Season of the Wolf

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Is that a—?” Robbie asked.

  Alex let the video run. Peter zoomed in on what was definitively a wolf. People were shouting, calling one another’s attention to the beast. At about the same time that Alex noticed that the wolf had a chunk missing from its right ear, somebody in Peter’s truck said they should call the animal “Notch.”

  “Good name,” Robbie said. “Someone took a bite out of that guy.”

  The video didn’t stop. Notch vanished behind the ridge, and the trucks gave chase. Peter turned—his balance was precarious but he kept the camera relatively steady, even though the truck left the dirt road and careened overland, up the slope and then down the other side. Alex recognized the landscape—the same course his group had taken earlier—and a chill set in as the vehicles in the video neared the canyon where he knew the recording would end.

  Then they got deep into the canyon and the wolves attacked. They came from every direction—Peter was swinging the camera from side to side, giving up any attempt at art, but capturing the chaos and terror of the moment. Wolves jumped into open truck beds and blood fountained into the air and they climbed into vehicles through open doors or windows and dragged people outside, dismembering them in the just-fallen snow or sinking their snouts into torsos and bringing them up with muzzles wet and red, sometimes clutching organs in their mouths.

  Throughout, Alex heard Ellen’s screams sometimes, but from Peter he only heard muttered, occasional words. “Fuck. Fuck me. Oh, fuck.” Then a wolf got Peter—his scream was long and piercing and the fear in it made Alex want to weep. He was trembling and watching the video—Peter had turned the camera toward the wolf that had his thigh in its mouth, blood shooting out around its teeth—and he didn’t even realize until the screen went black as the video ended that Robbie had taken his hand in both of hers and was stroking his with a gentle caress.

  “It’s done,” she said.

  “Oh, God, that was…”

  “Shh. I know, Alex. He was your friend and it was awful. More than that. I don’t even know the words. It was—you shouldn’t watch it again. I have to show it to Morris and Alden and some others. Dr. Conklin. But you should—”

  “You think I’m letting you leave my side?” he asked.

  “I won’t. You can come with. You can sit with me and I’ll hold your hand, but you don’t have to look.”

  He tried to gather himself. “I can deal with it, Robbie,” he said. “I know I come across like a city slicker with no experience of death or bloodshed or tragedy, and I wish that was me. But it’s not.”

  “You do a convincing impersonation.”

  “Years of practice, that’s all. The people I know, back in L.A.—they wouldn’t want to be near someone who had done and seen the things I have. So I don’t let them know, and they’re fine with that and so am I. But when I close my eyes, when I go to sleep—it’s all there. The things you most want to forget are the things that never let you go.”

  She held his gaze for a long time. He didn’t think he would ever get tired of looking into those eyes. There was an expectant look on her face, as if she were waiting for him to say something else, or perhaps trying to formulate a sentence or question of her own. Instead, she shifted her attention to the TV, shutting it off. “I’m calling Dr. Conklin. He’s got to see that video.”

  “Good idea.”

  “And after that, we should get something to eat.”

  Out at the scene of the attacks, Alex had not expected to ever have an appetite again. He was surprised to find, now that she mentioned it, that he was famished.

  * * *

  Alex had never been to a tactical operations center in a war zone, but when they walked into the Cup & Cow, that’s what he thought of. There were people eating their dinners, and the wait staff was busy carrying plates and refilling coffee cups and putting bottled beer down on tabletops where there were already empty bottles standing. Nearly every table was full, some more than, with extra chairs pulled up at the corners. People who weren’t eating were talking in low, serious tones, some writing or sketching on scraps of paper or notepads or even tablecloths. By picking up snatches of conversation, Alex learned that Clara Durbin was still missing, as were the other women who had disappeared over the past few days.

  They managed to find a table near the kitchen door, and a frazzled waitress took their orders. Conklin’s face was still pale; it had blanched while watching the video, and his color had not returned.

  “You haven’t said much, Cale,” Robbie observed. “I know it was gruesome, but when the wolves were on camera, could you get a sense of what’s driving them? They can’t all be rabid, can they?”

  “I didn’t see any signs of rabies or distemper,” Conklin said. “I still haven’t quite processed what I did see.”

  “I don’t think human beings can make sense of something like that,” Alex said. “It’s just…it’s wrong. Like you said, it isn’t natural.”

  “I would never have believed it. If you didn’t have that video I still wouldn’t. Wolves don’t behave that way. There’s this mythology around them—we think about places like Romania, back in Dracula’s day, when your coach could be run down by a slavering pack of wolves. But that’s fantasy, it doesn’t happen in the real world. Only—”

  He stopped as the waitress poured coffee for Robbie and Alex, then went away and hurried back with a small pot of tea for Conklin. “Your orders will be up in a couple of minutes,” she said. “Sorry, we’re kind of swamped. It’s usually quiet this time of day.”

  “That’s okay, Grace,” Robbie said. “Today’s not a usual kind of day. Whenever you can is fine.”

  A man in a blue work shirt and wheat-colored canvas pants that looked to Alex like something he might have taken off a farmer from the 1880s approached the table. He moved with the hesitation of a teenager, dared by his buddies to ask the prettiest girl in school to dance. “’Scuse me,” he said to Conklin. “You the wolf guy?”

  “Guess you could call me that.

  “We had a question. ‘Bout wolves.”

  Conklin nodded sagely. “Makes sense.”

  “Where do they live? Don’t they have to have some kind of a, what do you call it? A den?”

  “Wolves do have dens,” Conklin said. “They’re usually used by a pregnant wolf, to give birth in. The pups might stay in there until they’re ready to face the world. The adult wolves will have a rendezvous site somewhere, and the den or dens might be close by. There’s not much about these wolves that’s ordinary, though.”

  The man turned back toward his companions. “A den, it’s called. You were right, Bill!” He spun back to Conklin. “How would we find that? The, whatever, rendezvous site and the den?”

  A woman seated at a nearby table joined the conversation. “If we could find it, could we kill them that way? Catch them all there and, I don’t know, machine-gun them or something?”

  “That likely wouldn’t be much easier to do at the rendezvous site than it was out in the open,” Conklin said. “More difficult, maybe, if some of them went into the den.”

  “What’s it like?” the man asked. “Inside the den?”

  “It could be a cave, a hollow in the ground, something like that.”

  “If we destroyed their site, somehow, would that make them move on?” the woman asked. She had a bandanna tied on her head, with long, dark hair falling from it. Her eyes were quick and lively, and she had big hands, rawboned and chapped and creased from hard work.

  “It’s impossible to say,” Conklin replied. “You’re wanting me to characterize what these animals would do based on what typical wolves might do, and I’m not sure there’s any correlation.”

  “How would we find it?” the woman asked.

  “Chances are, after the massacre the wolves would have gone back there. They had eaten their fill, from the sound of it. They’d leave the rest where it was and return to the rendezvous site, expecting to be able to go back for seconds when they got hung
ry again. Since the bodies were recovered, they won’t have that option, so when they’re hungry they’ll hunt again. But I suppose the best chance of finding them all together and as relaxed as they’ll ever get would be there.”

  A man sitting at the table with the woman looked out the big windows at the front of the café. Snow drifted lazily past the outside lights. Most people in the room were paying attention to their conversation; chatter at the other tables had died. “Too late to do anything tonight.”

  “Hell, yes,” another man said. Alex recognized him from the search party. “I’m not goin’ out there in the dark. Maybe never again.”

  “In the daytime, though,” the man who had started the discussion said. “I’d be game in daylight.”

  “What do you want to do?” someone else asked. “Blow it up?”

  “Would that work?” Alex asked Conklin.

  “I suppose as well as anything. Blow up any dens and do as much damage to the site as you can. Make them understand that it’s not a safe harbor.”

  “I’m in!” someone shouted.

  “Same here!”

  There was a chorus of assent, general but far from universal. The next thing Alex knew, another man was saying that he knew where to get a bunch of dynamite, from a storage locker at a mine site. “I don’t have a key,” he said. “But I can get it by morning and bring back as much as we need.”

  “Is it safe?” Alex asked.

  “Safe as things that go boom ever are.”

  “I mean, is it old? You don’t want to just throw old dynamite in the back of your pickup and drive it out into the woods.”

  “I don’t think it’s real old,” the man said. “Mine was just closed about four months back. Not even closed, really, just temporarily.”

  “Just check it,” Alex urged. “Do you know what to look for?”

  “Mister, I worked at that mine for eight years. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

  “We should meet up here in the morning,” Robbie said. “And somebody should check in with Chief Deeds and the DOW folks, make sure we’re not fouling up any other plans.”

  “I’ll talk to Morris,” the woman said.

  “How about here at seven, Robbie?” the former miner said. “That early enough?”

  “Should be fine,” Robbie said. She took control of the arrangements, and within minutes there was a plan in place. Everybody in the restaurant seemed to know her, and they respected her as a natural leader. Alex had been impressed since he had met her, and seeing the way the people who knew her best responded to her only deepened his appreciation.

  Once the details were in place, Alex paid for the meals that he, Robbie, and Conklin had eaten (Alex without really tasting any of it, his attention riveted on the discussion instead), and they bade the scientist good night. Then Alex walked with Robbie back to her shop. Snow coated the sidewalk like a sheet, crumpled where people had passed by, and formed a thick white blanket on the slanted roofs of the buildings across the way. The night was cold, and Alex zipped his coat against the chill.

  “So,” Robbie said as they neared her door. “Sounds like you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All that stuff about dynamite? And earlier today, at the scene? There are layers you haven’t shown me.”

  “I didn’t know you wanted to see.”

  She put a key in the lock, turned it, and shoved the heavy glass door open. Then she put a hand on Alex’s arm. “I’ve never been much good at subtle,” she said. “I think there’s something going on here. I mean, between you and me. Or there could be.”

  “Could be.”

  “But it’s not going anywhere if I feel like we’ve got secrets. Big ones, I mean. Everybody has little ones. I feel like you’re holding back on me, and that leaves me kind of groping around in the dark, wondering if I’m going to say something that offends or shocks or terrifies you. So, you going to tell me, or—”

  “Well, if there’s going to be groping involved, then I guess I ought to.”

  Robbie laughed and released him. He followed her inside, and she bolted the door behind them.

  27

  “My family owned a company that was called Converse Coal when it began, back in the post-Civil War era,” Alex began. They were in Robbie’s cluttered back room/office, she in her desk chair and he occupying an ancient gray chair in which the springs were either collapsed or trying to tear free of the fabric. She had turned on an old space heater, and its coils grew bright orange as he talked. “Now it’s called Converse Energy, and is about a lot more than just coal. But it’s not the family business anymore, either, it’s a public company, and I own just enough shares to be completely ignored by the board.”

  “So that’s where all the money comes from?”

  “That’s right. There was a lot of it, and for generations we kept it in the family. I’m not saying we were the Vanderbilts or the Rockefellers or anything like that, but we were definitely the one percenters of the day. But we weren’t coddled, like in some rich families. One rule was, every kid had to work in the mines. Every summer, from ages fifteen to twenty.”

  “That’s not just a taste.”

  “No, it was a serious deal. You went in at the bottom of the totem pole. I mean, the other miners knew you were a Converse, but that was a mixed blessing. Sometimes they kept you out of trouble, and other times they targeted you. If you worked hard, you got promoted. The idea was that you’d have at least a good idea of what everybody in the company did, at every level. That way, the theory went, you could manage them wisely.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “The Converse family thought so. Anyway, the summer I was seventeen, I was still working underground most of the time, but as an apprentice foreman, so I was up and down, constantly moving between one shaft and another.

  “One day at shift change, I was checking the miners as they went down, checking their tags and gear, making sure everybody had the required safety equipment. Coal mining has always been a dangerous job, and they all knew it. But they looked to the company to create the safest working conditions possible. And that was my goal, too. You want everybody who goes underground to come back out at the end of a shift.

  “Anyway, on this day—it was the third of June, I remember—one of the miners was nervous. I could tell by the way he was kind of shuffling. His eyes were twitchy. I wondered if maybe he’d been doing speed or something, so I engaged him for a couple of minutes. I took my time checking him out and tried to get him to talk to me. Eventually I figured out that he was just scared. On the verge of panic, really.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know if it was a premonition, or a bad dream, or what. He wouldn’t ever say, but I got the sense that it was something like that. He just had an awful feeling about going into the mine that day. His name was Jared Flannery, and he had these bright green eyes. He told me he had a bad feeling, and I calmed him down. ‘Don’t worry, Jared,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, would I?’ ‘I don’t know, boss,’ he said. So I said, ‘Trust me,’ and sent him down.”

  “Why do I get the feeling this doesn’t end well for him?”

  “Not just for him,” Alex said. He hadn’t talked about this in so long, he wasn’t quite sure how to tell the rest of it. It was technical, and it was terrible, and he felt something akin to Jared Flannery’s panic when he thought about continuing. He wondered if he could get away with making up some anticlimactic ending and going back to the motel.

  But that wasn’t necessarily any better. Charles Durbin might or might not be there, but it didn’t sound like Clara would be. Paul and Ellen definitely would not be. He didn’t want to face it, not tonight.

  He looked at Robbie, waiting expectantly, her lips parted a little, her eyes clear and focused. He wanted, suddenly, to kiss her. He knew that was not a good idea, knew that her reaction could range from kissing back to throwing him across the room to unl
oading one of her many firearms in his direction.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “Jared Flannery went down, and so did twenty-eight other miners. Not me; I would be going down later, but had some paperwork to take care of first.

  “I never got the chance. Because they had been down there about two-and-a-half hours when methane and coal dust exploded in the section forty-seven. Nine miners died right away. Two others were injured, but the explosion caused a cave-in, and we couldn’t get to them for six days. By that time, they had died. Four more were injured but were on the right side of the cave-in, and they got out okay, along with the remaining uninjured ones.”

  “Oh my God, Alex. That’s awful!”

  “Yeah. It was pretty bad. Of course, the families of the missing camped out at the mine for all six days, at the end of which we couldn’t give them any good news. You hate to see miners trapped underground, but at least if they come out alive, there’s a happy ending. Not in this case.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “So was I.”

  “What happened? Do they know what caused it?”

  “Apparently there had been some bad decisions made earlier on—not while I was there—that resulted in stress on the coalbed and face. Those stresses and other factors caused an outburst of methane and coal dust. We had a machine going, called a continuous mining machine, and it had a sealed compartment containing a light switch and switch control. Rather, the compartment was supposed to be sealed, but it had been closed with a wire hanging out of it, and that wire allowed enough of the combination coal dust and methane atmosphere to get to the switch. When it operated, it ignited the atmosphere. And boom.”