So far, I haven’t seen any of the undead drop dead from natural causes.
It had been a long emotional day for me.
I prepared everything for an early start tomorrow.
Wolfe was starting to walk normally by the end of the day, so I decided we would be continuing our journey once again.
I liked the sound of the place Ben told me about. If it was as nice as he had described it, I think it might be time to settle down for a while.
For the first time in a very long time, when we got up tomorrow, we actually had a place to go, a real destination.
It felt good to know where we would be going for a change.
As we settled in for the night, I heard something I haven’t heard since we left Montana.
I heard the sound of a wolf howling off in the distance.
I wasn’t the only one to hear the howling, I noticed that Wolfe sat up and looked off into the direction of the sound.
I’ve often wondered if wolf ever longed for the life he was meant to live in the wild.
As I watched Wolfe staring intently into the hills, I knew he heard the call.
Wolfe looked at me, then back at the hills as another howl echoed across the hill sides.
“I hear it buddy,” I said softly.
I was afraid to say much more than that.
I just wondered what Wolfe heard as he listened to the howl.
Was he hearing the call that I had been dreading would come one day?
Would Wolfe be able to resist the call, or would he be driven to answer it.
My heart sank as I listened as another howl echoed around us.
I was afraid of what it could mean.
Chapter 12
I woke up early the next morning.
As I rolled off my blanket and began to stand up, I noticed that Wolfe wasn’t on his blanket.
Every morning when I got up Wolfe was either on his blanket or he was beside my blanket staring at me.
As I stood up and nervously began to look around, he came running up behind me.
“Out for your morning bathroom break?” I asked.
He wagged his tail then walked over and sat down on his blanket and looked at the remains of last night’s fire.
His way of saying, “How come breakfast isn’t ready?”
I looked at him curiously and wondered when he had been.
He usually didn’t wander far from me during the night or early morning.
If he smelled something that he felt he needed to investigate he never went far away without first waking me up.
Maybe the howling I had heard last night just had me worried, but I couldn’t help being concerned.
I felt like a parent of a teenage daughter that I knew would one day begin to notice boys.
You could worry all you wanted, but in the end, there was nothing you could do about it but hope.
I couldn’t help but wonder where Wolfe had been.
I tried to brush off the thought and tell myself he had gone out to investigate another prairie dog that had wandered in too close to camp, but the other possibility wouldn’t leave my mind.
We had a hot breakfast then started walking west again.
Wolfe always remained by my side, but I felt he seemed to be distracted for some reason.
I had spotted two different rabbits sitting close to where we walked, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Usually he would bring them to my attention and wait for instructions, but not today.
We walked for two days and each night I heard the howling again off in the distance.
I watched Wolfe as he listened to the sound,
my gut told me by his body language that Wolfe seemed conflicted or confused as he listened.
On the second night, I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed it or if I had actually seen it in the middle of the night, but I swear that Wolfe’s blanket sat empty during that night.
Each morning he would appear from behind the rocks or a tree in time for breakfast, but it had me worried.
On the third day we saw the lake through the trees in the distance.
By mid-afternoon we made it to the lake. It took us another hour to find the cabins.
Ben’s description of the lake and cabins hadn’t done the place justice.
The lake stretched on for over a mile, surrounded by tall pines.
The cabins didn’t appear to be very old and were in good condition and nicely set up.
The cabins were each two room cabins with a bedroom and a living area with a small kitchen area on one side, the other wall was a large stone fireplace. The living room had two couches and a table, the bedroom had a full-sized bed complete with pillows and a blanket.
After looking over the cabins, there were about ten of them that sat back two hundred feet from the lake, I chose a cabin that sat the closest to the lake. The cabin even had an oil lamp inside that was still half full of oil.
It was almost enough to make me start feeling civilized again.
After scouting around, I found a canoe on shore that I dragged up next to my cabin.
I told Wolfe he was in for a treat and that tomorrow I would take him for a canoe ride.
He just sniffed at the canoe, but he didn’t seem to be all that excited with the canoe.
I looked at Wolfe, “If you don’t mind, I think we just might hang around here for a while. I haven’t slept in a bed for years and I think you will want to give one a try.”
Wolfe just looked at me and wagged his tail as if he understood.
We spent the rest of the afternoon scouting the area so I knew what was around us, then I gathered a pile of wood for the night’s fire.
As the evening approached, I built a fire in the pit in front of the cabin’s porch.
I was looking forward to sitting on a porch chair instead of on the ground and enjoying a small taste of the way life used to be.
I knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near what I had in my old life, but it excited me all the same.
As the last of the days light filtered through the pines, I noticed Wolfe’s ears turning and rotating on his head when he picked up a sound that only he could hear.
He began to sniff the air, then got up and ran to the front corner of the cabin.
He stood there for a long moment staring off into the pines, then he looked at me for a second before looking back out to the pines.
I got up and walked over next to Wolfe to see what had his attention.
When I reached his side and looked out into the pines, I knew the day I had been dreading had finally arrived.
At the edge of the pines sat a gray wolf.
The wolf was about half the size of Wolfe, and I suspected that it was a female.
I knelt down on the ground next to Wolfe.
“Is that a friend of yours?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
Wolfe confirmed my fears when he let out a soft whine.
He kept looking at me then back out to the wolf that waited by the pines.
I could tell he was conflicted as to what he should do.
He looked at me as if waiting for instructions or for my permission.
I looked out at the wolf by the trees and could feel my heart aching.
I remembered the pain I felt when I had lost my girls back in Bismarck and I was feeling that same pain again tonight.
Wolfe whined again and looked at me.
I didn’t want Wolfe to leave, but I knew I didn’t have the right to make him stay.
You could say that I had saved his life and he owed it to me to stay, but Wolfe had also saved my life many times over in the last two years and if anything, it was me that owed him.
Honestly, Wolfe didn’t owe me anything.
He was my best friend, my only friend, and he had paid me back many times over for anything I had done for him.
As I looked at Wolfe, I knew what I had to do, what I owed him for everything he had done for me, for what he meant to me.
; It was my world that had ended, not his, and he deserved to live a good life, the life he was meant to live.
He deserved to be free.
Just because I no longer had the option to live the kind of life I wanted, was no reason for me to deny Wolfe the kind of life he deserved.
I lifted my hand and ruffled the hair on the back of his neck and patted his side.
“It’s OK buddy, you deserve it,” I whispered. Then I quietly said it, the word I didn’t want to say but knew it was the right thing to do.
I said, “Go.”
Wolfe licked my face, then he was off like he did the day he took off after that big buck.
I watched as he approached the other wolf, she turned and walked into the pines, then I watched as Wolfe followed until they were both gone.
When they were both gone I whispered softly, “Goodbye Wolfe, be free my friend and have a good life.”
I slowly got to my feet and looked at the few gray hairs that had stuck to my hand from petting Wolfe.
I put my hand in my pocket and walked inside and closed the door.
I lit the oil lamp with my lighter, I couldn’t help but think Wolfe would have been impressed by that, and then I sat the light on the table.
I sat down on the couch once again in my life feeling lost and alone.
After I few minutes I remembered the paper and pens I had picked up back at the resort where Wolfe had stepped in one of Ben’s traps.
I decided now would be a good time to start writing my story.
I gave my story the title, Charlie and Wolfe, since he was as responsible as I was for the story that I wanted to tell.
I wrote into the night, when I was exhausted I decided to turn in and enjoy sleeping in a bed once again.
For some reason I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had thought. I missed sleeping on the hard ground, next to Wolfe.
Chapter 13
The next morning I woke up feeling well rested and refreshed, until I realized that I was alone.
I was happy for Wolfe, but that didn’t help change the emptiness I felt.
When I spotted a fishing pole hanging over the fireplace I decided that maybe fishing might take my mind off Wolfe, besides the idea of having fish for breakfast had my mouth watering.
I took the fishing pole down and checked it over, fortunately there was a hook on the end of the line.
I went outside and turned over some stones and rolled over some logs until I had collected cup full of night crawlers.
I then dragged the canoe down to the shore line and pushed myself out into the lake.
The fish were biting this morning, since no one had been at the lake fishing for over two years maybe they forgot about what finding a worm on a hook meant.
When I noticed that the sun was now high overhead, I had a dozen fish lying in front of me in the canoe.
I enjoyed fishing and the excitement of doing something different and catching all those fish had helped keep my mind occupied.
I paddled back to shore and dragged the canoe full of fish up to the cabin.
I cleaned the fish and built a fire in the pit.
Inside I found a grate to put over the fire pit which made it a lot easier than balancing the fish on branches to cook them over the fire.
When the fire was crackling and the fish began to sizzle, I went inside to get one of the plates I saw inside on the sink.
Eating off a plate with real silverware was going to be another blast from the past.
I grabbed the plate and a fork and headed back out to sit on the porch to keep an eye on the fish.
I came to a sudden stop when I saw four large ears sitting in front of the fire watching the fish sizzle over the fire.
“Wolfe,” I shouted.
Wolfe turned and ran up on the porch.
He jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and licked my face.
I vigorously rubbed the hair on the sides of his neck.
“What’s the matter, your new friend can’t cook?” I laughed.
Over the following weeks, Wolfe’s new friend, finally decided that I was OK and let me pet her.
I called her Lady.
They then moved from sleeping out on the porch each night, to sleeping on the couch inside the cabin.
It wasn’t long before I found that the bed wasn’t as large as I thought.
As time went on, each morning I soon had eight ears watching the morning breakfast cooking over the fire instead of just four.
Two little ornery pups that reminded me of the day I had found Wolfe was added to our pack.
The orneriest one, the one I called Junior after his father, was a handful.
When Wolfe didn’t know what to do with him, he would pick him up by the fur on the back of his neck and drop him on my lap.
After all I was the man with all the plans and whose job it was to solve all the problems.
But alas, some problems were even too big for me to solve.
So this is the end of my story, at least what I’ve decided to put in my book.
Wolfe and I had decided that we had traveled enough and decided to settle down.
Wolfe and I continued to hunt and fish, I of course kept my job as the cook, Lady watched the pups, and the pups took it upon themselves to clean the dishes after each meal, whether I wanted them to or not.
I only have one sheet of paper left, so if it is still blank when you read this, you can assume that we lived happily ever after.
It isn’t going to be the kind of life I had in my old life, but it is a happy life and I will always be grateful for the day I found Wolfe.
Since arriving at the cabin my nightmares have stopped.
When I think about my life back in Bismarck, now what I remember are mostly the good memories.
I now feel content and at peace with my life and I try to enjoy what I have rather than obsessing on what I don’t have.
Hopefully there are others out there somewhere that had survived the war and the undead, if so, maybe mankind will someday make a comeback.
I doubt I will ever know about it, something like that will take a long time to happen.
Time that Wolfe and I unfortunately won’t have to see it all take place.
So if you are a part of that group, I wish you good luck.
If you never found out what had happened to mankind, I hope you appreciated reading my story and finding out.
Just know that I am happy that I survived and have been able to at least find a life that has brought me some happiness and enjoyment.
I hope that you have been able to find something in life that has brought you some happiness.
If not, keep looking, there is something good out there somewhere waiting for you. It may not be what you expect, but it is there.
Don’t give up, you’ll never know when and where you will find it. It may not always be what you wanted, but it just might be what you need.
Postscript
I have just finished reading Charlie’s story and wanted to add my thoughts, a few things that I would like the next person who reads this story to know.
I think you should know this to make Charlie’s story complete.
You see I live in a small village of about thirty people.
From what I understand, my village started about forty years ago when my Great Grandmother and two of her friends finally found a place that was safe from the undead.
She wasn’t my Great Grandmother back then of course, because I hadn’t been born yet and at the time she was way too young to be anyone’s grandmother.
I just wanted to point that out before I continued.
There had been forty people in her group when they were forced to run from the dead that was killing everyone in their town, the same undead monsters that had destroyed every city and town in their path.
When they finally found this place, only three people had survived the journey.
As the story was told to me, my G
reat Grandmother Stacey and her friends were close to death from starvation.
They were lying in the woods and were too weak to continue.
They figured that they were dying and were grateful that at least they would die a peaceful death instead of being torn apart and eaten by the undead.
As they laid on deaths door and were losing conciseness, three wolves appeared out of the pines.
When my Great Grandmother woke up, she found herself in a cabin surrounded by a man and four wolves.
The man’s name was Charlie, my Great Grandfather.
Everything we have is all because of Charlie.
Even though Charlie had lived a hard life at the beginning, I just want you to know, the rest of his life was a happy life surrounded by people that loved him.
As I was saying our community is made up of about thirty-five people, but I need to add there is a total in all of fifty of us.
The rest of us are made up of large lovable gray furry creatures.
They are the descendants of Wolfe,
As I understand it, Wolfe is the reason that they all live in our cabins and like their meals cooked medium rare.
I really didn’t understand what that was all about until I read Charlies story, now it makes perfect sense.
It was a sad day today, but it hasn’t always been that way.
Ever since I was born and from what everyone has told me, this has been a happy and peaceful place.
Today was sad because today we buried Charlie.
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 35