Season of the Wolf

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  * * *

  He stood in a thicket of trees. The cool evening air tasted his flesh where it was exposed, hands and neck and face. There were broken branches and stripped shreds of bark and fallen pine needles under his boots, like uneven layers of carpeting. He breathed in the pine and the scent of urine (his own, he had pissed here in the trees, watching while that rich fuck came in, backing into the lot like the rich fuck he was and parking and going inside, then coming out again, driving that fancy Jap SUV).

  Clara Durbin was inside, too, doing whatever it was she did there.

  And there was one other person inside, besides the Right Reverend Fuckbuggy.

  The chief’s wife. She was parked in back, where nobody could see her car if they drove past or parked in the church’s front lot. She had gone in the back door. He had watched her drive in, had parked down the road and raced through the woods and had made it to the rear of the church just in time to see the door close behind her. A couple of minutes later, the lights in that part of the building went out. A light came on in the part where the reverend lived, but the curtains were drawn.

  He didn’t need to see, though. He knew what Reverend Fuckbuggy did with the ladies. Silver Gap was a small town; word traveled.

  One day, the chief would find out. He would learn what his whorewife had been up to, and it would break his noble heart. His warrior’s heart.

  Still, maybe he could help. He had started harvesting, after all. So far, he had only been harvesting the abandoned, the unwanted. But he supposed expanding his parameters to include the unworthy wasn’t too much of a stretch.

  Anyway, he would be doing the chief a favor. Who knew what diseases she had picked up from Reverend Fuckbuggy’s filthy fuckstick? He couldn’t take her tonight; he had his hands full already.

  But soon.

  Soon.

  21

  Flannery led him through the tunnels.

  Blackness surrounded them, broken only by the glow from Flannery’s eyes. Alex was sobbing, barely able to talk, but Flannery never stopped grinning. Every now and then he offered encouragement. Not too far now, boss. Don’t worry, boss, we’ll be there soon. In the light. In the air that don’t clog your lungs with soot. Out where the roof don’t fall in and break through that useless helmet—that’s for show, right, not for safety, because it don’t mean a tinker’s damn when the world is crashin’ down on your head. We’ll be there soon, yeah. There’s just this one door, we gotta get through one door, and then we’re home free.

  But Alex knew they would never find that door. It was too dark, and the cave-in had filled the tunnels with tons of debris. The Earth had turned on them and you couldn’t fight the Earth. It would let you think you had a chance, but then it would laugh, that loud, loopy, whooping guffaw that shook the world’s guts from the inside, turning night into darker night, extinguishing lamps and lives.

  No, they would maybe be lucky enough to find the right tunnel, but it would be choked with rock and coal and earth and dust, impassable, impossible. He was hysterical, barely holding it together and that only because of Flannery’s calming presence. He fought for control, but then Flannery reached a bend and disappeared around it. Alex had no helmet, no flashlight, no source of illumination at all. Flannery wore a helmet with a carbide lamp, but it didn’t burn; all the light came from behind his eyes. Now even that was gone.

  Panic overtook him. He ran toward where he’d last seen Flannery, but hurtled headlong into a wall. He saw light then, flashes of it blinding him as he tumbled backward. His head snapped back and crashed into the hard tunnel floor.

  Now he was alone, the tunnel silent. Flannery was far ahead someplace. The blackness was existential, definitional, the absolute absence of all light. Alex gained his footing awkwardly, hands out for balance. He left them extended and took slow, shuffling steps, using his hands to feel his way forward. He smelled his own sweat, rank and sour; it filmed his body, soaked into his clothes, trickled down his socks and into his boots.

  Then Flannery was there again, beside him, his eyes burning through the dark. He accepted it; dream-reality was different from the waking kind. The panic bubbling up within Alex receded to something more like dread. Come on, boss, Flannery said. You don’t want to fall behind in here. Keep up.

  They were moving again, Flannery’s eyes cutting a path like headlights on a nighttime road. Flannery kept up a monologue as he marched ahead, but the words slurred into an uneven buzz.

  When he finally heard another recognizable word, it was “door.” Sure enough, Flannery had stopped before it. Light leaked in around its edges, and Flannery’s eye beams showed a big brass padlock hanging in a rusty hasp.

  At the sight of that door, Alex’s knees went rubbery and his hands started to tremble. He heard snarling and the gnashing of teeth behind it. “Don’t open it!” he tried to say. His mouth opened but the only sound that came out was a pathetic whimper.

  Flannery touched the lock and it was gone. The door opened with a loud, labored creak that drowned out Alex’s further attempts to complain.

  Light filled the room on the other side, though it was filtered, as if seeping through drapes. Whatever creatures were growling and snapping were not in the room, which was hardly wider than the tunnel. Flannery led him through it, and although with every step Alex expected to be attacked, the only things he saw in the room were women. There were three of them, with blank stares and silver smiles.

  They frightened him more than the beasts he had expected.

  He reared back from one who raised her hands toward him. She looked familiar, though he couldn’t place her. He couldn’t tell if she was imploring or beseeching or trying to grab or caress him, he just saw that empty gaze and that silver smile and those hands reaching for him and he lurched away.

  And then he woke, his arms and shoulders and head on the floor, legs still on the bed, tangled in the covers. His T-shirt and shorts were soaked and the sheet immobilizing his legs was soaked. He shivered as a frigid blast from the motel’s air conditioner dried the sweat on his skin.

  He went into the bathroom and stripped, draping his wet nightclothes over the shower curtain rod. He ran the water in the sink as hot as it would go and washed his face, then his chest and armpits. He studied himself in the mirror, his eyes bloodshot, his chin and cheeks stubbled. Nobody looked his best at this hour, in the harsh light of a fixture over the sink.

  He found a dry shirt and a pair of sweatpants, dressed in those, and sat in the room’s one chair, his feet up on the ottoman. He turned on the TV and ran through channels with the remote until he found something he could stand to have on, a melodrama from the 1940s, in black-and-white. He didn’t know what it was. He had seen the female lead before but couldn’t remember her name. He let their words wash over him, not taking in their meaning, and soon he drifted off again.

  * * *

  Engines and honking and shouts outside brought him around. The movie was over, and on the screen before him a woman who had co-starred in a TV sitcom two decades earlier explained how she had lost weight and firmed every part of her physique. Alex punched the power button on the remote and peered out the window, bleary-eyed.

  On the road past the motel, was a steady stream of cars and trucks headed for town. Pickups were most numerous, some with cabs at capacity and more people riding in the beds. Trailers bore hunting vehicles of various descriptions. He saw gun racks and men in blaze orange vests and camo pants and ball caps, and he knew what it was about.

  Wolves.

  Somehow word had spread that Silver Gap had wolves, and this was the result. Animals that weren’t supposed to be in Colorado at all, according to Robbie, and therefore, animals for which there were no hunting licenses to be had. But now they were here, and people were responding in droves to the opportunity to shoot them. Or, Alex thought, to the possibility of such an opportunity. He didn’t know if an open call had been issued for wolf hunters, or it these newcomers had simply decided for themselves th
at their services were required.

  Either way, he expected the woods would be a good place to stay away from until the hysteria had run its course.

  And then another thought occurred to him. The costs of renting out the entire motel weren’t bankrupting him, but those hunters would need rooms, and he had them all tied up.

  He splashed some water in his face and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, socks and boots and walked down to the motel office.

  When he passed through the door, the bell rang, but there was nobody behind the counter. “Mr. Durbin?” Alex called. “Charles?”

  No answer came from the open doorway behind the counter area. Alex waited another minute, feeling awkward. Durbin had told him that he and Clara lived on the premises, and he could tell from outside that there was a reasonable-sized apartment connected to the lobby. But he didn’t know if the doorway led directly into the residence. He didn’t want to walk in on the Durbins if they were fighting, or making love, or engaged in any other private couple-type activity.

  On the other hand, there had been a series of wolf attacks. They could in there, injured, maybe dying.

  He called out once more, then decided to risk it. “Clara?” he called as he went around the counter and through the open door. “Charles? Anybody here?”

  Behind the doorway was an office area containing a floor safe and a couple of desks. A computer hummed softly on one, with fractal images shooting across the screen. “Hello?” Alex tried.

  On the far side of the office was another open door. One glance told him it led into their apartment. Inside, they were still largely living out of boxes, as if they hadn’t quite decided that their reprieve was permanent. Alex knocked on the door. “Anybody home?”

  Charles emerged from what was obviously a bathroom, drying his hands on a small towel. “Sorry, Mr. Converse,” he said. “The fan in there’s as loud as the dickens. I thought maybe somebody was calling me but couldn’t tell for sure.”

  “No problem,” Alex said. “I just wanted to make sure everybody was okay.”

  “Far as I know,” Charles said. He ducked back into the room, then emerged again without the towel. “Clara went out a little while ago. It’s a little difficult, not having any staff. But not having many guests makes it easier.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I suppose you’ve seen the traffic out there?”

  “Yeah, been a pretty busy morning out on the road.”

  “Well, what I wanted to suggest was that you could rent them the rooms we’re not using. If you don’t fill up, I’ll still pay for any empty ones. But in the long run, it seems like having more guests—people who could come back again, and tell other people about where they stayed—would be better for your business.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Charles said, nodding. “I left my coffee in the kitchen, come on in.”

  Alex did as the man said and followed him through the small apartment. In the kitchen there was a table with two chairs, the usual large appliances, and an array of smaller ones on a tile counter. On the table was an open cardboard box, which someone had clearly been rummaging in for something or other. A few items had been left out beside it, including some framed photographs. While Charles poured some cream into a cup of coffee—he offered Alex one, which Alex gratefully accepted—Alex picked up one of the frames, which contained three shots from what had to be the Durbins’ wedding.

  When he focused in on the middle one, showing Charles and Clara Durbin and a third man, clad in their wedding finery, Alex froze. “You okay, Mr. Converse?” Charles asked.

  The voice in the quiet room, full of light from a window over the sink, startled Alex. His legs had begun to buckle, and sweat had popped out on his upper lip and his forehead, and for a moment there the world seemed to have gone as dark as the inside of a coal mine.

  The woman in the photograph, young Clara Durbin in her wedding gown, a flowered wreath pressed down over long brown hair parted in the middle, was unmistakably the silver-mouthed woman who had reached out to him in his dream. And beside her, the grinning man who was not her husband, his hair longer than Alex had ever seen it and a short, tight beard clinging to his chin, was just as certainly Jared Flannery.

  “Alex?”

  Alex realized that Charles Durbin was staring. “Sorry,” he said. He put the framed pictures back on the table. “I didn’t sleep very well, and I guess I’m not quite awake yet. Your wedding?”

  “Yeah. Long time ago. Bunch of hippies. Who knew it would last so long?”

  “You can never tell.” Charles’s hair was longer than today, too, and he was about forty pounds lighter, slim and fit and seemingly happy. Alex asked the question, even though he dreaded the answer. “Who’s the other guy?”

  “Oh, that’s her brother, Jared. Our best man. Her father had passed away a couple of years earlier, so Jared really stepped up and filled that role as well.

  “Sounds like a great guy.”

  “Oh, he was. He’s been gone for ten years or more, now.”

  Fourteen, Alex corrected mentally. He kept his mouth closed. That was dangerous territory, and he didn’t mean to tread there. Certainly not until he had figured it out for himself.

  If he ever could.

  He followed Charles back to the lobby, only half-present. He answered in monosyllables, and by the time he got back to his room, he might have agreed to buy the motel, for all he could recall.

  Had he seen the pictures earlier, and somehow incorporated them into his dreams? He didn’t see how. He had never been to Flannery’s home, never met the Durbins before this week, and he hadn’t been beyond the lobby earlier. There had been no artwork or photographs in the lobby; it had all been packed up for their imminent move.

  And Jared Flannery had been his guide, in his nightmares, for more than a decade.

  22

  Getting into town proved difficult. There was enough traffic to jam the little town’s single main road and overwhelm its police force. Once in town, there were no available parking spaces, so Alex turned up one of the side roads. He, Peter, and Ellen wound up walking back to downtown, a distance almost as far as if they had just hiked in from the motel. Peter carried his camera and tripod, while Ellen lugged the sound equipment. When they arrived at Robbie’s shop, she was hauling gear to her red Jeep and arranging it in back.

  She tossed Alex a harried smile. “Morning.”

  “I was hoping you could take us out so Peter could do some shooting,” he said. “Someplace where the hunters aren’t. But you look busy.”

  “Chief Deeds has me booked up. I’m taking out a few of the town’s best hunters—”

  “Second best,” Alex said. “After you.”

  “Right. Anyway, he wants us to get those wolves before all these rookies and Sunday hunters get out into the backcountry and start shooting at each other.”

  “Got room for three passengers?” Alex asked. “I’ll pay whatever the Chief is, and then some. We don’t want to hunt, but we’d love to observe, maybe film of the process.”

  “I thought your movie was about bugs.”

  “It’s about the effects of climate change,” Alex countered. “That can include bark beetles, but it can include other things, too. If there’s any link between climate change and the reappearance of wolves into this ecosystem, then that’s a worthwhile part of the story.”

  “And visually a hell of a lot more exciting than fuckin’ bug-eaten trees,” Peter added.

  “And that,” Alex said.

  He could see that she didn’t want to drag them along. She took her job seriously, and she had been hired for a specific purpose. But she kept glancing at him, catching his eye, and every time she did, that ready grin slipped over her face. She was weakening, he thought. “We won’t be in the way,” he said. “You won’t even know we’re there.”

  She heaved a sigh and crossed her arms over her chest, giving him her sternest glare. “I have a few rules,” she said.

>   “Name them.”

  “You only get out of the Jeep if I say you can. If I say to get back in, you do it, fast. If I say hold still, you hold still. If I say move, you move.”

  “No problem,” Alex said. “Peter?”

  The tall man nodded his head. “I can live with it.”

  “Can you get all your equipment in the Jeep with my stuff there? And still find room to sit?”

  “We’ll make it work,” Peter said. He and Ellen helped Robbie load the rest of her gear and worked theirs in around it. When they were done, the front passenger seat was available, and there was room in back for two if they didn’t mind sitting close. Alex knew they wouldn’t object to that—he just hoped they didn’t decide to have backseat sex.

  They eased into traffic, made it to the edge of town, and were stopped there by a police roadblock. A cop that Robbie identified as Tommy Ortega waved them toward a staging area, which was really the parking lot of Mountain Grocers and the couple of streets surrounding it.

  On the far side of the roadblock sat some state Division of Wildlife trucks and a helicopter. There were uniformed men with guns around the trucks, which were bristling with what appeared to be state-of-the-art communications gear and antennas. They looked like a military force.

  The hunters who had been shunted to the side were massing before the roadblock. Alex heard grumbling and muttered threats and some louder comments about “federals” and “states’ rights” and the right to bear arms. He didn’t bother pointing out to anyone that the uniformed officials blocking their way were in fact, state employees and not federal.

  Mayor Stewart worked his way clear of a knot of official-looking types—lots of suits, and even a few clipboards and walkie-talkies—on the far side of the roadblock. He threaded between two yellow sawhorses, accompanied by another man in a suit who Alex had never seen before. Stewart carried a megaphone.