The Wolves of Winter

Jeryl took a deep breath and launched into it. “Well, it wasn’t sudden, I’ll say that much. It wasn’t one event. No meteorite, earthquake, or tsunami. Those things you always hear about. The seeds of it started early in the century—you read about nine-eleven in school?—and the anger just sort of snowballed. I don’t think one person ever said to the other: ‘Is this it? Is this the apocalypse?’ You’d hear about the occasional bombing, shooting, but otherwise things were mostly calm, relatively speaking. You could watch the news and hear about the War on Terror mixed in with a feel-good bit about pandas being born in the zoo.”

“So how did it start?”

“The last attack. I remember sitting down with my coffee and flipping on the news. Every channel was the same. Explosion had gone off in the Pentagon. Bunch of nut jobs managed to hijack a drone and blow up half the building. Hundreds were killed. And that was the last straw. The US went kamikaze. We bombed the hell out of Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan. But it didn’t stop there. It spread. Countries got labeled as either enemies or allies. You were either pro- or anti-America. There were no other options. When North Korea and Mongolia were named terrorist countries, China started getting nervous. Started flexing its muscles. Started chumming with the wrong people. And we didn’t like it. We wanted China to break all trade, all ties with them. China refused.

“It seemed nuclear war was inevitable. So we dropped the first one. Meant to take out China’s atomic bombs. Didn’t work. Either they had backups or their nukes weren’t in Beijing. Millions were killed, so they retaliated. They nearly took out New York with their own nuke. Luckily, we got it in time, and the bomb hit the water. Devastated the city either way—from the tidal waves and radiation sickness. Then everyone seemed to go nuke happy. North Korea nuked Japan. Russia sent nukes to Turkey. The world was on the verge of collapse, everyone trying to blow each other out of the water. But then, next thing you know, the Asian flu hits, or the yellow flu.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s racist,” Ramsey said.

“Nah. People are too sensitive. Anyway, the flu started wiping out Asia. Guaranteed, we sent it to them somehow. I don’t know what we did, maybe poisoned their water with it, but I promise you this: the flu in Asia was a weapon sent by America. With the Asian travel ban, I guess they didn’t count on it coming back across the Pacific so quickly. When the first case was reported in Florida, organizations started popping up. The IMA, Refugees for Peace. And especially the DCIA: Disease Containment and Immunity Advancement. Everyone called them Immunity. Or the Immunizers. They were funded by some corner of the government no one had ever heard of. Apparently, they’d been around for years, only no one knew anything about them until the flu.”

“I remember seeing them on the news,” Ramsey said. “They were the ones with the white stars pinned to their shoulders. Supposed to protect us from the spread.”

“That’s them. They started showing up in schools, businesses. They set the containment rules and made us wear masks. They were doing research, supposedly. All I saw was them with soldiers, trucks, and guns, blocking off safe zones from people trying to get in. And telling cameras they were ‘working on it.’ They sent that vaccination, but a lot of good it did. Was probably just sugar water.”

“Sugar water?”

“Yeah. By this point, Asia was decimated. Millions of people were dying, and the survivors were migrating out any way they could, even though international travel was forbidden. Once it started to spread in the States, it was lights-out fast enough. People dropped like flies. Then planes stopped flying, mail stopped coming, hospitals and schools closed, then the news stopped reporting. Total information blackout. People panicked—those who weren’t dead already. Then the exodus. Like Moses. Most people didn’t know where they were going, just somewhere without a lot of infected people. The cities got pretty ugly. With the riots, looting, gangs, and all the fires. No fire department to stop them. Remember the huge one outside Fairbanks? Wind blew the smoke right through Eagle. It was hazy for days. So many damn fires. Who knows how they all got started.”

“So you really think we caused the flu?”

“I do. Unless it was one last terrorist attack. A jihad. Suppose if it was, then they really did win in the end.”

“Jihad?”

“Kill the infidel. That was their goal. And look around you. Job well done.”

Snow is the quietest kind of weather. After dinner, I sat outside on the stump and watched it fall. It was only the beginning of the winter season, something like September, and it had been snowing off and on for a while already. I’d experienced enough snow to last a lifetime, but I still liked to watch it. There’s something peaceful about those flakes drifting down from the sky, like they aren’t in a hurry. Rain is so panicked and forceful. Walt Whitman—good ol’ Walt—in one of his poems said, “Behavior lawless as snowflakes.” I think I get that. The falling, forming, unforming, drifting, and swirling—there’s a lawlessness about them. I looked up and felt the icy pinpricks on my cheek and in my eyelashes.

There was a crunching in the snow in front of me. I looked down. It was Ramsey, buried in his musk ox jacket, his blond hair tucked beneath a skullcap. He was growing a beard like Ken’s, though his was a young man’s beard with pale stubble patches.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sitting.”

“Oh,” he said as if he hadn’t noticed.

He wanted me to say more. I didn’t have more to say.

“Sorry about Conrad.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Yeah.”

Ramsey was a nice kid. Eighteen years old. A good-looking guy, but in all honesty, without Jeryl taking care of him, he would never have survived this long. Sure, he could fish, but how hard was it to hold a stick over the water? He had crappy aim, had next to no muscle, and was timid. Timid got you dead. But he was nice, and I liked him well enough.

“Don’t get too wet out here,” he said.

“Thanks.” He turned toward his cabin.

Only after did it occur to me to ask what he was doing out in the snow himself.

I’d given Ramsey the old college try, as my dad would’ve said.

It was a stupid move, but I showed up at his and Jeryl’s cabin late in the warm season. The snows hadn’t come yet, so the smell of pine and spruce wood was still heavy in the air. The winter would take care of that, numb the senses, make everything smell like ice. But the wind already had a good sting to it, and I could see the air congregate in front of my face. Congregate. That’s a good word. Like my breath was a church gathering, and I was God, breathing life and then watching it drift away in the wind.

The thing about Ramsey was, other than Conrad, he was the only man in our settlement who I wasn’t related to. Which means exactly what you might think it means. And with Conrad being a thieving asshole who was too old for me anyway, there was only one real option. Thanks, apocalypse.

I’d had sex with only one boy before everything changed. His name was Alexander—not Alex, as he liked to tell people. I met him in Eagle. He was tall with dark hair. We’d hang out after school, and he’d smoke in his dad’s basement. There wasn’t much else for us to do in Eagle. I never tried smoking, though. Grossed me out. I didn’t care how cool it was supposed to be.

I liked Alexander because he was funny, because he was nice, because he used words like preposterous, and because he was the only boy who ever looked twice at me.

The first time he kissed me, I pulled away and said, “My dad’s gonna kick your ass.”

The second time he kissed me, I kissed him back.

We started making out a lot. I didn’t let him smoke beforehand because the taste was nasty. I’d take off my shirt and let him touch me, but I kept my bra on. He wanted to have sex. I didn’t.

“You gotta have sex sometime.”

“We’re not old enough.”

“When’s old enough?”

“I dunno, eighteen.”

“Eighteen! I can’t wait that long.” He said it with a laugh. But we were only sixteen, and I guess two years is a long time for a sixteen-year-old boy.

So we didn’t do it. Not then, at least. For a while after that, we stayed friends, but we stopped making out. He moved on to other girls. Then the world ended. Literally. Between the wars and the flu and the TVs going out, it seemed like the end of time. People were already starting to evacuate. But it wasn’t till after Dad died that I really felt the weight of it all. The world crashed down hard around my feet. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t read, food had no taste.

I met Alexander in his dad’s basement, just to see someone other than my family, someone who didn’t remind me that Dad was gone. I don’t remember if he kissed me or I kissed him, but next thing I knew, we were taking off our clothes, and for the briefest of moments, I felt something. A closeness.

Afterward, I walked out the door while he lit a cigarette.

“Lynn?” he said. But I kept walking, tears filling my eyes.

My dad’s gonna kick your ass. I don’t know why, but it was the only thought in my head.

We continued sleeping together, all the way until Alexander and his dad left Eagle. I never told my mom. I tried alcohol too. But it was the same as the sex. A moment of relaxation, of comfort, followed by emptiness.

And now there was Ramsey. He hadn’t outright said that he wanted me, but I could tell in the way he looked at me and, sometimes, in the way he refused to look at me.

“You realize that we’re the only ones not related?” he said once, back when I’d fish with him every so often. Back before I realized how boring fishing was.

“You and Ken aren’t related,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean.” I knew what he meant.

He tried to kiss me once too. Well, he did kiss me once. But it was on the cheek, and he apologized and walked away immediately after. It was such a childish kiss. And I wasn’t a child. I was a woman. A peck on the cheek didn’t cut it. It wasn’t really about sex. I just didn’t want to feel alone. I wanted that comfort I’d gotten from Alexander. If only for a moment.

So I dug into my mom’s precious stash of vodka, which was brought only for “medicinal purposes,” and took three long swigs from a bottle that had already been opened. It melted my insides. I made my way over to Ramsey and Jeryl’s.

Jeryl answered the door. I swore that guy slept in his clothes.

“Lynn. You all right?”

“Is Ramsey asleep?”

Jeryl looked me up and down and frowned.

“I think so,” he said.

“Can I see him?”

Jeryl bit his lip. I’d never seen him do that before. He knew exactly why I was there. It was embarrassing, it was unnatural, but everything about the world was unnatural now.

“Come on in. I was … I think I’ll take a walk.”

He stepped out.

Ramsey was just as surprised to see me, and instead of embarrassed, he seemed flat-out scared. I jumped on his bed without a word and kissed him. He didn’t shove me away or ask me what the hell I was doing. His lips were tight, and his breath was stale. But I pushed on. I’m a trouper.

I got so far as taking my jacket off, then my shirt, and I wasn’t wearing a bra. I hadn’t worn a bra since Eagle. I rolled on top of him and felt him shaking. I looked into his eyes and saw they were wet. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Crying? Was he crying?

“The hell?” I said. I know, not very compassionate of me. He was, after all, only seventeen at the time, and I was twenty-two. Not to mention the fact that he was eleven when we left Eagle. He’d probably never kissed a girl before. Still, I was surprised by his reaction, confused, and, to be honest, offended.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Keep going. It’s okay.”

I rolled off him and covered up, suddenly self-conscious of how naked I was. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

There was a lot of apologizing, a lot of awkward silences before I decided, to hell with this, I’m out of here. I dressed and left, and we never spoke of it. But when I think about it, I still get this ball in the pit of my stomach.

I don’t know if Ramsey was gay or if he was just a scared little boy. Either way, I never tried that again. So much for procreation. Oh well. Screw you, human race.

5

Things I don’t miss about summer:

Bugs.

Sunburns.

Sunscreen.

Freckles, freckles, freckles.

The morning after the shit storm with Conrad, I got up early, dressed, and trudged out into the snow. Couldn’t stand to be around everyone. I was in one of my moods, the ones that can be changed only by long bouts of solitude. Strange, the things that survive the apocalypse. My need to be by myself apparently outlives any flu. Back in the old world, I used to run off to the river and climb this one willow tree that hung over the moving water. I’d read, listen to music, or just sit there and watch the leaves spinning in the wind. Needed to be away from everyone, everything. That’s what hunting became for me. I liked being on my own. The quiet of it, the stillness of the snow, the familiar spruce, fir, and pine trees, the challenge of the hills, finding footprints of large and small game. All of it a world I understood and one that didn’t need to understand me.

It had stopped snowing sometime in the night, but not before another inch of fresh powder was added to the ground. There was about a foot and a half in all. We had to stock up on what meat we could before the deep snow and deep freeze set in. Grow our winter coats. Ramsey used to beg Jeryl to move us all south to warmer weather, friendlier environments. But Jeryl always said no in his most I’m-in-charge voice. He didn’t want to go south where the big cities were, where whatever was left of the world sat like a crumbling, rusting parasite, where even if everyone was dead, the air was probably still thick with the flu. We were people of the Yukon now.

When I crested the first hill, just southeast of our homestead, I stopped and sat in the snow, pulled out a bit of deer jerky, and munched on it for breakfast. Remember fluffy scrambled eggs? Crisp bacon? Blueberry pancakes? I don’t.

The sun blinked over the horizon, rubbing its sleep-crusted eyes. Trees, snow, mountains, as far as I could see. I inhaled the frozen air, trying to remember what warmth felt like. Being truly, comfortably warm. Then I realized that I didn’t care. I’d gotten used to the cold, the uncomfortable. Maybe a part of me—hell, maybe a large part of me—liked it.

The jerky was too salty, but it was filling. I stuffed a handful of snow in my mouth and started down the other side of the hill. I’d hunt east today, head for the river. I wasn’t going to check my traps, so I’d left my sled at our cabin, and despite the snow, walking felt light without it. If I made a big kill, I’d have to butcher the thing and hang the meat in a tree with the rope I’d brought in my backpack. Dad had shown me how. Then I’d head back and get my sled and maybe Jeryl to help retrieve it. All I had on me was the rope, my Hän knife, a bottle of water, more deer jerky, arrows, and my compound bow.

A healthy part of me wanted to head to Conrad’s place, stake it out, hide in a tree or the hill just behind his cabin, and wait for him to step out the door. And then, thwang, arrow through the neck. It’d be easy. That’s the thing the fat bastard didn’t understand. He was bigger, stronger than me, but if I wasn’t such a nice person, I could kill him as easy as bringing down a moose. Easier. I knew exactly where this particular moose lived.

Conrad was the opposite of my dad. Loud, selfish, fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, while Dad was boisterous without being loud, kind, smart, and strong. Dad used to let me ride on his shoulders, let me put makeup on him when no one else was home, let me stay up late watching movies, let me pick out my own clothes, let me throw temper tantrums without interrupting me or telling me to go to my room. He’d fix my lunch for school and give me money when he knew that he’d made a crappy lunch. He taught me to hunt and fish and trap and how to drive a stick shift in the church parking lot even before I got my license. And when I was really little, in Chicago, he’d sing to me before bedtime or when I woke from a nightmare. I can still remember the feel of his beard against my cheek, his strong arms holding me up. I even remember lines from some of the songs.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

merry merry king of the bush is he …

It didn’t make sense that the world could spin on when people like Dad died and people like Conrad lived.

The fat oaf joined us the first year. He found our settlement after we’d put up the first few walls of Mom’s and my cabin. Jeryl had known Conrad back in Eagle, but they hadn’t exactly been friends. He told us he was thinking of settling nearby, and Jeryl said that we’d be happy to have the company, that sticking together, hunting together, would make survival all the more possible. But I could tell even then from the way Jeryl eyed him that he was suspicious.

Everything started out fine. Jeryl, Ken, and Ramsey helped Conrad build his cabin, and they all hunted together for a while. Then we got a few winters under our belt. The first few tastes of hunger. Conrad didn’t show up as much anymore. I heard grumblings about game and territory. Ken said that Conrad even took a swing at Jeryl once. Since then we’d become silent neighbors who tried to stay out of each other’s way. Mom hated him from the beginning. Not sure why. Maybe she was just an excellent judge of character.

The hill was rough going. I’d gotten lazy in the short spring, before the snows came. My thighs were too skinny now, my back not used to the strain. Nothing about me said winter warrior. I was the opposite. Both of my parents had Scottish in their heritage. Hence our name, McBride, hence my tangle of half-dreadlocked red hair, hence my freckled face, hence my green eyes. Everything about me stood out against the snow. A red bull’s-eye. That’s why I wore the dark gray skullcap Mom knitted for me—to blend in. It was big enough to stuff my mess of hair inside. But it wasn’t just my redness that made me unsuited for the Yukon. I’d always been too skinny. And the lean winters had done nothing for my weight. Sure, I’d gained some muscle from the hard life, the long walks, drawing the bow, but it wasn’t anything substantial. Ken said that small girls are always angrier. Maybe that’s why I had a healthy amount of rage in me. Or maybe it was the Scottish blood.

The snow deepened as I climbed higher, and the spruce trees angled out from the ground, pointing at the blinding sky. With the freezing air, the summer-blue sky seemed fake. My thighs were burning and my shoulders hurt from the weight of my backpack and my compound bow, which I held at my side. I was breathing hard, the air stinging the back of my throat, but it felt good. When I crested the hill, I looked down at the river. A leviathan like the ones they talk about in the Bible, splitting the snow in lazy turns, ice creeping in along its edges. One day, the whole thing would freeze over. The river always made me a little uneasy. It seemed so calm, so peaceful. But put one foot in and you’d have frostbite before you made it back to the cabins—that is, if the river didn’t snatch you and pull you under.

The trees grew dense along the bank, making for a tough shot. My plan was to get close enough—but not too close—find a good tree to hide behind, and see if I could spot some deer coming in for a drink. Why is it that animals prefer to drink icy river water rather than eat snow? Something about it must taste better.

I watched the water’s current and for the millionth time imagined myself following the river east. Traveling on and on, exploring, discovering, living. Not this day-in-and-day-out motionless, monotonous surviving in rough cabins. I’d never tell Mom, but deep down, I wanted to escape, to get out and see what was left of the world. Who knew, maybe there were more settlements like ours, with better equipment, more people … more men. I was wasted on this frozen slice of the Yukon, a case of arrested development. Nothing new to learn here.

I was really, really good at school. Before.

Math, literature, science, easy. Social studies bored the hell out of me, so mostly I sucked at that. But everything else was a breeze. They even moved me ahead a grade, so I got to play the role of little ginger girl who thinks she’s too smart for her own good. God, the kids loved that. It didn’t help that my name was freaking Gwendolynn.

Suddenly, I was the youngest in class, and I was still smarter than most of the other kids. Okay, I was smarter than all the other kids. I don’t mean to brag about it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a genius or anything. Mostly, it probably means that the other kids were a bunch of stupids.

Mom brought some books into the Yukon and used to give me lessons in our cabin. A grade twelve calculus book (boring!), a book of short stories by Flannery O’Connor, a few biology magazines, and The Taming of the Shrew. That was my education. Oh, and of course Dad’s copy of Walt Whitman’s poems.

The books were no good to me anymore, except the Whitman, and Mom didn’t have much else to teach me. So I moved on to hunting. I was good at it. Dad used to take Ken and me out. He was a biologist, so on top of the hunting, he’d tell us about all kinds of plants. Which ones are good to eat, which ones will kill you, how and where to dig up edible roots. The plant part was boring so I mostly tuned it out.

“Lynn, are you listening? This is important.”

“Yes,” I’d say, even though I wasn’t.

“Then what’s this plant called?”

“It’s … a snowleaf.”

“A snowleaf?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s chickweed. Can you eat it?”

“Yeah,” I said even though I had no idea.

“Okay. Here.” He handed me one of the small green leaves.

I plopped it in my mouth without hesitating, staring him down as I chewed. I knew that if I was wrong, if it was poisonous, Dad would stop me. It tasted stale, dirty, green.

“So if you were in the wild, you’d recognize that plant, right?”

I nodded halfheartedly as I swallowed.

Dad couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

He also showed me how to use the bow. He’d adjust my stance, my elbow, my fingers on the string, and we’d shoot at a cloth target strung over a bale of hay behind our house in Eagle.

“How far away is it?”

“Thirty yards,” I’d guess.

“More like twenty. Use the twenty-yard sight pin.”

I’d adjust my aim to the top pin in the little, circular sight.

“Take a breath,” he’d say.

I was a natural. By the time I was thirteen, I’d killed marten, squirrels, crows, and a raccoon. Whenever I’d bring something in, Dad would throw his arm around my shoulders and kiss my head. “That’s my girl!” He’d always cook up the kill too. No matter how small the animal, how stringy and rough the meat, Dad would make a point of eating it with me. As weird as that was, Dad would say, “Can’t kill just for the fun of it. The animal died to provide for us.” Sometimes it tasted terrible, but I didn’t mind. It’s like I really was providing for the family.