Project Hannibal

by Kathryn Hoff

  When Estelle’s turn came, she couldn’t come up with anything inspiring or pithy.

  “I’m a doctor,” she told the phone’s camera. “I’ve seen a lot of death. Sometimes it’s welcome, the coming of peace after long suffering. But often it’s the loss of a hard-fought battle. It’s not in my nature to give up. I want to keep battling to save my life and the lives of Annie and Sera. I want to live, to go on battling pain and disease whenever and wherever I can. But if this is my time to go, then I’m so very grateful to have spent my last days with Annie and Sera. And to my parents—Sera’s grandparents—and on behalf of my late sister, I want to say how terribly proud I am of Sera.”

  Sera put down the phone. “I’ll take a few more pictures, but it’s down to ten percent now, so that’s probably all.”

  “I hope you won’t be too disappointed if we survive,” Estelle said.

  Sera grinned. “I won’t be disappointed. And I’ll have one hell of an essay for my college applications.”

  Estelle huddled in the lean-to with Sera and Annie, trying not to think of the cold and hunger that made her insides ache. Having all said their piece, it scarcely seemed worthwhile to talk. Sleep was best—conserving whatever energy they had left.

  Estelle’s mind drifted between dreams and regrets. I should have been closer to Marie, been a better sister to her. I should have visited home more often, maybe pushed my parents into a twelve-step program.

  It was foolish to keep dwelling on past choices, but Estelle couldn’t make the wheels stop turning. I should have used a few satphone minutes to call my parents.

  A deep vibration put Estelle’s senses on alert. Could it be a helicopter?

  But as soon as she sat up, the sound was gone.

  Sera, cross-legged on the ground, looked up dull-eyed from her pastime of braiding grass stems into a fragile, useless rope. “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought I heard something.” Estelle scanned the gray clouds.

  Nothing.

  Estelle nodded to the grass rope. “What are you planning to do with that?”

  “Eat it, if this goes on much longer.”

  Annie was dozing. Her eyes were ringed and sunken, her breath quick and shallow. God, if you’re out there, send help soon.

  Estelle lay down again. She wasn’t a big believer in God—as a doctor, she’d seen too much senseless tragedy. For her, church provided the comfort of community more than deep faith. But it didn’t make any kind of sense for her and Sera and Annie to have survived so far if they were just doomed to die here of hunger and cold anyway. There had to be more purpose to life than that.

  I should have spent more time in church—maybe then I’d feel more hopeful about what comes next.

  Ragged, uneven thunder echoed faintly through the ground.

  Estelle bolted upright again. “I did hear something.” Annie opened her eyes dazedly.

  An avalanche? The glacier on the move? Sweet Jesus, not an earthquake?

  Sera stood and gazed at the sky. “I don’t see anything. Are you sure?”

  “I’m not hallucinating. Something’s coming.”

  A dark patch appeared on the southern horizon. Something moving. Something big—as big as an elephant.

  Maybe she was hallucinating.

  “Holy shit,” Sera said. “What is that?”

  CHAPTER 34

  One for the books

  Estelle’s first impulse was to grab Sera and flee. But to where?

  She helped Annie sit up. “Quick, take a look. What do you see?”

  There were four or five of the animals now, cresting the southeast ridge a quarter mile away. They were still unclear, striding through the tall grass: great shaggy beasts with a swaying, ponderous walk.

  Annie peered. “They walk kind of like bears.”

  If they were a family of bears, the women were in big trouble.

  A couple more of the creatures topped the ridge behind the first group. Red-brown in color.

  The color of grizzlies.

  “Can’t be bears,” Annie murmured. “Too many of them.”

  Estelle relaxed a little. Except for a mother and cubs, bears didn’t travel together.

  “Musk oxen?” Annie mused. “Too big.”

  Sera stretched onto tiptoe, shading her eyes. “Do you have elephants in Alaska?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, you do now.” Sera stared, mouth gaping. “Call me crazy, but those are mammoths!” She broke into a grin. “And there’s someone riding on them!”

  Before Estelle could tell her to stay down, Sera jumped, waving her arms and whooping. “Here! We’re over here!”

  It wasn’t possible, but there they were. Mammoths. As if the models had stepped out of the natural history museum, they strode up the valley as if they’d been born there—heads rising over the sloped back, in-curled tusks cleaving the air in front, trunks swinging with every step.

  And atop the front animals, two men riding like mahouts in an Asian travelogue.

  “Well, I’ll be blessed,” Annie said softly. “Never in my life have I seen something like that.”

  Estelle closed her mouth. “Me neither.”

  Sera’s shouts had an effect. The animals had been heading for the downed plane, but the leader swerved in their direction. Some of the others strung out toward the glacier.

  Estelle could see them better now. Each taller than a man, they forged up the hill through grass long enough to brush their bellies. Some carried saddlebags in brown camo. Only two carried riders.

  They marched forward, faster than a human would walk, and Estelle began to worry about being run down. She stood in front of the improvised shelter, ready to wave them away from Annie. Even Sera stepped back.

  “Amazing,” Sera murmured.

  Twenty feet away, the leaders halted and the riders slipped off.

  “Hello! Dr. Dupris?” While one man fiddled with the harnesses strapped to the mammoths, the other strode up the hill. “I’m awfully glad to see you. I’m State Wildlife Trooper Robbie Kanut.”

  The animals congregated at the glacier runoff below the camp like office workers around the water cooler, dipping trunks into the shallow meltwater and blowing it into their mouths.

  Estelle could only stare in disbelief. “Mammoths? I have a heart patient here who needs to be evacuated to Fairbanks, and they send mammoths? What kind of a rescue is this?”

  Kanut felt distinctly unappreciated. In the fifty-four hours since the eruption, he’d covered forty miles of rough terrain to reach the women, traveling day and night, crossing mountains and rivers, perched atop a mammoth, no less . . . and he gets grief.

  The girl—about sixteen, five foot four, a hundred twenty pounds, brown skin, brown hair and eyes—had wrapped him in a hug, grinning through her tears. The old lady watching from under a tarp-improvised tent had wheezed laughter that ended with a worrying cough.

  But the doctor—size and coloring similar to the girl’s, adding about twenty pounds and twenty years—had ripped into Kanut. “We need help, not a circus sideshow. Of all the outlandish, totally impractical . . . what the hell are these, anyway?”

  He gabbled explanations: yes, ma’am, all aircraft are still grounded, only form of transportation, secret government project. And all the while Cortez, unloading the animals, smirked.

  “I’m here to assist you any way I can while we wait for evacuation,” Kanut added. “We have food and a tent . . .”

  Cortez shot a scowl at Kanut’s offering up the tent but kept his mouth shut. What did he expect? There was no way Kanut was going to let the three women sleep on the ground.

  The girl Sera went over to Cortez and gave him a hug. Now it was Kanut’s turn to smirk at his discomfort. Cortez let her pet his mount for a minute before handing her a couple of saddlebags to move to the campsite.

  “What do you need most urgently?” Kanut finished.

  Dr. Dupris rubbed her neck.

  “Most urgently? I ne
ed to get Annie warmer. Hot food. Um . . . I don’t suppose you have any coffee?”

  Before long, Kanut and Cortez had the tent raised and the old lady was propped against a camp stool, snug in Cortez’s sleeping bag. Kanut heated water to prepare some food for the ladies while Cortez set up the generator to recharge their devices. Kanut had enough juice in his satphone to let the doctor call her base—cautioning her not to mention the mammoths.

  “It’s part of a secret government project,” he explained. “Nobody’s supposed to know about them.”

  “Kind of hard to keep those a secret,” she’d replied, but she managed to reassure her colleagues without mentioning exactly how the trooper had reached her location.

  His call to headquarters was less satisfactory. The sergeant—still under the impression that Kanut had traveled by ATV—said the area was still a no-fly zone.

  “Listen, Sarge, one of the civilians is an Athabaskan elder who needs heart surgery. Now I’m here, with food and a tent, but what she needs is a hospital.”

  “No can do, not yet anyway. We’ll see she’s first on the list—but it won’t be today and maybe not tomorrow.”

  Kanut ended the call feeling desperate. Get to the crash victims had been his goal, but he’d expected to get to them sooner and that he would just be providing first aid until a quick pickup. But the situation was both better and worse than he feared: better because all three women were still alive, worse because he had no idea how long he’d have to keep them that way.

  He walked over to where Cortez was fussing with the water jugs, filtering out a supply from the glacier’s meltwater. The guy might be arrogant but he was good at organizing.

  Cortez looked up. “Is the cavalry on its way? I want to get the herd out of the area before anyone else shows up.”

  “Not yet. The volcano’s still active. Look, Cortez—I know you want to get going, but it’s likely to be at least another day or two before a helicopter can get here, and it could be longer. The ash isn’t falling so much anymore, but the cloud isn’t dissipating. There’s no telling when air traffic will resume.”

  Cortez stood, arms crossed. “I’ve done my job. Brought you to your lost lambs. You said I’d be free to go.”

  “I know what I said, but look at them.” He glanced toward the tent where the teen, the doctor, and the old lady were chowing down on the first hot food they’d had in days. “Those are three women, three human beings in trouble. You can’t just leave them. They need food and shelter. They need our help—your help.”

  “You already gave them my tent, my food, even my goddamn sleeping bag. What else do you want?”

  Kanut took a breath. “Everything. Everything you’ve got. Food, medical supplies, generator, tarps. They’ll need all of it if they have to wait more than another day for rescue.”

  Cortez’s face flushed. “And what about me? Am I supposed to starve?”

  “That’s up to you. You can leave if you want—but the supplies stay here. Or you can stay here with us and share until help arrives. Take your pick.”

  “Or I can load the mammoths back up and take it all. How do you propose to stop me?”

  Kanut shook his head. “I can’t. But I don’t think you’re so hard-hearted as to leave these women with nothing. Why, that Annie, she’s old enough to be your mother. You’d never leave your mother in such a situation, would you?”

  Cortez snarled, “You don’t know my mother.”

  For a moment they glared, face to face.

  Doc Dupris called, “Trooper Kanut? Is everything all right?”

  Kanut smiled and waved. “Fine, Doc.” To Cortez, in low tones, he said, “Send your pets off into the woods and stay with us. As far as headquarters knows, you’re a good Samaritan who brought me here on an ATV we left on the other side of the river. Nobody will check. The ladies will keep quiet about the mammoths. You may not like it, but you belong with us, with your own kind.”

  “Forget it,” Cortez snarled. “As soon as the herd’s rested a few hours, I’m taking the mammoths north.”

  “And the women?”

  “You can have the tent, the sleeping bag, and most of the food. The generator stays with me. I need to keep the tablet charged so I can keep track of the mammoths.”

  Kanut shook his head sadly. “You’re one for the books, you know? You’d rather take a chance on dying alone in the wilderness with your mammoths than stay with people and share.”

  Cortez sneered. “My mammoths never lied to me.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Choices

  The lying bastard. Luis should have known better than to trust a cop, even a low-level wildlife trooper. He should have let Ruby run the trooper down the moment he popped up, waving a rifle. Commandeering Luis’s mammoths. Taking—stealing—his supplies.

  Would he rather face the wilderness with the mammoths than stay with people like that? Hell, yes.

  What a disaster. Luis had planned to take the mammoths to grid HB27, deep into the wilderness, hidden and quiet. He would have let them go and called the bush pilot to fly him out with no one the wiser. Now the herd had spent days running around far off his chosen course. They’d been seen by way too many people, and now more people were on the way.

  Luis repacked his backpack and supply sacks, separating out the portion he could afford to leave behind.

  He needed the generator, that wasn’t negotiable. He’d leave the solar charger for Kanut. Water—he’d leave Kanut one of the filter bottles. He’d leave his sleeping bag with the old lady and take Kanut’s crinkly blanket and the sleeping mat—that should keep him warm enough. With a tarp and some rope he could improvise shelter if he needed it. At least he wouldn’t have to put up with Kanut’s snoring anymore. He’d take the camp stove: Kanut was an Alaska Native, surely he could figure out how to make a fire.

  Food. There had been plenty when he and Brandon started—how could there be so little left? The pot growers had taken one of the saddlebags. Brandon and Luis had shared a meal with those homesteaders. Brandon had taken some with him when he left, not knowing that Luis would be burdened with a pot-bellied, snoring, lying mouth to feed.

  To be on the safe side, Luis figured he needed supplies for five days. He counted out a bare minimum of food packets.

  What was left wouldn’t feed Kanut and the women for more than two days.

  Reluctantly, he moved another half-day’s rations for four people over to Kanut’s pile. That left Luis with only three days of food for himself.

  Three days. Time enough to move the herd to someplace safe and for the plane to pick him up? Maybe.

  And the alternative?

  Release the herd here, now. Give them the scatter call and let them wander at will. Take up Kanut’s offer to share with his bunch of misfits. Ride out on the chopper, a good Samaritan who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to help the poor stranded crash victims. Use Kanut’s story about abandoning an ATV at the river to explain how they got here.

  Why not? It wasn’t where he’d planned to go, but the area was remote enough. It was the right type of environment—the edge of the permafrost, barren enough to be unattractive even to the hardiest of homesteaders. The grass would give out at the first frost, and the herd would move on, as it should, seeking out young trees at the edge of the tundra to feed on.

  All very feasible—and completely unappealing. Kanut, the smug bastard, would gloat for days, thinking he’d talked Luis into choosing humanity over the herd.

  Forget it. Luis would rather starve for a day or two than give Kanut the satisfaction. As soon as the mammoths were rested, he’d take them north.

  Luis walked down the hill toward the mammoths congregating among the meadow flowers. Socializing and vocalizing, their trumpets and squeals wafted up the valley.

  Just a few days left until he had to say goodbye to his best friends. God, he was going to miss them. Especially Ruby. He felt like he was sending his children off to school. Or, more accurately
, to boot camp. Nature was a war zone: eat or be eaten, spot the predator before it spots you, fight or die. He could only hope he’d prepared his mammoth family to survive.

  The teenage girl was seated on a boulder, wide-eyed, arms around her knees, watching the mammoths.

  She grinned up at him. “I love the little one—he’s so cute!”

  “Don’t get close to them,” Luis said. “They’re not really tame.”

  “They sound like a Mardi Gras party. I’m Sera, by the way. Are they really part of a secret government experiment?”

  “Um, yes. I’ll have to ask you to keep quiet about them when you get home, at least until the official announcement.”

  “Oh, I promise.”

  Some hope. She’d probably upload photos onto her social media account before she even took off her shoes. Well, maybe it wouldn’t matter once Ginger started her news-leak campaign.

  The girl chattered away, something about a party and a costume in the last carnival. Luis counted heads. The whole herd was there, even Diamond. The big bull stood close beside Pearl, touching and smelling her. When she backed toward him, Diamond mounted her, resting his front feet on her back.

  “Omigod,” Sera breathed. “Talk about a party—are they doing what I think they’re doing?”

  “Oh, yes. Making the next generation.” One more sign the herd was ready to manage on its own.

  The rest of the herd was very interested, rumbling and squealing in excitement until Diamond withdrew, trumpeting and slashing his tusks through the air.

  “I think it’s sweet,” Sera said. “Like having your honeymoon in the middle of your wedding reception: no privacy but everyone’s enjoying the spectacle. How come he chose her?”

  “She’s the only one in estrus. The other females are already pregnant.” Especially Opal.

  Opal stood apart from the others. Not checking out the action, not exchanging touches with the girls, not eating, not walking, not enjoying the party. Head down, trunk limp.