by Steve Haynes
‘Maybe I should have one, too,’ she says.
They stop working to stare at her. For a moment, sitting side-by-side in bulky snowsuits, with their legs dangling off the edge of the tailgate, they remind her of two overgrown boys, playing with toy guns.
‘You can shoot?’ Vargas says.
‘My father taught me.’
Vargas trudges over to the side door, to get a third rifle. She can see that it is lighter and smaller than theirs, and semi-automatic – not auto. But she doesn’t bother to mention this. Instead she checks the safety, and takes aim along the barrel, aware that they are watching her. If it’s a test, apparently she passes. Vargas grunts.
‘Just don’t shoot me,’ he says.
As they set out, she slings the weapon over her shoulder, so it rests vertically on her back. It knocks awkwardly against her rucksack, which is filled with her food supplies, sleeping bag, and laptop. She hikes between the two men, with Vargas out in front and Sam a few paces behind. Looking after her, no doubt. The dog scampers around, zipping ahead and bounding back, acting as their unofficial scout.
They make good time, padding steadily through the powder. It is well packed and squeaks beneath their snowshoes. Other than that the forest is almost noiseless; the snow dampens any sounds. Visibility is good because the trees – mostly various species of larch – are bare and leafless and spaced relatively far apart. All the branches are coated in an off-white hoar frost that looks like fungus.
‘You said it’s a full day’s hike?’ she calls to Vargas.
‘Why? You are tired already?’
‘I’m wondering what he was doing way out here, alone.’
They walk half a dozen paces before he answers.
‘If you asked him, he would say he is hunting wild boar.’
After two hours they take a break. They perch on a fallen tree, without removing their bags or snowshoes. Her calves are burning but other than that she feels good. Vargas looks a bit worse off. He is breathing hard, and his moustache is frozen with snot. Filling a cup from his flask, he offers it to her first. She drinks it down, and nearly gags – it’s vodka. She hands it back, trying to take it in stride, but can see him smirking to himself. She gets out her flask of tea and sips that instead.
‘Your father,’ he says, tapping her rifle. ‘He took you hunting?’
‘Sometimes. But never for tiger.’
She means it as a joke, but neither of them laughs.
‘We have a saying,’ Sam says. ‘If a tiger wants to eat you, you won’t see it.’
He pushes his glasses up his nose, cranes his neck to look around. Nicole finds herself doing the same. Studying the landscape. Trying to imagine just what, exactly, is out there. Then Vargas stands and tosses back the remaining vodka.
‘We keep going,’ he announces.
By mid-afternoon, the shack comes into view. It is a two-room shanty, with wooden siding and a corrugated tin roof, covered in snow. Long icicles hang like teeth from the eaves and there are small windows on each side, overlooking the forest.
Out front, after they’ve removed their packs, Vargas tells her about the first attack. Because of the shack’s isolation, it went unreported for several days. By the time he and Sam got out there, it had been snowing for hours. At first they thought the trapper – a local man – had simply left. Then the dog unearthed the remains. A few bloody bones, frozen in the snow. That was all. No tracks. No other traces.
‘But all his supplies had been used up,’ Sam adds.
Nicole looks from him to Vargas, trying to understand. They explain that they think the tiger had him trapped here, in the shack. He waited it out for as long as he could. Then, rather than slowly starve to death, he’d made a final attempt to escape.
‘A cat would never normally do that,’ she says, ‘if it was only about food.’
Vargas shrugs. ‘Maybe he shoots at it, and makes it mad.’
Nicole frowns. ‘Maybe.’
Afterwards they take her into the shack. It is as cold inside as out, and smells like an old fridge. There is a table in the main room, littered with empty food tins. Mostly canned meat and vegetables and soup. In one corner lies a single mattress, draped in woolen blankets. Opposite it, directly below one of the windows, stands a workbench. The wooden surface is well worn and stained dark brown. Notches – as if from a blade – line the edges. Vargas notices her studying it.
‘For scraping hides, cutting meat,’ he explains.
The other room is smaller and looks like it was added later. It has been used for storage. Among the clutter she sees paraffin cans, a set of cross-country skis, a few lanterns – the housings smoked black – and some rusty leg traps. A space has been cleared on the floor to the left; in the middle is a mound of shit and toilet paper.
‘Because he was scared to go out,’ Nicole says, quietly.
Sam grimaces. ‘I will be, too. Tonight.’
While Sam takes a look outside, she and Vargas continue to poke around the shelter. It’s obvious he doesn’t expect her to find anything. She doesn’t really expect to, either. But it’s what she’s supposed to be doing, it’s what her office wants, so she does it. On the table, among the food tins, she notices a stack of smut magazines.
She holds one up. ‘Looks like he goes to the same bookstore as you.’
‘Is not funny,’ Vargas says.
As she puts the magazine down, she spots a cellphone half-hidden beneath the stack. She picks it up, turns it on. There’s still a bit of charge to the battery.
‘No signal here,’ Vargas says. ‘Or he would call for help.’
She ignores him, examines it anyway. First she scrolls through the picture gallery – mostly more porn – and then checks the videos. There are only a few, all fairly recent. She selects the oldest and clicks ‘play.’ It shows a man’s face, talking into the camera, as if he’s holding it at arm’s length. He is middle-aged, with a shaved head and a scar above his right eye. He is speaking quickly, in Russian. Obviously agitated. Vargas, having heard, comes over to stand beside her.
‘Is him,’ he says. ‘He is saying – it is still there. Will not go away. It knows . . .’ Vargas pauses, startled, then goes on, ‘It knows what I have done.’
The second video clip is dark. Too dark to see much, other than the shape of the man’s head, lit up by lantern light. This time, he is whispering. Vargas leans in closer to catch it, and translates for her. ‘He is saying to listen, listen to it. Is close.’
Nicole adjusts the volume. Faintly – through the tinny speakers – they can hear roaring, like distant thunder. The sound sends prickles along her forearms.
‘And next,’ Vargas says. He has started whispering, too. ‘Is one more.’
The final clip shows the man’s upper body – as if he has set up the phone on the table to film himself. He is sitting in a chair, wearing full hunting gear, cradling his rifle. The pale light coming through the window creates a halo-effect around his head. After waiting a moment, he starts to address the camera, struggling for words.
‘Is message to his family,’ Vargas says. ‘He says he has run out of food. He says he is going to try. He says . . .’ Vargas trails off. The raw emotion on the man’s face needs no translation, no explanation. Then, at the last, the hunter clenches his fist and shouts something, defiant.
‘He says he will show it how a Siberian dies.’
The end of the clip is him reaching out towards the camera. Nicole stares at the blank screen for a moment, before carefully placing the phone down.
‘It is proof, no?’ Vargas says. ‘That it stalks him. Is a man-eater.’
She nods, tells him it is. Though she’s still unsure what the agency will decide. Man-eater or not, if it’s a new species, and sustainable, they’ll want to capture and protect it rather than kill it. She is wondering if – and when – she
should tell him that, when Sam pokes his head through the door. His glasses are all fogged up again.
‘There’s something at the back,’ he says.
Outside the light is fading; on the horizon the clouds have gone a sickly ochre colour. Behind the shelter, the dog has found a large pit dug in the snow. While they examine it, the dog paces around the edge, sniffing and whimpering. The surrounding snow is dotted with paw-prints – the same over-sized tracks they found yesterday.
‘This wasn’t here last time,’ Sam says.
‘No,’ Vargas says.
‘Why would it come back?’ she asks.
The words hang there as the three of them stare into the pit, thinking about it. The back wall is unnaturally flat, as if the cabin has foundations that go deep. Nicole brushes some ice crystals aside – revealing wood, gouged with claw marks.
‘It’s like it was trying to get into the cabin,’ Sam says.
‘Or at something beneath.’
Back inside, the three of them shove the table away from the wall, and lift up the tattered rug. Underneath is a small door, with a ring set into the wood, like the entrance to a cellar. It is not locked, and they lift it easily. Below, a stepladder drops into darkness. Vargas digs a flashlight out of his bag, and climbs down first. Then he says something in Russian – short and sharp, like a swear.
‘You must see,’ he calls up.
The cellar is no bigger than a walk-in closet. It is a tight fit for all three of them together. Vargas waits until her and Sam are down before shining his light around. They are in a kind of makeshift freezer, surrounded by shelving. Each shelf is laden with animal parts. Some in jars, some in plastic bags. She does not recognize all of them but she sees a kidney, a liver, a gallbladder. There are teeth and claws, too. Tongues. A menagerie of dismemberment. And on the floor, piled practically beneath their feet, are the hides. All neatly folded. The fur tawny and striped. She stoops to touch the one on top. Even stiff with frost, it feels unbelievably soft.
‘I don’t want to hear,’ she says, still crouched there, ‘any of your shit about families to feed, or needing to survive. This is a travesty. This is an abomination.’
‘Yes,’ is all Vargas says.
Sam is perusing the different shelves, like a clerk taking inventory. ‘There’s sable here, too. And lynx. All rare or endangered. He would have had help. They’d wait until spring, then haul a load out with snowmobiles or four-wheelers. Truckers or loggers would help them smuggle it into China. Risky, but the pay –’
He stops talking; he is standing quite still, staring at something in a styrofoam cooler against the far wall. They wait, expectant, but still he does not say anything. Vargas looks at her, then steps over. She follows. When she sees what he has found, her hand goes to her mouth. In the cooler is a small animal, about the size of a large housecat. Its coat is patterned like a tiger, but the proportions are different. It is stockier, with higher back legs – almost hyena-like. Built for speed and power.
Vargas pans his flashlight along the body. It’s obviously a cub; the feet are oversized, the coat fluffy rather than sleek. The mouth is open, wide, as if it died in pain, or crying out. A leg-trap, probably. Light glints off a pair of wicked-looking eyeteeth. Something about those teeth looks wrong to her. She reaches in, uses both hands to force the mouth closed.
‘Look,’ she says, pointing.
The eyeteeth come down outside the lower mouth, extending inches past the jaw. Vargas mutters something in Russian again – that same swear word. Srat.
‘Well,’ Sam says, ‘now we know what’s out there.’
‘And why it’s pissed,’ she adds.
She is sitting in a chair by the workbench with her rifle across her knees. The chair is cold and hard and she shifts around frequently. Beneath the window, a paraffin lamp sputters, giving off smoke. It makes the place stink but the window is open a crack for ventilation. She can see her breath in the light. Aside from their bodies, and the lamp, there is no heat in the shelter. Behind her the other two are stretched on the floor in their sleeping bags. Nobody wanted to sleep on the dead man’s mattress.
Every few minutes she opens her laptop, checks her emails. Her inbox is always conspicuously empty. Three hours ago she sent her report to head office, summarizing the videos, the underground storeroom, the cub specimen. Everything they’ve found. But she hasn’t received a reply, even though the satellite link is good.
At one point she thinks she hears something. A sound out there. A low rumble. But it does not come again and when she peers out the window she of course sees nothing. Just blackness, and flakes of falling snow, flickering like tinsel in the lamplight. She stays there, studying the dark, imagining what it contains. It makes her think of that Blake poem her father used to read her – the famous one about the tiger. She can remember most of the first verse, and recites it silently to herself: Tiger tiger burning bright, in the forests of the night. What dread hand, and what dread eye, dare frame thy . . . something. Thy fearful something.
There’s rustling behind her. A cough. Looking back, she sees Vargas coming into the light. His hair is tousled, his capped teeth bared in a glittering grimace.
‘I have a few more hours yet,’ she says.
She knows he gave her first watch as a favour. It’s easier to stay up, than get up halfway through the night, or early in the morning.
‘I cannot sleep,’ he says. ‘But maybe you can.’
He pulls up a chair beside her, places his flask on the floor. When he glances at her laptop – closed now to conserve the battery – she expects him to ask about that, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s already guessed. Now that the agency has proof of its ability to breed, and the validity of its mutation, there’s no way they’ll issue a permit to kill it. Instead they’ll send up a team of their own to trap it, take it alive. Which may take time. Which may cost lives.
‘You have shot animals,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I have shot animals.’
The dog comes up, nuzzles Vargas’s palm. He strokes its head, and it sits beside him, thumping out the seconds with its tail.
‘This man,’ he says, ‘is the same as yesterday for you, no? You think he maybe deserved to die. For what he did.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ she says.
‘You are thinking it, though.’
He bends forward, picks up his flask. Unscrewing the lid, he pours himself a cup of vodka. His hands are trembling. She can’t tell if it’s from the alcohol or not.
‘I am lucky,’ he says, taking a sip, ‘to have this job.’
‘Yes.’
‘I did not always have it.’
She waits. He cradles his cup in both hands, as if drawing warmth from it.
‘Before, I was like them. You understand?’ He is not looking at her, but rather at a point on the floor – as if gazing right through it to the slaughterhouse below. ‘I made money that way.’
She leans her rifle, barrel up, against the workbench. ‘And the hides you confiscate,’ she says quietly. ‘Like the sable fur. You sell those on, don’t you?’
In answer, he lowers his head. They sit like that for a while.
Then she says: ‘I don’t know what you expect me to say.’
‘I do not know, either.’
He takes a long drink from his cup. She stands up, nearly knocking her chair over backwards in the process. She’s not going to be his priest, give him absolution.
‘I need some sleep,’ she says.
As she walks away, he mutters something that stops her.
‘Maybe it knows.’
He is staring into his cup, which is empty.
‘Maybe it does,’ she says.
Vargas is gone. Or that’s what it looks like, when she wakes up. Sam is still on the floor beside her, and the door is slightly ajar. She scrambles t
o her feet, startling the dog, and rushes to the window. But no – Vargas is there. Taking a piss in the snow. When he comes back in, the slam of the door startles Sam.
‘You didn’t get me up,’ he says, rubbing his eyes. ‘Morning was my watch.’
Vargas only grunts. His face is haggard, his eyes puffy. She knows Sam must notice that, too, but he chooses not to mention it. Working mostly in silence, they put away their sleeping bags, pack up their gear, pull on their parkas. As she gnaws on a frozen energy bar, Nicole notices Vargas staring dully at his snowshoes – like a child who’s forgotten how to tie his laces. She goes over to see what the problem is.
‘Idiot,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘They’re on the wrong feet.’
He nods and switches them over. His movements are slow and laborious. The stink of vodka radiates from his pores, like a sickly cologne.
The temperature has risen in the night and it has stopped snowing. Now a mist hangs above the fresh snow. They don’t realize how dense it is until they’re standing in front of the shelter, ready to leave. Visibility is about thirty yards. Beyond that, the snow blends into the mist, the trees become shadows.
‘We could wait until it clears,’ Sam says.
‘Is fine,’ Vargas says. ‘We go.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’ she asks.
‘Stay if you want, if you are scared. I go.’
Vargas starts off without waiting for a reply, the dog trailing at his heels. Sam and Nicole exchange a glance. ‘The stubborn bastard,’ she says. ‘He’s half-cut.’
Sam nods. ‘I’ve never seen him like this.’
They follow. It’s either that or let him go. Even drunk, and exhausted, Vargas sets a good pace. Their track has been covered by the snowfall, but he manages to find it. He trudges along with his head down, bulldozing ahead. He does not watch the forest at all. Nicole does, though. She watches the mist, and the way it seems to be moving. Curling about trees, wrapping around branches. Landscape, mist and sky are all a uniform grey. It feels as if she is walking through a dream, the snow soft as cloud beneath her feet. When she looks back, the shelter is already gone – absorbed by the haze. She keeps one hand on the butt of her rifle, slung across her shoulder.