The Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  Jeryl glanced at me and Ken, then returned his eyes to Mom.

  “Mary, they need to know about their father.”

  Mom paused for way too long. Ken shifted in his chair. The fire hummed in the corner of the room. Then Mom’s face grew serious. She stood up straight in her chair. “Your dad worked for Immunity before we moved to Alaska.”

  And there it was. It was like I knew it, like I’d always known it. Like somewhere, buried inside me, the answer had been waiting—in my blood. I looked to Jeryl. His eyes were locked on Mom, and Ken was frowning at her, probably making the same face I was. Jax was still standing by the door. I caught his eyes but quickly looked away. I didn’t want to see pity in them.

  “We left Chicago to get away from Immunity. In Alaska, your dad did a few things with Jeryl to earn our living, I had my job at the school, but by that time we had enough to retire. Not comfortably by any means, but we managed.”

  My mind felt like origami. Folding, folding, folding. Dad was one of them. I could picture the white star pinned to his shoulder. Was that a memory or my imagination? Did he work with Anders? I felt sick.

  “Don’t judge him,” Mom said. “It was before they—we didn’t know what they stood for then, what they were planning to do. He left them once he found out.” She sighed. “They were testing the serums before they were ready. They were using children and their mothers as test subjects. Most didn’t survive. He hadn’t yet completed a functional antidote when we left Chicago. At least, he didn’t think he did.” She eyed Jax. “But they—Immunity—continued his research.” Her gaze shifted to me. “And when you got sick, he started working on the serum again. He was able to make something, and he gave it to you while you slept. And it worked. It healed you.”

  “Did more than that,” Jeryl said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jeryl scratched at his chin. “While we were gone, she was taken by Immunity, and they . . . used her. She’s not just immune, Mary, she’s the cure.”

  “What the hell?” Ken said. “Is all this true?”

  But Mom barreled past his questions: “She was taken by Immunity? When?”

  My head was spinning; the room was closing in on me. Dad. Immunity. My blood. It all made a sick sort of sense. I remembered the dream I’d had. A bee sting that wasn’t a bee sting. Dad had given me an injection. He was the reason I survived. But I couldn’t get the image of him with a blue coat, a white star on his shoulder, out of my head. Was everything I knew about Dad wrong? Was everything a lie?

  I stood up and turned toward the door.

  “Lynn, where are you going?” Jeryl asked. Mom stayed quiet.

  “I just . . . need a walk.”

  “Lynn, stop. We can’t have you wandering alone,” Jeryl said, rising.

  It was too late; I was pushing the door open, practically running the second my feet hit snow.

  I looked over my shoulder. Jeryl was out the door, Ken close behind him. No sign of Mom. I kept moving.

  “Don’t go far!” Jeryl yelled, and then I heard him swear. But I didn’t look back again. I trudged determinedly through the snow. My tired legs had somehow reenergized, putting more and more steps between me and our cabins. My breath came in wheezing gulps.

  I made my way east to the Blackstone, the biting air stinging my cheeks. When I saw the river below a small hill, I sat down in the snow and stared at it. It seemed like more of it had frozen over since I last saw it. But in the middle, the current was a quiet, powerful thing, pushing the water helplessly onward. I pictured the time back in Alaska when Dad and I waded out into the waters of the Yukon River. I won’t let you go under. Did he know what was going to happen? Did he know what the world would become? What I would become?

  I shoved the thoughts aside. I didn’t want to think. I needed to shut off my brain. Just breathe.

  I heard feet stomping in the snow and saw Ramsey, fishing pole in hand, making his way up the hill toward me. He waved. I didn’t wave back. I wanted to turn and run, but it was too late.

  “You’re back.” He grinned at me once he’d gotten close enough.

  I wiped my forehead with my gloves, then pointed to his empty line. “Didn’t get anything?”

  “What?” He looked down at his pole. “Nah. Slim pickings. Doesn’t matter. Did you just get back? Is Jeryl with you? What’re you doing out here?” He spoke rapidly, anxious for clarity.

  “Just . . . watching the river.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  But that wasn’t true. It was always going somewhere. Even underneath the ice. Always changing, moving, turning, whether you liked it or not. It just looked stationary, like it was a solid thing. It was an illusion.

  “Lynn!” The voice came from behind me. I saw Jeryl and Ken and Jax walking up the hill toward us. I turned back to Ramsey. His face had gone sour upon seeing Jax. “We need to talk,” Jeryl said once he was a few yards from us.

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Not about that,” he said.

  “What about?”

  “Immunity is coming. We need a plan.” He looked over at Ramsey. “You’ll want to be a part of this.”

  “Immunity’s coming?” He sounded panicked.

  Ramsey was a boy who’d never battled anything more than fish. Fear was written plainly on his face. “Yes,” I said. “They’re coming for me.”

  – Part III –

  Immunity

  * * *

  Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

  I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  34

  Me, Jax, Jeryl, Ken, and Ramsey were standing on the north hill behind our cabins. The valley was framed by more hills covered with pine, spruce, and fir trees. I surveyed all of it, doing my best to empty my mind of thoughts of my dad. But my head was still reeling.

  “They’ll come through this valley,” Jax said. “They won’t be sneaky about it. They’ll have numbers. I’d guess they’ll be here by morning. They’ll want daylight so, in case things go south, they’ll be able to see clearly enough to not shoot me or Lynn. But just in case, we’ll take turns on the lookout tonight. Do you have bells, Jeryl, or something else that’ll make a racket if they run into it in the bushes?”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Jeryl said.

  “They might try to talk to us first,” Jax continued. “Convince us they have everyone’s best interests at heart.” He scuffed a hole in the snow with his shoe. “That’s their way, spin nice, fancy stories and have plenty of body bags on hand for when it doesn’t work out.”

  “We aren’t bargaining with them,” Jeryl said.

  “We should put someone on each of these hills with a rifle,” Jax said, pointing to the hills surrounding the valley. “We can pick them off as they come, maybe scatter them a bit. Then use the cover of the trees to make it back to the cabins.”

  Jeryl wiped at his mustache with a gloved hand. “Ken, you and Jax take the east, and Lynn and I will take the west.”

  “What about me?” Ramsey asked.

  “You’ll hole up in the cabin with Mary.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Jeryl looked at him. Serious eyes. “We’ll retreat back to Mary’s cabin if things get sticky. We need you and her there to lay covering fire if it comes to it.”

  “What if we get surrounded?” Ken asked. “What if they don’t come straight through this valley? No offense, Jax, but you can’t know for sure.”

  “Then we’ll have to change the plan,” Jeryl said. “Quickly.”

  “And that’s it?” Ken asked. “Shoot at them from the hills and change the plan if things go south? Shouldn’t we lay some traps or something?”

  “We’re all going to die,” Ramsey said.

  “Traps won’t be any good,” Jax said. “We don’t have anything to set that could do enough damage to a group this size.”

  Jeryl
cleared his throat and squinted down at the long valley of snow. We all watched him, waiting. “Well,” he said. “I might have something.”

  * * *

  I sat on my stump outside our cabin, whittling at a stick to pass the time, to keep my mind occupied. Jeryl had headed out to take watch on the north hill. Jax had offered to take turns on duty, but Jeryl had said no, he wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway.

  The sun was starting to fall, spilling an oddly bright, piss-yellow glow onto the snow—don’t eat the yellow snow—and the winter air had a good sting in it. I wondered what month it was. We didn’t keep track of them anymore. Or the weeks or the days. Well, Jeryl did. He’d give you the day of the week, the date, month, year, and exact time. He was probably just blowing smoke, but sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t at least close. For the rest of us, there was the cold season and the stay-inside-and-try-not-to-freeze-your-ass-off season. That was as precise as we got.

  The stick I was whittling was as thin as a fingernail when Jax came tromping through the snow from the north. He gave me a nod and looked down at my hands.

  “Nice stick.”

  “Yeah, it’s a keeper.”

  “Maybe you can stab someone with it.”

  I turned it over in my palm. “I was thinking of picking my teeth with it, actually.”

  He smiled. “That works too.” Maybe his smiles weren’t as rare as I’d originally thought. Or maybe they didn’t mean what I originally thought. I liked the way they looked on his face, though. Not that I’d ever tell him that.

  “So,” I said, setting down my stick and tucking a stray tangle of red hair back into my skullcap. “Are we going to die tomorrow?”

  “No,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s one of my powers.”

  I tried my best not to smirk. “Jackass.”

  He smoothed his ruffled brown beard. It made me remember a man I once saw on the cover of a magazine at the dentist. It was a fitness magazine. The man was shirtless, beardless, with a muscled body and perfectly trimmed eyebrows. Even then, I thought he looked unreal. Like a cartoon. Surely the world never had men like that. Hadn’t men always been bearded, manly, like Jax?

  Ken suddenly appeared at the front door of his cabin. “Jax, Lynn. Come here,” he said.

  Jax sauntered over.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Get in here,” he said.

  It was warm inside the small cabin. A fire burned in the hearth. The flames were golden and flailing like one of those inflatable, giant people that used-car salesmen had in their commercials. Look at me, I’m a fire!

  Ramsey sat on the floor next to the fireplace. There were no chairs in Ken’s cabin, just the room, the fireplace, and his small cot in the corner under that stupid poster he’d brought with him from Alaska of the big-boobed girls.

  Ken picked up a large bottle of vodka from behind Ramsey. Clear liquid sloshed between the glass, flashing orange from the light of the fire. Made it look like the bottle was molten in Ken’s palms.

  He held it out like a trophy. “I stole it from Mom’s stash.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “She’s going to kill you.”

  “I stole it years ago. Either she thinks she used it or that she didn’t bring as many bottles as she thought. Who knows? Maybe she didn’t even notice.”

  “So, what? You’re going to drink it?”

  “Hell yes, we might not get another opportunity.” The comment hung in the air. Rotten. We might not get another opportunity because we might be shot to shit soon.

  “I think we need to be as clearheaded as possible,” I said.

  “Come on.” Ken waggled the bottle. “Just to take the edge off. Calm our nerves. We’ll all be better shots for it.” He unscrewed the top, and before I could say anything else, he threw back a drink. “Whooo!” he said, shaking his head. His eyes were red and watery. “Damn.” He held out the bottle.

  Jax grabbed it, took his own gulp. He turned to me—that smirk—and offered the bottle.

  “Stupid,” I said, then poured some of the liquid fire down my throat.

  The first time I had alcohol was with my dad. He let me try some of his beer one evening when we were out fishing. I remember casting our lines over the silver water as an eagle watched us from a branch across the river. Dad was sipping on an Alaskan amber. “Want to try? Just a sip,” he said. It tasted like pop gone bad. He laughed. “What do you think?”

  “It’s good,” I lied.

  He laughed again. He was the type of man who smiled with his whole face. “You don’t have to like it.”

  “I like it.” I was trying to impress him. Of course, he didn’t care if I liked it or not. He was just trying to be a fun dad.

  He was a fun dad.

  But beer is nothing compared to vodka. Vodka is gross. There’s no getting around it. It tastes like syrupy pine on fire. But it does warm your insides. I’ll give it that. So I drank with everyone as we passed the bottle around, talking, laughing, almost like we were friends on a camping trip, getting away from the real world, forgetting our troubles for a little while.

  “Pizza,” Ken said. “With big fucking pepperoni slices and extra cheese. I’d kill you all for one slice.”

  “Add olives and I’d kill you first,” Ramsey said.

  “Olives? Sick.”

  “Hey, you eat your pizza, I’ll eat mine.” Ramsey took a drink. He’d coughed pretty hard the first time, but had clearly gotten the hang of it. “I miss popcorn at the movies,” he said. “The kind with way too much butter. You can taste it on your lips and fingers the rest of the night.”

  Ramsey handed the bottle to Jax. Jax stared at it for a second before taking his drink. The fire had burned down to coals.

  “Peanut butter,” Jax said. “Thick spoonfuls of peanut butter.”

  “Really?” I said.

  Jax looked at me. “What?”

  “Guess I didn’t take you for a peanut butter guy.”

  “What does a peanut butter guy look like?”

  “I dunno. Not you.”

  He passed the vodka to me and our fingers touched. My throat was mostly numb at this point, my head and chest warm. I swirled the bottle around for a second, watching the liquid spin. I took a drink, then held it out for Ken.

  “No, no, your turn,” Ken said. “What do you miss?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t miss anything.”

  “Yes you do,” Ken said.

  I thought about it. “Chocolate, I guess.” Dad used to keep bars of dark chocolate with almonds in the cupboard.

  “Ha, what a girl answer,” Ken said, taking a drink.

  “Chocolate is delicious. I miss it too,” Ramsey said.

  “I miss girls,” Ken said. Ramsey laughed.

  “I thought we were talking about food,” I said.

  “Clearly, I moved on.” Ken waggled the bottle at me. “Easy for you. You’ve got one, two, three options now. What have I got? Huh? Nothing. Damn relatives.”

  I looked at Jax, then regretted it. Everyone saw. Everyone understood. The air grew stale, the smell of wood and smoke and vodka mingling into an earthy stink.

  “You’ve been to cities, huh, Jax?” Ken asked. “There are more people there, right? Lots of girls?”

  Jax shook his head. “Mostly just passed through.”

  “But you must have seen some.”

  “Some. Not lots.”

  “But there were girls?”

  “Probably not what you’re looking for.”

  “I’m looking for anything.”

  “Asshole,” I said.

  “So’s Ramsey, he just won’t admit it.”

  “Shut up, Ken,” Ramsey said, looking at me. Then he turned to Ken and grabbed the bottle from him. “My mom,” he said, almost defiantly. “That’s what I miss.” I waited for Ken to say something sarcastic, but he didn’t. “I miss Dad too. But my mom died when I was so young. Cancer. It’s like al
l the memories I have of her are perfect.” I’d never heard him talk about his mom before. It was like meeting Ramsey for the first time, like a veil had been lifted. I remembered his tears as I tried to kiss him that night. Suddenly, he didn’t seem so awkward, just sad. “I know it makes her into something she probably wasn’t,” he said. “But still, I miss her.”

  “How old were you?” Ken asked, a surprisingly sensitive question, for him.

  “Six.”

  “I was eighteen when Dad died,” Ken said. He didn’t say I miss Dad, I’d never heard him say it, but it was in there.

  My throat was too tight to speak. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the floor. Our game had died its inevitable death.

  “How many will there be?” Ken asked Jax.

  Jax shifted on the hard, wooden ground. “Hard to say. Maybe twenty. Maybe more.”

  I thought back to the camp. All the tents. All the faces. Twenty. At least twenty.

  “So we’ve got no chance then, huh?” Ken asked. He was playing it off as a joke question, but I knew he wanted an answer.

  “We have a chance,” Jax said. “They’re going to figure you guys for runners not fighters. They’ll come in cocksure of themselves. That’s a weakness.” It was hard to tell if he believed what he was saying. “They’ll also have to be careful. They won’t want to kill me or Lynn. That’ll cause them to make mistakes.”

  Could I really be so sure that they didn’t want to kill me? I’d killed one of their men—hell, as far as they knew, I’d killed Braylen too. Maybe Anders didn’t much care whether I was alive or a corpse, as long as he got my blood. Although being dead would probably be better than being stuck to a cot, unable to move, while they slowly drained the blood from my veins. The thought sent my head spinning. I needed to stop thinking.

  I stood up suddenly, felt all the eyes in the room snap to me. I marched over to Ken, took the bottle out of his hands, threw back a full mouthful, then set it on the ground in the middle of the cabin.

  “Clean, smooth faces,” I said.

  “What?” Ken said.