Season of the Wolf

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Alex put his hands under the table. They’d started shaking as he realized how right she was. He hadn’t even considered that, had simply rushed to make sure Peter didn’t get them involved in a scrape on their first evening in town.

  Peter returned from the men’s room without further incident, and their food arrived soon after. As they ate, chatting casually about their plans for the next few days, a couple came inside and spoke to the woman behind the counter, the one who seemed to be running things. Her face took on a grave appearance, and within a few minutes word spread throughout the restaurant. The people in the next booth told Alex, Peter, and Ellen, as if they were locals. “Mike Hackett’s missing,” a woman said. “There’s gonna be a search party out, first thing in the morning.”

  “I don’t know Mike Hackett,” Alex said. “But we’d be glad to help search.”

  “We’re meeting in the parking lot behind Town Hall, at seven.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “We will?” Peter muttered.

  “You started us out by pissing off one of the locals,” Alex said, keeping his voice low. “This’ll be a good way to get them on our side, and what we’re doing here will be much easier if they like us.”

  “What if it’s dangerous?” Ellen asked.

  “How could it be dangerous? We’ll be with a bunch of people. They know the area and they’ll probably be armed—”

  “What’s more dangerous than a bunch of Cletuses with guns?” Peter interrupted.

  “Look, the guy’s probably sleeping off a drunk under a tree someplace, you guys. The whole thing probably won’t take more than an hour or two. We walk around in the woods, make some friends, and then when they find out why we’re here maybe they’ll go easy with the pitchforks and torches.”

  “Seven is awfully fucking early.”

  “Peter, we’re making a movie about climate change. These are rural people, mountain people, who probably don’t believe in it. They’re going to think we’re a bunch of assholes from the city, and so far you’re proving them right. We’ve got a chance here to make them go easier on us, and we’ve got to take it.”

  Peter shrugged. He did that a lot. “You’re the head honcho.”

  “That’s right. So get to bed early tonight. And set an alarm—I doubt the motel has a wake-up service.”

  Peter nodded his assent, and Alex turned back to the people in the next booth. “Excuse me. If I wanted a guide, someone who really knows these mountains well—I mean, after the search party’s done, of course—is there someone you’d recommend?”

  The man didn’t even have to consider the question. “Robbie Driscoll,” he said. “Don’t you think, Mae?”

  “Yes,” his date agreed. “Robbie’s the best. Just look for Driscoll’s Outfitters, here on Main. It’s, what, four doors from here.”

  “Driscoll’s,” Alex repeated. “Thanks. Thank you very much.”

  “Enjoy your meal,” the man said. “The pork chops here are the best I’ve ever had.”

  Alex forked a chunk into his mouth, and he couldn’t disagree.

  * * *

  Ellen waited until both men were looking away, then shifted her grip on her steak knife and brought it back above the table. As soon as Peter had bumped into the big man, she had snatched it up and been ready to move. She had known a guy like him in Miami—fuck known, she had been with him, and shading the truth from herself wouldn’t do her any good. He was a city guy, not a mountain man like this dude, but physically aggressive men shared enough similarities for her to recognize one: the way his chin ticked up when he spoke, the tightness at the back of his jaw. She had watched the man’s hands when Peter got in his face, his fingers poised to clutch a knife or a gun or to curl into fists. Peter wouldn’t have had a chance, and even Alex’s interference wouldn’t have helped.

  Hence the knife. She was out of her comfort zone here, and it didn’t pay to take chances.

  Ellen was a survivor. Her father had died when she was a child, and her mother had dealt with that loss by becoming addicted to a variety of pharmaceuticals. When she went to prison, Ellen went into the system too, and a series of foster homes had taught hard lessons. She had figured out early in life that she would always be small and not strong, but that if she latched onto someone who was powerful she would be protected. Once in a while she took a beating—men who liked to punch weren’t always particular about whom, where and when—but never more than one.

  Eventually she had figured out that power didn’t only come from physical strength; that, in fact, lasting power emanated from less flagrantly obvious sources. Wealth, for instance. Influence. That newfound knowledge had led eventually to Peter, a man she believed to be on the cusp of doing big things. This documentary of Alex’s was just the beginning, the project that would take Peter to the next level.

  She wanted to be with him on that ride. If that meant being ready to knife someone who might hurt him, then that’s what she would do.

  Just the same, she was glad it hadn’t come to that yet. With luck, it wouldn’t.

  She would be ready, though, just in case. She always was. Survival demanded no less.

  * * *

  He was underground, in the dark. The walls were close and the lights had flickered and then gone out, and the air was thick with choking black dust. He had fallen to the ground when the earth shook, carrying with it a noise that seemed to come from everywhere at once, from all around him and deep inside, first a ferocious boom from the mine bump as the support pillars collapsed, then a rumbling that seemed like it would never end, but that stopped abruptly, leaving behind only the patter of rocks falling from walls and ceiling, and the screams of the lost and injured.

  Lost? That was him. When he regained his feet—lucky to be alive, he knew that much; doubtless some of the shafts and rooms had collapsed entirely—he didn’t know which way was which. One direction might lead him out of the mine, to safety and breathable air. The other would take him deeper in, where his chances of being caught in a secondary cave-in or explosion would increase with every foot he traveled. He fought back against the panic that tore at his throat, trying to think, to reason.

  But it was no use. The world was pitch-black; he couldn’t see his hand an inch from his face. The dust gagged him, and he stumbled along, coughing and spitting and vomiting, with no clue where he was going. For all he knew, he could have passed into seams long since closed off by the company but opened again by the tremors.

  Time had passed—he had no way of knowing how much—when he heard another tunnel burst. He couldn’t tell if it was ahead of him, behind, or in a shaft that was parallel or adjoining. His face was slick with dust-caked blood and he was weak, stumbling often, panic ebbing but being replaced by a sense of futility. The shafts could be filling with mud and debris that would drown him before he had a chance to die of hunger. Either way, he would never see sunlight again, never take another breath of clean air.

  Then the man was there, as he always was. His name was Jared Flannery, and he could see Flannery, as if the miner had his own perpetual glow. He was blackened from head to toe, but his ruddy brush of a mustache stood out, and green eyes shone like lanterns. This way, man, he said, though his mouth didn’t move. Come on, this is the way out.

  And he followed Flannery, willingly, only once in a while fearing that Flannery was some sort of mine sprite, a Tommyknocker or other creature here to lead him into certain destruction. Flannery seemed to know the way; he was confident, at least, and he kept up a running patter as they moved through the shaft. This is the way, won’t be far now, this way to the surface, boss.

  He didn’t know why he should trust Flannery, but he did. And they did seem to be going up, mostly, and the air did seem to be clearing a little. He was still scared, terrified, but he started to allow himself to believe that there might be a way out, that escape was possible, if not likely.

  And then Flannery stopped, and there was a door behind him, and he put his hand o
n the door handle. This is the way, boss, Flannery said, this is it, right through here.

  But as he drew closer to the door, something behind it made a noise. Another bump, he feared, another collapse, but no, it wasn’t that. It was on the other side of that door, and it was a growling, deep and resonant and fierce. Not just growling, but snapping and slavering, and he knew that if Flannery opened that door, they would charge, all teeth and claws and ripping, tearing, and as Flannery pulled down on the handle and the door started to gap open and light, blinding light with shadows moving in it started to leak through he said “No, Flannery, don’t open it don’t let them in I won’t I’ll do—”

  Alex woke up thrashing, sheets and blankets wrapped tightly around him, binding him. Sweat covered him like ice water, and he was shivering, his teeth clacking together.

  The dream was always the same, and yet it wasn’t. It varied in its details; sometimes Flannery took him to a great shaft from which he could see light, at a distance that seemed like a miles-long, impossible climb. Twice, he had taken him to a place where light fell on a signpost, and the sign read “Silver Gap.” Sometimes Flannery led him around in circles and then abandoned him, though always with a promise to fetch help and come back.

  The dreams, though—and no one else knew it, surely not Peter and Ellen—the dreams were why they had come. He had been looking for some sort of redemption. The idea of a documentary had been itching at him, and he had seen that sign: Silver Gap. He looked it up and found out about Silver Gap, Colorado, and learned about the bark beetles, and the fairly direct link between their spread and the blister rust infection that was killing whitebark pines all over the western states, and his plans had crystallized almost at once.

  Now, he was here. And instead of going away, the dream was back, worse than ever. Before, at the end of the dream, scary as it was, there had been some hope. But this one, tonight, had offered none. There was only one way out, Flannery seemed to be saying. Through that door. And when he opened that door…

  Alex shivered again, got out of bed, flicked on the overhead light. There were no bedside lights, no bedside tables. He sat on the edge of the bed in the bare room, wrapped the blanket around himself, and waited for the dawn.

  6

  Alex woke up again at six.

  He had an internal alarm that worked as well as any store-bought clock he’d ever had. He wasn’t sure when he had fallen asleep again—he was still at the edge of the bed, his legs dangling off—but obviously he had. When he’d turned in, there still hadn’t been any hot water in the joint, but the owner must have gotten the water heater going because when Alex tried the shower, he only had to wait a couple of minutes before the bathroom filled with steam. While he was out to dinner with Peter and Ellen, someone had come in, made the bed and left towels and soap.

  Although he traveled with his own soap, shampoo and conditioner, he used the motel’s because he wanted whoever had left them to notice that he had noticed. Alex Converse might have been the heir to the Converse Coal fortune, but he tried to remember that not everyone had been born rich, and that even hotel housekeepers—which he doubted this place had, at the moment—deserved respect and needed to feel appreciated.

  His family business had been responsible for terrible environmental degradation, for clogging rivers with sediment from mountaintop removal, for clear-cutting forests, for pumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Alex couldn’t make it as if it had never happened. He couldn’t even shut down the company, because stockholders controlled it now, and he only had a minority interest.

  Instead, he did everything he could to counteract the destruction that had made him rich. The Alex Converse Foundation funded groups fighting climate change and other environmental battles, and supported political candidates who shared those goals. Those were baby steps, though. You helped elect someone and then maybe that person voted the way you wanted, and maybe they didn’t. You worked for months or years to get a bill inching through a state legislature, or Congress, only to see it fail or be watered down so much that it lost its teeth. Alex tried to be patient, but sometimes he felt like a feather in a tornado, trying to make headway but being blown in circles by forces far more powerful than he could ever be.

  Finally, the idea for the film had come to him. He had never made a movie, but he understood the persuasive powers of moving images. He was no celebrity, no Al Gore or Michael Moore—his name was known mostly to the fundraisers for the groups he supported—but he had done a lot of research on climate change, and he thought he had an approach that would attract some notice.

  Only a few years ago, in the wake of Gore’s movie, people had believed in climate change—what had once been known as “global warming.” Since then, though, the deniers had made headway, thanks to phony interest groups backed by oil companies—and, he knew, other big energy industry companies, including Converse Coal—buying off scientists who helped spread the lie that climate change was nothing but a liberal hoax.

  The evidence, in fact, was all around. Here in the Rocky Mountains, glaciers were melting, and bark beetle devastation that had come about when winters ceased being cold enough to kill off the beetles every year. Elsewhere, there were disappearing wetlands and prolonged drought, powerful storms and calving of the Antarctic ice shelf and enough other symptoms to convince any, he thought, but the willfully blind.

  When he got out of the shower, he dressed quickly and walked down to bang on the door of the cabin that Peter and Ellen shared. She answered, already dressed, and told him they were up and getting ready. Surprised but pleased, Alex left them to it and walked back to his cabin.

  * * *

  A few minutes after seven, he parked the Lexus in the lot behind the big brick Town Hall building, where a crowd of about fifty had gathered. Many, as he had expected, carried rifles or shotguns, and more than a few had handguns on their hips. Someone had set up a table with two coffee urns, hot water, teabags, and several steel trays of doughnuts. Alex recognized the woman who had been running the restaurant last night, the Cup & Cow, standing behind the food table.

  Alex, used to the temperate southern California clime, had outfitted himself in a Mountain Hardwear Sub Zero SL jacket, North Face Outbound pants, and fur-lined leather gloves. His boots were from Asolo, and by themselves had probably cost more than most of these people had spent on everything they wore. He saw plenty of flannel, denim, and down.

  The vast majority of the people were white, but there were a handful of Latinos and a couple of black men. The guy Peter had pissed off at the restaurant was there, talking to an enormously fat man who didn’t look much older than fifteen but who almost certainly was. A double-barreled shotgun looked like a child’s toy in his hands. A couple of feet from them stood a pair of hard-looking, rawboned women with short, steely hair and masculine clothes.

  “Guess we found the dyke contingent,” Peter said with a snicker.

  Alex hadn’t slept well enough to put up with Peter’s shit. That, or he needed caffeine even more than he wanted to admit. “Try not to offend anyone for at least an hour, Peter. Try really hard.”

  Alex was overdressed, considering that the autumn had not yet turned really cold, even at this elevation. And he was overdoing it with his pricey new duds, compared to the lived-in clothing of the locals. Peter and Ellen hadn’t gone so whole-hog on the outdoor gear; both dressed as if they were out for a stroll on the Santa Monica Promenade. Peter was unshaven, with fair whiskers stubbling his cheeks, and grouchy.

  They were helping themselves to coffee and doughnuts when a stocky man with short, dark hair clapped his hands together a couple of times. His mustache was a stiff, mostly black thatch riding his lip. He wore a dark blue coat with a gold star on the chest, and a tan cowboy hat. The crowd quieted and directed their attention toward him.

  “Thanks for coming out today, folks,” he said. “Looks like I know most of you, but there are a couple newcomers here, and we appreciate you taking part in this effort,
too. For anybody who don’t know me, I’m Chief Deeds.”

  He ticked his head toward two officers standing at his left, a tall black man with a mustache rivaling his own, and a shorter, skinny white guy whose prominent nose and receding chin gave him an unfortunate rodent-like appearance. “These here are officers Jones and Honeycutt, for those that don’t know them,” the chief continued. “We’re here to track down Mike Hackett. I got some pictures here that his wife Marie gave me, for anyone don’t remember what Mike looks like. I figure he’s fixed most of your trucks, one time or another, and you’ll recall the smile on his face when he took your money.”

  There was general laughter in the crowd. Alex felt like a stranger crashing a family reunion. He was pretty sure that he, Peter, and Ellen were the only outsiders, the ones for whom Chief Deeds had intended his introductions.

  “I should also thank John Fredericks of Fredericks Mining for buying the coffee and doughnuts. Where are you, John?”

  A burly, bearded man in a plaid hunting coat and cap raised one hand. “Right here. Morris!”

  “Well, thanks a lot, John. We appreciate it and I know the mayor’s wife appreciates the extra business.”

  “Maybe she can mention that to him next tax season,” John Fredericks said, drawing another laugh from the crowd.

  The chief continued with an overview of the basic strategy. His officers had located Hackett’s truck, so the search party would convoy over to where it had been parked, and fan out from there. Everybody would stay no more than five or six feet from the people on either side of them, because any farther and somebody lying on the ground, maybe hurt and needing help, could be missed. Where terrain demanded it, they would adjust, but that was the plan.