Winter of the Wolf Moon

by Steve Hamilton

  “Something’s wrong here, Lonnie,” the man said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Bruckman put both of his hands on the collar of my coat, the cold gun metal against the left side of my face. “I cannot believe this is happening,” he said. He was still looking into my eyes but he said it like he was talking to nobody in particular. “I cannot fucking believe that this is happening!”

  “What are we gonna do?” the man on my left said.

  Lonnie let out an animal shriek and hit me in the ribs with the gun again. The other four men took their cue and started beating the hell out of me. Or maybe one of the men held back this time. I wasn’t counting.

  When they pulled me off the floor, my left eye was starting to swell shut. Everything else was hurting so much, it made me wish I was unconscious.

  “Give me that rope,” I heard somebody say. I had lost all ability to separate the voices. It was all one monster now, with ten arms and ten legs.

  I felt my hands being tied together, so tight that the rough hemp bit into my wrists. And then my legs. I was picked up like a big bag of rock salt and taken out into the cold air. I felt a stinging over my left eyebrow and felt the blood dripping into my eye.

  I was dropped into the snow, which opened to receive me, then closed back over me, the cold white powder covering my face. I could see nothing but white.

  Footsteps. Walking away from me. I am being left for dead. In the spring they will find what’s left of my body, after the coyotes have had their way with me.

  It was quiet. Only the distant sound of the wind and the newly fallen snowflakes collecting over my head.

  Then the explosion as all five snowmobiles started at once. The metallic whine of engines racing, then the hollow clunk of gears engaging. They will leave me and I will go numb with cold until I am dead.

  Then the sudden jerk on my legs. My body moving. I am … I am sliding. They’re pulling me. Somebody is pulling me behind his snowmobile.

  I felt myself rising to the top of the snow as I was pulled feet first into the woods. I could hear the machine laboring through the drifts. Then when we were on the trail he opened it up. The rope strained at the sudden acceleration, almost snapping. And then I became a body in motion. I felt nothing but speed and the smooth blanket of snow beneath me, almost without friction. The snow blew into my face like a thousand tiny needles.

  They dragged me for some period of time I could not even register. Then the machines stopped. I heard voices. Words with no meaning. I couldn’t feel my face. I couldn’t feel my hands. I tried to sit up, to look around me. Through the snow in my eyelashes I saw only trees and more snow. They’re taking me into the forest, I thought. They’re taking the trail due west, away from town, into the heart of the wilderness. Nobody will see them.

  But why have they stopped here? I tried to clear my head and listen to them. Two men were yelling at each other. Fuck you. No, fuck you. You’re fucking crazy. Let’s just go then.

  The machines roared again. This time they were coming right at me. I tried to cover my head, but it was useless. I could barely bend at the middle. The machines passed on either side of me. I could feel the rope pull tight against my body, digging into my neck, and then a sudden violent jerk. My legs were whipped sideways and my whole body flipped over. I hit the ground with my face. I could feel the warm blood flowing from my nose.

  They’re pulling me back, I thought. Back toward my cabin. I have to stay conscious. I have to think. Somebody has to see me. Somebody else out on the trail. It’s my only chance.

  I tried to look, tried to keep my eyes open against the onslaught of snow in my face. There was nothing but white.

  Until the tree.

  I didn’t see it until a split second before it hit me. I tried to roll away from it, but it caught me in the ribs, right where Bruckman had already nailed me. It knocked all the air out of my body and sent a shooting pain from my right arm all the way down to my leg.

  This is it, I thought. This is how it ends.

  We stopped. I was off the trail, back in the deep snow. I sank into it, fighting for my breath.

  Breathe, goddamn it. Breathe.

  Bruckman’s face appeared above mine. He bent down over me. “Are you gonna tell me where it is?” he said.

  Breathe. Take a breath.

  “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I’ll kill you right here.”

  One breath. Please.

  “Where is it?” he screamed. “Tell me where it is!”

  “He doesn’t know!” a voice behind him said. “Can’t you see that? How stupid are you?”

  Bruckman’s face was gone. I looked up at the branches and the clouds and the snowflakes falling down upon my face. From a thousand miles away I heard the voices blending into one.

  “The fuck is wrong with you, anyway? … I’ll show you what’s wrong with me…. What’re we gonna do, drag his ass all the way back with us? … Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do … All the way back over the river, that’s what we’re gonna do…. Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do…. You’re so fucking crazy. Stuff has fucked you up so bad you can’t even think straight anymore…. Just get the fuck out of the way, then…. My pleasure, Captain Fuckhead. I’m outta here.”

  A single machine taking off again. Then another. I waited for the pull. I tried to tense my body but I couldn’t even do that anymore. I was dead weight now.

  Motion. Slow at first, like before. When we hit the trail he’ll open it up again. Can’t hold on much longer.

  Can’t hold on.

  No. I must fight it. One more try.

  I picked my head up. I opened my eyes.

  From the tree. A sudden movement. Something hitting the driver from the side. He is down. The snowmobile has stopped. I am looking at it like it is something in a dream. A snowmobile with no rider on it.

  A man. He has a big knife. The biggest knife I have ever seen. He is cutting the rope. He is not wearing a helmet like the riders. I know the man. I have seen him before in my dreams.

  Another man. I know him, too. I have seen him in the same dream. He is fighting with the rider. The rider still has his helmet on. They are wrestling in the snow. It is all happening in slow motion.

  A gunshot rips through the dream.

  “Don’t shoot me, you idiot!”

  I know that voice.

  More gunshots. And then a man’s body covering mine, the impact hard enough to wake me, to chase away the warm numbness in my body. I am cold again. And I am in more pain than I have ever felt before.

  I heard the whine of the snowmobiles, the sound getting smaller and smaller until finally there was only the sound of his breath against my ear. “Don’t worry, Alex,” the voice whispered to me. It was Vinnie. “They’re gone.”

  Vinnie rolled off me, sat up next to me. Leon knelt down on the other side of me.

  “Help is on the way,” Vinnie said.

  “You’re gonna be okay, partner,” Leon said.

  I tried to speak. Finally, a short breath. And then another. “I …” I couldn’t say any more.

  “Don’t move,” Vinnie said. “Don’t try to talk.”

  “Just relax,” Leon said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “I …” I took as much of a breath as I could, swallowed hard and then tried again. “I … hate …”

  They looked down at me. The snow continued to fall all around us.

  “I … hate …” I said. And then with my last ounce of strength, I finished the sentence: “… snowmobiles.” And then I was out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I opened my eyes, I saw white ceiling tiles and a fluorescent light that seemed a thousand times too bright. Then the faces of strangers with white masks on. They were doing something to my side. I felt a vague tugging in my ribs. Then I did not see them anymore and felt nothing but a dull ache all over my body that gave way to a soft rolling sensation like I was lying in a boat in the middle of Lake Superior on a calm day.

&n
bsp; I saw Leon’s face for a moment. Then Vinnie’s.

  I slept. When I opened my eyes again the room was empty. I looked over at the door. There was a window in the door, where anyone in the hallway could look into the room and see me lying there. There was a man standing there. He was watching me. He had a blue hunting cap on. The flaps were hanging over his ears. I tried to speak but I couldn’t.

  I slept again. For an hour or a day or a year. This time when I awoke I felt like I was really awake for the first time since I had come to this place. The pain was stronger now. A lot stronger.

  My head hurt, especially over my left eye. My mouth hurt. My legs hurt. More than anything else, my right side hurt. Besides the pain, there was something else. What was it? I lifted my left hand and reached across my body. There was a plastic tube there. It came right out of my body and ran to a machine that was sitting next to the bed. The machine was humming away, doing whatever the hell it was supposed to do to me. God, what was it doing? I felt the tube. It was hollow. It was …

  Air.

  The machine was pumping air into me.

  I can’t breathe anymore. I’m hooked up to this machine because I can’t breathe on my own. Am I paralyzed? No, I can’t be. I’m moving my arm. How about the rest of me?

  I moved my legs. I tried to sit up. Pain shot through my ribs.

  “Bad idea,” a voice said.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  “I’m Dr. Glenn.” He appeared next to me, lifting the sheet to look at my right side. He was a tall man, with a beard and eyes that looked right through me. “And you, sir, should not be moving yet.” He measured out every word like it was another form of medicine.

  “What happened to me?” I said. “Where am I?”

  “You are in the War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. You have been here since yesterday afternoon.”

  “Why am I hooked up to this machine?”

  “Do not be alarmed,” he said. “It is just to help keep your lung inflated.”

  “My lung …”

  “You have two cracked ribs, sir, and a slightly punctured lung. You suffered a fifteen percent collapse. Anything more than ten is serious enough to use this machine. Right now, there is a balloon inside the upper chamber of your right lung. We need to keep the lung inflated for a couple of days to let the ribs heal.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “You also suffered a slight concussion,” he said. “As well as a cut above your left eye that required fifteen stitches.”

  I felt the bandage on my eyebrow.

  “In addition to all of these injuries,” he said, holding up an X ray toward the ceiling light, “were you aware that you have a bullet in your chest?”

  “You found the bullet,” I said. “I looked everywhere for that thing.”

  He looked down at me and smiled for the first time. The serious doctor routine was gone. “Seriously,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “You mean with the bullet or with everything else?”

  “Start with the bullet.”

  “It was fourteen years ago,” I said. “I took three in the chest. The doctors left that one in.”

  He nodded and looked at the X ray again. “Inferior media stinum,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been worth the risk to go get it.”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “I’m sure they also told you that there will always be a danger of the bullet migrating closer to the spinal cord, right? Which is why you have a chest X ray every year to make sure it hasn’t moved?”

  “Uh … I don’t seem to recall them saying anything like that”

  “The hell you don’t,” he said. He looked at me and waited for me to confess. When I didn’t, he held the X ray up again. “I’ve never seen this in person before,” he said. “Around here, the gunshots are always hunters. They’re not little bullets like this one. What is that, a twenty-two?”

  “Yes,” I said. “From an Uzi.”

  “You must lead a very interesting life,” he said. “Now about this business—”

  “Which business?”

  “This business that brings you to my hospital with a collapsed lung and more braises than I can count.”

  “I was sledding,” I said. “I hit a tree.”

  He smiled again. “There are rope burns on your wrists and ankles,” he said. “Do you always have somebody tie you up when you go sledding?”

  I looked at my wrists. The ropes had left a three-inch band of red, raw skin. “I need to talk to the sheriff, Doctor.”

  “He was here. I’ll call him, have him come back, now that you’re awake. There were two men here, too. The two men who came here with the ambulance.”

  “Vinnie and Leon,” I said. And then I remembered the face I had seen, or thought I had seen, in the doorway. “Doctor, were there any men with hunting caps out in the hallway?”

  “Hunting caps? You mean with the flaps? I don’t know. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. A lot of men wear hunting caps around here.”

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  “It’s going to be at least two days before we take you off that machine,” he said. “Then at least another day after that We’ll do X rays every day to see how the ribs look.”

  “That’s great news,” I said. “I’ve always loved hospitals.”

  When the doctor left, I sat there listening to the machine for a long while. Now that I knew what was happening, I could feel the balloon inside me. For a moment the thought of it was too much and I had to fight the urge to rip the tube out. But then the balloon would still be inside me. In fact, if I pulled out the tube, what would stop me from flying around the room as the air escaped from the balloon, just like in the cartoons?

  A nurse came and gave me some pills. When I took them, the pain in my side started to soften again. I took another little ride in the clouds. When I woke up this time, Leon was sitting in a chair next to the bed.

  “Hey, partner,” he said.

  “What time is it?” I said. “How long did I sleep?”

  “It’s about five P.M.,” he said. “You’ve been here about twenty-four hours now.”

  “What happened?” I said. “Where did you … How did you … The last time I saw you, we were both at Mrs. Hudson’s house. You were on your way home.”

  “You told me you were being followed,” he said. “So I decided to investigate.”

  “You followed me home?”

  “I followed the men who were following you,” I said. He pulled out a notebook. “Jeep Grand Cherokee, dark green …”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “The guys who were following me were driving a green Taurus.”

  “Two Caucasian men,” he said. “Late forties, wearing hunting caps …”

  “One red, one blue,” I said. “That’s them. I helped them get their car out of the snow. They must have wised up and switched to a four-wheel drive.”

  Leon looked at me. “You helped them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Get their car out of the snow.”

  “They were stuck,” I said. “It was the neighborly thing to do.”

  “And you got a good look at them,” he said. “I like it, partner.”

  “Leon …,” I said, but then I didn’t have the strength to finish the sentence. “Just tell me what else happened. What did the two men in the car do?”

  “I followed them all the way into Paradise. They pulled into one of those little tourist motels on the south end of town, the Brass Anchor. You know it?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve seen the owner around town,” I said. “Those two guys are staying there?”

  “It makes sense,” he said. “North of you, it’s a dead end. All they have to do is sit and wait for you to come down that road, then pick up the tail again.”

  “So then what?”

  “So then after I watched them go into the motel, I came up to your place. I figured you’d want to know. Your truck w
as there, and the door was open, but you weren’t home. I saw a lot of footprints in the snow, and the snowmobile tracks. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it didn’t look good. I tried calling the sheriff on my cellular, but it wasn’t going through. When the regular phone lines go down, all the cellular channels get jammed. Anyway, I went back down your road, saw Mr. LeBlanc pulling into his place. I tried calling the sheriff again, finally got through, and then we both came back. That’s when we heard the snowmobiles. They were pulling you back down the trail. Vinnie grabbed a big stick. I pulled out my revolver. I still have the carry permit. From before, I mean, when I thought I was a real private investigator.” He looked down at his hands.

  “You are,” I said, “You probably saved my life.”

  “I panicked, Alex. Vinnie knocked that guy off the snowmobile, and I just stood there watching him. The other snowmobiles came back. I didn’t know what to do. I just fired the gun into the air. Vinnie yelled at me not to shoot him. I fired the gun in the air again. The men turned around and drove away. I was aiming my gun at them. I could have shot them. One of them, anyway. The guy who was dragging you behind his snowmobile. I could have shot him. But I didn’t.”

  “You did the right thing,” I said. “What else were you going to do? Shoot him in the back as he drove away?”

  “They were trying to kill you,” he said. “They were trying to kill my partner and I let them get away.”

  “Leon, I don’t tell many people this, but when I was a police officer in Detroit, my partner and I got into a … well, a bad situation. Both of us got shot. I survived, but my partner didn’t. I’ve replayed that day in my mind a million times, and I always end up feeling responsible for his death. I probably could have drawn my gun in time to stop it. But I didn’t.”

  “That’s where the bullet in your chest came from?”

  “Yes. The doctor and I were just having some fun with that. Anyway, the difference is, I failed, and my partner died. You didn’t fail. I’m alive. So let’s knock off all this shit about you letting them get away, all right?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you for telling me that.”

  “It’s probably just the drags I’m on,” I said.