The Grey

by Mackenzie Jeffers, Ian

  I want to get out of here but I go back over to the dead we brought out and reach and roll, looking to see if anybody has wallets, Lewenden, Luttinger, throw them in a pile, and I check the other dead I can get to also. Henrick comes over, he and the others stare at me, like I’m a lunatic.

  “We should take them,” I say. “For the families.”

  They all nod, suddenly. Henrick takes off the backpack he’s put his food and his knife in, stuffs the wallets in. It’s foolish, with so many we haven’t gotten, but we do it anyway. We find ourselves looking at the bodies lying there. Henrick wants to have a service for them, say something, at least. They’re all frozen stiff by now, and we’ve turned them all this way and that for knives and cell-phones and satellite phones and now their wallets. We tried to lay them straight after that but we’re hurrying, now.

  “Should we cover them over, at least?” Henrick says. I don’t want to. I don't feel good staying another minute, I feel stupid enough taking the wallets. The light already looks weaker.

  “The snow will do it,” I say.

  Henrick looks at the ones we brought out and the rest, all we can see, Lewenden, the others, and the ones we can’t, I suppose.

  “God bless everyone who died here,” he says. “Us too.”

  He stops, doesn’t know what else to say. But we’ve sent them off as well as we’re going to, and now there’s us. I see we’re standing there looking at each other.

  I pull my bag over my shoulder on my good side, turn to the trees.

  5

  The clearing is bigger than it seemed. We’ve been walking a long time, we can barely see the plane behind us, anymore, we’ve as good as lost it as a mark, but somehow the trees don’t look any closer. The daylight bled away before we even hit our stride, went to dusk, now it’s hanging there between that and night again. We’re out in the middle between what seems like the safety of the plane and the trees, feeling stranded, gone wrong already, Ojeira and Feeny struggling to keep up, falling behind.

  “Should we stop? Make a fire?” Henrick asks.

  I don’t know. I look at the trees, try to guess how far. And the wind is getting up even more than the morning, so I don’t know if we could, and all we have to burn is the wood we took for clubs.

  “We should keep on, if we can,” I say. “They might let us slide if we make the trees. If they’re still around. We’d be less obvious, maybe.”

  “How much further are the fucking trees?” Bengt says. As if when we’re in the trees we’re home free, which isn’t what I meant.

  “I don’t know. I misjudged the distance.” Bengt looks at me like I’m a tour guide who doesn’t know his job.

  “That’s fucking great. So we’re here for the night?” Bengt says. It’s all night, more or less, from here. And the trees aren’t going to save us from wolves, if they want us. But I don’t say anything to him. I keep looking back to where I think the plane is, along our tracks, and Ojeira and Feeny trailing behind.

  Ojeira’s at the back, hobbling pretty bad, but he's still going better than he was before. I think maybe he’s not as bad off as he seemed, after all, even with his hernia or whatever it is he doesn’t know about, if he still hasn’t noticed. He didn’t want us to help him like Luttinger and I did before, maybe he’s mending already. Feeny’s with him, he’s only got the missing hand, but he might have fever or something, he’s wobbling, walking drunken, it looks like. He looks worse than Ojeira. The snow’s hip-deep in places so none of us are going that fast, and they haven’t dropped behind too badly. But they will before long, as slow as we’ve been going, they’re going slower. They’re strung pretty far back already.

  “We should wait a little for those two, though,” I say.

  The others look back, waiting. After a minute Tlingit and some of them sit, breathing hard. We look around, again and again, I do, the others too, and I know we’re looking for the wolves that are supposedly going to leave us alone, and not come at us, because we think we’re trying to respectfully go the fuck home. Ojeira and Feeny barely seem to be getting any closer, and Feeny keeps stopping to hold his stump up high. I think it’s hurting whenever any blood fills into it so he gives up and walks with his hand in the air like he’s on strike for something. We should have stopped sooner. As I look again Feeny looks like he’s dropped further back than Ojeira. The wind is creeping up harder, getting to be a slam, pushing cold through us, making it harder for Ojeira and Feeny, us too. I stare back at them, in the half-light that’s left, waiting for them, wishing they’d hurry.

  Then, like before, I see something I’m not sure I’m seeing at all, lines moving in the dark, grey or black, two from the right, two from the left, one from behind, coming at Feeny. They don’t seem interested in Ojeira. They’ve chosen Feeny, like they choose any animal, based on some invisible thing, though not so invisible this time, and that’s going to be that, nothing will turn them away, unless it’s a threat.

  I start running before the others seem to see them. I start straight for Feeny, but then I shift, head for the one of them coming from the right, the one closest it looks like, waving my arms, shouting, trying to look like a threat. I hear the others doing the same, behind me, same as they did to beat that one off of me. We’re far away. Feeny looks at us, sees us running, looks around. He sees the one from the right I’m charging at but he doesn’t see the ones from behind him, or the left. Ojeira looks too, almost falls backwards but catches his balance, stands there, frozen, then he starts jump-hobbling as hard as he can to help Feeny, yelling like the rest of us, but all they seem to care about is Feeny. They don’t even care about me, so I yell louder and wave my arms. I realize there’s a log and a knife in my pack and I’m empty-handed, running at them, but there’s no time.

  The one I’m charging at finally turns off Feeny to start at me, and the ones from behind and the left are still on Feeny but further from him, so I’ve gained him ten seconds maybe, or five, and now I have to keep charging at the one I’ve committed to.

  I yell back at the guys, “Get on the others! Go!”

  I seem to think there’s some way if we split them up and charge at them we’ll be able to get the others off Feeny. What we do with whichever wolves we pull off I don’t know, but they’ll be off Feeny. But run as hard as we can, and whether one of them is turned at me or not, I’m seeing we’re far, further than I thought, and all the other black lines moving on Feeny are much closer, it looks like, than we are, and we can yell as loud as we want but they aren’t getting pulled off by anything, they’re on him. Ojeira falls over in the snow and is yelling in pain, then he’s stumbling and tripping trying to get his feet back up on the snow, and he stumbles backwards in terror when he sees them closing on Feeny, then he stops, like he doesn’t want to leave Feeny, but he can’t make himself go get him. Neither would I, alone, half-broken like him.

  I’m still making for Feeny as fast as I can, but Feeny doesn’t have any fight in him, and one of them hits Feeny and then the lines all rush suddenly so much faster than before and shoot at him like knives across the snow, and they’re all on him, the one I thought I pulled off turns and runs back at him too, and I can’t see Feeny any more at all under their bodies but I’m still trying to get to him, and yelling, but I realize I’m not aware of the others anymore behind me and they aren’t yelling anymore, just me, and I realize I hear just Henrick.

  “Wait!” Henrick's yelling. “To your side!”

  I look around, and I see why he’s yelling. The big wolf is there, running in at me, I never saw him at all, and suddenly he’s much closer to me than the others, charging at me, cutting me off. I stop dead, involuntary, from fear, I just stop and look at him, and he stops too, our breath misting.

  In this half-minute gone by it’s almost full dark, as good as, but I’m closer to this one than I was when I saw him at the fire. I see him better than I did before. He’s a lot bigger than I thought, his hackles up, and his fur is darker, yellow-gold in his eyes, what li
ght they’re catching. My muscles freeze, I feel them clenching, by themselves, because the rest of me remembers having these on me, however the body arranges it so you feel fear, all of that is seizing up, my body’s trying to get out of itself. And feeling all that I’m forced to notice he’s a beautiful kind of thing. He looks like death to me, which is not the thought I want in my head.

  A couple of the other wolves trot up from nowhere to his flanks, out of the dark, and stare at me too, stopping me or anybody else from getting to Feeny, and I’m aware we’re all just strung out staring at these ones in front, while Feeny is getting dragged this way and that in the snow and I can’t hear him, he’s quiet by now, or not making any noise loud enough to hear from here, and the big one and the ones with him keep staring at me, daring me to go at them.

  So like an idiot I do go in at them, thinking of Feeny. I pull off my pack and run in at the big one roaring and swinging the pack at him, with the log inside, and he just snarls, and he and the others just hop out of my way, loop around me again, and seeing I’m past them I charge on for Feeny a few steps but I feel them coming up on my hindquarters. I turn, face them, so now I’m between two sets of wolves away from the other guys and I’m fucked. I can’t go to Feeny because the big one and the others will run me down from behind if I do, and if I charge him again he’ll just do what he did again. He outplayed me.

  I look at him and the two on his flanks while they loop around in front of me again, between me and Feeny, daring me in the same stupid game. I’m beaten. I just watch while Feeny is dragged and ripped, and the others watch too, spread out, I don’t know how long. Not long, and too long.

  Feeny’s dead, probably, the first two wolves who hit him are walking away from him, leaving the others, then one by one they stop and stroll away, until the smallest one seems to realize he’s the last, and he finally stands up and walks away, too, and we see Feeny’s a dark mess in the snow. It’s hard to see what there is of him, no sitting with him helping him over and telling him he’s going to die, I just let him get ripped apart and watched it, and the wolves have taken up this circle looking at us now, not moving, just waiting for us, it looks like, to comprehend. We see Ojeira, standing off, looking at Feeny, terrified. The wolves look at us like somebody who’s just hit you and is waiting to see if you got the point, if you’re going to try and get up again, or if you understand now who just hit you, and how hard.

  The big one stares at me, more fixed than any of the others, who keep glancing over at him. He doesn’t look like something I could shake off my back. He looks more like he’d go through my back on the way to my stomach, and cut me in half. I just stare at them, afraid to do anything, waiting.

  Then he gets off his paws and charges me, straight over the snow, not taking his eyes off me. I’m still out in front, I don’t know how many yards ahead of the others, but enough to feel alone. I don’t think I can laugh my way through another fight with a wolf, not this one. I watch him coming, and I tighten up, can’t help it. I know this wolf can kill me, if he decides he wants to, but I’m too scared to run away and too scared to run at him, I don’t know what to do. I watch him come at me, closer and closer, twenty feet, fifteen, and I’m afraid to move or I know I’m dead if I do, and he just stops, dead, ten feet away, staring at me. I still don’t move. I remember other wolves I’ve had staring matches with, and I’ve never seen one look at me like this. This one hates every winter he’s ever had, and hates the fifty blood brawls he’s fought because he’s the biggest, and the meanest, and he’s had to. And since I’m here, now, in his place, he might hate me, too, and anybody with me. Watching him, I feel like he’s still deciding what he’s going to do with us.

  He sits down, calmly, staring at me, and I still don’t move, and none of the others do either, I don’t think. I can’t hear anything behind me, I don’t know if they’re still there, and I’m afraid to look. Then he stands again, forward on his paws, and he shoots straight at me another few feet again and stops dead again and stares at me, and snarls again, and I stay still, again. With him this much closer I can feel him jumping on me, but he doesn’t jump yet. He’s close enough for him to jump at me if he wants, but not close enough for me to reach out and grab him, or swing at him, if I was that brave. I don’t like him being smarter than me, and he is, out here. Anywhere, maybe. Maybe my father hated them because they were smarter than him.

  I shift a little, in my boots. I don’t mean to, it’s hard to stay as still as I’ve been trying to. It looks like I’m leaning forward, an inch, at most. He bares his teeth, his lips peeled back, eyes popping, ears down, tail in the air, straight up, brushing back and forth, barely, and he keeps his eyes on mine and snarls, from the bottom of somewhere I never want to be. His teeth are huge, all out of his mouth for show, and he’s telling me: ‘Get out of my house, you piece of shit, or I’ll take your throat in one bite.’

  We keep staring at each other in the wind. I don’t know what to do but stare. Then he turns, circles around, so he’ll see me if I come at him. But I don’t go at him, and he trots off and leaves me there, lopes past Feeny, and Ojeira, toward the dark again and they’ve all fallen in behind him, loping away. I’m finally brave enough to turn my head and see Henrick, and the others, standing still like I am, behind me. The big wolf turns again, looks back at us, from farther off. One of the ones next to him, the next-biggest, starts to howl, and the others join in, and the big one tilts back and howls too.

  I still don’t move, none of us does, we just stand there listening to them howling, watching, then they string out and fade into the dark one by one, till the last one stops howling and then we can’t see them or hear them any more.

  We don’t know where they are, after a few seconds. They might have looped around and come next to us, in the dark, by now. I look around, at Henrick and the others strung out, everybody standing still, and I listen for paws in the snow, their breath, a yelp, but there’s nothing.

  The wind shifts, suddenly, hard, like a door slamming on you, and as cold as it is, I think I smell them, the smell they left behind. I think I can smell Feeny, too, his blood and all the other mess they ripped out of him, on the snow. I look back to the trees where we were heading before the wolves came after Feeny, where we imagine west is, but don’t know. At least the wolves went something like the other way, back behind us, which is something, I suppose, not for Feeny though. Bearings are hard to hold. I don’t know if the trees we were trying to head for are the ones I’m looking at now. I know very little but cold.

  I start back to Feeny to see if he’s alive, which seems insane to me, because that’s the directions the wolves went into the dark, but I start back for him anyway, and besides Ojeira is sitting there, I can just see him, looking stranded. The others don’t move at first, then they follow me, either for Feeny or Ojeira or because we want to stick together. We’re watching and listening, all the time, and it’s hard going back, but we get to Ojeira, who’s getting himself up, staring, shaking, because he was closer to see what they were doing to Feeny.

  “Are you OK?” I ask him. He nods, looking terrified and disgusted at the same time.

  We keep on a little further, snow blowing at us, and get to Feeny. I see ribs and meat, he looks like a deer you’re dressing to lay in a deep-freeze, and my skin and my muscles creep, seeing him like that, it’s worse than Luttinger looked, somehow. I look around in the dark, and I still can’t see the wolves though I know they might be standing there, waiting. But they seem to be gone, for the minute, watching us, maybe, I don’t know. I bend down over him, reach under the mess. The snow blowing stings my hands and I feel the warmth coming off Feeny’s carcass but I still reach around under him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Henrick says.

  I’m after Feeny's wallet, why I think he’d still have it I don’t know, but blood’s everywhere and his guts and hacks of flesh and it isn’t something I’m enjoying. But I find it, to my surprise, half in his pocket, half in the snow. H
enrick starts scooping up snow with his bare hands, covering him, and Tlingit and Bengt and Knox help, me too. It seems the least we can do, what we didn’t do for the others, and maybe it’s for us more than for him. We do a little, and I know the snow will cover him soon anyway, for winter, and after won’t matter.

  Tlingit picks up Feeny’s pack, which is lying loose a few feet away. He reaches in and takes out Feeny’s knife, and a couple of bags of peanuts, and the lighters Feeny found. He stuffs the peanuts in his pack and keeps the knife in his hand. I pull my pack off and kneel down and get my knife out, too, put it in my pocket, and the piece of wood I have. I feel two kinds of idiot for not having them ready before. Everybody else does the same. It was probably stupid to come and stand over him like this. More than probably.

  We head for the trees again. All of us are looking around constantly now, every step, heading for the trees. I’m thinking that if they hit Feeny because he was straggling, walking drunk like he was, then they’re still watching us, waiting to choose another. As sure as I am they’re watching us, I’m hoping that, somewhere in my head, they’re seeing us going, they’ve shown us enough, and they’re satisfied. But I don’t know. The clearing seems to go on forever, we walk and walk, fast as we can manage, staring at the strip of forest, making up the ground we lost going back for Feeny, and slogging on, waiting every step for something else to come out of the dark, take another one of us. I’m waiting for them to take Ojeira, because I’m pretty sure they will next, if they come at us again. Sometimes they want the weakest, if they’re hunting, and sometimes the strongest, if they’re fighting. I try to act like neither, which is as good as saying: ‘Take that other fucker, don’t take me,’ but it’s an old habit, keeping my head down, making myself invisible. I tell myself if they don’t jump me, better for me to save whoever they do jump. That’s what I tell myself.