Frostbite

by David Wellington

Then—from deep in the forest, another call came. Slightly different. It held the hint of a growl. A challenge. Instantly the wolves were up and looking from side to side. Their tails went down and they glanced at each other as if to ask if they had all heard it.

  The new call came again. It was unlike the sad moaning of the wolves. It was more wicked, more chilling. It was hateful.

  The wolves beneath Chey’s branch scattered, disappearing into the darkness as silently as they’d come. The new cry came a third time then, but from much, much closer by.

  3.

  Chey scrambled backward on her branch. She had an urge to be closer to the trunk of the tree, with as much solid wood around her as possible. Every time the howling roar came out of the forest her skin literally crawled, ripples of gooseflesh undulating up her arms and down her back.

  There was something down there, something angry and loud. Something nasty enough that it could scare off an entire pack of timber wolves. What was it, some kind of bear? But it hadn’t sounded like any bear she’d ever heard on television or in the movies.

  She scanned the ground around her tree, straining her eyes in the dark, looking for any sign—any shimmer of movement, any footprints, any low branches stirred by something moving past.

  But there was nothing. Not even the glint of light from a pair of eyes, or a reflection off a shiny coat as it moved stealthily through the underbrush. Nor could she hear anything. She craned all her perceptions downward, held her breath and listened to the creaking sounds of the tree, the faint groaning of the branch that supported her. She didn’t hear any panting, or any near-silent footsteps. Maybe, she thought, it had gone away. Maybe it had never been interested in her—maybe it had been howling like that just because it had wanted to move the timber wolves along. Maybe it had no problem with her at all. Maybe it couldn’t even hear or smell her, up in her tree.

  Then she heard a crash as something big came running through the litter of the forest floor and she almost yelped in her terror. She felt a desperate urge to urinate, but she clamped her legs harder around the branch and that helped a little.

  She heard the creature snuffling from not ten meters away. Nosing through the undergrowth like a snorting boar. Winkling out her scent, she was sure. She reached into her pocket and grabbed her cell phone for comfort. Maybe—maybe it was time to call for help. Maybe things had gone too far. But no, even that was pointless. Help could never come in time to save her now. She clutched the phone hard, as if it were a magical talisman that could protect her. She supposed if she had to she could throw it like a rock. It was the closest thing to a weapon she possessed.

  She curled up against the side of the tree with her legs holding tight to the branch. She breathed through her nose, and tried not to panic, and didn’t make a move.

  It didn’t matter, of course. The beast could probably smell her from kilometers away.

  She could see it now. There had been no moment when it went from invisible to visible, but suddenly it was down there, moving. Far too close. It curled around the birch like a liquid shadow, like darkness poured out on the ground.

  Then it stopped, its muscles coiling up under baggy skin. Chey stopped breathing. It looked up.

  The horror was not very much larger than the timber wolves, perhaps two meters long from nose to tail, maybe a meter and a half tall at the shoulder. It possessed the same broad flat face as the wolves. If anything its muzzle was shorter but far more wicked-looking. The main difference in its features were its teeth. The timber wolves had lots of teeth, of course, yellow and sharp. This thing had enormous pearly white fangs. There was no other word for them but fangs. They were huge, and thick, so big they pushed aside its lips. They looked perfectly adapted to crushing bones. Big bones. Human bones.

  The other big difference between this thing and the timber wolves was in the way its paws spread out across the snow, as broad as human hands, each digit ending in a long curved claw. Its coat was mottled silver and black, more striking in its coloration than the dull camouflage of the timber wolves.

  She took its shape in all in an instant, but after she saw them she had trouble looking at anything but its eyes. Those eyes—they were not yellow, like those of the timber wolves, but an icy green, narrow and cold. Intelligence resided in those eyes as well as something else, a dreadful anger. She could read it quite plainly, as well as she could have read the eyes of a human being. This animal didn’t want to eat her. It didn’t consider her prey. It wanted to kill her.

  Those eyes.

  Memories lit up in her head like neon signs begging for her attention. Memories that had never been far below the surface. She knew those eyes. She’d crossed half a continent to find them. And now they were going to kill her.

  The monster despised her so much it wanted to tear her to pieces and scatter her remains across the forest floor. It wanted to spill her blood on the ground and grind her skull to shards with its giant teeth. The weight of that look, of that evil stare, made her press even harder backward against the tree. It made her want to hide away, to do anything to escape such passionate loathing.

  The beast’s hackles came up and its tail went down. Its lips pulled back from its teeth and a noise like a motorcycle revving up leaked out from between its jaws. And then it leapt at her.

  Pushing hard against the ground with its hind legs, it threw itself into the air. Its forepaws slashed at the space just below her dangling feet. Its mouth opened to grab her legs and crush them into paste. At the top of its leap it was only centimeters short of her feet. It fell back to earth with a snarl and panted as it scratched and clawed at the yielding bark, snarling and growling its thwarted desire. Chey just had time to adjust her hold on the tree before the wolf leapt at her again.

  “No,” she begged, but the beast came up at her as fast as if gravity had been reversed, as if the world had been turned upside down and it were falling up at her, its teeth snapping together in midair. She pulled back, trying desperately to get away, but one forepaw caught her in the ankle, a vicious claw sinking through skin and muscle to grate on the bone. Pain flashed through her like a red strobe light going off. For a second she heard only the blood rushing in her head, and saw nothing but the blood vessels at the backs of her eyes.

  The monster fell back again, its claw pulling free of her flesh.

  Next time it would get a better grip. She was sure of it. She would die in the next few seconds, she realized. She would die, a victim of this enraged creature, if she didn’t do something, and right away.

  She scrambled up against the trunk of the tree and lunged for a higher branch. She missed. Her leg throbbed and she gasped in pain, but she knew if she didn’t get farther up the tree the beast would get her. It was just that simple. She reared up, grabbed a branch that looked like it might barely support her weight, and hauled herself up, even as she started hyperventilating and stars shot through her vision.

  The beast jumped for her a third time, but she was out of its range. She tried not to look down, but that was impossible.

  At the base of the tree the monster dropped down on its haunches and stared at her. Its breath huffed in and out of its lungs in thick plumes of vapor. It was willing her to fall, to let go and fall. She could feel its desire. Its wanting.

  Then the impossible happened. It turned its gaze away from her, if only for a moment. It looked out through the trees to where the moon was beginning to sink toward the horizon. When it turned to look at her again its palpable hatred was tempered with bitter resentment. It smoldered up at her for a while, then twitched its shoulder around and disappeared into the dim forest as quickly and as quietly as it had come.

  It had to be a trick, she thought. But the wolf was gone.

  Those eyes!

  4.

  The big wolf didn’t come back.

  Chey spent hours waiting for it to return, praying that it wouldn’t, trying to imagine what she would do if it did. Her adrenaline kept her hyperventilating and trembling f
or a long time. Eventually it wore off and her body started hurting and her brain started going in circles. Every little sound startled her. Every time she thought she saw something move she jumped and nearly fell. The moon was down, below the horizon, and eventually the aurora flickered out as well, and the only light came from cold and tiny stars, and still she sat vigil, still she studied the ground around her, over and over until she had memorized every little detail, the placement of every twig and dead leaf. Exhaustion and cold seeped through her, freezing her in place.

  At dawn she decided to climb down out of the tree.

  It was harder than she thought it was going to be. Her body was stiff and grumpy, her nerves and muscles rebelling, disobeying her commands. Her ankle, where the wolf had snagged her, had swollen alarmingly. A crust of dried blood glued her Timberland hiking sock to her skin. Every time she moved the ankle her entire leg started to shake uncontrollably.

  Going up the tree had taken mere seconds—driven by panic and the survival instinct, she had reverted to her monkey ancestry and just done it. Getting back down took some thought and planning. First she had to get her hands to let go of the branch. Then she realized there was no good way to get down—no easy footholds, and the thin branches she’d used to climb up looked far less appealing when she reached out to put her weight on them. Finally, after long minutes of adjusting and readjusting her position, moving from one branch to another, teetering on the edge of a bad drop, she hung down by her arms and let herself fall onto her good foot. The touch of solid ground ran through her like an electric shock. It felt so good, though—to have something firm and reliable underneath her. To not be constantly terrified of falling. Tiredness surged up through her bones then. She dropped to her knees, wishing she could drop farther, that she could fall down entirely, lay down and go to sleep.

  Not when the wolf might still be out there, though. She had no idea why it had left her, nor did she know when it might return. She would not sleep again until she knew she was safe.

  With filthy weak hands she went through her pockets and checked the small collection of items she still possessed. Absurdly enough, she had thought often in the darkness that her things might have fallen out of her pockets as she raced up the tree. But no, she still had them. She had one last quarter of an energy bar, which she shoved in her mouth. The foil wrapper went back in her pocket—as bad as things were, Chey didn’t litter. She had her phone, the battery almost dead. When the keys lit up blue for her she almost cried in gratitude. At least something still did what it was supposed to.

  She didn’t think she could say the same for the tiny compass attached to the zipper pull of her parka.

  It pointed north for her, as it always had. She had followed it like a lifeline, held it carefully in her fingers like a jewel. It had been the thing that was going to save her, a connection to the civilized world of maps and coordinates and everything in its proper place. She had believed in it with much more faith than she’d ever placed in God. Now she had to admit that her faith might have been misplaced. Either the compass or her map were completely wrong. She should have reached the town of Echo Bay by now—it was almost perfectly due north of where she’d started—but she had seen nothing so far except the endless crazily tilted forest.

  Maybe the town didn’t exist. Maybe when they printed the map they’d made a mistake.

  Maybe she was going to walk for weeks more, heading north like a good little Girl Guide until she ran right into the Arctic Ocean. Or maybe, long before that—yes, almost certainly before that happened—the wolf would find her again when there were no tall trees around, and it would kill her.

  She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. She was so scared her back hurt. Fear tried to bend her in two, to make her fall down and curl up and wish herself into nonexistence.

  “Okay,” she sighed to herself. “Okay.” The sound of human words broke the spell. Hearing a voice, even her own, made her feel less alone and defenseless. She brushed off her parka as best she could—it was covered in tiny shreds of birch bark and less pleasant materials—and stood up. Her knee buckled the first time she stepped forward with her hurt ankle, and she had to stop for a second and wait for the roaring in her ears to die down. The next step hurt slightly less.

  “Okay,” she said. Louder. More confidently. The hard k sound was the part that helped. “Okay, you little idiot. You’re going to be okay.”

  The trees swallowed her up without comment. Her slow pace made it easier, actually, to cross the rough ground. She had plenty of time to look and see where each foot should go, to avoid the potholes and the knobby tree roots. She had time to listen to the sound of pine needles squishing and crunching under her feet, to the squeak of old snow as her boots sank down through it. She could smell the forest, too, smell its pitch and its rotting wood and its musty perfume.

  She walked for an hour, according to the clock display of her cell phone. Then she stopped to rest. Sitting down on a dry rock, she pulled her knees close to her chest and looked back the way she’d come. There was no trail or path there—she felt really proud for how she’d covered so much unbroken ground. Then she looked up and saw the paper birch she’d sheltered in the previous night.

  It stood no more than a hundred meters behind her. In an hour that was all the distance she’d covered.

  Tears exploded in her throat. Chey bit them back, sucking breath into her body. “No,” she said, though she didn’t know what she was rejecting, exactly. “No!”

  She was lost.

  She was alone.

  She was wounded.

  She knew how to add up those figures. She knew what the sum would be. Those three variables were what separated happy, healthy young women from corpses no one would ever find. Her body would fail her, the life drained out of it by the cold or the rain or by loss of blood or—or—or by the big wolf. It would come back and finish the job, and maybe eat part of her. As soon as it was gone smaller animals would pick at her flesh, and leave what they, in turn, didn’t want. In time her bones would bleach white and then even they would decay, and no one, not her family, not her friends, not the ex-lovers she’d left behind her, would ever know where she’d gone. Maybe a million years from now, she thought, she would be a fossil, and some future paleontologist would dig her up, and wonder what she was doing there, so far from any human habitation.

  “Goddamn it, no!” she shrieked. “I won’t stop here! Not when I’ve come so far. Not right here!”

  Her shout echoed around the trees. A few needles fell from a spruce that stuck up at a thirty-degree angle to the forest floor.

  “I won’t,” she said, as if saying it aloud could make it so.

  In the distance a bird called back to her with a high bell-like note she didn’t recognize. It sounded almost mechanical, actually, less like an animal sound than something man-made. Maybe it hadn’t been a bird at all. It sounded almost like a fork clinking on a metal plate.

  She looked down at her compass. North was straight ahead, which meant the sound had come from the southwest. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and heard the clinking sound again. If she concentrated, really concentrated, she was pretty sure she could hear something else, too—the sizzle and pop of frying food.

  5.

  Chey staggered through the trees, drawn by the smell of cooking. It was over—her nightmare of being lost in the woods was over. Finally she would see another human being, someone who could help her. Animals didn’t cook their food. Wolves especially didn’t cook their food. Her ankle hurt like hell and a bright light went off behind her eyes every time she stepped on that foot, but she didn’t much care. There was someone nearby, somebody human. Someone who could help her, someone who could save her.

  Her bad foot got her to the edge of a clearing and then gave up, spilling her across moss and snow. She raised herself up on her arms and looked around.

  The clearing was no more than ten meters across, a raised bit of earth that ran down toward a thin stre
am meandering through the trees. A campfire had been built at its high point and a black iron skillet sat smoking in the coals, strips of what looked like back bacon glistening inside. It was enough to make her mouth water.

  By the fire sat a man wearing a fur coat. No, that was giving the garment too much credit. It looked like a pile of ragged furs, brown and gray like the colors of the forest. The man himself was short, maybe shorter than Chey, though it was hard to tell when he was sitting down. He had his back to her and he was bent over the skillet, meticulously adjusting its contents.

  “Hello,” she croaked, and brushed dead leaves off her face.

  There was no reaction. She realized her voice was so weak it might be mistaken for the creaking of the branches overhead. Chey pushed herself up higher and cleared her throat, then dredged up the strength to say, “Hey! You! Over here!”

  The man turned and Chey let out a strangled yelp. At first his face seemed featureless and raw. Then she realized he was wearing a mask. It was painted white and it had narrow flat slots where his eyes and his mouth must be. Stripes of brown paint led upward from the eye slots.

  The man reached up and pushed the mask up, onto the top of his head. Beneath it his face was wide and round and very surprised. He’d probably never expected to see another human in these woods—much less a bedraggled, wounded woman pulling herself along the ground by her arms. He rose from where he’d been sitting by the stream and came toward her, his furs swinging as he walked.

  “Dzo,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Chey told him, shaking her head. “I don’t speak Inuit.”

  “Neither do I,” he said, in English. “The nearest Eskimo is in Nunavut, the next territory over. The people around here are Sahtu Dene nation. That’s if you want to get particular, which I normally don’t, and if there were any of them actually around here, as in, within a hundred kilometers, which there aren’t. Dzo.”