I was sure that we would meet again.
“It’s almost time to restock dog food ourselves. I’ve seen some tracks. I think a lone cow is around here somewhere. Times are tough so she may be our first volunteer to be a food source. I’m sure we’ll get more meat than we can use. I have a snow machine and a makeshift sleigh to tow behind it. I can bring some meat by if I can bag her, if you’d like?” I ended it as a question.
He was interested. Although he had passed a number on his way here today, butchering a moose by yourself is a monumental task. Maybe we could hunt one together. As long as the snow machine didn’t get too close, his dog team would be fine.
He gave me directions to his place. I told him I would try to stop by sometime in the next week, whenever the weather was clear. It would be cold, but I didn’t want to risk being out in a snowstorm. Although with the snow machine, I could cover the fifteen miles to his place in maybe twenty minutes. The road was fairly straight and had a nice base layer of snow. I had his sled track to follow as well.
We shook hands again, neither committing to anything. For a brief period of time, we shared the beauty of Alaska and some of the challenges living here. We did not live in fear. We just lived.
Christmas I
“You know, tomorrow is Christmas …” I left it at that. The twins had no idea, although they were at the age where they were supposed to be excited to see what Santa would bring. We had lost track of time. But not our phones. Even without service they knew the time and date. We dutifully checked the phone once or twice a day for service, and that’s when I noticed the date.
The twins were down for their naps. They seemed to be asleep. We took our conversation to the other, colder side of the great room.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Madison replied. “I’m not sure I like what Christmas has become. Too commercial.”
I laughed. “I agree completely. This year, I refuse to go Christmas shopping! I will not buy anything in a store for them!”
As Madison thought about it, she giggled too. “This is our chance to make it what we think it should be.”
I waited. “So, what do you think it should be?”
She knew that she had been set up. We had talked about this many times before the twins came along. At two years old, this was going to be a pivotal year for them. It was going to be Santa Claus bringing piles of presents, or a more traditional Christian celebration, or something of our own making. Although we didn’t believe in the Seinfeld version called Festivus, we understood the point they were trying to make.
“Let’s make it about giving and not getting.” Of course. What did that look like? I made a hand gesture of “tell me more.”
“We each give something out of the ordinary to each other. We have to be accountable, so we’ll write things down if we give an act, like cleaning a room or doing dishes. We’ll track it on a paper that we’ll post on the wall.” Madison believed that the most important gift you could give was your time. I saw the wisdom in it. Time is something that, once wasted, can never be gotten back. We have to make the most of our time.
That’s why she was always so much better at parties than I was. Even though we are both introverts, she could flow through a party and leave everyone smiling. Her secret? Ask a question and give them your undivided attention as they answer. She then asked a short follow-up question to show that she’d listened to them. And then she moved on. She shared almost nothing of herself with strangers. As introverts do.
We thought our children were solid introverts. They were perfectly happy playing with each other. Weeks after the explosion, they remained unfazed. They didn’t realize that tomorrow was Christmas. Time for another family meeting.
We gathered at our favorite place in front of the pellet stove. The dogs were easily worked up. We took some time to settle them down. Time in this case meant a couple of stale Milk Bones.
“Christmas is tomorrow. Do you know what that means?” I asked.
“Santa Claus!” our little girl Aeryn exclaimed. We hadn’t used Santa Claus as an incentive for good behavior. I hadn’t thought that we mentioned it at all in previous months and especially not in the past three weeks. Our daughter was a genius! That was one conclusion, or maybe last year’s Christmas when the twins were one had made a good impression. A good commercialized impression. I think that I may have overdone it.
My wife looked at me. It was not pleasant.
“Well yes, sweetheart,” she started, still giving me the hairy eyeball. “Santa Claus is a way for us to give to people we care about. Maybe tonight we will read you that story out of the Bible about the birth of Jesus Christ and what Christmas is supposed to be. Then we can talk more about what we want for each other.”
“I want McDonald’s fries,” said Charles, our little man. This earned me a withering look from my wife.
“I don’t even want to know why you would take them to McDonald’s. You don’t have a reason good enough.” My retort of “fine” died on my tongue. Of course I had taken them to McDonald’s. It was between meals and they were hungry. It was quick, and they’d enjoyed them, it seemed. Maybe they’d enjoyed them a little too much. We wouldn’t be going back anytime soon. Even if the McDonald’s was resurrected, it appeared that we would not be going back.
I tried to recover some dignity. “Those aren’t the kinds of things we ask for. Like right now, I want your mother to be happy that for a brief moment in time, you enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a French fry. But you are committing, from this moment forward, that you won’t harm your body in the future with foods that are bad for you …” It didn’t work. I was still in the dog house.
“What we were thinking is that we would do things for each other, things that we wouldn’t normally do, like taking an extra turn cleaning the house. Your father will be digging our new outhouse very soon, for example.”
But it’s winter and the ground is like concrete … I left it unsaid.
“Come on everyone, time for chores,” I said. I needed to escape and let things cool down a bit. It was Christmas Eve! And I still needed to run the generator, bring in more pellets, and maybe siphon a little water from someone’s tank in our neighborhood.
Escape
After the debacle of the family meeting, I hurried outside. I made sure everything was plugged in correctly, maximizing what we did with our power, and then started the generator. It ran smoothly. Even with the last three weeks, we still had not run it for one hundred total hours. It remained like new, our stalwart companion in crisis.
My newest best friend was the snow machine. I wanted to make a quick run to the gas station to see if maybe there was some treat I could get for the twins, something their mother would approve of. I needed her balance on these things otherwise I guarantee I would get them candy bars and Coke. I had been borderline diabetic. I liked my sweets, although after not having any for the past few years, my sweet tooth had disappeared. Honey as a sweetener worked just fine. I could no longer eat a piece of cake; it was too sweet. Not that there would be any cake.
The snow machine fired up on the first pull. I waved as I drove out. She was still giving me her mad look. Escape was my only recourse. Time was my friend, as in, I needed to give her some time to realize that there was no way I was digging a hole for an outhouse in the winter. Even with a pick axe it would have been brutal work.
I took it easy until I got to the open road. Following my own previous tracks, I gave it the gas and raced the short mile to the gas station. The snow machine slowed down quickly and I turned in. My tracks were the only ones in the past weeks. Only human ones, that is. It looked like a pack of dogs had been through here. With the door shut, they hadn’t gone inside to cause any damage.
I looked more closely. These dogs had big paws. I put my gloved hand down to get a better frame of reference.
Wolves.
I jumped back on the sled and returned to the house. I came into our driveway a little quickly and was off the sled as
it was winding down. I went inside to be certain that our dogs were still there. They were.
“No one goes outside without me. Dogs on a leash and we don’t stray beyond our own yard. We stay away from the woods,” I said firmly.
“What’s going on?” Madison asked.
“Wolves.” I always carried my .45 when “shopping.” I grabbed my .45-70 rifle and headed back outside.
“Where are you going?” Madison asked.
“I want to see where they went. I want to see that they keep going. And if they don’t, I have to make sure they can’t bother us,” I said in the voice of the Marine that I had been.
Wolves
I jumped back on the sled and gunned it out of our neighborhood. I slowed to take the corner onto Chena Hot Springs Road and then opened it up.
I almost fell off. My rifle, slung across my back, didn’t allow me to lean forward as much as I needed to. I slowed, adjusted things, then sped back up.
The wolf tracks went from the gas station straight out onto the road. They were on top of the Dog Musher’s tracks. And the tracks started getting further apart. The wolves were running after the Dog Musher.
I maintained my speed at fifty mph, staying on the dog sled tracks. The wolf tracks marred the smoothness of the sled’s passing. After ten miles, the tracks remained unchanged. The wolves continued to chase the dog sled. I didn’t know how I could tell if the Dog Musher had been aware he was being followed. Maybe he was making a bee line for his kennel so he could secure his team and fight off the wolves.
At mile eleven, the wolf tracks left the road and headed down a driveway. I raced past where they had turned. I looked around at the woods to make sure I wasn’t going to get ambushed, then turned and went slowly down the driveway. I could see where the wolf tracks intersected with moose tracks. The wolf pack had changed prey. I followed them a short way until a spot where I could see the moose had jumped a fence. It looked like the wolves didn’t follow. Their tracks circled, then went left toward a break in the trees – the power line.
Once up the powerline, they picked up their pace and were running again. Up ahead, the power line intercepted the road. There was an embankment and I wasn’t good enough with the snow machine yet. I went too slowly, going straight up and lost traction. I tried to turn and take it along the side. It started to roll.
I gunned it, but too late. It jumped a little forward, enough to unseat me. And it still rolled. Right over the top of me and down the bank, settling on its side at the bottom. The windscreen was broken and it was no longer running. I hoped that was because of the kill switch wristband I always used. I was more than eleven miles away from home with less than an hour of light remaining while on the trail of a wolf pack.
If I swore, now was perfect for it. But I didn’t, and I didn’t have the time. My rifle had dug into my back. My pistol dug into the ribs under my arm. The sled had slammed into my chest. I sat in the snow and took off my helmet. I listened for any sounds. It was quiet. I don’t know what a wolf pack sounded like while hunting, but I expected to hear something. Maybe not.
I cleaned off the face shield and looked at my rifle. There was snow in the scabbard, but after wiping off the rifle action and shaking the snow out, I was back in business. I made sure there was a round in the chamber and that the safety was on.
My sled needed some love. I wiped it off enough. The broken windscreen wouldn’t be a problem. I crossed my fingers and tried to start it.
It came to life on the first pull. My heart raced. I was out here hoping to help the Dog Musher while at the same time putting my family at risk. I should head straight back home.
But that wasn’t who I was. The Dog Musher needed help right now. If I went home, who’s to say that the wolves wouldn’t follow me back?
I drove the snow machine at a crawl along the bottom of the embankment until I came to another driveway where a ramp had been created over the years. The sled smoothly negotiated it and I was back on the road, where I found the wolves had resumed following the Dog Musher.
Failure
Two Rivers was close by. I opened up the snow machine on the straightaways and was quickly at the Dog Musher’s turn-off. The trail was far too easy to follow.
I slowed. Even with the engine still running, I could hear the sounds of battle – growls and yips of pain. Some barking. Some howling.
The Dog Musher had not known that he was being followed. It looked like he had arrived shortly before the wolves. Half his team had been unhooked and chained back to their dog houses. This is how the wolves found them. Easy prey.
The chained dogs had no chance. The Dog Musher had been in the open and was still fighting valiantly against three wolves. The other members of the pack were efficiently killing the sled dogs. I ripped the rifle off my back and took aim. The shot took one of the wolves in the flank. His back legs were almost ripped off – a 405-grain round fired from fifty feet away didn’t need to hit the center of the target to be effective.
That left two attacking the Dog Musher. The shot had not startled the wolves at all. I expected them to run off, but they were in killing mode.
They were too close to the Dog Musher. Both had bitten deeply, and more than once. The Dog Musher’s thick clothes helped, but he was still too exposed. One hand was a bloody stump. I angled in close with the snow machine, driving with one hand while holding the rifle in the other.
I stopped about twenty feet away and jumped off. A big male took notice and came at me. I shot him in the chest as he jumped. I fell backwards into the snow. I scrambled to get back up, but didn’t make it all the way.
Another came at me. I shot him from a sitting position. My 45-70 had two rounds left. There were more wolves than that.
I took aim at a wolf ripping into the Dog Musher’s leg. The man screamed in pain. I fired. I missed! I chambered the last round and fired again. This one hit home and the wolf exploded in fur and blood.
I struggled quickly to get my .45 out from inside my jacket. The cries from the sled dogs had stopped. Only the growls of the wolves remained. The Dog Musher was losing his fight for consciousness.
One of the five remaining wolves came at me, but not straight. It started to circle, keeping its gleaming eyes focused on me. I clicked the safety off with my thumb and drove the first round from the .45 right through its forehead. It went down while the shot rang loudly in my ears.
The other four were not so keen to engage. It looked like they were deciding what to do. Maybe I had killed the Alphas of the pack. I didn’t care. At this point, I was in control. I walked toward the closest wolf, a female, and dropped her with a shot behind her shoulder.
The others started to run toward the nearest woods as if their pelts were on fire. I fired a couple times, but missed.
I followed them a short way to make sure they were still running. They were.
This battle was over.
I ran over to the Dog Musher, who was lying in his own blood, sobbing.
“My dogs …”
I looked back. All his dogs were dead or dying. There was blood everywhere.
I ripped off a piece of his coat and started to tighten it around his mangled hand. He convulsed in pain. He kept trying to get something out of his jacket, but it was on his left side. His right hand was of no use. I pulled his jacket open for him. He had a .38 caliber pistol. He hadn’t been able to get it out in time to fight off the wolves.
The cold would keep his wounds from bleeding too much, but I needed bandages. I ran inside his cabin. There was a dresser and I hurriedly opened the drawers until I found t-shirts. I grabbed a handful and turned to run back outside. The retort of a gunshot shook the windows.
The wolves! I dropped the shirts and pulled my pistol out of my shoulder holster, levering off the safety as I burst out the door.
No wolves. No threat. Only the Dog Musher with the top of his head blown off. And his pistol on the ground nearby where it had jumped from his dead fingers.
M
y ears were still ringing from the earlier gunfire, but I couldn’t hear any other sounds. The world returned to its normal state of peace. I looked around. Carnage. The smell of blood tainted the air. Gunpowder lingered.
I got behind the Dog Musher and lifted him off the ground. His head dripped gore onto the front of my jacket as I dragged him to his cabin. I put him on his bed and covered him up. After breakup (spring melt), I would return and bury him. He deserved better than this.
The wolves hadn’t cared. We’d lived in Alaska for only four years, but in all that time, I had never heard of wolves attacking people. “Is this going to happen more often in our new world?” I asked myself.
If so, that meant things had changed dramatically for my family. We had to always be on the lookout. We had to always be armed. We had lived such sheltered lives before and never fully appreciated it.
Putting my feelings aside, I checked for supplies. The shed had two pallets of dog food. We could put that to good use. I took two as that was all that would fit on the back of the snow machine. I started it and, without looking back, headed for home.
The Unhappy Return
I pulled in by our garage just after sunset. Madison bolted outside wearing just her hoodie and sweatpants when she saw me. I looked a mess. My coat would probably have to be burned. My snow pants weren’t in much better condition.
“I’m fine.” I said as she stared at the blood and gore frozen to the front of my jacket. “Not mine. They got the Dog Musher.”
She mouthed the words, “Oh my God.”
I pulled her inside the garage, where it was still cold, but not like being outside. “And all his dogs, too.” I tore off the coat and threw it on the ground and pulled her in close for a hug.
I had broken into people’s homes. I had stolen their goods. And I’d watched people die. Was I ready for this? I didn’t think so.
Endure (End Times Alaska Book 1) Page 6
