The Raven's Gift

by Don Reardon

  Red chuckled. “And Greek! I’ll order us one of them gy-ros and a cal-zoni!”

  They laughed together at his awkward pronunciation and John began to chuckle, too.

  Red reached over and picked up a cordless phone sitting by the computer. John hadn’t noticed it sitting there, useless. “Here’s the phone,” he said, handing it to the girl. “Order me some Pad Thai from Stinky Fingers, with some mango coconut rice.”

  The girl put the phone to her ear, laughing, and rolled back on the bed. John stood up from his chair and walked over to her. “Let me see that thing,” he said. She stopped laughing and she held the phone out. He snatched it up and for a moment Red and the girl thought the fun was over, but then he put it to his own ear.

  “Hello? Is this Impossible Hut? I’d like to place an order. Yeah. One order of new jeans, yeah, mine aren’t fitting so well. I’ve lost a couple of pounds on this crazy diet. And a jet to pick us up and take us somewhere tropical, somewhere warm, yes, with a side order of cheesy fries. What do you want, Red?”

  The girl held her stomach and rolled around on the bed, laughing and gasping for air.

  “From Impossible Hut? I’ll take some king crab with drawn butter, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, and a Blackhawk chopper, fuelled and fully loaded for ass kicking.”

  “Did you get that? Wait, one more order. Rayna, what do you want?”

  She stopped laughing and sat up. Her face got serious. “I can get anything I want?” she asked.

  “Anything. Red’s buying.”

  “The hell I am!”

  “Okay, I’m buying. Order whatever you want, girl.”

  “Well, I’d like some ice cream. Chocolate with whipped cream on top. And I never had Japanese food before. What do they call it?”

  “Sushi.”

  “Yes, sushi. I want to try that.”

  “Is that all,” John asked, still holding the phone to his ear. “You want anything else?”

  The girl thought long and hard for a moment, turned her face up toward him, and smiled. “Just ice cream,” she said. “Chocolate ice cream.”

  HE LOST COUNT of how many days Anna had been sick, how long they had been without power, how many snow machines had raced away from the village, and how many groups he’d seen carrying corpses out to the cemetery at the north end of the village, just past their house. At first there had been a few crude plywood coffins. He suspected those had been hand cut. Then the bodies were wrapped in sheets. And finally, he would watch as just one or two people used all their strength to lug a body, no coffin or sheet, to a snow machine with a sled.

  One night, while Anna slept, he walked out to the cemetery to stretch his legs, but also to see what they were doing with the dead. He didn’t want to waste the batteries in his headlamp, so he kept the light off. He could see well enough with the snow reflecting the light coming from a waning half moon.

  Each step through the snow zapped his strength. He’d started to ration their canned food. He figured help would be coming soon enough, but he didn’t want to take any chances, and he worried what extent people would go to if they started running out of food and fuel to hunt and fish.

  He took several steps backward at the sight of the dead. The rows and rows of bodies stood out against the snow. Behind them the white wooden crosses from the old graves stood leaning like weary soldiers on guard. He didn’t count the corpses. There were too many to count.

  In slow, short steps he backed away from the frozen, lifeless faces. Then he turned and sprinted home. He wasn’t close enough to see their expressions, but he knew some of them were his students, and from the size of the smaller corpses, some of Anna’s too. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she joined them.

  36

  “See you, Red,” Rayna whispered over the rattle of the Tundra’s motor. She held his face with her bare hands and kissed him on the forehead. “Quyana-cakneq.”

  Red’s eyes welled as he watched the girl slide her hands into her mittens.

  John was glad the girl couldn’t see the tears beginning to stream down the man’s weathered cheeks. He wished he couldn’t, either.

  “You travel safe, kiddo. You’ll find gold where you’re going, girl,” he said. “And keep an eye on this goofy guy.”

  She laughed. “So funny you are, Red. Piuraa.”

  John took off his glove and shook Red’s hand. He gave a firm squeeze and nodded his head. He didn’t need to say any more.

  “Got everything?”

  “I think so,” John said.

  “Well. If you need something else, don’t be afraid to come back and get it.”

  John nodded again.

  He swung his leg over the machine’s black seat, and the girl crawled on behind him and wrapped her arms around him. “I’ve never been so happy to be on a sno-go,” she yelled to Red.

  Red grinned and patted her on the back, and then tapped John’s shoulder. “Go on,” he said, “you don’t have all day. Cut across that way toward the bluffs, then drop down on the river. Watch out for open spots and overflow on the river ice. Good luck, you two.”

  John grabbed the rifle leaning against the cowling. He slid the weapon beneath his thighs, crossways, and gave a two-fingered salute. Red winked at him, and John squeezed the throttle and the machine and sled lurched forward.

  He aimed the machine northeast, following the edge of town, in the direction Red had pointed out. He travelled at half speed, just fast enough to make them a difficult target to hit, but not so fast as to waste their fuel.

  They cruised past the dump, where the ravens circled by the hundreds, riding the breeze that whipped up against the ridges of dirt and trash. The birds dove and swooped, and tucked their broad black wings, plummeting toward the ground and then opening their wings at the last moment to sail up into the grey sky again. He watched the ravens as he passed, and not once did one of them roll over and dump luck in his direction. Had Red not stocked them with everything they would need, he would have considered stopping and picking around the black-speckled expanse of snow, garbage, bones, and ravens.

  Just before the looming river bluff east of town he stopped the machine and killed the motor. He sat for a moment, and then turned back to look at the city behind them.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Just stopping for a second, that’s all.”

  “You don’t have to do it,” she said. “Nobody should have to do something like that.”

  He wanted to know how she knew, but there was no point. She knew, just as she knew most everything he thought or said. He wondered if she knew about Red’s tears, and then he wondered if those tears were because Red knew John didn’t have it in him.

  “I think we owe it to him,” he said.

  The girl thought for a while and nodded.

  “He would do it for us,” John whispered.

  A bent figure emerged from the brush near the base of the bluffs. John lifted his rifle, but then realized the person was small, old, hunched, and carrying his ice pick the way the old woman carried her shotgun, in one hand like a cane.

  “I’ll be damned. There she is,” John said.

  “I knew she would wait for us,” the girl said.

  They both still sat on the machine, the girl’s arms still wrapped around his waist, her body pressed against his back. John took off a glove and held his fingers against his cheek, where the icy wind burned at his skin. “You start walking. That way,” John said, turning and touching her cheek with his fingers. She turned her head in the direction of the old woman.

  “It’s okay if you don’t go back, John. Red would understand.”

  John slid his rifle back under his legs and squeezed the handlebars as tight as he could. He leaned forward and rested his head between the bars and with his face turned sideways, relaxed his eyes until the ocean of pallid flat earth to the north of them blurred. He felt Rayna lean forward as well and rest her head against his back, her arms still around him. />
  They sat that way for a while, and then the girl let go and slid off the seat. The cold air rushed to fill the space against his back where she had been. She pulled off her glove and put her hand on his back, followed his spine to his neck, and then knelt down and held her warm palm to his face. Her icy irises seemed to search for his eyes and then stopped, as if they had found something important. The bright sunlight against the snow turned her pupils into two black pinholes, smaller than any he had ever seen, but at the same time he felt as if he could crawl into one of them and hide himself from the world.

  “I made a promise to her,” he said, not sure if his voice was audible over the wind. “And I made a deal with Red.”

  He felt his voice wither and he blinked hard and felt his tears beginning to freeze against his cheeks. She wiped away a tear with her thumb and then leaned in and touched her lips to the freezing tear, and then kissed the new pools forming at the edge of his eyes.

  “My grandmother used to tell me to never ask for a promise if I knew it wasn’t fair. Maybe Anna made you promise something, but Red didn’t. He doesn’t expect you to return.”

  She kissed his cheek again, and then stood. He sat up and gave the starter handle a quick tug. The machine fired, and he pumped the throttle lightly and let it idle.

  “I’ll be back. I need to at least tell him I can’t do it …”

  She lifted her eyebrows slightly and turned in the direction of the old woman, who had covered half the distance to the bluff.

  John gunned the machine, turned in a wide half arc, and eased the sled back toward the ravens circling Bethel.

  ANNA HADN’T SLEPT SOUNDLY in days, and when she finally did, she moaned and cried and muttered in her sleep. When she finally fell silent, he took out his pistol and rifle from the closet and set them within reach of the bed.

  The fever was only getting worse. Day and night she would sweat until her clothes were damp all the way through. He had worked tirelessly to keep her clothes changed, her water glass ice free, and as best he could, her nerves calm.

  He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to have a weapon close by, but the night before he was sure he’d heard shots. He’d started locking both doors, the door to the entry and the inside door. If someone came thinking they could do anything other than help Anna, they would be staring at the business end of his guns.

  Suddenly Anna sat straight up and pointed toward the bedroom door. John squinted in the dark, trying to see what she was looking at. “He’s here,” she whispered. “He’s here, for me.”

  John reached for his pistol and light. He flipped the light on, the beam cutting through their breath which hung above them in the freezing room. Anna slumped back on the bed, mumbling. He sat there waiting, almost wishing there was something or someone to unleash on. Trembling, John took a deep breath and leaned back, holding the pistol in one hand and turning off the headlamp with the other.

  He didn’t know how much longer she could hold out, but it couldn’t be too much longer before help came. It just couldn’t.

  37

  He could see Red’s body at the bottom of the steps. Fifty yards from the tank he turned the machine perpendicular to the building and killed the motor. He dove off the machine and pulled the rifle across the seat and hunched low, watching for movement.

  The gate to the storage area beneath the tank was open and Red’s snow machine gone. He could see that the tracks from the other machine were headed toward the middle of town. One of Red’s legs kicked, and John dashed toward the tank, rifle in hand.

  Red’s body was still, but his eyes were moving, and they tracked John’s approach. John knelt down and cradled his head in his lap. He could see two quarter-sized bloody holes in Red’s chest.

  “I bought you a little time,” Red gasped. “He’s got my machine. But he’s only got a half tank of gas.” Red convulsed and spit up a mouthful of blood. “You don’t have much time. Go. Save the girl. He knows about the gym. The kids. I told him the surviving kids are here in town, but he’ll be coming for you when he doesn’t find them. Sit me up, John. I want to be ready if he comes back.”

  “Who is he?” John asked. “What does he want?”

  “Blood,” Red said, lifting his hand to a dark, wet crimson smear on his neck. “He’s here for the blood of the survivors.”

  “YOU CAN’T GIVE UP ON ME,” he said. “Don’t quit fighting. You can beat this,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as her.

  Anna’s green eyes had already lost most of their life, the shine gone, replaced with a dull, listless stare, as if her spirit oozed from her body with each sniffle, each cough, and each glob of bright green phlegm spotted with droplets of blood.

  “Just hold on until help gets here. It’s on the way,” he said, knowing no one would make it in time. It was already too late. He hadn’t done enough.

  He cuddled beside her and spoke to her while running his fingers through her hair, not sure if she could even hear him or if she was asleep or in some feverish coma-like state. There was lifelessness about her. Even her hair felt wrong, thin and dying.

  “If anything happens to you, I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you,” he whispered. “I’ll just stay right here until I’m gone too. I won’t live without you, Anna. Don’t give up. Please. You get a little better and I’ll get us out of here. I promise. I’ll take you home. Back to the warm and sunshine. I’ll find a way to make everything all right. Just stay with me. Stay with me. Fight it. Come on. I’m right here, girl. I’ll always be here.”

  He said it, and he meant it. Life as he knew it wouldn’t be the same. It didn’t make sense to even consider going on without her. She alone had kept the world from crushing him.

  He slowly and quietly lifted the covers and slipped out of the bed. He pulled on his parka and boots, tucked the pistol into his waistband, and grabbed the rifle. He had to go check out the clinic to make sure there wasn’t something there that could help her.

  He was too late. Every possible medical supply had been taken. When he returned to her, empty-handed, she saw the look on his face and instead of crying, as he was so sure she would, she transformed. Right there on the bed, in front of him, she changed.

  38

  The old woman rode in the sled with the food and gear, the blue tarp wrapped around her. She wasn’t coughing, but he could tell she wasn’t doing well from the nights in the cold. The light coat of snow on the river ice made for fast, smooth travelling. The machine beneath him and the frigid wind in his face felt good. He felt strong on the machine. He knew the hunter would be coming, but the speed and the ground they were covering so quickly mattered.

  As he put distance between themselves and Bethel, the thin willows and sporadic patches of black spruce along the wide, meandering river’s edge gave way to thicker stands of spruce and birch. The mountains seemed to grow up out of the tundra with each mile.

  Broken-down snow machines and stripped four-wheelers abandoned along the riverbank made ominous trail markers. Each bend in the river revealed something more of the panicked flight from Bethel. Between the broken vehicles he spotted the occasional piece of clothing. A single red boot. A black glove. A pair of blue jeans flapping in the willows.

  The darkened eye sockets of half-buried skulls stared out at them from the passing snowdrifts. At one point he thought he saw a hand reaching up out of the ice. He slowed and saw it was just a stick with branches.

  A frozen River Styx, he thought to himself as the river turned north and then east and then west. Winding and winding, circling and circling, the underworld somewhere in the distance.

  John kept looking back. Checking to make sure the old woman was okay, but also worried about the other, faster machine that would be coming for them.

  The roofs and hoods of several pickup trucks and taxi cabs poked through the river ice in places they’d gotten stuck or run out of gas on the frantic arctic exodus from Bethel. He passed a set of four tires poking up through the ice, the r
idiculous long undercarriage of a stretch limo.

  The sun moved across the southern sky as he manoeuvred carefully around the metal corpses that stretched for as far as he could see from each twist in the river. He expected the steel carnage to begin thinning out, but then wondered if the wreckage stretched on forever.

  ANNA JUST SMILED her lovely smile. She knew. He didn’t know if she knew it would be that night, or if she just knew there was no reason left to hope. She knew.

  “Come here,” she said. “Hold me.”

  He pulled off his parka and crawled beneath the covers and wrapped his arms around her. The cool air burned at his nostrils and his breath froze against the nylon sleeping bags over them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry for what? I should be the one who’s sorry. I should have found a way out.”

  “I’m sorry for bringing us here,” she said. “We shouldn’t have come. We didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong here. I just thought maybe we should connect with your heritage for our children. I was wrong, John.”

  “That’s not true. The regular life isn’t for us. And don’t give up on me. I don’t like your tone. You can’t give up on me, okay? Okay?”

  “You’re not mad that I made the decision to bring us here?”

  “That was our decision. We made it together,” he said.

  “Yeah, but I was the one … I just wanted you to know where you came from.”

  She stopped and coughed. The air crackled deep within her chest and the phlegm and mucus seemed too thick for her to bring up. She coughed again, harder, and then rested her head on the pillow, her eyes wet with tears from the effort.

  “I was the one,” she whispered, “who pushed for it.”

  “It’s okay. Who is to say this isn’t happening everywhere? This could have happened to us anywhere. No matter where we chose to live. Besides, where else could we live?”