Snowbound

FORTY

Will stopped walking. As far as he could tell, he was still in the trees. It was snowing and moonless and he might as well have been blind. He decided there was no point in going on in these conditions. He’d been on the move for at least ten minutes, and if he went any farther, he might not be able to find the tent again, whenever the hell the moon decided to reappear.

He sat down against the trunk of a large birch and waited.

Within a minute, he was shivering. He’d left the tent without gloves—a stupid fucking thing to do—and the gun was freezing to the touch, so he set it beside him in the snow and pulled the sleeves of his parka and fleece jacket over his hands.

Ten excruciating minutes passed, his face growing numb, the snow still falling.

The darkness held.

He stood up and brushed the snow off his pants, his parka, having decided to walk around the tree several times in an effort to get warm.

Something moved in the vicinity.

He held his breath, straining to listen.

Whispered, “Kalyn?” The sound repeated, closer now, ten or fifteen feet dead ahead, and he’d started to back away from it, when he heard another noise behind him, close enough to recognize—careful footsteps sinking in the snow.

“Kalyn, that you?” He was picking up noise on his left. Now his right. He squatted down, digging through the snow until he grasped the Smith & Wesson. “I have a gun,” he said in full voice, panic rising in his chest, constricting his throat.

The snow dissipated. He looked up, saw the moon again, or at least a piece of it. A handful of stars. Ragged black clouds.

He scanned the woods—slim black tree trunks, his footprints leading up a gentle slope. The meadow’s just over the top, I think. I haven’t come that far. I’d have heard Devi scream if anything had happened.

At first, he thought it was a person crouched down twenty feet ahead, and he raised the .45. But as it skulked toward him, he recognized his mistake, took several steps toward it, waving his hands wildly in the air.

The wolf was pure white, and the moon made its pink eyes appear to glow. It loped back through the trees. After thirty feet, it stopped, turned, and faced him again, head cocked. “You’re endangered,” he said, “so don’t make me shoot your ass.”

Will began to follow his own footprints back toward the hill, the moon shining down into the forest now.

He sensed movement to his right and left and behind him, though he hadn’t heard a thing.

Will spun around, looking back toward the tree he’d been hunkered down against. The three black wolves that were tracking him stopped.

He ran at them and waved his arms.

They dispersed among the spruce but didn’t go far. He glanced back toward the hill, caught the white wolf creeping toward him again. It stopped when it saw that Will had noticed.

He heard the three black wolves coming from behind, turned and faced them.

As they stopped in their tracks, the lead wolf moved toward him again.

“I don’t have time for this stupid game,” he said.

He began following his footprints back up the hill, that white wolf backpedaling in the snow as Will moved toward him, its head low, muzzle pointed toward the ground, long tail flicking back and forth. Will could hear the others coming behind him.

He reached the top of the small hill, but instead of seeing the meadow and the tent as he’d expected, he saw only more forest, his footprints winding aimlessly through the trees.

I’ve come farther than I thought.

He turned slowly around so he could see the wolves, noticed for the first time that they wore collars. They were closer than before, all within fifteen feet, and the black wolf on his left had arched its back, its ears now erect, hackles raised, lips curled back. Will could see the long incisors.

And he felt pure old-fashioned terror—primitive fears, eons of old programming firing in the synapses. He lunged at them and waved his arms, but they backed only a few feet away, and the largest of the black wolves, a 150-pound male, didn’t move at all, just stared him down through focused yellow eyes. For the first time, Will noticed the pair of gray wolves lurking thirty feet behind the others.

Jesus. Six of them.

He jogged up through the trees.

It was snowing again, and he thought he heard thunder, but he wasn’t sure with his heart banging relentlessly in his chest.

The wolves loped along beside him as Will tried to retrace his own footprints, and something snapped near the back of his left leg, the click of teeth clamping shut.

He stopped, spun around, leveled the .45 between the big black wolf’s eyes, and fired.

The report filled the woods, and the wolves scattered.

The one he’d killed lay crumpled in the snow, a mound of black fur. “Go find an elk or something!” Will yelled.

He pushed on through the trees, now moving at a solid clip through the snow.

He kept expecting to emerge from the forest, and at last he did, but it wasn’t into the meadow they’d camped in.

He came out of the trees, and the ground sloped for two hundred yards down to the shore of a narrow lake whose water appeared black as blood. The inner lake. He looked to the near end, saw where a ribbon of water flowed out of it, knew that was the stream they’d followed earlier in the day, hoped it would guide him back to the meadow, to Devlin.

As he started for it, he heard something moving in the woods, and not creeping or sneaking, but the full-on noise of something, somethings, running toward him.

He ran for the end of the lake, glancing over his shoulder every few steps, trying to keep his footing in the snow. The third time he looked back, he saw five shadows break out of the trees, racing toward him in tight formation, kicking up powder clouds in their wake.

It was snowing hard again, and the moon disappeared, the world now gone cavern black. He could see nothing, but he heard them coming, and as he looked back, the sky flickered with lightning and he saw them—Oh God, so close—aimed the .45, firing at the lead wolf, the big white one with pink eyes. It was panting, its huge blue tongue swinging out of its mouth.

Lights-out. No way to know if I hit—

Something rammed him from behind, a wolf throwing the full weight of its muscled frame into his back.

Will went down, toppled over several times in the snow, jaws snapping all around him, as he smelled the sharp odor of their scent glands, then on his feet again, somehow untouched.

Lightning offered a fleeting glimpse of where he stood, forty feet from the lake’s edge, the mouth of the stream, and the wolves surrounding him, snarling, growling, the ones behind him lunging at the back of his legs.

Darkness again. He’d dropped the gun when he’d fallen up the slope, had nothing but his bare, freezing hands. This is not happening.

Something ripped a piece out of his leg and he screamed—more out of fear than pain, too charged with adrenaline to feel a thing—kept spinning around in the merciless dark, his hands outstretched, getting shredded as he fended off bites.

The sky lighted up, the wolves right there, five sets of bared teeth and eyes mad with the ravenous rage of the hunt, crouched down, on the verge of lunging.

Will spotted a stand of spruce trees at the mouth of the stream, thought, You get to those trees and you climb them. He pushed on through the dark as thunder echoed across the lake, struggling against the mounting pain in his legs.

Electricity raked the sky. He was just five yards from the trees, saw that the branches were low, thought, I can climb that.