by Rob Smales
I hear a ravening growl, then another, loud and clear, not filtered through the plane’s hull or window glass. I roll to my side, toward the sound, and see those shapes through the windshield again, passing this way and that. Hear them yipping and growling there at the broken window, trying to get in the way they did before. A flanking maneuver. I hope my hastily made lattice of branches will hold. If it gives way I’m done for. We’re all done for.
Keep an eye on them, Billy, I think as I roll slowly away from the windshield, unable to watch. You keep an eye on them, while I . . .
Rolling brings the door into view, and here, lying on the ceiling, or the floor, or whatever the hell it is now, I find a new thing in the plane. There’s blood on the door, dark in the fading, dusky light, and more on that upside down sign about watching your head. The blood on the sign is shaped like a comma: thick at the top, trailing down through a short, narrowing curve, almost like an arrow. An arrow pointing to the new thing.
A wolf’s foot.
It lies there below the door, severed at the wrist—do they call it a wrist, when it’s a dog?—snow crystals still sticking to the gray fur between the pads at one end, white bone sticking out of the red meat at the other.
The red meat.
Keep an eye on them, Billy, I think again, though all that comes out of my mouth is a low moan. And drool. My breath practically slurps in and out, and I feel moisture on my chin as I wriggle close enough to touch the foot. The adrenaline is leaving my system, though, and I can’t ignore the pain any more, and the pressure in my head is growing. Grown. Grown huge, and monstrous.
I pull the paw to me, almost cuddling it: Christ, I must look to Maggie like some overgrown toddler, snuggling his Wubbie in the cradle, but I can’t help it. Just by chance, I grabbed it oriented to me, stub up, toes down. Some part of me assumed it would be stiff, and stuffed-feeling, but it’s not. It’s flexible, and soft, and still . . . warm.
The pressure in my head is huge and pushing, pushing me toward the darkness. Toward rest. I know I can’t fight it off: losing this battle is the cost of winning the one at the door. I look at the stump of the foot, snugged up against my chest, the warm, raw, red end almost touching my chin. It’s a bit mashed, a bit messy. Not the cleanest cut. Butchery by Piper.
My head propels me brutally toward the precipice of consciousness, but my stomach fights back. It’s a hard, tight ball of pain and want, so shriveled-feeling as to be unable to even growl any more. My head pushes, but my stomach rolls my tongue out and into that rough butchery just as my awareness receives that one final shove, and I savor the taste, salty and sweet and oh-so-good, as I finally topple into the dark.
The flare is a compromise, but I think it’s a good one. I woke with the taste of salt on my tongue and dried blood on my lips. It may be mine, but it may not—I’m somewhat hazy on what happened last night once the wolf got a hold of my boot. The sun is high, the day bright, and a glance through the windows shows some of the snow is churned and red, and I have this foot . . .
Did the pack turn on one of its own? Is that why my lattice held? Did I—I hold up the foot, a lucky charm from the world’s largest rabbit—do this?
No matter. Not really.
I chuckle at the thought that one of the wolves that came to make a meal of us has become, instead, a meal itself. At least I think it’s a laugh. There are tears.
Anyway, I woke holding this stiff foot like a stuffed animal, snuggling with it for Christ’s sake! And the blood on my lips and chin, well, it’s . . . it’s almost as if I was sucking on the damn thing in my sleep, like some great horrific lollipop. Thinking that should, I know, make me feel ill at the very least. Should make my stomach cramp and lurch, make my throat-flapper thing work and work as I try not to be sick. It should, I know.
But it doesn’t. Not at all.
In fact, I was looking outside to see the state of the fire when I saw the blood in the snow. But there is no fire, and no wood—I used it all to make the lattice, I think. I consider, for the barest instant, going to gather more wood and start a cookfire, but the thought is pushed aside immediately, crushed aside, by the dreamlike memory of a taste, both salty and sweet. My mouth floods with saliva, my grip on the foot tightening of its own volition, and I think raw? My God, not raw!
A flare! pipes up that annoying part of my mind, though this time it’s making so much sense, so much perfect sense. Those flares are self-igniting, and they’re right there in the kit.
So here I sit, hands trembling so I almost drop the bright and hissing flare, though I never come close to losing my grip on that foot. Part of my mind, that goddamned annoying part that chooses when and where to speak with no input from me, points out that just a short time ago I would have found that foot disgusting. Would have refused to even touch the thing, never mind eat it.
Now, though, my mouth is already open, saliva overspilling my lips as the bright white flame of the flare blackens the fur and crisps the skin, and cooks the flesh, and my stomach rumbles. The burnt-hair stink that fills the closed air of the Piper stings my nose, and makes my eyes run with tears—but it’s the best, most delicious thing I’ve ever smelled. I manage to wait until about half the thing is scorched before I drop the flare, nearly setting myself on fire, though I barely notice.
I start out peeling back the stiff, blackened coating of fur, but that takes too long; mere seconds later I adopt a two-handed, corn-on-the-cob style of eating. My teeth make short work of the scorched wrapper encasing the meat, and I find myself picturing well-done chicken skin, and the golden-brown skin of the Christmas goose my mother used to make. This skin is crunchier, and bitter, but the flesh beneath it is sweet and juicy. I come across bits I’d never have eaten before, the greasy fat and rubbery gristle, but they don’t even give me pause; I gulp them down and keep on going.
They’re part of the absolute, all-time best meal I’ve ever had. I don’t stop when I run out of scorched flesh, either. I can’t. I’m too busy pulling apart the bones to get to the meat in between, the paw like a great big chicken wing from Delo’s back home.
I’ve never liked chicken wings. Way too much work for not enough reward.
A part of me warns that I should slow down, that I should be eating with more care, but I can no more slow than I could stop. Besides, it is that rational, annoying part of me, and this is an opportunity to ignore it for once, so ignore it I do—right up until the puking starts.
It comes hard and fast. I have a moment to think no, wait, and then it’s too late. My belly, so used to being an angry, empty ball of pain that I try to ignore, shoots a sudden spike of agony through me. I curl around the hurt so hard my knees strike my face, and I barely dodge a broken nose. The meat, the meal, jets out of me as I curl, a red-pink undigested froth, black-flecked and reeking, and I’m begging my body to stop, begging my stomach not to do this. This is the only meal it—I—am ever likely to have again. This is supposed to keep us alive, damn it!
But it doesn’t listen, doesn’t stop, and the thick convulsions don’t even slow until I’m empty, my idiot body pumping until the well’s run dry. Once I realize it’s not going to stop until everything is gone and more—my spoiled child of a stomach back to demanding food without cease—I wish for the darkness to come again, to sweep me away. I’ve occasionally wished for unconsciousness since my ordeal began, and usually I’ve gotten it, but not this time. This time I lie here, curled around that jabbing stone in my middle, and I weep. I cry with tears, then without. I wish for the pain to go away, then that I could have back that moment when I felt food in my belly—not full, never that, not even close, but something is so, so much better than nothing—and then I almost, almost wish that whatever is wrong with my head would hurry up and finish me, since I can’t seem to get the job done.
That stops me. That sets me to crying anew, because I don’t wish that. I wish, with all my heart, that this was all over, but I don’t wish for that. I want to survive. I look up at Maggie, st
ill hanging there, watching me impassively. Watching me weep.
“I’m sorry, hon. I’m trying, I really am, but I don’t know what else to do. I think all the wolves have to do is be patient. All they have to do is wait, and they can have us.”
I lower my voice trying not to be overheard from the front of the plane.
“It won’t just be Bill next time. They’ll have us all. We’ll all be food for the wolves.”
I lie there, thinking about those wolves, and the cold, and the snow, trying not to think about my hunger, for a long, long time. The flare has gone out, and night has fallen, but it feels like hours before the real darkness finally comes, and I sleep.
I am eating again. I’ve had dreams like this before, dreams of Christmas dinners, and pizza parlors, and childish dreams of Mother telling me to clean my plate, using the image of starving children in Africa to get me to eat every bite. This, though, this is a new one.
I’m eating the paw.
It has to be the paw. There is only the paw—it’s not like those pizza parlors where I can have as much as I want, whenever I want, or Mother putting a second helping in front of me when I’ve barely finished the first. There has only been the one, there will only be the one, but I’m getting a second crack at it, it seems. And it is so, so good.
This is an odd dream, where I am aware I’m dreaming, where I know this is my second run at this thing, and I’m determined not to make the same mistakes. I’m determined to learn. To survive.
It’s hard—a constant battle—but I force myself to slow down, to take it easy. I give my stomach time—a little, anyway, as much as I can stand—to come to grips with the meat. To come to terms with it. To accept it. Mother’s voice ripples through my head, piped in like the music in that pizza parlor, telling me again and again, chew your food, don’t eat like a savage, chew your food. And I do chew, sometimes counting to thirty as I do so, sometimes losing count and starting again, trying to focus on the numbers rather than the meat filling my mouth, determined not to just bite and swallow, like a savage.
And the chewing. The chewing is so good. The chewing is wonderful. The meat is juicy, and full of flavor, with none of those bits of blackened fur to bitter the feast. And the eating is easy: I started at the thick end again, where the meat is plentiful, rather than in among the smaller bones of the paw, where chicken wing effort is required. Too much work for too little reward.
I open my eyes, slowly, not wanting to interrupt the dream, wishing it could go on and on . . . and it does go on. I open my eyes to the light of day and see the meat, the good, red meat, the dream-paw become flesh, right in front of me. I am surprised—amazed, more like—but that doesn’t stop me from taking another bite, from chewing slowly, carefully, definitely not like a savage.
I look about the plane as I chew. I’ve no idea what time it is, but the sun seems to be high in the sky, and bright, and warming the plane a bit as it does. I don’t have a fire, but I still have some of those plugs, I think, and maybe a flare or two. My wooden lattice seems to have held, and I think I’m actually feeling better. I pause in my chewing, listening to my body work in the silence.
Gurgling, an almost happy sound, with no sign of churning in my guts. I think I really do feel better; even the pain in my head seems . . . lighter.
I look at the paw, seeing for the first time that it’s larger than I remember, longer, more than just a paw and wrist. There’s more than one meal here, if I can stop myself soon. Ration myself. Maybe far more than one.
I look at the paw, with all its chicken-wing boniness. Maybe I’ll just finish that now. Slow myself down. Get all of that work out of the way. I look at the claws at the end of the paw, at their clear coat and white ends. French tips, I think those are called.
Suddenly a woman passes through my head, small and dark and smiling. She holds a paw aloft, turning it gently this way and that, showing the white-tipped claws to advantage. You like? she says, and I nod, smiling a bit myself.
Strange, the things your mind latches onto when you think you’re going to live.
The noise is disturbing: high and whining, growing louder by the second. I think of the wolves, think that they’re back, coming to try to get into my den again, to try to take me. And my food. Again.
No.
I listen further, moving quietly from window to window, peering out into the sun-splashed clearing, looking to the tree line. Seeking out movement. It’s the middle of the day, not their usual time, I think, but they must be getting desperate, those wolves.
But this is not a wolf sound.
The sound, an annoying buzz that splits the air and pains the head, is familiar. Sort of. Part of me thinks it almost recognizes the sound, and a word
(snowmobile)
floats through my head, but it’s not connected to anything else in there, not anchored to food, or warmth, or wolves, so it just floats on out. The noise—loud, louder, oh God so loud—stops. Cuts off. Leaves silence in its wake. I hunker, not moving about the den any longer but remaining quite motionless, as still as I can. Listening.
The crunch of snow.
Again.
Footsteps? Something—or things—moving toward the den? From the back, where it tapers to nothing and there are no windows?
“Is this it? This has to be it, right?”
“Dude, do you know of any other small planes that went down recently?”
I hear the sounds, and they are familiar, but then so are the yips and howls of the wolf pack.
“We should call this in, right? Who do we call?”
“We’re not calling anyone now. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no coverage—unless you have one of those military sat-phones I keep seeing in the movies hidden up your ass or something.”
I recognize the sounds. Words. Those are words—I used to use them myself. I haven’t, though. Not for a while. Not since Maggie and Bill left. They left me some food—quite a bit, actually—but they took their words with them. I turn and look from place to place, at the food they left behind. At the meat.
Not a lot left.
But it’s mine.
I edge toward the door. Slowly. With great stealth. Surprise is a weapon, like my stick and my knife, and I will use it as I will use them. My knee still pains me, though not nearly so much, and it shouldn’t slow me when I—
“What’s that? Is that a fire pit?”
“I don’t—holy shit, I think you’re right! Does that . . . ho-leeeeeey shit, does that mean . . . ?”
“It’s been three weeks, man! Do you really think there could be a survivor? After this long?”
Inside the den my eyes are wide, and I tremble, almost violently, from crown to heel. There are at least two of them, maybe more, and one of their sounds has echoed in my mind, has struck off something in there and bounced about a bit. Come to rest.
Survivor.
That’s me. I am. No matter what, that’s what I am.
There are at least two, maybe a whole new pack, like the wolves. And, like the wolves, they want what I have. What I need.
They cannot have it.
I burst through the door, erupting out into the sunlight and snow, my paws filled with branch and blade, teeth bared in anger and determination to protect my den and dinner.
Determination to survive.
PLAYMATE WANTED
There was one. Walking along the highway shoulder, green pack on her back, worn boots scuffing dust as she trudged along. She was just passing a sign for a turnoff ahead, but he ignored the sign, internal pressure keeping his focus tight upon her.
I hope this isn’t a false alarm, he thought. She looks okay from a distance, but she needs to be more than just okay. Oh God, let her be more than just okay.
He lowered the passenger’s side window as the big caddy smoothly swung to the edge of the tarmac, and Benny leaned over a bit so that he could see the girl from a better angle. He called to her. “Excuse me?”
The girl stopped walkin
g and bent a bit to squint through the open window.
Perfect, sighed the Need within him.
Benny gazed out at a tall girl of twenty, maybe twenty-two. Her dark hair was long, the bangs cut straight across the forehead above dark, serious eyes. Her lashes were thick, her mouth generous. Her green windbreaker and matching backpack concealed most of her upper body, but her jeans were tight, and clung to curvy hips and legs. Benny had done his reading, and knew that people with his . . . proclivities were said to focus on types. If he had a type, then an almost perfect example of it stood before him. The final test was to hear her speak. He held his breath and watched her perfect lips part.
“Can I help you?”
Yes! Deep within his chest, in the dark place where the Need lived and grew, Benny felt a thrilling little tingle at the sound of the girl’s rich voice.
Benny was well aware that she saw a pot-bellied thirty-something man wearing an unfashionable blue spring jacket. She saw thinning brown hair hanging across his forehead to fall into his bleary, bloodshot eyes. She saw teeth, discolored and crooked from a lifetime of smoking and drinking with not enough brushing and flossing.
He said “Why, yes. I believe you can!”
And he was aware she saw the gun, usually kept concealed in a gym bag on the passenger’s seat, but now in plain sight in Benny’s right hand. He brought it up, flat and level before her widening eyes, and shot her in the throat.
Halfway home, Benny had to pull over to shoot her again. The tranquilizer dart he’d stuck her with should have kept her down for the count, but only two hours into his return trip he thought he heard thumping coming from the trunk. He turned the radio down, then off.
Yes, there it was. Rapid thumping and muffled shouts coming from the rear of the vehicle. Benny sighed, wishing he felt safe hunting closer to home; not only was there the wear and tear on his trunk lining, but he was putting some serious miles on the caddy. He made a mental note to make an appointment for a tune-up and oil change, and checked his mirrors for traffic. Seeing none, he pulled over to the side of the two-lane highway he had been cruising along, threw the gearshift up into park, then closed his eyes and just sat for a moment. The thumping had grown faster—harder—as he’d pulled over, and the shouts had grown to a muffled howling. Now, maybe in response to the car stopping, the girl began to scream. Inside he felt light and airy, almost joyous, as the Need within him fairly danced to her song of terror. When the girl’s increasing struggles actually began to rock the Cadillac, Benny sighed again and opened his door.