The Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  It’s the cold that will kill you. Obviously. Your clothes soak through, your body temperature drops. Eventually, you give up walking, too tired, too numb for it to even matter anymore. You fall asleep. You don’t wake up. Not a bad way to go, I guess. Better than wasting away from a flu that eats you from the inside out.

  I didn’t want to die, but there is something stubborn in me. Like stopping and making shelter would be giving up. Jeryl had shown us how to make a good igloo. By good, I merely mean workable in a sticky situation. And I wasn’t kidding myself. I was in a sticky situation. My jacket and pants were waterproof, but like everything else, they had a breaking point. I could feel the damp weighing me down, freezing my skin.

  I continued for maybe two hours. Walking into nothingness. Every step became a burden. Lift boot. Plant boot. Lift boot. Plant boot. What comes next? Shit. Lift boot. I couldn’t see the contours of the ground, so I had no idea when the earth slanted one way or another. I fell twice. Got back up twice.

  When the trees grew thick around me, it was something of a relief—the snow and wind didn’t hit me as hard. Another hour or so passed, and I reached a clearing. A wide valley. I couldn’t feel my face. I was going to die. Maybe I’d see Dad again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I should stop. Yes. Stop. Just for a moment. Just to sit. Rest.

  I sat.

  Bad decision. My muscles drank in the lack of motion like a dry mouth sucks down a smoothie.

  I wasn’t going to get back up, and I knew it. I set my compound bow down beside me, and in desperation I screamed out their names. Jeryl! Jax! Help! Over and over again. My voice sounded small and pathetic against the howling wind. I tried to pack some snow, make an igloo. I lifted a fistful, stuffed it into my palm, felt it grow hard. Packed it down. Stuffed again, packed. It was painstaking work. My limbs were frozen, my bones brittle, my grip empty. I’d be finished by morning. I’d be dead by morning.

  What a stupid decision to come after them. I was going to freeze to death like an idiot. My dad had called me a survivor. He was wrong.

  Jeryl! Jax! Help!

  Nothing but the whirl of white flakes, the wind pushing against me. Mocking me: Go back, go back, you should have gone back.

  It was now full dark. I wasn’t sitting anymore. I was lying down. I was looking at the swirling sky. When had I lain down? The snow distorted my vision like static on an old TV. I wasn’t going to give up. I couldn’t give up.

  I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  Nuclear winter. That’s what they said was the cause of the weather changes—the dying summer, the piling snow.

  I remember when the bomb was dropped in New York. It was all over the news. We’d been in Eagle for three years, and the wars had been going on for just as long. Peace had tried and failed, tried and failed. Then the Asian flu. Jeryl said that the American government sent it to wipe them all out. But I’m not so sure. Part of me thinks it was God. He saw what we were doing to ourselves and he said, “Enough’s enough!” Because when you think about it, the flu provided a common enemy: an indestructible force we could all rally against. A reason for a cease-fire. Sure, it killed most of humankind, but maybe, in a roundabout way, it also saved us. Saved us from ourselves, from the bombs destroying cities, from the soaring fires that were popping up all over the country.

  Not sure the nuclear winter was supposed to last this long. But it has. Like the earth got used to the cold. Like it kind of enjoyed it. All that snow. Piling on the trees, the cabins, my arms, legs, chest, face. Buried in it. Suffocating in it. Dying in it.

  * * *

  But I wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  I was moving. Rising steadily up and down. At first I thought the ground was shaking. I’d never been in an earthquake—maybe that’s what it felt like. No. I was convulsing. From the cold. A seizure from the cold? Is that possible?

  “Hang on, almost there.” The voice came from the sky. Jeryl’s voice. I felt his arms underneath me. He was carrying me. Old man Jeryl, carrying me through the blizzard. I wanted to cry with relief. But when I blinked up at him, it was all wrong. The hat, the beard. The eyes. Blue. Not Jeryl. Jax.

  I came more awake then. Not enough to move or speak, but I could feel my heart in my chest coming to life, warming. His arms gripped me, and I let them. I can’t say how long he carried me like that. It could have been only a minute; it could have been an hour. Time had become a slippery thing. The wind had warped it. The snow had blurred it. Ahead, I saw a single flash of light—a candle in a dark, empty room. Then Jax bent forward. The sky was swallowed by walls of snow. Jax had made an igloo and started a small fire inside. Unlike me, he wasn’t stupid enough to keep walking in the blizzard.

  The igloo was large as far as igloos went. It was empty but for the fire, which was burning inside a pan. Jeryl’s pan. Where was Jeryl? I saw Wolf walk around the fire and sit in the corner, panting, his fur fluffed with snow. It was strangely nice to see the oblivious dog. Jax set me down against the wall, unslung my bow from his shoulder, and knelt beside me. He gave my face a long look. His eyes lingered on my mouth. “Your lips are purple,” he said. I pictured him kissing me. His warmth against mine. Thawing me. It was a dumb thought. Not my fault—I was delirious.

  Then he took off his gloves and began working the snow-caked laces of my boots. I didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but I was too tired and numb to stop him. He pulled those off, then my gloves and my hat. My hair tumbled down my shoulders in a wet, ugly nest. Then his hands were on my waist, finding my belt, loosening it. He pulled at my pants.

  “What’re you doing?” I tried to say, but my frozen lips slurred the words together. Waterydoin?

  “Your clothes are soaked. I’m taking them off.”

  It was like I was watching myself watch him as he pulled my pants off my stiff legs. Then he tugged at my jacket, and I leaned forward to help him get it off. Why was I helping him? Did I trust him? I couldn’t think straight. He was working on my sweater when Jeryl came bursting into the small space. Jeryl’s mustache and eyebrows were dusted with snow.

  “The hell are you doing?” Jeryl asked.

  “Relax, old man. Getting her warm. Her clothes are soaked through.”

  “You can’t—”

  “You got a better idea?” Jax gave Jeryl a challenging look.

  Jeryl pursed his blue lips and crouched by the fire, ready to spring. He looked at me. “You’re lucky we found you. Could have died out there.”

  Jax took my shirt in his hands and, before I could stop him, nearly tore it over my head. As usual, I wasn’t wearing a bra. I wrapped my arms around my chest. Jeryl looked away.

  “Stand up. Here,” Jax said, laying my jacket down behind me and helping me to my feet. I couldn’t fully stand in the small space, so I crouched, staring at the little fire burning in the middle of the snow structure. Looked like wood shavings and cloth. Jeryl’s stash. He was always prepared.

  I felt my leggings being tugged from my hips, and I watched helplessly as Jax pulled them down to my ankles. My bare white legs flashed with firelight. I couldn’t move my feet. They were standing on my wet jacket, which was protecting them—for the most part—from the snow, but still, I couldn’t move them. I tried, I wanted to, but they refused to budge. Jax cupped my ankle and heel in his warm palms and lifted them gently. Moving quickly, not frantically, just purposefully. Then he stood and started to unzip his coat.

  “Wait a minute,” Jeryl said, crouched over the fire, watching us.

  “You want to do this?” Jax asked.

  Jeryl seemed to chew on his tongue. “Not right for me to.”

  “Right. Then I’ll do it.”

  Do what? What was happening?

  I watched as Jax took off his clothes. Had I been more aware of myself, I would have looked away. It’s not like I wanted to jump his bones, as Ken would say. I was freezing to death. He was moving, so I watched him. Because he was getting naked, because I was naked, because it was all so fuckin
g weird.

  When he pulled off his shirt, there it was. The tattoo on his arm. Numbers, running down the inside of his forearm. One, two, seven, four, one. Then his pants were off. He kept a pair of gray boxers on. Thank God. The light from the small fire sent waves of shadows across his naked skin. Made it look like his whole body was moving. Then he was moving. He grabbed my arm and sat down. Something screamed inside of me. No, please no, not this. But I was too tired to fight it and, honestly, too afraid that I was going to die. He guided me down onto him, pressing his chest against my back, wrapping his arms around me. I was nearly delirious, yet all I could think about was whether or not his forearms were touching my boobs. But his body was warm, soothing even, and the fire, small as it was, was burning my face and feet. His fingers wrapped around my elbows, and I felt the rise and fall of his chest and his breath thawing the back of my neck. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.

  Jeryl pulled a blanket out from his pack and wrapped it around us, giving Jax a look that said both I don’t trust you and All of this is your fault.

  Then I started to shake. Convulse really. Helpless and freezing, I started to vibrate. Jax didn’t say anything, and Jeryl just stared. His brow furrowed and his lips pinched tight, pushing up his mustache like it was just as concerned as he was. Gradually, my limbs came alive. It felt like a thousand needles were poking me from the inside out.

  That’s when I started to cry. Stupid stupid stupid stupid. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know if it was because I hurt all over, because I was relieved to be alive, or because I felt like such an idiot. Maybe I was finally crying over the shock of seeing three men get killed, and almost getting killed myself. Maybe it was because of Conrad, the last person who’d been this close to me, touching me with his cold, reptilian hands. Or maybe it had something to do with Jax’s hands. Warm. Nothing like Conrad’s.

  I don’t know. It didn’t really matter. I cried and cried.

  Jax lifted a hand and pressed my forehead, pushing my head toward him.

  “It’s okay,” he said, sounding hesitant, awkward. I let my head fall back to his chest as I shook, blubbered, and sobbed.

  15

  My loft in my cabin wasn’t anything special. My bed was made of blankets tied to a wooden structure Ken and Jeryl built years ago. It sagged in the middle, as if someone had mated a hammock with a cot. We still called it a cot, though. It wasn’t all that comfortable, and it made a creaking noise that sounded like it was going to fall apart every time I moved. But my body had gotten used to it. The wooden, musty smell was familiar, the blanket was somehow molded to my shape, and the heavy quilt Mom made kept me warm in the winter. I loved my little cot. For the last seven years, I’d spent nearly every single night in it, and it was as much of a home as anything else I’d ever known.

  That’s partly why waking up naked in an igloo with a strange man’s arms wrapped around me was disorienting as hell. He was leaned up against the wall of the igloo with his shoulder supporting my head, his arms wrapped around me, and his forearms pressed to my chest. But it felt kind of good. Surprisingly good. Too good.

  I threw his arms off me and sat up. As I moved, I felt the hair of his legs tickling my thighs.

  “Slowly,” Jax said. Jeryl jumped awake from where he’d been sleeping. Sleeping. That’s the first time I think I’d ever seen him sleep. Wolf raised a lazy head. He’d snuggled up with Jax and me. When he saw that we weren’t doing anything exciting, he plopped his head back down in the snow.

  “How do you feel?” Jeryl asked, lifting his bag and pulling out more cloth and his little fire starter, which looked like two gray squares of metal.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling the blanket over my chest. My voice sounded angrier than I’d meant. But the weird thing was, I was fine. My skin didn’t hurt, and I could move my hands and feet without feeling like they were wrapped in rubber bands. I started to push farther away from Jax and then realized I was naked. I ripped the blanket off him like he’d stolen it from me. He gave me a look but didn’t say a word.

  I stood and awkwardly walked with the blanket over to my clothes, my feet tingling from the freezing snow, which had hardened under our footprints.

  “Are they dry?” I asked.

  “Should be. For the most part,” Jeryl said.

  I picked up my leggings, then looked over at Jax. He was watching me. “You mind?” I said.

  “Sorry.” He looked away, then stood and started to dress himself.

  I got dressed in silence, as quickly as I could, exposing myself again, if only for a brief moment. No one looked, though, not even Wolf.

  Once my leggings, shirt, socks, snow pants, sweater, boots, hat, gloves, and coat were back on, I felt like me again. Like I had my skin back. Or maybe my armor. I still felt embarrassed, though. There was no getting around that.

  When he realized it was safe, Jeryl looked back over at me. Jax was dressed now too and scratching Wolf’s ears.

  “The hell were you thinking?” Jeryl said with a good old-fashioned frown.

  “I didn’t know there’d be a blizzard.”

  “Why’d you follow us?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing better to do.” I caught Jax’s eyes for a second, then looked away.

  “Dammit, Lynn, I told you to stay home.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  It was true. He hadn’t actually said that. Sure, it was implied all over the place. But he hadn’t said it.

  He gave a good harrumph, then got another small fire going and pulled out a chunk of dried meat from his pack. He handed it to me, and I gobbled it down. I guess nearly freezing to death is hungry work.

  “Once you feel ready, you’re going back,” Jeryl said.

  And that pissed me off. I should have seen it coming. Of course he’d say that. But after everything that it took, after I almost died to get there, he’d send me back with a slap on the hand?

  “Like hell,” I said.

  “Your mom—”

  “Is going to be pissed and worried out of her mind. But that’s not your responsibility. I’m not your responsibility. I’m not a kid, and you’re not my father.”

  His eyebrows dropped. Maybe there was hurt in his eyes, but it was always hard to tell with Jeryl.

  “I can help,” I said, nodding to my bow.

  “I hate to say this again,” Jax said, squatting by the fire and looking at Jeryl, “but you both should go back. I don’t need your help, and I need to move fast. The blizzard might have done in his horse. Maybe him too. Now’s the time to catch up, and you’ll only slow me down.”

  “I’m not going back,” Jeryl said.

  “And why is that exactly?” Jax asked.

  Jeryl’s face was blank. “I’m here to make sure you don’t bring those bastards back to our camp.”

  “Really?” Jax said. “Is that what you think I’d do? After I just killed three of them? I don’t buy it.”

  Jeryl ran a hand over his face. I looked at my uncle, gave him a questioning look. What is he talking about, Jeryl? But his face told me nothing. There was something going on. Something I’d missed. Jeryl was such a simple man, what kind of secrets could he have? He looked at me mid-mustache-stroke, and I felt an invisible barrier between us, a heavy wall I’d never sensed before.

  “You’re going back home,” he said. “No discussion.”

  I felt resolve sink like iron into my bones. “No,” I said. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re not.”

  “What are you going to do? Carry me back? You can’t stop me from following you.”

  “Dammit, Lynn. What’s gotten into you?” Jeryl’s jaw clenched.

  “How many arrows you bring?” Jax said. His eyes had something new in them. He wasn’t looking at me like Jeryl was, like I was a child.

  “Just the four,” I said.

  Jax glanced at my bow, then at Jeryl, a challenge in his gaze. “It’ll have to do.”

  16

  We moved fa
st. My legs felt a little stiff, but for the most part, I was fine. I kept up. Not that it was easy. The snow was thick. Even Wolf seemed tired, walking slowly in front of Jax. If they’d been following the man’s tracks, they were gone now. The blizzard had taken care of that. But somehow Jax seemed to know where he was going, like he’d gotten the man’s scent and was hunting him. Or maybe Wolf was tracking him. Didn’t look like it, though. The dog seemed to be trudging casually through the snow, sniffing at the ground every once in a while, not like he was looking for something, but like he smelled some piss and wanted to rub his nose in it.

  We continued like that for hours, stopping only a few times to take a drink and grab a chunk of Jeryl’s meat and carrots. The clouds were gray, fluffy, and low above our heads. They weren’t the angry black clouds from last night. They were calmer, tamer.

  I found myself walking next to Jax, while Jeryl and Wolf trailed behind. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask, “So where’d you get the tattoo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember.” His expression never changed.

  “How’s that possible?”

  “I was young when I got it.”

  “Like a baby?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?” I didn’t mean it as snotty as it sounded.

  He wiped his wet beard with his glove. “I know that we can’t let Nayan get back to his camp.”

  “Or what? What are they going to do to us? What are they going to do to you?”