The Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  I was angry, I was scared, I was trapped. Me and the damn crow. Together in our cages. Kept hidden from the big, wide world full of blood, teeth, snow, and secrets. I wanted out. But I’d have to wait for the right time. I closed my eyes. I could hear my dad’s words. “Sometimes, the more you push, the worse it gets.”

  Shift foot to the right.

  Shift foot to the left.

  Feel your way out.

  22

  I woke to the sound of someone entering my tent. It was still dark, must have been only a few hours later. I sat up. Ponytail man. I felt groggy, and the air seemed liquid. Ponytail looked down at me, taking a deep, screechy breath through his nose. Like a scientist, he examined me, studying me from different angles as if I were a specimen.

  “Seems you’ve got some movement back, hmm?” He sat down on the stool Braylen had used.

  I looked away. My glares were all used up. Keep talking, Ponytail. I’m done.

  “My name is Anders Lundgren. You might call this my camp.”

  Good for you.

  He was balding in the front, just slightly. The edges of his forehead were too pronounced. And he had the beard of course. Most men did. Grayish, just like his hair. He put a finger in his ear and began to pick like he couldn’t care less about what he was doing or saying. Like this was all some sort of routine he’d done a million times.

  “Braylen tells me you don’t want to talk to anyone. That’s fine. You don’t need to talk to me. Just listen. Just for a minute. How’s that sound?”

  I scratched the side of my face to show him that I could be just as carefree as he could. But nothing about me was carefree. Why was he here? Why was he talking to me? Why in the middle of the night? What did he want from me?

  “Let me ask you something,” he said, leaning back. “Do you like your life? Hmm?” He paused. He wasn’t waiting for me to respond. He knew I wasn’t going to. He was being dramatic. Asshole.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, putting words in my mouth. “And do you think things are going to get better? People are going to get better, recover? No. You know we aren’t.” He adjusted his seat, breathed in through his nose again, that hawk-like screeching. “I’m going to admit something to you. As a sign of good faith. Okay? You see, Immunity saw all of this coming. No one will come right out and say that, but we did. We saw the end. So we started testing, long ago. We were preparing.” He paused, waiting for a reaction. I didn’t give him one.

  “It started with the rats. We were told to engineer rats that could survive a very specific strain of influenza for months at a time. It was an order issued from on high, from people who could see the future and were preparing for it. And after years of testing, we succeeded. We made a serum that boosted the rats’ immune systems. You should have seen these things.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands out like he was holding one of the rats. “They could run the wheel for hours at a time. They could dodge snakes. Break into locked boxes to get their treats. It wasn’t just immunity. It was . . . next generation, an evolutionary leap. Those rats had superpowers.” He leaned back again, dropping his imaginary rat. A gust of wind slapped against the tent canvas, making a chug chug chug noise.

  “Do you know anything about genetics, hmm? I won’t bore you with the science of it, but safe to say that if there is a God, he’s cruel. He gave us life but withheld the best parts of it, buried in our DNA. He made us weak. Humans, as it turns out, are much trickier to engineer than rats. We started with the mothers—they were the key. It was quite the extensive protocol. Before giving anything to their children, we had a pre-serum we gave to pregnant moms with the hope that they’d pass on their immunities to their babies during their critical development period. Many of those mothers didn’t survive. It was a shame, of course. But you can’t give up after a few setbacks. Every scientific discovery in history had its setbacks. You know how many times the Wright brothers crashed their planes? These mothers, well . . . most started wasting away after giving birth. And their children didn’t fare well either. It took years of testing, failures, disappointments, before we bred Jackson Day.”

  The name sent needles into my brain. Jackson. Jax. And did he say “bred”? What the hell did that mean?

  Anders continued. “He was the first and he remains the only success story. Jackson is immune to the flu, like the rats were. But it’s beyond that. He’s next level—‘superhuman,’ some of the people here call him. But I don’t like that word. It makes it sound like he’s uncontrollable. He’s still a man, albeit a very dangerous one. The thing is, he must be made to cooperate. He’s our future, you see—our only hope. We have to find out why the serum worked on him and only him. Humanity, what’s left of it anyway, depends on us.”

  He grew silent. I could sense him waiting, waiting for me to respond, ask questions, change my mind, or be impressed. Wait away, Anders.

  He took a long breath through his mouth this time. “We treated the subjects well, you know. All the children and their mothers. We gave them a life they never would have had otherwise. Jackson may have told you a different story. How we’re some sort of evil scientists who did experiments on him in dark rooms. Did he also tell you about his part in the war? Did he tell you how many people he’s killed? He’s an assassin. He’s murdered countless high-profile targets, one by one. You should know who you’ve been keeping company with.”

  The orange lantern from outside flickered as the wind continued to rattle the walls, making the canvas look like an ocean on fire. The little mountain climber on the shelf was now rocking back and forth precariously over the ledge. I could feel Anders’s eyes on me. I kept my expression blank. Inside, there was turmoil. Jax, the superhuman. Jax, the assassin. Jax, the murderer.

  “We were trying to make the world a better place. Now that that isn’t possible, we’re trying to fix it. Sure, we’re here to study people—see why the flu doesn’t like the chilly parts of the world. All the rebuilding Braylen talks about. But to realize our full potential, to evolve as a species, we need Jackson.” Which meant Jax was alive. And so was Jeryl. That confirmed it. He was growing animated now, his cheeks shaking slightly from the words. “Bringing him back to us is the first step to real change. Our team is making strides here, but if we had Jackson, we could make leaps. With his immunity, his skills, we could remake the world. Isn’t that what we all want?”

  Did I want that? The world remade? Remade how? It wasn’t going to bring the past back. It wasn’t going to bring back the dead.

  Anders stood and took a step toward my cot. My legs locked, and I turned my head so that I couldn’t see his eyes. I felt his arm press down on the pillow next to my face. His breath in and out, in and out.

  “I had a daughter once,” he said.

  He touched my hair, and I instinctively brought up a hand to swat him. My arm didn’t move as fast as I’d expected, and Anders was able to pull away before I hit him. I sat up and met his eyes. He took a step back from the cot and grimaced, white teeth flashing, fangs like a wolf’s. Then I saw it. In his hand was my knife. Held casually. And somehow, the casualness made it all the more threatening. I felt the need to escape grow intense—the tent filling with water, me needing to breathe.

  “Do you know where they are?” he asked.

  I held his gaze, not blinking. My eyes started to water. Tears of fear? Relief?

  “You will take us to him. You have to.” He sounded calm, but I could sense the frustration, like a musk he was sending out.

  “We have only the best intentions. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” He put the knife back in his belt. “We want to help him. We want to fix this world. And I think we can.”

  He looked at me again, then made something like a grunt. “When you see him, ask him. Ask him how many people he’s killed. And look him in the eye when you do.”

  He turned and stepped out of sight. I heard the sound of the zipper pulling prongs together. A moment passed. He was gone.

  I let out a
long, shaky breath and collapsed onto the cot. Jax was alive. Jeryl was alive. Now I knew my purpose: they were keeping me here as bait.

  In the corner of the room, the mountain climber rocked and nodded, rocked and nodded, looking as if at any moment he would plunge to his little wooden death.

  23

  I rarely went into the basement, but I remember vividly one time when I did. It was a Saturday. Dad was out getting lunch with Jeryl, Mom was reading in her room, and I didn’t know where Ken was. The door was partly cracked, basically calling to me.

  I peeked down at the cement steps. Then my foot was on the first, and the second, and I was descending—halfway down. The space was dark, nearly pitch black. I flicked the light switch at the bottom of the steps and the fluorescent light crackled, then flash-flash-flashed until it stayed on with a dull buzz.

  Dad’s desk and chair were in the corner, with his computer, papers, books. In the middle of the room was a foldout table with dishes, jars, measuring cups, plants, and his notebook. I stepped toward the table and took the notebook in my hands. I shouldn’t be doing this, I should put it down, I should walk away. I opened the black, worn leather cover.

  Numbers, graphs, and scrawled, barely legible handwriting. I flipped through, but the words may as well have been in a different language.

  Then, as I scrolled, I saw it. My name flashed on one of the pages. Lynn. Clearly legible, large print. I tried to flip back, to see what he’d written about me. More numbers, more tiny handwriting.

  The doorbell rang upstairs, and I slammed the notebook shut and sprinted up the steps two at a time. I pushed through the door at the top and scanned the hallway. But there was no one. Mom was at the front door, talking to our neighbor Linda, who was passing out flyers about some pray-for-the-planet event at church. No one had seen me emerge from the basement.

  It wasn’t until later, in my room, thinking about why my name might be in my dad’s work journal, that I realized I’d forgotten to shut off the light in the basement.

  If Dad noticed, he never said.

  * * *

  The next morning was basically the same. Braylen gave me breakfast—venison, freaking amazing—then we took a long walk through the woods. I didn’t need her help walking this time. My body was starting to remember how to move.

  “Would you like to see more of our camp?” she asked after a while of silence. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  She led me back to the camp. Just her and me, walking between sparse trees. I thought about running away. But I didn’t trust my legs to be fast enough or, in all honesty, long enough to outrun her. So I followed like an obedient little puppy. She led me to one of the large brown tents on the west side. She unzipped the flap delicately, like she was taking off a fancy dress.

  I almost gasped when I looked inside. Cages lined the tent. Cages with animals in them. A fox, a marten, a wolverine, a hare, all kinds of birds—including an owl, a peregrine falcon, the white crow—and a wolf. But it wasn’t just the crow that was white—all of them were. Pale as snow. Not a speck of brown, gray, black. Brilliantly white. Some of the birds were flapping their feathers, squawking. The fox was pacing in his cage; but the wolf was sitting still, watching, like he was assessing, thinking, judging. His eyes looked silver. It was disturbing. All of it.

  “Amazing, huh?” Braylen said. “Tom thinks that all species out here will one day display white coats or feathers. Evolution, I guess.”

  I looked around at the bizarre menagerie. My eye kept returning to the wolf, sitting back on its haunches, watching us like we were the ones in the cage.

  “The question is, was this type of evolution already happening before? And if so, what did we do that made it speed up? And how can we use that? How can we change to keep up with a changing world? Might these animals even hold the cure to the flu? We’re trying to learn from them. To see what they have to teach us. We’ll let them all go, eventually.”

  I could feel her eyes on me, waiting for a reaction. “Come on, there’s more,” she said, leading me back out of the tent.

  The next tent she took me to was on the northeast side by a group of horses penned in by a wooden fence. From somewhere beside it, I heard rumbling like an engine. I didn’t ask, though something about that sound bothered me. She pulled the zipper.

  “Come on in.” Warm light spilled through the opening. Inside were rows and rows of wooden tables. On top of the tables were crates filled with dirt. In the dirt were plants. Sprouting, growing, lifting toward rectangular lights that buzzed above them. Lights. Lightbulbs. Electricity? Holy shit! It was like going back in time.

  It was hard to stay quiet, but I did. “We managed to keep some equipment. And our generator outside still works. Helps to have the best minds in the world. We use it only for this tent and not all day. Look, these are garden peas.” She pointed to the first crate of leafy plants, running along a small, wire fence, sprouting little green cocoons from their stems. “Over there are tomatoes, still working on those. These are bush beans; beets are over there. And the big ones are carrots and potatoes.” Of course. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  It was. And weird. So weird to see lights. After seven years, I’d nearly forgotten what they looked like, sounded like, felt like on my skin. They burned red circles into my eyes, but I couldn’t stop staring at them. And the plants. So much green in winter.

  Then I saw them. Sitting in the corner of the tent like toys no one wants to play with anymore. My compound bow. My knife. A jolt of excitement surged through my fingertips. It was like seeing old friends after years apart. I practically lunged for them. But Braylen’s eyes were on me, so I looked away. I tried to be casual, reaching out a hand and touching one of the pea pods. I expected Braylen to stop me, but she didn’t. Before she could say anything, I snapped off a pod.

  “Go ahead,” she said, like it had been her idea. “Just open up the shell and . . .”

  I plopped the whole thing in my mouth and crunched down on it. It was sweet.

  “We’re trying to create something out here. To plant. To grow. You know. To be a part of this new world.” She took a step toward me. Her eyes still on the plants. “You could be a part of it too, you know?”

  It was almost a tempting offer. But not quite. The white animals. The experiments. I pushed the thought of my bow and knife out of my head as best I could and listened. The generator gurgled and the lights hummed. Mechanical sounds. The sounds of the old world. The dead world. The world of people dying of flu. I didn’t want to resurrect the past. I didn’t want to create a new social order. I belonged to a free world of hunting, killing, surviving. I drowned out those sounds with the crunch crunch crunching of the pea pod between my carnivore-sharp teeth.

  * * *

  Later that day, I took a nap. I must’ve slept pretty hard because it was dark when I heard the zipper. Outside, the Halloween-orange lanterns had been lit and were dancing up and down the canvas. Braylen stepped through the tent, a good afternoon grin on her face. “Care to join us around the fire? Lance has got some Dall sheep roasting. You ever had? It’s not bad actually.”

  I was a bit groggy but also hungry. I was always hungry. So I pushed the blanket off and swung my legs down from the cot. Braylen stepped toward me to help with my snow pants, jacket, and boots, but I held up a hand. I could do it myself.

  The night air was like little frosty knives poking at my face in a million different places. There were several fires burning around the camp. Even though we were about ten yards away from the nearest one, I swear I could feel the heat from where I stood. When we approached, I saw four faces looking at me. Three men and a woman. One of them was the man who kidnapped me: Blondy. He smirked like we shared an inside joke. Another man was turning a slab of meat on a spit over the fire.

  “Annie, this is Harper, Ramirez, Lance, and Denise.” I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

  They all mumbled hello or gave little nods. The man who was turning the meat, La
nce, had a blue hat, a brown beard, and a big lip-slug of a mustache. He was openly staring at me. I gave him my best glare, a Mom glare, then looked away.

  “Here, have a seat.” Braylen gestured to one of the logs around the fire pit, which was just a dugout stretch of earth. The fire was hot, and the flames waved their wild arms.

  “How’re you feeling these days, Annie?” Lance asked.

  “She’s much better,” Braylen said.

  “So, tell us about yourself,” Lance said. His eyes seemed to poke at me like needles, testing, prodding. “You got family?”

  Braylen looked at me, as if to remind me of my big opportunity to say something.

  “You live nearby?” Yeah, like I was going to give that information up.

  Then Blondy—or, Harper, I guess—grunted. “Still not talking, huh? Maybe she’s retarded.”

  “Shut up, Harper,” Braylen said. “What she says or doesn’t say is none of your business.” It was the first time I’d heard her be anything but pleasant. Maybe there was more to her than I gave her credit for. Maybe there was even something to like.

  “You brought her to our fire, that makes her our business.”

  “Harper,” Lance said. “We all know how big your dick is, just keep it in your pants for once.”

  Harper laughed at this. But it wasn’t the type of laugh that could be joined. It was an I’m in control type of laugh. Maybe he was in control. I doubted it. He didn’t seem the scientist type. If I had to guess, I’d say Harper was one of the outdoorsmen Braylen said was with them. A hired hand. A mindless goon.

  Braylen turned to me and whispered, “Sorry,” but I didn’t say anything, just gazed into the fire.

  No one spoke for a good long while after that. Eventually, Lance pulled the meat off the spit and took out some plates and a knife from his pack. He started cutting. “It’s hot.”

  “I’m hungry as hell,” Harper said, clearly begging for a big piece.