Frostbite

by David Wellington

  part four

  port radium

  46.

  “It’s at least thirty meters down,” Chey said, looking out into the darkness. She had one shutter propped open, but the moon was down (of course it was, she thought, otherwise she’d be in her wolf form) and she couldn’t see anything beyond the branches of the nearest trees. She couldn’t, for instance, see the ground below her. She thought if she could see how far the drop was she might be more afraid than she was already. In the pitch dark it might be possible to climb up on the sill and jump out. The idea still made her stark raving terrified. “That would kill me.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Dzo leaned out and looked down. “You’re a shifter, remember? It’s just going to hurt like a bitch.”

  Chey licked her chapped lips. “I’m not sure if I can do that. I’m afraid.”

  Dzo shrugged mightily. “You asked if I knew a way out of here. You’re looking at it. Don’t blame me if you wimp out.”

  “You’re not human. I don’t think you’re alive, really. You’re more like a ghost or a spirit. Can you even feel pain? Have you ever felt pain?”

  Dzo tilted his head and shoulders from side to side. It was a distinctly ambivalent gesture. “Why, sure I have,” he said, finally. “Sorta. Actually, no, I guess I haven’t.”

  “Well, it’s not fun. That’s pretty much the definition of pain. It’s the opposite of fun. Maybe I should just take my chances and stay here.”And blow my head off with my one silver bullet, she thought. “I mean, even if I did survive the fall, even if I recovered from the broken bones and punctured lungs and blood loss and everything, then I’d still be down there. In these woods, with Bobby wanting me dead. At least up here I’m safe from him.”

  “Until he comes back for you and finds you didn’t kill yourself like he wanted,” Dzo pointed out.

  “Yeah. How long is it until moonrise?” she asked Dzo.

  “No clue,” he told her. She stared at him and he shrugged. “You think I got some kind of built-in moon schedule in my head or something? Listen, you want to know where the nearest body of water is, and how deep it is, and what’s at the bottom, then I’m your guy. But why do you care?”

  “Because when I jump out this window, when I land down there and I break my neck, I’ll be in incredible pain until the next time I change. I’d like to spend as little time as possible like that. The perfect time would be to jump just a couple of seconds before I change.” She stared at him again.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She nodded and grabbed all the things she had to her name. The two magazines, the slices of greasy ham, and the pistol. She made sure the safety was on and jammed it in her pocket.

  “If I land on my head, and my brains splat all over the ground,” she said, “I still won’t die. Will I?”

  “Don’t know,” Dzo admitted.

  Chey frowned and went to the shutter. It was so easy not to jump. It was so easy to waste more time. But what if she changed in the next second? What if she had to wait for another night, another day to pass?

  And what if she jumped—and there were still hours to go?

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to do it.” But then she just stood there. Her legs were frozen in place. “Can you help me?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Dzo said. He came up behind her and picked her up as if she were made of paper. Then he tossed her out into the wind, even as she began to scream at him, to beg him not to. She looked back and saw the side of the fire tower, saw Dzo silhouetted in the window, barely illuminated by starlight. His mask was down.

  She fell.

  The cold darkness around her felt like an illimitable gulf of space. She felt for a particle of time as if she were floating in the depths of interstellar space.

  A moment later she collided with the ground so hard she felt like a squashed bug, like a stain on the forest floor.

  The pain was unimaginable. Her skin hurt everywhere and she felt bones poking her, fragments of bone sticking in her guts. Her breath sputtered inside her, full of blood—she must have punctured a lung. She could see nothing, could feel nothing but her own insides squirming out through a break in her skin.

  She tried to get a hand underneath her, tried to rise. Blood gushed from her mouth and she fell back, her torn cheek grating on the rocks.

  The moon—she begged the moon to rise—the moon had to come. It had to come soon. The moon. It would heal her. It had to come. Soon.

  Then she felt a hand slip into hers. It was smooth and small, almost feminine. It was a stranger’s hand, but she was past caring. The tiny fragment of comfort she took from that human touch was something, a drop of water on a parched tongue. It didn’t hurt—that was the main thing.

  Who was it? Who could it possibly be? Or was someone even there—maybe, could it just be a hallucination, her brain trying desperately to find some comfort for her, making things up when nothing real presented itself? She could wonder, but she had no way of answering. Her eyes couldn’t focus, couldn’t make out anything. No one spoke to her—or if they did, she couldn’t hear it.

  Her breath hitched in her damaged lungs and stopped and she panicked for a second, but the hand just closed tighter around hers and she calmed down, literally felt herself settling down and then, with a noise like a balloon popping, air sagged out of her.

  Whose hand was it?

  In the end it didn’t matter.

  She lay there broken on the ground for forty-seven minutes. She had no way of measuring that time—to her it felt like hundreds of hours. It would have felt like an eternity if not for that hand in hers.

  Then silver light came like a grace upon her, a divine breath of mercy.

  Confused, her head still buzzing and unclear, the wolf rose on strong legs and howled for her newfound freedom.

  47.

  Like fungus after a rain the white tubes stuck up out of the earth around the tower. They stank of men. They stank of timber wolves, and of silver. The wolf moved around one of them, uncomprehending. She studied it, inspected it with nose and ears and eyes. She licked the outside of it and felt it thrumming, felt the tension inside of it like the fear in a field mouse’s belly. She licked the edge, tasted oil there, tasted wolves. Timber wolves—not her pack. Not even her nation.

  Still—

  She snuffled around the edge of the pipe. It was no mere curiosity that drove her, nor was it the tantalizing smell. This was a man-made thing, and therefore, she hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it. That was the law, the iron margin of her existence. She hated it, without further reason or meaning except that it was touched by human hands, that it was part of their world. Yet it didn’t move or offer any resistance. So she took her time.

  The top was open and dark. She looked inside, but her eyes weren’t her strongest sense. She put a paw up on the edge.

  Then she twisted around it and sank her sharp teeth into the yielding, cracking whiteness of it, dug in deep and then yanked backward with the powerful muscles in her neck.

  The pipe slid up out of the ground with a noise like thunder. Something fast moved past her cheek, flew into the darkness. She cast the pipe away from her and danced backward, her ears stinging with the noise it had made.

  Her mouth snapped open and her tongue came out, tasting the air.

  What was that, was that, was that, what was that?

  Someone was playing a joke on her. She snarled and slashed the air in rage. Humans—humans had put this thing here, just to distract her perhaps. Or maybe they had a darker purpose.

  Humans. The humans had imprisoned her. They’d tried to break her, tried to destroy her mind. Maybe they’d succeeded, a little.

  Now she was free. She didn’t know how that happened. But she knew she wanted their blood in vengeance.

  She could smell them in the air. Their perfumes clung to the tree trunks, their sweat dotted the ground. She ran through the woods following that track, looking to show them, to show them, to show them who they were
dealing with.

  She found their camp. The wolf howled and tore into a bedroll with her teeth. She slapped at the kerosene lanterns and tore at the tents. The stink of humanity was everywhere, everywhere, all around her. They had been there. They had been so close! How had they gotten so close to her?

  She would destroy them. They had harmed her—they had—they had—they had done something, she wasn’t clear on what but some-thing—they had imprisoned her. She recalled her starved howling. She could remember pain.

  She would tear them apart. She would find their throats and—

  They were gone. The remains of their fire still warmed the earth, but they were gone. They had headed out, toward where the sun had set. She could sense their path like an arrow of as-yet-unspilled blood painted across the forest floor. Blood that belonged to her. Her blood, her blood, her blood to lap up, her blood by right. Her blood.

  On bounding legs she ran, following that trail. Through dawn and most of the day, she ran.

  Her paws splashed across water, her tongue lapped at the reindeer moss and the lichens on the bare rocks. Above her the trees seemed to part, to lean away from her path. The moon, a narrow crescent like the blade of a knife, anointed her fur and her eyes as she streaked over tree roots and broken ground. She came to a shallow pond and didn’t even slow down, the freezing cold water scattering into round droplets on her guard hairs, her feet down and touching slimy rocks, fish scattering from the thousand small impacts of her running. She ran for hours, and did not tire, because there was blood at the end of the trail. Her blood to claim.

  She could feel them ahead of her. The one who had chained her—yes, it was coming back to her, now. She had trouble telling them apart, but she knew there was one, one in particular. He was ahead. The male human, the one who had locked her away. He was there, and with her tongue flapping in the corner of her mouth she could taste him and then, and then, and then—

  A human warbled in the trees, a high-pitched fear sound. Her blood pumped cold in her veins with blood joy. The human was nearby, very close, nearby. It wasn’t the human she wanted, not the male that had locked her up. But this one would most certainly do for a start. She spun around, her paws slipping on pinecones and fallen needles. Her ears twitched, triangulating his position. She remembered when she had been taught to hunt and she dropped to the ground, her belly cold on the surface, her joints bent, poised like a spider’s legs are poised just before the strike.

  The human moved through the trees, blundering like a bear. Making so much noise she nearly cringed. His stink was so complex—metal wood leather wool body odor meat breath urine human urine human spoor. It flashed in the chill air like an abstract painting, a wild disarray of smells.

  He called to her, but she did not answer. He crept closer. He was big, big for a human, bigger than her. His bones were long and she could hear his joints rolling. She could smell his skin. She could smell his blood.

  He called again. He knew she was there, knew she was lying in wait for him. Her lips drew back over her massive teeth. Fine, she thought. Fine, fine, fine. Let him know. Let him see her with those cold human eyes. Let him smell and taste and touch her. She would not move. Not until, not until it was, not until it was—time.

  She stood up on all four legs at once, raised the saddle of fur between her shoulders like a battle standard. He was within snapping range, close enough to touch her with his human hands. He had a piece of metal and he brought it up, metal and wood and oil and, and, and yes, she smelled silver and it banged in the air, exploded in the dark just like the white pipe back at the tower. She knew there was danger in that sound, knew it carried her death. She felt silver glide across her skin, felt silver filings get lost in her fur and they burned and she howled, but the silver didn’t break her skin.

  The silver was gone. It had not pierced her. Had not killed her. Now it was her turn.

  48.

  She swung around, her massive mouth wide open, and pulled the human into her jaws. His weapon fell to the ground and he screamed and her blood sang. She closed her jaw like a vise and twisted and pulled and tore and his leg bones snapped inside her head. She could hear them thrum against her upper palate. She could taste his blood on her tongue.

  His body surged with pain and fear and it made her rejoice. She shook in convulsions as she tore at his flesh, as she swallowed chunks of him. He rattled and wailed and fell away from her and part of him tore free. His leg tore open in her mouth, and he toppled backward like a felled tree. She gulped down his blood and meat and lunged forward for the rest of him. Bloodlust scattered her senses—all she knew was to press forward, to press the attack. She did not see his arm come around, would not have guessed he had any strength left, and when his closed fist smashed into the top of her head, crushing her sensitive ears, she yelped and dropped to her side.

  Light swirled in her eyes. Her mouth was full of nothing, full of air, of air—her paws beat at the carpet of pine needles and dead leaves. What had happened? How had—how had he hurt—how had—

  He pushed away from her, scuttling into the darkness like a pill bug, his hands pushing at the snow and the rocks. She shook herself, trying to throw off the dullness, the ringing numbness in her head. When she recovered he was not there. She cast about, threw her forelegs down and touched the earth with her muzzle, sniffing for him. He couldn’t have gotten far. She knew she’d wounded him badly.

  She took a step forward, another, another. She smelled water and breeze, cold air like the trailing hem of a ghost’s gown flapping in space. Another step and—no. She stood on a precipice looking down at a sunken stream bed. Far below her, down a raw slope of disturbed earth, he had crashed to the bottom of the trickling water. He was down there moaning and bleeding and still alive.

  The need to kill filled her up. Her hackles lifted and a growl grew in her throat. Yet it was over. There was no way for her to get down that sharp slope. She was no human with fingers and toes to grab at the descent.

  No matter. He couldn’t live long. She’d given him a death wound, and it was only a matter of time before blood loss finished him off. She turned around a few times and settled to her belly, to listen to his screams and wait.

  The moon sank behind the trees and caught her yawning. And then—

  Chey came to sobbing, her body cold and damp. She remembered blood, but whose, and how it had been shed, was lost to her. She lay on the edge of a riverbank maybe five meters high, a carved-out shore of mud and tree roots. She looked over the edge—and then she shrieked in horror.

  Her wolf had killed a man. There could be no doubt about it, this time. She could see his bent and twisted corpse down there. It was Frank Pickersgill, and his blood stained the water. Naked and shivering, she stared down at her own handiwork.

  Frank Pickersgill. She had not hated the man, though she’d been afraid of him. He’d never shown her anything but kindness. And she had killed him. Her stomach rumbled and she realized she must have—must have—

  “Lady,” he croaked up at her.

  Oh, God, he was still alive. Chey stepped forward onto the sloping bank and clods of dirt tumbled away from her foot, pattered down across him. She hurried down as quickly as she could manage, grabbing at exposed roots and bits of rock, sliding down as much as she climbed. She was covered in mud and dead leaves by the time she reached bottom, by the time she knelt by him in the frigid water.

  “Lady,” he sighed, and she heard his breath come weakly in and out of him, dripping, almost gently, from his lungs.

  “Don’t try to move,” she insisted.

  “Lady, they see you,” he protested. “They’re gonna kill you.”

  She searched him for wounds. Found most of his left leg gone. She started to vomit but forced herself to stop. “You’re going to make it,” she promised him, because it sounded like something she was supposed to say. She tore at his pant leg and found raw meat underneath. Blood trickled out of dozens of small wounds. Teeth marks.

 
; Chey put the guilt aside. This was what she’d chosen, wasn’t it? To be a monster. To accept that she was a monster. This was what monsters did.

  The wolf had felt no guilt. Just as Powell’s wolf had felt no guilt when it devoured her father. Just as Powell’s wolf had felt no guilt when it had tried to kill her, up in the tree. When it had scratched her.

  “We got our orders. If you come down from that tower, we gotta shoot on sight. Figured you should know that.”

  She pressed down on the raw tissues of his leg, tried to stanch the bleeding. She had no idea how much blood he’d lost already. “Don’t talk. Does talking hurt?” she asked.

  “Shit,” he laughed. Weakly. “Everything hurts. Gimme my pack, willya? I’m gonna die.”

  “Not necessarily,” she said.

  “Nice.” He smiled at her. His eyes weren’t tracking, just staring straight ahead of him. Was that a bad sign? “You’re a nice lady. I want you to know I ain’t sore. I know this wasn’t personal and I’m sorry they’re going to kill you. My pack?”

  She looked up and saw a leather satchel lying near his head. She grabbed it with her free hand and pushed it into his arms. He opened the flap and reached inside.

  He wasn’t going to die. She knew it, understood it. He wasn’t going to die. But he was going to change.

  “The moon will rise in a while,” she said. How many hours would it be? If he died of blood loss first—but no. He would make it until the moon rose. “Do you understand what’s going to happen to you?”

  “I heard the story from Fenech, yeah. It’s like rabies or somethin’. You get bit and you become one yourself. Lady, you get out of here. You head east. Get as far from … Get away from Port Radium, and maybe you’ll make it. Don’t look, now.”

  “What?” she asked.

  He drew a pistol from his pack and it wavered as it moved around between them. She reared back, thinking he was going to kill her. Instead he pushed the muzzle of the gun into his mouth and fired.

  “Jesus!” she shrieked, the noise lost in the gunshot. She fell backward into the water, her hands back to catch her.