by A. R. Shaw
44
Bishop
The wooden sign hung there stationary, its wide wood grain bared. The engraved letters didn’t concern him. They held no meaning now. The curved arch above them did. That was a sign that the middle finger of a flat hand had swiped away the ice. “There are no tracks because of the snow, but someone definitely uncovered these signs,” Bishop said. “That means we have no idea which direction they headed, but we do know where they were. We can only look for wreckage. I see no signs of tracks in the snow.”
“But it could take longer to find them that way. I think we should split up,” Alyssa said.
Shaking his head at her, he said, “Please stop. That’s how we lose people. We don’t have enough equipment or people to split up. We have to do this my way, Alyssa. Or you can just wait here. Your choice.”
Holding his hand up to stop her protest, he said, “I know…I know, but this is the only way. We find the wreckage, and then we find them. That’s all there is to it. They haven’t gone more than five miles in this. We will find them now…it won’t take much longer. We’re close.”
Ignoring her glowering stare, he pointed to the south and said, “I think it’s reasonable to assume they came this way. The opposite direction is all forest. At least there’s open space here. If they had a chance at landing and surviving, I would bet it’s out in the open. Let’s head there first. They may have sent out a few people to find help or shelter. We might run into a group and find out more then.”
Putting his helmet on again, Bishop headed down into the valley below. The others followed. After driving through the valley another half hour, he said into the mic, “Look straight ahead.” He pointed toward the jagged, gray metal partially hidden by accumulated ice.
They slowed and then came to an abrupt halt. Most of them stared not at the wreckage but at the oblong mounds of snow that indicated graves. Alyssa sprang from her seat and ran ahead. Bishop pulled his side arm and chased after her. “Alyssa, stop!”
The Osprey looked to be broken into two pieces. Mounds of snow gave indications of what lay beneath. Some were larger than others. Most were small, no longer than two feet in length. And then there was the bear or what was left of it. Brown oxidized blood stained the snow around it; brown flesh was strewn all over. There were smaller, doglike tracks all around, and when Bishop reached down to feel the compact snow, he said, “Wolves.”
Alyssa threw off her helmet and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Is there anyone here?” she yelled.
“Stop that,” Bishop urged. “Why don’t you just call them over here?”
Then he faced the others. “Everyone team up. Rifles out. There’re wolves. Let’s take ten and look for any signs of survivors.”
“I count nine graves. That means there are seventeen survivors, and none of these graves belongs to either Yeager or Walt. They’re not long enough,” Alyssa said.
“There’s also a bear here. That means one of those graves could contain only remnants. Don’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to make you understand there’s no hope out here. So, stop it. Stop analyzing. Deal with the facts.”
Her chin quivered and bobbed up and down. He hoped she was getting it then.
That’s when the others came back. One of the guards said, “Nothing in the Osprey. It looks like it burned out, mostly and landed hard. They could have salvaged some of the supplies, but everything is so snowed over, it’s hard to tell.”
Bishop agreed. He looked around and couldn’t help falling into the old habit of following the wolf tracks as he’d done in the Kootenai Forest, back in Idaho. He recognized one set in particular going away from the crash site—back the way they’d come. Kneeling down, he felt the hardened snow around the splayed toe pads topped by nail holes. Beyond those, there were smaller, less defined tracks. He said, “You know…there’s a she-wolf here, and she’s headed that way. They’re fresh tracks. That’s both good and bad news.”
“What does that mean?” Alyssa asked.
“Quick, let’s go,” was Bishop’s only answer.
45
Jax
Swimming…both arms reaching, hands cupped, legs kicking against the frozen water. Lungs burning…on fire within his chest. Jax only hoped he was heading in the right direction. With infinite angles, there was no way of knowing where up was. No way of knowing if, in fact, he was burrowing deeper into the snow by going south by southwest.
Something solid met his hand, and the panic in his chest rose as he cast that blockade aside…not knowing what it was or whom it belonged to. Only a breath. Only a gasp of air held value. A tiny wisp of oxygen. He was never a man who gave up, and he never would be. To die trying…fighting…was his way, unless…he decided that he was done with life. Not before. Life would not be taken from him, not willingly.
As his chest tightened more, he saw her again. The fair-skinned child…the one he’d tried to sustain when he knew he shouldn’t. Her precious fragility was too soft for this world, yet despite that failure, preserving her was something he wanted in life. She smiled at him in his mind’s eye. Her delicate, outstretched hand reached for him. Her pale-blue eyes and tiny, perfect-bow lips smiled. Then, as the image faded and darkness flooded in from the sides, his hand grasped another. So cold he was before, and now, a warmth.
“Jax!”
46
Walt
“What was that?” Rebecca sat straight up.
A new howling began, and somehow this one sounded different.
Selfishly, Yeager thought any distraction from the hunger in his stomach was welcome. And knowing the children were hungry too and there was nothing he could do about their needs drove him mad.
“Did you hear the shot, too?” Rebecca asked him when he didn’t answer. She moved her long, dark hair away from her ears.
He knew she was questioning her own sanity then. He had to admit to himself that he was wondering about his own. Then the sound came again.
He nodded and held a finger to his lips, clenching the rifle by his side with his other hand. He peeked through the crack, the light a sharp contrast to the dark interior. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw the mother wolf on her side, her pups roaming about, concerned. She let out a mournful cry, and suddenly, the male wolves approached her. She was injured somehow. “Someone shot her?” he said.
She cried out again and then lay there, moaning. The males sniffed at her and howled a long and mournful howl. It was an odd thing to witness—somewhat like the servants of a queen bee gathering at her request.
Jumping to his feet, Yeager held his arm on the door lock, not willing to let the other wolves advance, when, suddenly, a surge of gunfire began. The children began screaming. Soon, he heard nothing but his own heartbeat in the chaotic noise. Then with his limited view, he saw a few more wolves drop to the ground around the mother wolf.
Someone had found them, finally. Someone was picking off the wolves. The attack lasted for at least three long minutes. When the shots ceased, he looked out again and saw the mother wolf start to rise. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He opened the door and shot her dead…putting her out of her misery and out of theirs.
47
Bishop
A white landscape led them on. The snow started again. Bishop stopped occasionally, hoping the tracks wouldn’t fill in as they went, taking away his lead. Slowing just past the harbinger they’d first come across, he found the faint tracks again in the snow and then looked up. The flakes were coming down harder and at an angle. He growled under his breath. They had little time now to find them, and they were so close. “Everyone stop! Listen. Alyssa, turn off your engine.”
There it was again. A slight noise. He took off his helmet, even though it enhanced sound. He needed to make sure it wasn’t the wind’s howl.
“What is that?”
“Shhh! Listen!”
“Ooowwhhh…ooowwhhh…ooowwhhh.”
“Damn!” The hairs on his skin rose in a wave. “Come on!”
he yelled, pulling on his helmet again. While he drove, he chanced using one hand to steer and reaching behind him for his rifle.
The scene was frightening. He stopped suddenly and made the others halt in their tracks as well. “Listen to me! Don’t shoot yet! Do exactly what I say. No one shoots yet. Let me find her first.”
He scanned the wolf packs around the small shack. He knew she was there somewhere, and when he spotted the smaller pups, he spotted her as well.
And then she spotted him. As if she knew his intent, her hackles rose. She bared her fangs.
The male wolves began to advance when he shot her in the hind flank. He had to keep her still and keep her alive to make this work. It was a nasty trick—one he’d learned by living in the Kootenai Forest—but it meant their survival. The queen went down on her side and began to yelp. The others turned to her, advancing. She lay there in agony. “Now pick off the males! Do not kill her. Do not shoot her. If she dies, we die, too, and everyone inside that cabin. Understand?”
They shot the wolves in front of them. One after another dropped, while others howled long and mournful cries.
“Keep her alive. Do not shoot her, or we all die,” he repeated. More than thirty wolves surrounded the small shack. They had no way of knowing who or what was inside. After the cacophony of gunfire ended, Bishop raised his rifle and shot off another round, killing another wolf that came to investigate his queen. He hated doing the killing this way, but there was no other choice. Going after the pack’s weakness was their only way.
“I can’t stand her howling. Can we put her out of her misery now?” Alyssa asked.
“No! You do that, and any nearby packs will come down. She has to stay alive for now.”
The female wolf’s cries continued as they drove further in.
“Alyssa, stay back. Don’t you dare run for it. We don’t know what’s inside there,” Bishop was saying when Yeager suddenly appeared outside the cabin, holding his rifle down.
“No!” Bishop yelled as Yeager fired into the wounded she-wolf.
48
Walt and Bishop
“Hurry! Run!” Bishop yelled. “We have little time now!”
Immediately, Bishop’s team began unleashing the sleds connected to the backs of their snowmobiles. The sleds popped out behind the units and automatically inflated.
Rushing, Yeager said, “What? What did I do?”
“You killed the she-wolf. Any pack within twenty-five miles will rush this way. We have to hurry and get everyone out of here. How many are left?”
Yeager shook his head. His expression gaunt and confused. “Fourteen.”
“Walt?”
Yeager swallowed. “Just barely. He may not make the trip.”
“We have no choice,” Bishop said. He turned around to see Alyssa staring at them with pleading eyes. She hadn’t heard the conversation. He nodded at her.
She stood there and cried.
“Come on, Alyssa. We have to hurry.”
Pointing to three of the others, he said, “You stand guard. They’ll come from uphill, through the woods. Pick them off as they do. Do the best you can.”
When Yeager opened the shelter door, what hit him first was the awful smell of decay. It nearly knocked him backward and sent him into a memory of times past. Not now, he told himself. Wide, scared eyes looked back at him, and then the crying began. One little girl held her arms out to him. He reached down and scooped her up along with the sparse rags she was covered in. “Let’s go. Everyone hurries. If you can wa—”
A shot and a yelp sounded outside, then another shot. Everyone scrambled. Bishop said no more. He ran with the girl to the first available sled and then ran back inside as more and more shots echoed out there. New howls sent another wave of ripples through his skin.
When he returned to the shelter, he watched as Alyssa sobbed over her husband. A weak hand patted her back, and where one of his legs should have been…there was an absence of form. “We have to move now. No time for that.”
Alyssa and Yeager lifted Walt from a padded blanket as Bishop scooped up more toddlers and ran with them. Carl’s daughter, Rebecca, carried two more children in her arms, leading those who could walk outside.
The children’s tears of relief quickly turned to panic again as the wolves began descending from the forested tree line. As if that weren’t enough, the abrasive, blowing ice storm began again. Setting the children down abruptly in the empty space of the sled, Bishop chanced a backward glance at the wolves and saw one sneaking to the left.
“Yeager!” Bishop yelled, pointing, since he was the nearest in range. Yeager had to drop to a crouch with his end of Walt to reach for his weapon…it was taking too long. Bishop ran toward them just as the wolf leaped onto Yeager’s back and attacked him at the neck.
Alyssa screamed as Bishop ran full tilt. The jaws of the wolf engulfed the back of Yeager’s neck, piercing his skin, when suddenly a shot flew past Bishop’s chest and struck the wolf. Bishop pulled back abruptly, his hands before him.
When he looked, it was Rebecca standing there with rifle in hand. Another time, he would thank and then chastise her for the close shot.
Then gunfire rang out again. “They’re coming! We’ve got to get out of here!”
There was no time to check Yeager’s condition. Bishop barely saw that he rose with blood pouring down the back of his neck. Alyssa tried to stanch the flow, but he waved her away, and they dragged Walt hastily to a sled. Bishop ran back inside the shelter as two more children were led out. He was scouring the rags and blankets on the floor when his foot met something solid. He bent down to uncover the form, finding a toddler curled into a ball on his side, weeping. His eyes were shut, and the tiny fingers on his left hand were black and swollen.
When Bishop saw the child’s familiar face, he realized that he’d saved this one before. “Jesus,” he muttered and scooped up the boy. He ran out the doorway, leaving the mess behind.
“Let’s go!” he yelled as he stuffed the boy into his own jacket and got onto his snowmobile. The men holding back the wolves backed away while shooting and made their escape as well.
Glancing backward, Bishop saw more than twenty wolves descending the hillside behind them, many taking up their trail, until finally there were none. Only the cold remained.
49
Jax
A few of the snowmobilers outran the avalanche, only to witness the force casting the caravan like toys, tossing the buses sideways and then end over end like a cinnamon roll, eventually engulfing them altogether.
“It’s been three days, Jax. We’ve salvaged everything we can. We’ve harvested all the meat from the farm animals and let the rest go on their own. We have to keep going now. We can’t stop,” Austin said.
Jax stood over the line of bodies laid out and covered with shiny silver Mylar blankets. The last in line was Rebecca’s father, Carl. Jax had covered his friend’s blue face, the final image now a part of him.
After Austin had found him inside the snow-filled bus, Jax had dived back in to pull out as many people as he could. His hands were raw, cracked, and bloodied by the time they were certain no one else could have survived. A few had made it, but Carl had caught his neck somehow and snapped the damn thing; his head hung loosely on his shoulder. Most likely, he hadn’t suffered. But that didn’t help a damn thing.
That funny girl of his was without a father now, though she wouldn’t know it until they met up with the bus survivors someday…if that ever happened. He was no longer sure they had a chance.
“I’m just trying to understand what we need to do next. You’re barely talking now, Jax.”
“Austin, stop your whining. I’m fine. It’s simple. Now, a few of us take the snowmobiles, and a few take the surviving horses. I’m taking Jake.”
“Wait. You can’t say we’re splitting up?” Austin said.
“That’s what I’m saying, Austin. Fill up the snowmobiles with the survivors. There are three horses left.
I’m taking one, and whoever wants to come with me on the rest of them, we’ll follow your trail. We can’t keep up with you, but we can follow along.”
“I don’t like the idea.”
“I’m coming with you, Jax,” Saul said. His arm, dislocated in the accident, was in a sling.
“You will not. You have a wife and kid.”
“I can’t hang onto a snowmobile. I can’t drive. I’d just take up space. It’s best if I travel with you. They’ll be fine. I don’t want to slow anyone down.”
“Fine. Suit your own damn self. Actually, I’ll take anyone seriously injured with me, but we could be days…weeks behind the others. That arm of yours will hurt like hell.”
“I don’t want to slow anyone down.”
“That’s a good point, Saul. Your choice.”
Austin cleared his throat. “There’s only fifteen of us now. Most of our supplies are gone, but we have enough rations to keep going. We should be fine.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Austin. It’s not for my benefit. I told you this would happen. Even the best laid plans don’t survive war.”
“What do you expect us to do? Stay here?” Austin said with a wave of his hand. The cold wind harassed the campfire, threatening to extinguish the warmth.
“No,” Jax said. “I expect you to survive. Never quit trying. If there’s breath in your lungs, Austin, you keep going. You understand me?”
Austin looked shocked. The words were harsh to him. He nodded. Overwhelmed. Saul patted Austin on the back with his good arm.
“He’ll be all right. He’s learned from the best.”
“Good days and bad,” Austin said.
