Overwinter

by David Wellington

  The male’s path was not something they could see or smell, but they knew that as he weaved and cut capers ahead of them he was not leading them blindly. He was still following the line of the hills, still dashing from one rock to the next where there was safe footing. The going was slow, but much faster than it had been during the storm. By nightfall they had entered a narrow valley between two high rills, a place where the snow was only a few feet deep. He led them down between these arms of raised earth, headed north. Always north.

  The gray’s instinct was to trust him, and not to wonder why they kept to this same course. He must have his reason, after all. Yet she could not help but glance back over her shoulder now and again, and wonder why they were headed into ever colder, ever snowier places. The temperature didn’t bother her, but she knew in her bones that they would find more game to the south, where the plants the small animals depended on could thrive. The farther north they went the hungrier they would become.

  Because as a wolf she was less than a year old, she had never migrated before, nor did she know they were headed toward a caribou mating ground. She had never seen one of the huge deer—though if she had, her body would have recognized it immediately. Her genes knew exactly how closely tied the caribou was to the wolf, so that their lives were like two threads twined together to make a stronger rope.

  She followed where the male led.

  If the white had any questions, or doubts, she kept them to herself. She trailed behind the gray a certain minimum distance, and stuck to her appointed place.

  Until they heard the machines.

  42.

  They were not, of course, true wolves. Their bodies were made in the form of extinct dire wolves, down to the genetic coding that taught them how to live in and with their world. But they were more than animals, and less, in some ways. There was another kind of instinct that waited always, crouched in the dark recesses of their brains. The knowledge the curse imparted, which had but one commandment.

  When they first heard the sound, the male’s ears perked up instantly and he half crouched as if he was going to sit down. He stayed frozen in that position, tensed and ready to pounce, while his head tracked back and forth, turning his ears to focus on the buzzing sound he’d heard.

  Behind him the females moved in close, ready for his signal. Ready to attack.

  It was not a sound native to that land. It was a human sound, a buzzing, droning whine of the kind human machines made. Soon they had human scent in their noses as well. People were close.

  The commandment of the curse came to the forefront of their minds. It made them taste blood. Their eyes narrowed and their tails drooped. The white started a throaty growl that spoke of violence.

  The commandment was simple, and it was this: thou shalt kill humans. There was an irresistible urge inside them, a fiery need, to destroy, to claw, to tear apart and rend anything human they came across. It was what they had been created for by the magic that gave them wolf bodies, the same magic that made them vulnerable to silver.

  There was absolutely no questioning this need, as far as the wolves were concerned. You attacked humans on sight without thinking, without wondering why. It was as natural to them as breathing, as the beating of their hearts.

  The noise was growing louder. They tracked it with their ears, their feet shuffling on the ground, their bodies curling around and around as they tried to decide which direction it was coming from. To decide which direction they would strike.

  At the top of the ridge to their left, it appeared. A long sleek machine with a human holding onto its back. It throbbed with machine noise and stank with oil. It threw up a great plume of snow in its wake as it blasted across the heights.

  And then it stopped. It rumbled to a halt and the human stepped off its back. He waved his arms in the air, taunting them.

  The male growled for them to hold their ground, perhaps sensing a trap—but it was too late. The white female couldn’t stop herself, even if she had wanted to. She shot across the snow, nearly invisible except as a ripple in the air. She was barking and growling at once, licking her lips and digging in deep with her claws spread out to find better purchase on the loose snow. The human climbed back onto his machine and turned it around, heading north, from whence he’d come. Running away from her—or leading her.

  The male and the gray had no choice. They followed after the white, running as fast as their legs could carry them. There was something wrong here, something out of place. They were werewolves. They did what their curse commanded, and nothing else.

  43.

  “They’re reporting in now, boss,” Sharon Minik said, peering through a very nice pair of binoculars. They had polarizing lenses that compensated automatically for ice glare. On a day like this you could go blind looking through binoculars in the wrong direction. Her new employer had all kinds of cool gear. “Jimmy’s almost done.” Out on the hills she watched as Jimmy Etok smoothed at the snow with his hands. “That’s the last one buried,” Sharon said, when Jimmy stood up and gave her a thumb’s up, lifting his arm high over his head.

  Behind her Varkanin lifted his radio. “Very good, Mr. Etok,” the Russian said. “Return to the first rally point now, if you please.”

  Sharon lowered the binoculars and turned on the seat of her snowmobile to look at Varkanin. She had grown accustomed to his blue face and it no longer spooked her just to look at him. It helped that he was so nice. He’d never once given her a hard time about being a girl hunter, like the old fellas up in town always did. And he’d made sure she was okay with this hunt, instead of assuming she would do what he said just because he was paying her.

  “You are certain,” he had asked her one night, during the storm, “that when you see them, you will be able to kill?”

  “Yeah,” she’d said, looking away. “If what you say is true, then …”

  He’d nodded and put a gentle hand on her arm. “They are killers. Each of them. Between the three of them they’ve slaughtered hundreds of innocent human beings.”

  So it wasn’t like she was drawing down on people. These were monsters. Even the government had decided they had to die, for the common good. How could she refuse that kind of public service? “And you say I won’t have to shoot them when they look human. Just when they look like wolves.”

  “We will complete the hunt before the moon goes down,” he’d said. He’d been very clear on that part.

  He’d walked her through every piece of the operation, from the planning stage to the kill. He’d shown her maps and satellite data the Canadian government had given him, tracking every move the lycanthropes made. He’d shown her the guns they would be using, and the silver bullets. Maybe she’d started getting a little scared, then, because he’d changed his tack. He’d told her about how important it was that the lycanthropes were put down—that was his term, put down, like what you did to a mad dog. He’d pointed out how it could be done mercifully, and without too much danger. Sharon had listened to every word. She’d even started to admire him for what he was doing. After all, the werewolves were heading right for the town of Umiaq, where all her people lived. If they weren’t stopped now, who knew what they were capable of?

  And yet …

  Now, when it was really happening, she had to admit she did have one doubt left. She had started to think that maybe Varkanin wasn’t doing this just out of the goodness of his own heart. “You got a real hate thing going with these wolves, don’t you?”

  “I have a job to perform, just like you do,” he said, with a smile. “You remember our agreement, yes?”

  “Sure,” Sharon said. “I still don’t think it’s smart, though.”

  He handed her a pistol loaded with silver bullets. She ejected the clip and took a look at them. She had expected them to be shiny, but in fact they were black with tarnish. “If the gray one or the big one, the leader, get close, I plug ’em. But the white one—”

  “Is mine to put down,” Varkanin said, nodding. “N
o matter the cost. If she attacks me, you are not to intervene. If somehow she injures me, you are to keep your distance until you are certain that I am dead. Only then should you engage her.”

  Sharon looked away. This guy called himself a hunter, but … she knew about hunting. When she was a kid her mother had tried to teach her the arts—which in her town had largely meant sewing, creepy throat singing, and carving wood. She’d never been any good at that stuff. Her dad, who lived down in Yellowknife, had taken her hunting every summer since she was six years old. He hadn’t cared if she was any good at it, because he said like anything important in life, if you did it badly long enough you’d eventually develop some level of talent. He’d been right, too. Now she was one of the very few Inuit women in Nunavut who actually made a living at it. She had a reputation for clean kills, for bringing back meat no matter how bad the weather was, and for not making stupid mistakes. Varkanin had told her that was why he had chosen her to be his second in command on this mission, and she’d felt real proud when he said that. Because he was supposed to be some big-shot hunter himself.

  She’d had time to get to know Varkanin a little, now. During the storm they’d holed up in a one-room cabin plotting their strategy, and she’d seen something in him she didn’t recognize. In her experience hunters killed because they needed to eat, or maybe because some southerner was paying them to help him take a moose head for his wall. Real hunters kept their cool and they never let the hunt mean anything personal.

  She’d had time to see underneath his unnaturally calm exterior, though. She’d seen the hatred he hid behind his blue skin and his placid eyes. This Russian guy wasn’t hunting today. He was here to do executions.

  “Please remember not to underestimate them,” Varkanin said. “If we stick exactly to plan, we will not be in any danger. But if we deviate—”

  “I know! They’re werewolves. They’re crazy dangerous, sure,” Sharon said. She slammed the clip back into her pistol and shoved it inside her coat, where her body heat would keep the oil in the gun’s action from freezing. “We’ve got all kinds of stories about them. About how you never, ever mess with them. Some people over east of here, near Greenland, they say if you see a werewolf it means you’re going to die. Over here we know better—we just run the other way, fast as we can.”

  “Yet you chose to join me, when I asked for your help.”

  Sharon shrugged. “ ’Cause I figured you knew what you were doing. I’ll keep my head screwed on straight, don’t worry.”

  Varkanin gave her his chilly smile. She’d seen it a couple times before and she wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was like he approved of her, sure, but also like he was remembering something very sad. There was a story there, but it wasn’t one she wanted to hear.

  The radio in Varkanin’s hand crackled. It was Leonard Opvik, the crazy kid from Kugluktuk who always wanted the most dangerous job. Sharon figured he was compensating for something. “They saw me! Yeehaw, here they come!”

  Varkanin laughed. “Good, it is beginning. But tell me, Ms. Minik, what does ‘yeehaw’ mean?”

  “Probably something he saw on TV,” she told him. Sharon gunned her snowmobile into life. “See you at the rally point, okay?”

  “Remember what I said about being careful!” he shouted over the noise of her engine. Sharon was already gone before he could finish his sentence, though, glad to finally be moving. Excited, despite her doubts and fears.

  This might actually be fun, she told herself.

  44.

  The wolves weren’t running as a pack anymore. They weren’t animals living according to carefully maintained social rules. They had become plain and simple monsters. This was what the curse had been created for.

  The gray raced to keep up with the white. The male was slightly off to one side, loping alongside them both. Ahead of them the human machine whined and belched hellish fumes in their faces. The driver kept looking back at them over his shoulder. He didn’t look nearly as scared as he should be.

  No matter. Jaws dripped with slaver. Lips pulled back from enormous, bone-crushing teeth. Claws dug hard into the snow to propel the wolves forward, faster, ever forward. They were gaining on the machine. Soon they would be upon it. They would pull it apart with their mouths, smash it with their paws. The driver would be shredded—his skin torn off, his vitals consumed and then, then, they would howl to the moon, offering up their blood sacrifice to something none of them understood. As it had always been, how it must be. Closer—they inched closer to the machine, until the snow it kicked up behind stung their noses and flecked their eyelashes. Just one more sprint, one more ounce of power dug up from inside their hearts and delivered straight to their legs, one more lunge and—

  The machine roared. The driver twisted his handlebars and smoke billowed out of the back of the machine. It shot forward over the snow twice as fast as before, much faster than the wolves could run. It tore a crazy zigzag path through the snow, cutting back and forth for no apparent reason.

  The wolves followed, running as fast as their legs would carry them—straight into a minefield.

  The first explosion caught the male, throwing him high into the air. Blood spurted from his throat and legs and he spun, flipping over twice before crashing back down to the snow. The white female skidded as she slowed down, trying to turn to see what had just happened. Her foot barely grazed another mine. It was enough.

  Heat, light, and smoke washed over the gray like an avalanche, the pressure buffeting her ears. She curled around herself in midair, then slid across the packed snow of the machine’s path, rolling on her side and wheezing as blood poured from her mouth and nose. She’d been at the edge of the explosion and still the blast had deafened and blinded her, completely thrown her mind off balance. She couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t get her feet underneath her.

  When the ringing in her ears subsided she lifted her head and put her forepaws down on the snow. Slowly she rose to stand on all fours and look around. She saw the white wolf right away.

  The white female was missing one foreleg, and most of her face on that side. She kept shaking her head and sneezing. Her remaining eye was rolling in her head.

  There was no sign of the male.

  Angry buzzing sounded from either side. The land rose in a mild incline to the gray’s left. To her right it was flat and featureless. Humans on machines were coming from both of those directions. She thought her chances would be better if she took on the human on the flat stretch of ground, and turned to run that way—and then stopped.

  She sniffed the air. It was foul with smoke and human stenches. She could barely smell anything under the snow. But there—yes, right before her, not three feet from where she stood—something hard and metallic lurked, just waiting for her to step on it. Now that she looked more closely she could see that the snow atop it had recently been disturbed, then smoothed back over by human hands.

  She snarled and took a step back. The white, perhaps thinking she was trying to close ranks, trotted toward her, bobbing wildly up and down as she tried to move gracefully with only three legs.

  The humans were getting closer. They had guns. The gray knew the smell of gun oil. She could smell silver, too. She could smell their silver bullets.

  She backed up another step. And then realized there might be something buried in the snow behind her, as well.

  There was no time to check. The humans and their machines were coming closer, coming toward her at full speed. This was where she would have to make her stand.

  45.

  “Jesus,” Sharon Minik said, looking down from the top of the hill. The two wolves standing there looked like they should be dead already. They were pinned down inside the minefield, both covered in blood. The white one looked like the only thing keeping her alive was sheer hatred and willpower. “They don’t have a chance,” Sharon said, taking the gun out of her parka. It was warm in her hand.

  “Do not feel sorry for them,” Varkanin s
aid over the radio. “They would not show mercy if the situation were reversed. You must show none now. Close in. The gray female must be Cheyenne Clark, the youngest of the pack. Give her a quick death, please.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sharon said. “She won’t suffer.”

  “I am less worried about this than I am of the belief that if it is not done quickly, we will lose our advantage.” The Russian called out for Jimmy Etok and Leonard Opvik to check in. They responded instantly, as they’d been taught.

  Sharon understood all the things that could go wrong on a hunt. All the different ways nature could make a joke out of your plans, especially up here where the weather was openly hostile to human life and the animals were all smarter than most people she knew. Still, this one looked like it was all over except for skinning the pelts. She had to admire Varkanin’s planning. He’d thought of everything.

  Sharon gunned her snowmobile into life and tore down the slope toward the mine field. The two wolves were back to back, turning slowly to face every possible angle of attack. They were smart enough not to move too far—Sharon hadn’t expected them to figure out how mines worked so quickly, but it didn’t matter. As long as they were trapped, and they knew it, it was going to be easy to just sweep in and pick them off.

  “Who can see the male?” Varkanin asked, over the radio. “Where is he?”

  “Looks like he landed in a snowdrift over here,” Jimmy said. “He didn’t look too good, last I saw him—maybe he’s dead.”

  “No,” Varkanin announced. “He is not. Be careful.”