* * *
Walking was different now. I wasn’t hunting. I wasn’t meandering. I had a purpose. I had a direction. South, south, south. I was getting out. Exploring the world. My grand adventure. God, I was terrified. The trees seemed bigger than normal, the hills steeper, the nights longer, the great, wide world spreading out in front of me. And I was alone. I felt like the only human alive, like my entire past had been an illusion. Maybe the world had always been just me walking through dense snow, imagining I wasn’t alone. But I was. So damn alone. Even the sound of my footsteps was swallowed by the silent, empty landscape. No sign of the Dempster Highway yet. But from the map, it looked like I could continue on southwest and run into it.
The snow came on my third day out. Thick. Heavy. I could feel its weight on my shoulders. The drifts of powder settled on my igloo that night. The structure was small, but with just me in it, the walls seemed wide, the space I’d built far too expansive. I dreamed of Ariane. I saw her on a far hill, covered in snow. Our eyes met, then she turned and disappeared into the wilderness, looking for home.
The next day, the snowfall had stopped, and I was lost in thought, lost in my own loneliness, feeling more miserable with each step, when I heard a muffled noise from across a small clearing behind me. I stopped, listened. Footsteps. A steady cadence. Definitely human. Someone was following me, close. Was I being tracked? For how long?
I nocked an arrow and held my bow ready, aiming toward the clearing.
Another sound. A snapping. No, not a snapping. Something else.
Barking. Sharp, happy barking. A dog’s bark. An excited bark. A come on out and play bark. I took a step into the clearing. Two figures—one human, one canine—appeared through the trees.
“No fucking way,” I said.
Wolf bounded to me, hurling across the clearing in a blur of snow and panting breath. I saw a missing patch of hair over his right shoulder where he’d been shot. When he reached me, he put his paws on my hips, almost knocking me over. He was heavier than I remembered. “Wolf!” I said as I gripped his thick fur.
Then I looked up at Jax, at the wide smile lighting up his face.
“You found him.” I couldn’t hide the joy and surprise in my voice. “He’s alive.”
“He’s like me. Hard to kill.”
Wolf was panting happily as I patted his fur. Jax watched me only a few paces away. “Jax, I—”
“After I found him, I went back to the cabins,” he said, taking a step toward me. “Your mom—she told me what you’re doing, where to find you. I’m coming with you.”
“But—”
“Listen. The way I see it, we’re the same now. We need to stick together.”
We’re the same. We need to stick together. We.
“What about Immunity? They’re not going to stop.”
“To me, it’s worth the risk.” He took another step toward me, close enough to reach out and grab my hand, touch my cheek. “You’re worth the risk.”
I bit my lip. I could feel tears gathering in my eyes.
“I’ve been alone for a long time,” he said, his voice shaking. He wasn’t any good at this kind of thing. Neither was I. “I never realized how alone until . . . well, until you, Lynn.” His eyes were bright with the daylight reflecting off the snow, and they were shining on me.
I stood to face him. Wolf sauntered off into the trees. Then, not bothering to wipe my tears, I closed the distance between us.
* * *
I don’t miss school. I don’t miss buses, TV, cell phones, cars, toasters, microwaves, advertisements, fancy clothes, designer shoes, nail polish, makeup, video games, candy—well, maybe chocolate—alarm clocks, clocks, cameras, computers, or the Internet. That world is gone. Gone like the dinosaurs, gone like Walt Whitman, gone like summer.
When you boil it all down, what I really miss is my dad. Not the dad who pored over his notebook in the basement, not the dad who worked for Immunity, not even the dad who made sure I knew how to hunt, fish, and work a compound bow. I miss the dad who made my school lunch, carried me on his shoulders, watched cartoons with me in the morning. His strong arms. His voice. I gotchya. That dad.
In the end, it’s funny how little we need to get by. Snow, moose, potatoes, carrots, the company of a few good people.
It’s amazing how little we need to survive.
And not just survive, but live.
Acknowledgments
Let me start by thanking my wonderful agent, Alexandra Machinist, whose faith and passion in my manuscript made all this possible. I want to thank my tireless editors, Nita Pronovost and Rick Horgan, whose comments and guidance shaped this novel into what it is today. I’d also like to send a big thanks to the teams at Scribner, Simon & Schuster Canada, Harlequin UK, HarperCollins Germany, and my co-agents at Curtis Brown for their early enthusiasm and hard work in publishing my book.
Next, thank you to all the folks at the UCR Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program, including leader of the pack Tod Goldberg. A special thanks to Mark Haskell Smith, who taught me how to write fiction, and Jill Alexander Essbaum, who taught me how to craft sentences. Thanks also to Marcus Brotherton for kind advice and for being the first to put my name in a book.
Thanks and love to my kids, Finnley and Lochland, for their stubbornness, smiles, and for letting me build them forts; to my parents, who were my very first and best fans; to my brothers, who taught me about stories and imagination; to my sister, who made stuff up about herself to impress me; to my mother- and father-in-law for supporting my family and providing a place for me to write; and finally, to my wife, Tessa, for believing in me and for doing all the hard work while I sat in a horse barn and wrote stories.
A Scribner Reading Group Guide
The Wolves of Winter
Tyrell Johnson
This reading group guide for The Wolves of Winter includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
A captivating tale of humanity pushed beyond its breaking point, of family and bonds of love forged when everything is lost, and of a heroic young woman who crosses a frozen landscape to find her destiny, this debut novel is in a postapocalyptic tradition that spans The Hunger Games and Station Eleven but blazes its own distinctive path.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
1. Why do you think the author chose Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself to be the special book shared between Lynn and her father?
2. Would you have dealt with Conrad, after his attack of Lynn, the same way Jeryl did (page 26)? Why or why not?
3. Why do you think Ramsey gets upset when Lynn tries to sleep with him? Why does Lynn get “this ball in the pit of [her] stomach” when she thinks about it afterwards (page 37)?
4. Lynn’s father tells her that first you survive in your head, then in your stomach, and then in your heart. He tells her, “You have to have all three” (page 63). How do Lynn, Mary, Ken, Jeryl, and Ramsey survive at their homestead? Do they each have all three?
5. Should Lynn have been more wary of Jax and Wolf when they appeared (page 52)? What would you have done in Lynn’s place?
6. After Jax and Jeryl leave in pursuit of Nayan, Lynn feels, “If I was ever going to get away, this was my chance” (page 116). Why is she so compelled to rush after them in that moment?
7. While Lynn is at the Immunity camp, Braylen’s motives are difficult for Lynn to decipher. Did Braylen ultimately mean well? Was she trustworthy?
8. Anders’s methods for combating the flu are “harsh, but they work” (page 185). How might his actions be justified despite their cruelty?
9. Anders calls Lynn “a stupid child” before his death (page 281). How does Lynn grow and mature over the course of the story? How is she still childlike
?
10. Was Mary right to keep Lynn’s immunity and her father’s letter a secret (page 260)? Should she have told Lynn sooner?
11. Why does Jeryl leave the camp in search of the bear he believes to be John-Henry (page 290)?
12. What do you think Lynn and Jax might find in Vancouver (page 297)?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. The Wolves of Winter details some of the routines the McBrides and their friends must keep up in order to survive in the Yukon—hunting, trapping, building their homes from scratch. Watch the documentary Alone in the Wilderness, about a man who built a cabin and lived alone in the Twin Lakes region of Alaska, and discuss what life in the wilderness would be like with your group.
2. Quotes from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself are woven throughout The Wolves of Winter. Read Song of Myself, or listen to a recording of it at whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/audio.html, and discuss your favorite passages.
About the Author
© JOSH DURIAS
TYRELL JOHNSON is a thirty-year-old MFA graduate of the University of California, Riverside. An avid outdoorsman, he currently lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, but grew up in Bellingham, Washington. The Wolves of Winter is his first novel.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Tyrell Johnson
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First Scribner hardcover edition January 2018
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Interior design by Jill Putorti
Jacket design by Pete Garceau and Hafen Hamburg
Jacket photographs: Background © Stephen Carroll/Trevillion Images; Woman © Mohamad Itani/Trevillion Images; Snowflakes © Lisa Valder/E+/Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-5567-3
ISBN 978-1-5011-5569-7 (ebook)
Table of Contents
Dedication
Part I: Strangers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part II: The Great White North
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part III: Immunity
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part IV: The Gone, Gone World
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide
Author the Author
Copyright
Wolves of Winter Page 24