Season of the Wolf

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Robbie swung the rifle around and squeezed off a shot. The wolf bucked, staggered. The brave Keeshond attacked it. The wolf fought back, injured but still upright and fierce.

  “Where are the others?” Conklin asked.

  “What others?”

  “Coming in from upwind? That’s a distraction, not an attack.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when they saw the rest. Robbie brought the gun about, sighted quickly on the first of three.

  “Mrs. Kuchar!” Alex called again. “Get inside the house!”

  This time she looked at him, confusion on her face. He pointed behind her. The Keeshond was already dead, and the wolf Robbie had shot was down as well, regaining its feet and then stumbling again, finished though it had not given up.

  Robbie squeezed the trigger again, shifted the gun, fired, shifted, fired. A red mist sprayed from the lead wolf’s skull and it collapsed, sliding in the snow. The wolf behind it jumped over without breaking stride, and that sudden movement saved it from Robbie’s second shot. Her third caught the back wolf on its right rear haunch, driving it sideways and down. She held the weapon steady, instantly recalculating her aim. The remaining wolf launched itself toward Mrs. Kuchar, whose legs seemed to have locked her into place.

  Robbie fired.

  The wolf’s head exploded, spraying Mrs. Kuchar with blood and brains. The animal collided with her, knocking her down, but it was already dead.

  The wolf Robbie had wounded regained its footing. Blood bubbled from the injury but it ignored the pain, drawing back its lips, snarling and advancing on the woman still trying to coax cooperation from her hands and feet. Robbie fired twice more, and the beast went over with a grunted exhalation.

  Alex and Conklin ran across the street toward Mrs. Kuchar while Robbie held back, surveying, making sure there weren’t more wolves on the way. Alex reached the woman first. He extended a hand, helping her to her feet. She was as white as the snow around her, with red splatter on her coat and legs and face.

  “What in heaven’s name is—” she began.

  “You should get inside your house, and stay there,” Alex said.

  “But, what about Ferdie?”

  “The dog?”

  “Yes!”

  “Ferdie’s gone. He tried to save you from the wolves.”

  “They killed him?”

  “At least they didn’t kill you,” Alex said. “But please get inside, before they do.”

  “He’s right,” Robbie said, crossing the road now that the coast was clear. “You’ve got to get in your house, Mrs. Kuchar. Lock your doors and close the shades and don’t come out again.”

  The woman stood, indecisive, for several long moments. Tears had started to well from her eyes. Robbie made a little shooing motion, and then she responded, turning away from them and waddling up her snow-packed walk. Her door closed and Alex heard the sound of locks being shot.

  Conklin was crouched over one of the wolf carcasses. Tracks in the snow showed that he had examined all three. He rose, nodding his head. “They’re the same,” he said. “Dire/gray cross.”

  The news was no surprise, but it was a confirmation.

  Things had changed. The world was not what Alex had thought.

  There were unknown creatures, large predators, they were marvels, and they were deadly.

  The next few people they saw, they could not save.

  Robbie was reloading her rifle when a man came out of his house, two blocks down, probably to see what all the shooting was about. Alex and Conklin tried to wave him back inside, but he was standing there trying to understand when the wolves darted from between houses, just a blur through the snow, and they took him down. For an instant, Alex saw red, and then they were gone again. On the hunt.

  They headed back to Main, where a couple of people driving too fast passed them in a little Nissan coupe. The car didn’t make a turn and slid out of control, coming to a halt halfway up on the sidewalk. The people, too distant to hear shouted warnings, got out of the car to survey their situation, and wolves manifested from the shadows and struck, swift and efficient, and they were gone by the time Robbie got off a shot.

  Another man wore a blaze orange vest over a down coat and carried a rifle of his own, and he cut through the snow like a man on a mission. He saw something off to his right and stepped between two buildings, out of sight. Alex couldn’t see the wolves, but he heard the man’s cries, heard the terror in them, and then he heard the silence.

  They walked faster, the knowledge that the wolves were in town, and attacking, lending urgency to their pace. “I thought you said they didn’t know the concept of war,” Alex said.

  “They don’t,” Conklin said. “But they know self-defense. You blew up their home.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  “If it hadn’t been you it would have been someone else, Alex,” Robbie reminded him. She glanced over her shoulder. “It wasn’t your idea. And they were killers long before that.”

  “They do what they have to do,” Conklin said. “At least, that’s true of regular grays. I don’t know about these things. They seem more—”

  Robbie cut him short. “Run,” she said.

  They ran.

  “Behind us,” she said, panting. “A few blocks, but coming fast.”

  They ran faster. Conklin started to pull ahead, his long legs eating up the ground, arms pumping. Robbie kept looking back, which slowed her down. Alex grabbed her hand and tried to hurry her along. They were less than a block from her shop, but the door would be locked. He didn’t know how far back the wolves were, or how many, but he guessed enough that Robbie didn’t think she could shoot them all or she would be doing it.

  Much of the snow had been shoveled or scraped off the sidewalk, but new snow had fallen and ice glazed it in spots. One slip and he would never get up again.

  Then he was at the door and Robbie was shoving her keys into his hands. He fumbled one into the door but it was the wrong one. “Which key is it?” he asked. But Robbie was down on one knee, aiming the rifle back down the street. She fired and the acrid scent bit at his nostrils and he pushed another key into the lock, turned it. The door gave under his push.

  He yanked the key out and went inside, then Conklin, and finally Robbie. Once she was through Alex slammed it shut and locked it again. He was still standing there, hands on the door, when a wolf lunged against the glass. The impact made Alex jerk his hands away from the door, as if it had suddenly turned electric, and he let out a cry of surprise.

  “The back room!” Robbie shouted. “Quick!”

  She was already on her way. Alex followed. Conklin was standing by the window, watching the four wolves that had gathered on the sidewalk. The same one that had tested the door slammed against it once more. It rattled but held.

  “Cale!” Alex cried.

  “Come on!” Robbie said. She grabbed Alex’s shoulder and hurled him into the back room. He fell against a shelf unit and rolled-up maps fell out around his feet.

  The wolf tried the door again. This time, glass shattered and crashed inward. The wolf yelped but kept coming, struggling over the jagged remains of the glass door, rear paws scrabbling for purchase. The other wolves were growling and crowding the first.

  Conklin was still halfway across the store, his attention riveted on his beloved creatures. Robbie and Alex both called him, but he didn’t seem to hear. Then the first wolf was inside. Blood slicked the doorway glass and pattered on the floor. The other wolves charged through the opening and finally Conklin started to realize that he was in trouble, but he still couldn’t seem to pull himself away. He looked back at Robbie and Alex and took a step backward, then another. Robbie fired into the furry mass at the door, two shots echoing in the small space, and then her hammer fell on an empty chamber.

  Alex started toward Conklin. “I’ll get hi—” he began. But Robbie caught him and drew him back into the room and as the first wolf reached Conklin—the scientist’s
hands extended toward it, as if in greeting, in invitation—she shut the steel door and threw the deadbolt.

  Conklin’s screams were loud and seemed to go on for a long, long time. The tearing and growling and snapping and chewing went on for much longer.

  35

  Wolves huffed at the bottom of the door. One of them must have gone up on its hind legs and pushed against it—it shook in its frame and Alex heard the front claws click against it, as high as his head or a little higher.

  Robbie looked through a peephole. “There are eight of them in the store now,” she said. “This door will hold them off, but at some point we’ll have to make a run for it.”

  “Can we go out the back?”

  The shop’s back door was also steel, a double door with a deadbolt lock and a length of two-by-four held in place by steel braces. There was a second fish-eye peephole in the left door, and he went to it, looked out. At first the alley behind the store appeared clear, but then he saw a fluff of tail pass by at the bottom edge of his field of view. “They’re out here, too,” he said, answering his own question.

  “Let’s give it a little while,” Robbie said.

  “We could call the cops.”

  “I imagine they’re a little busy.”

  “The Marines?”

  “That might be better.”

  Another impact against the door into the shop jolted it and startled them. Robbie grabbed a corner of her desk and started to slide it in that direction. Alex joined in, and when the heavy piece was solidly against the door, Robbie gave him a smile. “Those guys are strong,” she said.

  “Let’s hope they’re not real patient.”

  “We can hope,” she replied. “I wouldn’t put a lot of money on it, though.”

  * * *

  Chief Deeds looked out Alden Stewart’s second-floor window. Four wolves passed silently by, claiming the middle of the street. They were almost obscured by thick, wind-whipped snow. He knew there were many more out there. He’d finally ordered every phone in the building disconnected because they had been ringing so much he couldn’t think.

  Alden had refused to turn off his own cell phone, but he had at least silenced it, after a couple of frustrating conversations with the governor’s office. The storm was too powerful, the governor said. Helicopters couldn’t get airborne and trucks couldn’t get up the mountain. Until the weather cleared, the people of Silver Gap were on their own.

  Since then, Alden had been sitting in his desk chair, staring into space. The town was in Morris’s hands, and he didn’t know what to do.

  Most of the calls were from downtown. Judging from that, he guessed the wolves had decided to attack where the most people were massed. Homes on the outskirts hadn’t seen any sign of them. To make sure, he had called the neighbors on both sides of his own place, way on a hill on the western edge of town, and the neighbor across the street. No wolves reported there.

  That was good, because Christy had been complaining for the last hour. He couldn’t unplug her or set her to vibrate. He had come to Alden’s office to escape her, but if he stayed much longer, she would follow him up. She wanted to be at home, and from all reports, she would probably be safe there.

  He couldn’t leave, and Jones and Ortega were out in one of the department Tahoes. He had sent them to the motel to gather up whatever hunters were still there, with their guns, and to see if there were any DOW folks there or at Spud’s.

  With Trbovich dead, that left Honeycutt.

  He considered bringing in Jones and Ortega. He’d feel better about sending her home with two officers, instead of just one.

  But they were performing a useful function, and Honeycutt, as far as he knew, was sitting alone in the squad room drinking stale coffee.

  He turned to the mayor. “Alden,” he said. ‘I’m going downstairs for a minute. I’m gonna send Christy home. Don’t go anywhere. When I come back we’ll hash out a plan.”

  Alden might have nodded. Deeds was a little surprised that he remembered to swallow.

  * * *

  When Howie Honeycutt opened the back door of Town Hall for Christy the wind snatched it from his hand and blew it wide, straining the hinges. Snow blew against her face, stinging, as if tiny ice crystals had been hurled at her. She had lived in the mountains a good long time, and she didn’t mind a winter storm, but this was something different, almost sinister. It was ferocious and it didn’t let up.

  She caught the door and pushed it back toward Howie, who took the handle in his free hand. His right gripped an ungainly looking shotgun that she’d heard Morris call a “street sweeper” when he suggested that Howie take it along. It had a round drum at the bottom, just in front of the trigger. She didn’t know much about guns, though Morris had insisted she own a .38 snubnose and take a refresher course at the range down in Fort Collins every couple of years. She supposed she should be carrying it now, what with all the disappearances and the wolf attacks. But she was used to keeping it locked in a gun safe in the bedroom closet, and really, the thing was brutish and unpleasant.

  She started down the steps toward the Tahoe they had arrived in, but Howie touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Let me go first, ma’am,” he said. “If you don’t mind.” He raised the shotgun barrel, as if she might have forgotten he carried it. “Want to keep an eye out for wolves.”

  “Be my guest,” Christy said. She had scanned for anything as soon as she stepped into that biting wind, but she could barely see beyond the edge of the parking lot. An army could be positioned in the trees there, and she wouldn’t know it.

  Howie descended ahead of her and walked to the vehicle, swinging the gun barrel from side to side as he went. She followed in his path, wishing he would move a little faster. Caution was fine, but if there were any wolves around, getting inside the SUV and locking the doors seemed like as good an idea as trying to gun them down.

  He went to the passenger side and opened her door, then stood there like an attendant at a valet stand while she got in. She half-expected him to show his palm for a tip. But when she was inside and buckling her seatbelt, he just released the door, which the wind slammed for him. He hurried around to his side and slid in behind the wheel, positioning the shotgun barrel down in the footwell.

  They saw a wolf in the first block, trotting along beside the road with a human arm, torn off just below the elbow, in its mouth. Howie touched the shotgun’s stock, but the wolf paid them no mind and he drove on.

  “These are strange times,” he said. “Almost biblical, you might say.”

  “I guess you might.”

  “You really learn what a person’s made of, times like this. Times of crisis.”

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  They reached the end of downtown. The road made a wide curve toward the northwest, and halfway through it three wolves stood on the pavement, in the other lane. Christy thought he would drive past them, maybe even speed up, but instead he stopped the Tahoe right in the lane and opened his door, the engine still running.

  The wolves’ ears perked up as he stepped out, and she saw their muzzles twitch, smelling him. The one in front peeled back its lips in a snarl, and its golden eyes narrowed.

  Howie scooped up the shotgun and stepped away from the door. With it open, the cold clutched at her like a hand.

  The front wolf’s muscles tensed as it prepared to charge. Howie sighted on that one and pulled the trigger, twice in rapid succession. The blasts seemed incredibly loud, the flash from the barrel blindingly bright against the gray day. The rounds tore huge chunks from the animal’s right side and back, staggering but not dropping it. Christy’s grip tightened on the sides of her seat as the thing took another unsteady step toward Howie, and the two behind it readied for their own attacks.

  Howie wasted no time firing again and again, unleashing two more shots at the lead wolf and two each at the others. The top of the first wolf’s head sheared o
ff and it finally fell. The second one jumped over the first and Howie’s volley caught it in mid-air, knocking it back and down. The third animal took Howie’s first shot square in the face, turning it to red pulp, and the second shot savaged it still more.

  When all three wolves were still, Howie returned to the SUV. Christy noticed that his left hand dropped to his crotch on the way, like a baseball player adjusting himself.

  “We should get to my place,” Christy suggested. “You can hunt more after you’ve dropped me off, if you want.”

  “I didn’t like the way those ones were looking at us,” Howie said, as if that explained anything. He shifted gears and pressed on the accelerator, and the vehicle moved forward, passing over the parts of the road that were slushy and red from fresh wolf blood.

  “Well, Morris wanted me to call him when I’m there. Don’t want to keep him waiting.” That was a lie; Morris had told her the phones would be off. When Honeycutt returned he would know she’d made it up.

  Howie didn’t respond at first. He drove slowly, carefully, keeping the SUV in its lane and trying to see through the snow. After a few minutes, he said, “No, you wouldn’t want to keep him waiting. Especially considering the way you whore around on him.”

  She couldn’t have heard that right. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve seen you at Reverend Fuckbuggy’s, going over there to spread your ladybits for his fucking fuckstick.”

  “Howie, I think you had better not say another word and just get me home. If you do that, I won’t tell Morris what you said.”

  “You think he doesn’t know?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t bother to deny it, Mrs. Deeds. Mrs. Whoredeeds. I’m not blind, you know. People think I’m not paying attention, that’s all. But I am. I do.”