard grumblings about game and territory. Ken said that Conrad even took a swing at Jeryl once. Since then we’d become silent neighbors who tried to stay out of each other’s way. Mom hated him from the beginning. Not sure why. Maybe she was just an excellent judge of character.

  * * *

  The hill was rough going. I’d gotten lazy in the short spring, before the snows came. My thighs were too skinny now, my back not used to the strain. Nothing about me said winter warrior. I was the opposite. Both of my parents had Scottish in their heritage. Hence our name, McBride, hence my tangle of half-dreadlocked red hair, hence my freckled face, hence my green eyes. Everything about me stood out against the snow. A red bull’s-eye. That’s why I wore the dark gray skullcap Mom knitted for me—to blend in. It was big enough to stuff my mess of hair inside. But it wasn’t just my redness that made me unsuited for the Yukon. I’d always been too skinny. And the lean winters had done nothing for my weight. Sure, I’d gained some muscle from the hard life, the long walks, drawing the bow, but it wasn’t anything substantial. Ken said that small girls are always angrier. Maybe that’s why I had a healthy amount of rage in me. Or maybe it was the Scottish blood.

  The snow deepened as I climbed higher, and the spruce trees angled out from the ground, pointing at the blinding sky. With the freezing air, the summer-blue sky seemed fake. My thighs were burning and my shoulders hurt from the weight of my backpack and my compound bow, which I held at my side. I was breathing hard, the air stinging the back of my throat, but it felt good. When I crested the hill, I looked down at the river. A leviathan like the ones they talk about in the Bible, splitting the snow in lazy turns, ice creeping in along its edges. One day, the whole thing would freeze over. The river always made me a little uneasy. It seemed so calm, so peaceful. But put one foot in and you’d have frostbite before you made it back to the cabins—that is, if the river didn’t snatch you and pull you under.

  The trees grew dense along the bank, making for a tough shot. My plan was to get close enough—but not too close—find a good tree to hide behind, and see if I could spot some deer coming in for a drink. Why is it that animals prefer to drink icy river water rather than eat snow? Something about it must taste better.

  I watched the water’s current and for the millionth time imagined myself following the river east. Traveling on and on, exploring, discovering, living. Not this day-in-and-day-out motionless, monotonous surviving in rough cabins. I’d never tell Mom, but deep down, I wanted to escape, to get out and see what was left of the world. Who knew, maybe there were more settlements like ours, with better equipment, more people . . . more men. I was wasted on this frozen slice of the Yukon, a case of arrested development. Nothing new to learn here.

  I was really, really good at school. Before.

  Math, literature, science, easy. Social studies bored the hell out of me, so mostly I sucked at that. But everything else was a breeze. They even moved me ahead a grade, so I got to play the role of little ginger girl who thinks she’s too smart for her own good. God, the kids loved that. It didn’t help that my name was freaking Gwendolynn.

  Suddenly, I was the youngest in class, and I was still smarter than most of the other kids.
Okay, I was smarter than all the other kids. I don’t mean to brag about it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a genius or anything. Mostly, it probably means that the other kids were a bunch of stupids.

  Mom brought some books into the Yukon and used to give me lessons in our cabin. A grade twelve calculus book (boring!), a book of short stories by Flannery O’Connor, a few biology magazines, and The Taming of the Shrew. That was my education. Oh, and of course Dad’s copy of Walt Whitman’s poems.

  The books were no good to me anymore, except the Whitman, and Mom didn’t have much else to teach me. So I moved on to hunting. I was good at it. Dad used to take Ken and me out. He was a biologist, so on top of the hunting, he’d tell us about all kinds of plants. Which ones are good to eat, which ones will kill you, how and where to dig up edible roots. The plant part was boring so I mostly tuned it out.

  “Lynn, are you listening? This is important.”

  “Yes,” I’d say, even though I wasn’t.

  “Then what’s this plant called?”

  “It’s . . . a snowleaf.”

  “A snowleaf?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s chickweed. Can you eat it?”

  “Yeah,” I said even though I had no idea.

  “Okay. Here.” He handed me one of the small green leaves.

  I plopped it in my mouth without hesitating, staring him down as I chewed. I knew that if I was wrong, if it was poisonous, Dad would stop me. It tasted stale, dirty, green.

  “So if you were in the wild, you’d recognize that plant, right?”

  I nodded halfheartedly as I swallowed.

  Dad couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

  He also showed me how to use the bow. He’d adjust my stance, my elbow, my fingers on the string, and we’d shoot at a cloth target strung over a bale of hay behind our house in Eagle.

  “How far away is it?”

  “Thirty yards,” I’d guess.

  “More like twenty. Use the twenty-yard sight pin.”

  I’d adjust my aim to the top pin in the little, circular sight.

  “Take a breath,” he’d say.

  I was a natural. By the time I was thirteen, I’d killed marten, squirrels, crows, and a raccoon. Whenever I’d bring something in, Dad would throw his arm around my shoulders and kiss my head. “That’s my girl!” He’d always cook up the kill too. No matter how small the animal, how stringy and rough the meat, Dad would make a point of eating it with me. As weird as that was, Dad would say, “Can’t kill just for the fun of it. The animal died to provide for us.” Sometimes it tasted terrible, but I didn’t mind. It’s like I really was providing for the family.

  Mom didn’t share Dad’s enthusiasm. I’d come in with a dead marten or fox and she’d give me this look. What a waste, her face would say. All my smarts and I was out in the woods killing critters.

  I’d agree with her, but what’s the point?

  The point? The point is, I could make it out on my own. I didn’t need the cabins, the stupid animals. All I needed was my bow and my knife. Dad would have understood.

  But like all the other times before, I didn’t follow the river east. I just sat and imagined.

  I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, a flapping white wing, a beady blue eye. On a branch about twenty feet up was a bird. Looked like a crow. But it was all white. Never seen an all-white crow before. I stared at the thing, and it stared back at me. Jeryl once told me that the world was changing. Maybe this was part of what he was talking about. The bird let out an annoying “Yaw,” then launched from the branch toward the river, its white wings folding like a tissue caught in the wind. Such a weird creature. I followed it because, well, because it was a white crow.

  I started downhill, my feet packing the snow beneath me, the Blackstone River flowing in a silent rush. I scanned the trees, searching for the bird. That’s when I heard the rustling and saw another animal, this one walking on my side of the river. I stopped moving. A wolf. No, not a wolf. A dog. A freaking dog! Thick white fur with a streak of silver on top. Pale blue eyes and pointed ears. Siberian husky. Probably a sled dog. It was about twenty yards away, sniffing at the air. It was right where the bird had gone. I thought about all those Native American stories about shape-shifting spirit animals. Had the crow shifted into a dog? I took a cautious step, and its head snapped toward me, its ears white triangles pointing at the sky. We surveyed each other without moving. I thought, just for a second, about shooting the thing. Dog meat was meat, wasn’t it? And I didn’t know this dog. I’d never had a dog. I felt no sentimentality. But when it looked at me, I could see the curiosity in its eyes. The trust that it had learned in a world I’d forgotten about. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, shoot the stupid thing.

  Then a high-pitched whistle sounded from the south, and I heard more footsteps in the snow. I ducked behind a thick pine tree and peeked out at the bank, breathing fast. That’s when I saw him. Heavy, gray winter coat, brown pack strapped to his shoulders with what looked like a blanket or a bedroll tied to the top of it. He had a skullcap covering his head, a blue handkerchief covering his face, and dark hair plastered to his forehead. Eyes that had been focused on the ground were suddenly alert and pointed in my direction. My heart banged in my ears. I flattened my back against the tree. Then the dog barked, a piercing sound. Shit. I nearly jumped out of my sexy wool underwear. He barked again. Not an angry bark. Excited, if anything. A look-what-I-found bark.

  I peered around the tree. The dog was staring at me, the man staring at me. We all stared, assessing if what we were seeing was real.

  “Hello?” He said it like a question. Hello? Is that right? Is that what people used to say?

  I didn’t answer.

  “Don’t want any trouble,” he said, pulling his handkerchief down around his neck.

  “Okay,” I said. Probably should have said Me neither. The dog barked again.

  “Shut it,” the man said to the dog. He looked back at me. “I’m going to keep on moving. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.”

  It wasn’t till later that I thought about how weird that was. What lone, wandering human in a world devoid of company didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to learn about the surviving human race, didn’t want a moment—at least a moment—of human companionship?

  “Where you from?” I blurted as he started back up the river. He paused, turned back to me. The dog barked again as if answering for him.

  “South. The States.” He didn’t return the question. Maybe he assumed I was from the Yukon.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  He looked at me like he was trying to understand the question.

  “No” was all he said.

  Then he turned his back to me and started walking.

  He scared the hell out of me. A lone man, surviving on his own. How rough would he have to be to survive out here by himself? How desperate? I pictured Conrad, his face too close to mine, his body flattened against me. But I couldn’t let this man go. Couldn’t let him get away. He was a link to the world beyond our little settlement, the only link I’d seen in years and years. I had to trap him, ensnare him. I reached out with the only thing I had to offer.

  “You hungry?” He stopped. The dog had given up on me and was sniffing at a tree. “You should come with me.”

  The man appraised me. He was used to being alone, to surviving on his own. But he had to be hungry. Everyone was hungry.

  “Okay,” he said.

  6

  In the life before, in Alaska, Mom was a librarian. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her now. The hardened eyes, the dirt under her nails, the pinch of her lips. Crevices of survival, of suffering, of endless winter, not of a librarian in an elementary school, handing out Dr. Seuss to kids.

  But she did that, once, and she loved it.

  She loved my dad too. We all did. But his death had more of an impact on her than it did on me or Ken. Before, she was something like shy. She didn’t have friends or
any real social life, and she’d let Dad make almost all the decisions. Sure, she had her temper, but for the most part, she was a kind, quiet, unassuming woman. After his death, I think she felt the burden of the world on her shoulders. The burden of me and Ken. She became a strong-willed, outspoken, zealous woman full of fire and a will to survive. It’s probably what’s kept her alive so long. That and the fact that Jeryl showed up and nearly shoved us out the door. He saved us. Saved us from the town, which was rotting at the seams from flu, being torn apart by looters, and freezing in the plummeting temperatures. Our heater was broken, and the fires we had each night barely warmed our living room, let alone the whole house. I remember falling asleep, watching my breath gathering in front of my face and disappearing toward the ceiling. But Mom had refused to leave. Even after half the town was dead or on the move, she held tight to the walls of our house like they were the living, breathing reincarnation of Dad. Maybe if Walt Whitman had anything to say about it, they were.

  Jeryl came over one morning with his animals all packed up and ready to go. “Mary, time to leave.”

  She fought him, screamed at him, told him to get the hell out of her house. He wouldn’t budge. He started packing things up for her, and she got violent. Pushing and punching, but he just shoved her away. That’s when she ran to the basement, came up with a pistol in her hands.

  “Get out.” Her voice was shaking.

  Jeryl stopped what he was doing, and Ken and I watched from the living room. Deep down, I knew she’d never do it. But that’s when everything changed with Mom. My vision of her altered. She was the same, but she was different. More feral. Protective. We were still in Alaska, but that was the moment Yukon Mom was born.

  Uncle Jeryl walked up to her, calm as ever, as she held that gun out to him, telling him she’d do it, she didn’t care. He reached out, took the gun right out of her hands, and she crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut loose. Jeryl knelt down, helped her back to her feet.