Wolves of Winter

by Tyrell Johnson

  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.

  They passed the plates around, and I ogled the big brown chunk of meat in front of me.

  “Damn, that’s hot,” Harper said, mouth open, sucking in air to cool off his tongue.

  “I told you,” Lance said.

  I waited, broke mine apart as best I could, then dove in. It was a bit chewy but tasted something like a cross between beef and pork. Or at least what I remembered beef and pork tasting like. Yes, it was hot; yes, it burned my tongue; no, I didn’t bitch about it.

  We ate in silence as the wind died down and the flames gathered together into one big spire, swaying only slightly as it stretched toward the sky. Above us, silky clouds passed over bright stars. I thought of our cabins back home. Meals with Mom, Jeryl, Ken, Ramsey. What were they doing now? Where did they think I was? Then there was a shout from the north side of camp. The sound of feet scraping through snow.

  “Anders!” someone yelled.

  Harper stood and looked north into the darkness. We all did the same. Well, I looked, didn’t stand. A man came running toward our fire, searching our faces, panic in his eyes. I hadn’t seen this man yet; he was small, skinny, with a patchy beard.

  “Fuck,” Harper said, staring past the man, past the camp. In the dark open stretch of snow, I saw a figure running away. A woman, I thought. Desperate. Toppling over. Standing back up. Pushing against the snow as it exploded behind her with every kick of her boots.

  “Anders!” the skinny man yelled again. Men at the other fires were standing now, looking from the panicked man to the figure running into the darkness.

  Anders came from behind a tent to our right. “What is it?” His eyes were all squinty serious.

  “Ariane. She’s . . .” He pointed.

  “Her mask?” Anders asked.

  “I’m not sure. I think she threw it off.”

  Anders’s eyes settled on mine. There was something in them I didn’t like. The wheels were turning. Looked like they were turning in my direction.

  Braylen took a step toward Anders, eyes on the running woman. “Someone could get a mask and gloves on, ride her down easy enough.”

  Anders shook his head. “She could fight back, scratch you. Pull off your mask. That’s all it would take.”

  “Wait till morning then?” Braylen said. “Wait till she tires out? She can’t go on forever.”

  “No,” Anders said. “Harper.” It was his name, but it was also an order.

  “Anders,” Braylen pleaded. “No.”

  Anders just gave her a look like they were rehashing an old argument. She kept her mouth shut as Harper ran toward a small brown tent. Seconds later he burst out with a large rifle in his hands. He walked north toward the retreating figure.

  “Come on, Annie, let’s get back to your tent.” Braylen put a hand on my shoulder, worry in her voice. I didn’t turn.

  Harper stopped walking. Aimed.

  I almost said something then. Almost called out to distract him, to give the woman a chance, whoever she was, but I didn’t.

  Bang! The shot burst into the air. I watched as the running figure went down. A woman. Fleeing for her life. Helpless. Shot. I felt numb.

  I heard Anders speaking to Harper and the others. Issuing orders. “Get a mask, see if she’s alive.” My ears were ringing. Such a loud ringing. It blanketed the world, pushed out all the other sounds. Braylen grabbed my arm and led me away. I didn’t protest this time.

  Once we were back in my tent, Braylen helped me with my boots and pants. I let her. I didn’t care. “She had the flu, you have to understand that. We were trying to cure her. Help her. Help us all, you know?”

  Boots off. Pants off. I lay back in the cot.

  “We couldn’t let her get away. And we couldn’t risk going after her and infecting ourselves. Ariane could have spread it again. Who knew who she might infect. She was a dying woman anyway. Anders’s methods can be . . . harsh, but they work. He gets the job done. Always.” Her face softened. “You understand, right? Just nod, okay? You understand? We had no choice.”

  I closed my eyes, tired. I listened to the ringing in my ears. Dimmer now—an ambulance fading into the distance, a sound from the old world.

  Eventually, Braylen left. I heard the zipper being pulled open, then closed. Prongs snapping like tiny machine guns.

  24

  I got sick before Dad.

  It was the flu. Some people, few people, managed to get over it. I was one of them. I have these weird, hazy memories of staying home from school. Of lying flat on my bed, lights off because my head hurt so much. Aches and pains all over. Cold sweats. Tossing and turning. It was miserable.

  I had vivid dreams too. I remember waking up from a nightmare about a bee. It was the size of a cat and was chasing me through the woods. I tried to run, but it caught up to me and stung my arm. I sat up in bed—swore I could still feel the bee’s stinger in my shoulder—and there was Dad, sitting next to me, rubbing his beard, which he always did when he was thinking hard, stressed, or deciding which card to play next in a game of hearts.

  I was sweating, feeling worse than ever, and I was scared. I thought I was dying. Really dying. Not just the dramatic, I-feel-so-gross-I-think-I’m-dying feeling, but a deep, hollow fear that my life was ending.

  Dad pushed me back to my pillow. “It’s okay, honey. I’m here. I gotchya. You’re gonna be all right. I promise.” His voice was a whisper. His presence calming. The smell of him familiar. I was sixteen, but in my weakness, I felt like a child again.

  “Just go back to sleep,” he said. “You’re going to be all right now.”

  Funny thing is, I really did believe him. And he was right. The next morning I felt better. Then the next, I was even better. By the end of the week, I was shooting the compound bow like nothing had happened. And that’s exactly what Mom and Dad told me to tell people. I didn’t have the flu. I was just staying in with family for a few days. We moved on so quickly, sometimes I wonder if it actually didn’t happen.

  But something had happened. I just hadn’t noticed quite yet: the glassy look in Dad’s eyes, his pale face, sweaty palms. The beginning of the end.

  “And nothing can happen more beautiful than death,” Walt Whitman says. Fucking liar.

  * * *

  I woke to the sound of footsteps and voices outside my tent. Men with white masks and gloves came busting through the tent flaps, carrying another cot with someone lying on it. A body. A woman. She was naked from the waist up apart from bandages that wrapped around and around her torso and the mask plastered over her mouth. There was a dark red stain just under her ribs.

  Braylen followed the men in. She had her own mask on and gloves and a briefcase in her hand. She threw it on the table and opened it.

  “Sorry to wake you,” she said. “But we need your help. Here. Put this on.” She held out a mask. A white surgical mask like the ones they used to make us wear back in Eagle. I slipped it on.

  The men turned to leave. “More bandages, and fire. I need some light,” she said as she pulled out a needle, tubes, and clear plastic bags from her briefcase. “Ariane’s been shot”—been shot, like it was an accident—“and she’s lost a lot of blood.” Ariane moaned and shifted in her cot. She had long dark hair that was matted to her light brown skin. She looked Inuit, if I had to guess.

  “Unfortunately, you’re our only option,” she said. “Your blood is O negative. Universal donor. It’s rare in the general population but fairly common in redheads. Ariane is O negative, which means she can only receive O negative. No one else in camp has it, so you’re the only one who can help her.” The men came back with more banda
ges and a pan filled with burning, smoking wood, which they set on the table next to Braylen’s briefcase.

  “We need your blood. She needs your blood. Will you help?”

  I thought about shaking my head again, shoving her and making a run for the door. Oh God, I just wanted to run. To be anywhere but that tent. The blood. The flu. The needle. The fire that was all too warm and bright and filling the space with smoke. A woman’s life was on the line, right? It all felt wrong.

  “Listen,” Braylen said. “Either do this willingly or we can hold you down and paralyze you again. Your choice. But I’m not going to let her just die. I can’t.”

  I felt coals burning in my stomach. Braylen’s calm expression drilled into me. I thought about Jeryl, about Mom, Jax. What would they do in this situation?

  I held out my arm.

  “Good girl,” Braylen said. She placed a plastic bag on the ground. It was connected to a long, clear tube, which was attached to a needle. She pinched my forearm, then pressed the needle to my skin. Adjusted. Pressed again. Then with a slight prick, she slid it into my vein. A vial filled with my blood. Dark red, running through the tube and snaking down into the plastic bag. With one hand still on the needle, Braylen grabbed a roll of tape from her briefcase. She ripped off a small strip with her teeth and used it to pin the needle to my skin.

  “There we go,” she said. Then she turned and walked over to Ariane’s cot on the other side of the table.

  I had a dark feeling about all of it, like it was some sort of trick I didn’t fully understand. Too late now. I lay back, staring at the needle in my arm, watching the blood run out of me in a steady, flowing current.

  25

  The woman didn’t wake all the next day.

  Braylen and a few others came and went. Changed bandages, poked and prodded her, took notes on a notepad. Braylen brought me food and took me for our usual walk around the camp, but she wasn’t very talkative. I wasn’t either.

  I napped again that afternoon. I don’t know if it was from having given blood, or maybe something about being captive, but I was so tired—all the time.

  When I woke, it was dark outside. There were voices in my tent, talking excitedly. I kept my eyes closed and listened.

  “How’s this possible?” It was Anders.

  “I don’t know, but look”—definitely Braylen—“you can’t deny it. The flu is gone.” The flu is gone?

  “But she’d crossed the threshold,” Anders said.

  “I know.” Braylen sounded nearly giddy. “It’s the blood. The girl’s.”

  “Even if she is immune, how would her blood reverse the symptoms? It’s impossible.”

  Footsteps moved toward me. I opened my eyes. Anders was standing over me, an ugly frown on his ugly face.

  “Awake, hmm?” he said, his eyes intense. “Good. It’s time to start talking. Who are you?”

  I kept my face impassive, doing my best to look bored, but inside, my thoughts were spiraling out of control.

  “What’s your name? Your last name? How do you know Jackson?”

  “Leave her,” Braylen said. “She’s not going to talk.”

  Anders slammed a hand down on the table by my bed, rattling the pot of coals smoking there. I clenched a fistful of blanket in my hand.

  “Who the hell are you?” he yelled.

  Braylen stepped between me and Anders. “Out. Now.” Her voice had changed.

  For a moment, Anders looked like he was going to refuse, maybe even hit Braylen. But he just turned sharply. The tent flap snapped, and he was gone.

  Braylen looked over at Ariane, who was still asleep, then back at me. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then followed Anders out. I was left to the stuffy tent, the sound of voices outside, and the tumble of questions rattling, banging, slamming against my brain.

  * * *

  “Psst.”

  I opened my eyes. I wasn’t sleeping. Couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried.

  “Psst.”

  I looked toward the tent flap and watched the shadow of a guard taking his seat outside. Then another shadow appeared alongside, followed by footsteps from behind the tent. Three guards now. Great. I was precious cargo. At least my blood was.

  “Hey.” The voice was inside the tent.

  Ariane’s head lifted, eyes staring at me.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Are you numbed?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Are you tied up?”

  “No,” I said out loud. The sound of my voice was strange after not hearing it for so long.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Here,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her where our settlement was. I didn’t trust anyone anymore.

  “How did they find you?”

  “I . . . sort of stumbled into them.”

  She nodded like my answer made sense.

  “You?” I asked.

  “They took me from my home. Well, what was left of my home.” She had an odd way of speaking, carefully enunciating each word.

  “What happened?”

  She brushed a cord of black hair behind her ear. Her face was round, her nose flat, and there was something about her that was striking. The whites of her eyes seemed to glow against her dark irises and dark skin, which looked smooth and soft. “They burned it down. All of it. Do you remember the fires? The big ones in Utah, Kansas, Edmonton. I do not remember how many others. The news said it was looters. It was not looters.” She looked at me, dark eyes studying my face. “It was Immunity, burning down houses, where people with the flu outnumbered those without. Whole towns up in flames. It did not matter to them that there were women and children who were not sick, who could have been saved. They closed off the roads.”

  I could taste bile in the back of my throat. Fear. Disgust. Anger. All of it.

  “My son and I managed to escape. That’s when Anders found us. He took pity on us. He told me he would take care of my boy. He said they had a serum to prevent the flu.” There was no tremor in her voice, no crack or shudder, but I saw tears sliding down her cheeks. “He gave us the injection and took us north with him and the others who followed his orders. Then my son got sick. It wasn’t the flu. It was something else. It was the injections Anders gave us. It upset his mind. My boy was . . . different. And then he was dead. I took sick just after my son did. It was the flu for me. It was the injection. Anders didn’t save us; he took us for his experiments.”

  She laid her head back in her cot, exhausted.

  “He will watch the rest of the world burn. Like my home. Like my son.” She was shaking her head against her pillow, staring at the ceiling. “Damn him to hell.”

  She closed her eyes, more tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Anders. I could picture him standing over my bed. Wild eyes. Wolf teeth. My knife in his hand. What had happened to the world had made animals or monsters of us all. Survivors or murderers. Sometimes the line between the two was blurry, but in Anders’s case, it was clear. The man was a monster. He’d burned Ariane’s home, killed her son, given her the flu. And somehow I’d healed her. I was the answer he was looking for. I needed to get the hell out of there.

  I looked at Ariane. Her breathing had slowed, face relaxed, chest rising up and down. Did she know she was healed? Did she care? I closed my eyes, hoping to drift into a black, empty sleep. But behind my lids, all I saw was red.

  In the morning, Ariane was gone.

  26

  It snowed the next day. Small, lazy flakes that drifted in the wind. You’d think that such tiny things wouldn’t make a difference. But they do. Millions of them piling on top of each other, over and over. All day long. It felt colder too.

  Braylen took me for our walk as usual. But it was different this time. Because I knew too much. And Braylen knew that I knew. I caught her glancing at me. A strange look on her face. Suspicion, maybe. Or worry. Then she looked around, as if checking to se
e if anyone was within hearing distance. “You don’t like Anders. You don’t like Immunity, I get it. There are . . . other options.”

  A man walked past us and Braylen went quiet and straightened.

  Other options? What was she talking about? Was she not a believer in what Immunity was doing?

  When the man was far enough away, Braylen continued. “Anders is a genius, really, and the flu was his passion. He wanted to find a cure. He wanted to improve mankind. He had a wife and daughter, did you know that?”

  We were passing through the trees, just west of the tents now, out of earshot of most of the camp. I remembered Anders hovering over my cot. He’d mentioned his daughter.

  “His wife and daughter both got the flu.” Braylen brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “They both died. That’s when everything changed. That’s when his passion became an obsession. Nothing else mattered to him. He wants the cure. He wants to prove to himself and the world that he can find it. And he doesn’t care who gets in his way.”

  The sick feeling I’d had since talking to Ariane began to spread, to crawl around on my skin. We started angling slowly back toward camp, like Braylen was afraid to get too far.

  “He’s a changed man. He won’t let just anyone have it now. I know. I’ve heard him talking. Think about it. A cure will be the most valuable merchandise in the world. He knows this.”

  After a while, we reached the tents, but there were more people around now, starting fires. I thought about what Ariane had said and what Braylen was telling me now. Was she warning me? I had to get the hell out of there. If my blood was the cure, I couldn’t let him have it.

  Braylen didn’t say anything after that. We just walked back to my tent, quiet, lost in our own thoughts.

  Where were Jeryl and Jax?

  Was Jax really superhuman?

  What was Mom thinking right now?