Wolf and Iron

by Gordon Rupert Dickson

  The door resisted opening when he reached it. But a blow of the butt of his .22 was all that was needed to break the cheap lock of the door handle; and the door itself swung open to show him a rack of rifles and shotguns. He found boxes of ammunition for the .22 and changed the .30/06 rifle the woman had given him for one that also accepted the same ammunition but had been customized to have a square magazine about the size of a box of kitchen matches under it, that would hold sixteen shells instead of the ordinary clip.

  He stuffed his pockets full with ammunition for both the .22 and the .30/06.

  He would have to give up the bike and the carrier pack that was on it, with all its contents; but perhaps he could still get out of this with his life. Hastily, he loaded the rifle’s box magazine. He went to the single window in the room and found, as he had hoped, that it looked out on the back of the building. Through its dirty pane he saw a slight, grassy slope upward to trees that crowned a low hill, trees that were the beginning of a wood that stretched northward. They were part of the same woods the railroad tracks had curved through before emerging here.

  Taking a rifle in each hand, he used their butts to smash out the window glass, then clean as many as possible of the glass shards from the bottom and sides of the window frame. He threw the rifles out, and taking a grip on the inner edge of the window sill, he made a twisting jump out and down onto the grass about four feet below.

  He snatched up the rifles and began to run for the trees. The wolf-dog appeared beside him, having clearly followed him out. Although Jeebee was running at top speed, the other was barely loping along with him, and still looked more interested than concerned. Run, you idiot! thought Jeebee, but did not have the breath to say it.

  He heard a shout behind him, and glancing briefly back over his shoulder, saw the man with the belt-length black beard had come out around the corner of the house behind him, carrying a rifle. The shout was unintelligible. Jeebee ignored it, continuing to run as fast as he could.

  The outer line of trees loomed close before him, perhaps only a dozen more strides away, but now there was also the clamor of barking dogs behind him, and Jeebee knew that dogs could run him down easily. A sudden panicky fear made him skid to a stop and swing around. At least he would go down looking as if he was willing to fight.

  The man he had seen a moment before had been joined by another, this one holding a pistol in one hand hanging down at his side. But between those two and Jeebee was a good-size pack of the local dogs he had seen earlier.

  They swarmed up the slope after him, the large, short-haired collielike dog in the lead. The two men were merely standing with their firearms, apparently content to let the dogs catch Jeebee and pull him down. It was plain that it was more agreeable to them to have him as a captive, to explain the workings of the electric bike, than it would have been to bring him back as a nontalking corpse.

  Now, he thought, was the time when he should shoot. When the two before him were not ready. But he could not do it. He could, however, fire on the dogs.

  But, now that he had halted, he saw the collielike dog well in advance of the rest of the pack. The wolf-dog, stopped beside him, had also turned back. Suddenly it moved. It became a blur of gray rushing toward the oncoming dogs. The awkward-looking, shambling gait he had noticed through the window was gone. The wolf-dog, its head and ears erect, was closing the distance in great fluid bounds that reminded Jeebee of dolphins he had once seen, breasting the bow waves of a cruise ship—“lads, before the wind,” Herman Melville had called them in Moby Dick, and those words, strangely right in this moment, came unexpectedly back into Jeebee’s mind.

  The dogs right behind the collie spun and bolted, tails between their legs. The collie, however, which Jeebee recognized as the one who had stood forth against Wolf’s entry to the store, checked, lowered its body into a half crouch, and sprang for the wolf-dog’s throat.

  The wolf-dog made no effort to evade the attack. He simply closed his jaws around the back of his attacker’s neck. There was no sound, but the collie’s legs suddenly went stiff and its body jerked once as the canine teeth pierced the spinal cord.

  It fell.

  The wolf-dog stood over it for a moment. The man with the rifle had lifted his weapon to aim at Jeebee after all. Now his aim swung instead to point at Jeebee’s companion, who was now turning from his dead opponent.

  Jeebee dropped the .22 and jerked the .30/06 to his shoulder. The imaginary line across the horns of the rear sight and the tip of the front blade bisected the beard above the man’s chest. This time Jeebee fired without hesitation.

  Then he snatched up the .22 and turned away himself, hearing the pistol bark behind him, and made it into the shadowed protection of the woods. The wolf-dog had run at the sound of Jeebee’s rifle. Now he was far ahead of him into the trees and out of sight.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jeebee plodded on through the woods. He had put a good two hours of walking behind him, since he escaped from the station. But now the westering sun was just above the horizon, and he was looking for a place to camp for the night.

  He had heard two more shots from the revolver after he was among the trees and out of sight, but none of the bullets evidently came anywhere near him. Nobody, it seemed, had made any effort to follow him. Nor was there any great reason to, he had thought to himself. They had his bike; and going into the woods after him would be to risk the almost certain chance that he could kill or badly wound more than one of them before they killed or captured him.

  Nor had he seen any further sign of—abruptly he found he could not think of the creature he had freed as a wolf-dog any longer. No dog had ever covered ground the way he had seen his companion do so in turning back to his attack on the collie. Dogs did not bound like deer. He, whoever he was, could only be an actual wolf, and nothing else.

  Jeebee came upon a little opening in the trees, a sort of pocket-sized glade. Beyond it, the trees thinned out and he could see into more open country beyond. There was little point in trying to go further today, in any case. He congratulated himself on still having an emergency flask of water in his backpack.

  He found a pair of trees on the edge of the clearing close enough together so that he could fasten his heat-reflecting plastic tarp between them. Some six feet out from the tarp, he put together the materials of a fire and lighted it. Gradually, as the small twigs with which he had started it picked up flame, he added larger and larger dead branches that he had gathered from the woods around him. At last he had a small, but warm, fire going; as well as a pile of more wood handy to see him through the night.

  His first buoyancy of spirit, which had come from escaping from the people in the station, reinforced by the fact that he now had a heavier rifle and more ammunition, began slowly to leak out of him.

  He took off his backpack and settled down to make an inventory of what he now owned in the world.

  Beyond what was in the pack, his pockets held only the boxes of ammunition for the .22 and the .30/06 and a few packages of irradiated foods, and some underwear and socks. The great value lay in the ammunition he had picked up, and the .30/06.

  Even so, he reminded himself, the store of ammunition was not inexhaustible. The farther west he got, the more difficult it would be to find any ammunition at all.

  He ate a little of his irradiated emergency food, washing it down with water from the plastic flask. When he was done, the flask was only a little more than half-full; which meant that his first search tomorrow must be for a source of drinkable water. Also, he must check the next ruined buildings he came across for blankets to replace the ones that had been carried on the bike and now were gone for good. For tonight he would roll himself in the solar-cell blanket. It did not have the qualities of the heat-reflecting tarp, but it would at least help to conserve his own body heat.

  Meanwhile, he found himself sitting, staring into the fire, not ready to sleep yet, but with his spirits as deeply fallen as it seemed possible for them to fall,
and an exhaustion of the mind that mirrored the exhaustion of his body.

  It was completely dark now. The light from the flames of the fire leaping before him made a wall of darkness around him, so that he caught mere glimpses of the trees surrounding the little clearing. He forgot about his surroundings and sat gazing only into the flames dancing above the burning branches and before the backdrop of utter blackness that was the night.

  The snap of burning firewood snatched him from the uneasy doze into which he had slipped, and through the red, upleaping flames of the fire he became aware that Wolf had appeared, having approached him noiselessly, curiously, until he was almost upon Jeebee. His ears were folded back, and he stretched his long neck cautiously toward Jeebee’s boots.

  Wolf—Jeebee said internally, speaking the name he had given the other in his mind, but not daring to break the spell of the moment by speaking the name out loud and possibly scaring him away.

  Jeebee did not move; and Wolf’s exploratory sniffs finally gave way to an almost explosive exhalation that tickled the hairs on Jeebee’s shin. Jeebee had to fight down the impulse to pull back his leg. So! the crazy thought came to him. Wolves do huff and puff!

  Little by little, Wolf’s investigation proceeded up Jeebee’s body until their noses were only inches apart. The eyes that looked like golden china from a distance, up close were kaleidoscope mosaics of brown and yellow and green. Jeebee found it difficult to breathe. The coarse fur of Wolf’s chest brushed the back of his hand, and unconsciously he began to scratch the thick ruff.

  A small part of his mind noted with some surprise that the collie’s teeth seemed to have left neither scratch nor puncture. Hesitantly, almost shyly, Wolf’s tongue flicked the end of Jeebee’s nose. In that instant of contact, the exquisite tension that had held Jeebee, burst.

  Impulsively, overwhelmingly, grateful for this tiny hint of trust, he threw his arms out to hug Wolf’s neck.

  Wolf jerked away with a growl of startlement and a clack of jaws that closed on empty air. He hesitated for just an instant with one foreleg raised. An uncertain, quizzical expression was written momentarily on his face and form. Then, suddenly, he was gone, vanished from the small circle of firelight.

  For a moment Jeebee could not believe he had lost Wolf again. Slowly, the reality of the other’s going dawned on him as he sat waiting, listening, hoping in spite of himself that Wolf would return. But he did not. After a little while, Jeebee rolled himself in the solar-cell blanket and slept.

  When he woke, stiff and chilled beside the dead fire in the early morning, Wolf was there, lying on the other side of the clutter of burnt wood and ashes. When Jeebee sat up, however, Wolf was instantly on his feet and lost into the brush and trees surrounding the campsite.

  Nonetheless, Jeebee felt a great upbounding of happiness inside him. The other had come back. He had not been driven away for good by Jeebee’s attempt to hold him.

  I don’t blame him, Jeebee thought as he got to his feet and began to urinate on the gray, dead ash of last night’s fire. If someone he hardly knew tried to grab him, he, also, would have avoided the attempt. He wondered if there was any chance of Wolf staying with him. He must remember to let Wolf make the advances, in his own time. If he was not scared off, the other just might share Jeebee’s travels—for a way, at least. Jeebee had not realized until now how hungry he had grown for any kind of company at all.

  The sun was barely up. Jeebee drank as little as possible from his water flask, took a strip of irradiated beef from his pack to chew on, and began to move. Awake and revivified, his mind was at work again. He had perhaps half a pound more of the beef in his pockets. Enough for two light meals for him—probably a gulp and a half to Wolf. They would both need food; but if Wolf was going to share his journey for any distance at all, he surely could be trusted to find his own food.

  Jeebee could concentrate on his own needs. Water was the most urgent of these. But while looking for water, he could also watch for signs of game. Anything—squirrel, porcupine, groundhog—along their way. It was too much to hope for signs of deer, or any prey at all large. But if it appeared, he now had the .30/06.

  Even if he found, and could shoot, something as large as a deer, it would only be a temporary solution. So far, he had been lucky in finding food as he went in looted houses and their storage places. But that was a luck that probably would not last in this less populated country.

  He dreamed of Wolf choosing to stay in touch with him. If Wolf did, Jeebee wondered, would there be any way, assuming they could become a team, that Wolf could help him find game? He now remembered reading that a pair of lions would work together in their hunting, one driving game toward where another was lying in wait. Did wolves work together that way? Or, if not, was there still some way Wolf could be brought to drive meat animals into his gun sights?

  He sighed. The whole idea was nothing more than wishful thinking. Wolf was clearly no dog to be either controlled or trained. In any case, until Wolf would trust him more, it was all supposition. But the working engine of his mind stored the possibility for future reference, in the days that followed, as Jeebee moved on westward and Wolf continued to touch base with him, most twilights and dawns.

  There was only one realistic answer for him now, Jeebee realized. He had been avoiding the more traveled east-west routes for fear of being ambushed. Such routes sometimes used—but more often paralleled—one of the old highways. Most road surfaces were still good, but beginning to be overgrown with vegetation from lack of use. Still, they usually indicated the best route across the countryside. Unfortunately, such routes were usually the most direct way to the next town or city.

  He could not risk entering any inhabited or formerly inhabited place, again. His last experience was a gentle example of what might be encountered. But along any road, with the weapons he now had, he could possibly find other travelers from whom it would be safer to trade—or buy.

  Or rob. He put that thought from him. He had not yet become that desperate. Not yet, at least.

  Luckily he had not dared show it to the woman back where he had gotten the gun, but in a money belt around his waist under his shirt were twenty-three gold coins he had bought long ago, as a result of casually answering a coin-of-the-month plan in a magazine advertisement. He had paid for the coins regularly until, one day, he had realized he really had no great interest in belonging to such a plan and had dropped out.

  But now, they were there, under his shirt. If he could find someone safe to buy from, he would rather do that than rob—and perhaps have to kill.

  But he told himself now that if necessary, he would do even those things to stay alive and get safely to the ranch.

  His knowledge of QSD must live, therefore he must. Life had no meaning for him otherwise, now.

  He began to scheme as he walked, a rifle in each hand. He badly missed his maps, most of which had been with the motorbike. But memory said the nearest large east-west highway had been south of where he was now.

  It was strange how the study group at Stoketon had already become almost dreamlike in his mind—like a childhood memory of a home lived in once, but for a short time and long ago. Jer Shandeau, Peter Wilbiggin, Kim Allen—these and all the others he had worked with there—had acquired the sort of sunset aura that had always seemed to surround people in fables and fairy tales. It was hard now to believe that they, and the life he had shared with them, had been real at all.

  He caught his thoughts sharply up from their wandering. A necessary change of route was what he had been thinking of. This day would be warmer than the one before. The gentler weather of spring was moving inevitably northward. So far, today was a day of sunshine and an occasional cloud, and the warmth caused his spirits instinctively to rise.

  He had become used to using the sun as a timepiece. Though he still wore his watch with an experimental hundred-year battery, he had gotten out of the habit of glancing at it. The sun told him that the morning was perhaps one quarter of it
s way toward noon. South would be less than a half turn to his left.

  To check that fact, he lifted the cord holding his compass around his neck and took the compass itself on the palm of his hand. It agreed with what he had read from the sun’s position, but was a little more precise in what could be read from its poised needle.

  He had instinctively been moving within the woods since they had left their camping spot of last night. The turn south would take them out into the open grassland.

  He regretted more than ever the loss of his South Dakota map.

  What would be the type of east-west road he would encounter first, going south? He wanted a former freeway, or some kind of road that ran far to the west, not just something that had been a two-lane strip of asphalt joining two small towns together.

  The routes of the former interstates would attract more travelers and give him a greater choice. He was, he thought, somewhere below what had once been the city of Pierre, South Dakota.

  Pierre was too large a place to approach safely, these days. If anything was left of it at all, those leavings would be divided into territories by well-armed and watchful gangs at feud with each other, and all on the lookout for any easy prey such as he, alone, would be.

  The change in direction unfortunately took him out of the occasional cover of trees in which he preferred to travel, when these were available. Wolf seemed to do so, too. One thing was certain; he could come and go like a shadow.

  But he was clearly following a roughly parallel course to Jeebee’s; and sometimes, now that nearly two weeks had passed since they met, he stayed the night.

  Jeebee was now traversing land that had once been largely farm- or pasture-land. Occasionally he crossed country roads, and every so often he sighted farm buildings in the distance.

  It made for swifter, if more open, going.

  But as if to compensate for this, the rainy weather that had given frequent showers, let up, and he went through a succession of days that were both warm and sunny. The dead grass in the untilled fields was drying out and a few blades of new green were among it.