Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey (10 page)

But suddenly they come out of the dark, again, just like that, they’re there, the big one and the others, they were there all along, keeping pace with us, but they step in close enough for us to see them, now.  They start to circle, far out to our right and left, watching us, and then I see more behind us, on our flank.

We’re all scared, standing there, staring.  Reznikoff just starts running for the trees, like a maniac.  It’s one kind of chance if you're crazy enough to run toward them but it’s no chance at all if you run when they’re behind you, they’ll run you down like caribou, and we’re no caribou.

“
Don't run!
”  I yell out, “
Don’t fucking run!
” 

But Reznikoff isn’t listening.  Henrick’s ahead of me and he starts trying to run him down before the wolves do.  I charge after Henrick a few steps and stop, yelling “
Don’t!
” but Henrick keeps going, so now both of them are running for the trees while the wolves are just watching, straining to take off after them, but not going, yet.  They keep looking at the big one to see what he’ll do, and the rest of the guys back with me are, I can tell, straining to take off too, rather than get left back here, but I keep saying, “Don’t move, let Henrick get him.” 

But then I see the wolves start, just like that.  I don’t see any signal or anything from the big wolf, they just begin, shooting across at Henrick and Reznikoff, and then we’re committed.  We have to run or they’re dead.  I take off after Henrick, running as hard as I can, apiece of wood in my hand, roaring again, because I know it’s insane and because if I make enough noise maybe we’ll be lucky, and the ones behind me won’t close the distance before I can somehow get the ones in front of me off Reznikoff and Henrick, and somehow get us all on one side of them so we can face them, instead of being tied up in a bag like we are now. 

I can see four wolves, now six, now more, and all of them seem to have a bead on Reznikoff, and it looks like Henrick too, hard to see from the angle, running like I am.  I know Reznikoff has seen them, but he’s committed, and he’s committed the rest of us now too, so here we fucking go.  I’m hauling as fast as I can.  The rest of the guys are running behind me, we want into those trees, so we might as well run as fast as we can, right into the wolves, if we can.  Maybe two more of us will live to die later of hunger, or later tonight when the wolves come after us again.

Reznikoff’s way ahead of us.  Henrick too, but he’s not as fast as Reznikoff. Reznikoff’s way ahead of us, it looked like he maybe had a hundred yards to run into the trees and he must have run fifty by now and  he isn’t slowing, none of us is, but he doesn’t look any closer.  I’m looking at the wolves closing on him and the distance we have to go compared to the distance they have to go and suddenly they’re closing on him faster and Henrick and I are still charging but it doesn’t matter, or isn’t going to.

Reznikoff twists back and looks at the wolves closing, and he seems to know. There are a lot of them now, maybe all of them, eight, ten, they’re springing out of the back of the dark, and I see the big one loping, in no rush.  Suddenly as I’m running trying to catch them the one in front doubles his speed, more than doubles, shoots forward away from the pack and straight at Reznikoff, into Reznikoff.  I don’t see a jump or a leap, he just shoots into him and they become the same thing, same animal.  Three more of them rush in now too, shoot at Reznikoff, then others.  Henrick falters and stops. So do
I
.  The big wolf doesn’t rush in, he watches.  He looks at us, yawns, and the wolves that haven’t rushed in at Reznikoff stop and look at us too, as if they’re guarding their kill from us, stopping us from interfering like they did with Feeny.

Reznikoff’s standing, somehow, he was down but he’s up again, but covered, still, in wolves.  He looks so far away, and I see Reznikoff twisting around with I don’t know how many hanging on him then he goes down, like I did, he disappears under the wolves, in the dark. 

Henrick and I and the others watch for what feels like a soul-damning time, longer than it seemed with Feeny. 
Long enough to go to hell in.
  We’re stuck, or hypnotized, I don’t know, but I can’t move, suddenly, can’t charge them, not now, none of us can, this time. There are too many, we’re too afraid, they’ll just go behind us like they did when I tried to get to Feeny.  Whatever stopped us, we stopped. 

When I think I can’t stand it anymore I look across to open snow away from the wolves and Reznikoff and away from where we were heading, and I look at Henrick and we think the same thing, I think, the others too.

“Leave him,” I say.  But I’ve yelled it.  I wonder if Reznikoff heard it.

Henrick hesitates, a second, Tlingit too, but after that we’re all running for the trees as hard as we can, after all my speeches and yelling about not running.   I want to get into the trees before they leave Reznikoff and hit us.  I barely look to see if the other wolves are chasing us and they aren’t, maybe they know they don’t need to, they’ll get us all, soon enough, or this place will.  But we run and try not to think of Reznikoff, and we think we’re getting away with something, God help us.  We’re coming closer to the trees, but we’re not there.  I look back as I run and I know Ojeira will be in the back and he is, he can’t run any better than that jump-hop hobble he was doing before, and I keep looking back to see if they are coming for him but by miracle, or by something, they don’t. 

The trees finally loom up big and I stop and let the others run in and look back for the wolves and for Ojeira who is somehow in his awful way doing a decent speed now.  Why they haven’t picked him off I don’t understand but he jump-hops up with me and we run the last part together, then somehow we’re in the trees, we pass in to the bottom of the fucking world darkness. 

Not far in at all, we all stop short, panting.  We look out to the clearing, to Reznikoff and the wolves.  I can’t see them or Reznikoff or anything but snow, and dark.  We back away, still looking, and as we feel the slope dropping under us we turn away finally and stumble and run down the slope as fast as we can, as if further into dark is safer.   We’ve run into the underworld like the ghosts we are, and left our bodies behind us.  We run and blunder, in dark, barely missing trees we only see once they’re right in front of us, that we have to stiff-arm to keep from smashing our faces into, and we keep running until we’ve fallen into even deeper dark, moon is gone and we’re huffing and puffing, trying not to think about Reznikoff, and Feeny, and wondering where the wolves are now. 

I can barely see anything, or any of the guys.  I look ahead, into the dark, and I see patches where a little moonlight is coming down, some ways off.  But here, the ground in front of
us,
is black and blank. I can hear us breathing.  I look up the slope behind us to see, or try to hear if any of the wolves are coming in behind us, as if I could hear them.  The wind is blunted in here, but trees creak and crackle, hum, and it’s almost worse, everything sounds like wolf to us.  But for all I watch and listen, there’s nothing, only dark and the air washing through the trees. 

I don’t want to stay here.  Dark or not I run-stumble on again, with the others, still, headlong, still huffing and puffing, thinking if I step into a bottomless ravine and smash to pieces somewhere, down below, I’ll be home-fuck-you-free, thank God, I’ve decided the matter, and hopefully the others will notice before they fall in after me.  I keep rushing on blind, one arm in front and trying to see anything at all, and I ram into branches and trunks and fall into holes and huff and puff on, glad I’m in the trees. 

We all stop again, closer to where the patches of moon are coming down.  We’re wheezing, aching, half-pissing ourselves, leaning on trees, looking back to what seems like where we came from, and all around, because we don’t know if they’re in here with us yet, or coming.  There’s some glow, too, I see, not just patches, and I see the slope shallowing out, it rolls down, below us, with the trees reaching up and the dark above, it stretches ahead  like some giant haunted cave.  I stare into it, at cathedral trees, leviathan, a maze of them, and dead giants at their feet, lightning-struck or fallen from age, roots-up, naked, massive.  For whatever little glow there is, there’s much
more dark
.  Maybe the wolves are in here with us.  Maybe new ones, a dozen or a hundred, lined up around us, watching us, blinking, displeased with us.  I don’t know.  We’ve seen maybe ten or so at most, it’s been hard to count them, running in and out of dark the way they have, seems like not many more than that, maybe only eight.  Enough, though. 

We make our way forward, or what we think is forward, through the maze of dead and fallen trees.  We’ve slowed down, not because we think it’s smart, but because we’re exhausted and like fools, we think we’ve made some division between the open of the clearing behind us and this place, as if the wolves couldn’t be three feet beyond what we can see.  I’m praying I can keep some idea of which way anything is in here, I’m telling myself I’m still taking a line that’s something like west, what we decided was west, anyway.  But I don’t know at all if that’s the case, or if we’ll go in circles until we die, and the wolves will watch us and laugh, or get tired of waiting and go on tearing us to pieces one by one.

We keep on, a good ways, until the slope drops, dips deeper again.  The wind is still coming but not as fierce. I think I hear water.  I hear something, ahead of us, or somewhere.  Sounds get lost in the snow like we do.  But somewhere, not too far, I think there’s water running.  I think if we could find something that leads to a real river, it might take us to the coast, and we could follow the coast to a town. 

It’s a nice thought, if the wolves were going to leave us alone that long.  But then I lose the sound anyway, all I hear is the wind still coming up harder, washing the trees again,
washing
us away, maybe, particle by particle.  My brain’s too cold again, or the air is thin.  I realize for all I know we’ve been in thin air all this time, thinking worse and worse, the more hours we breathe it.  We should get used to it, but I don’t know that we’re fit to get used to anything but seeing people die.  I keep going, listening, still, trying to catch the sound or follow it, but it’s blown away from me.  There’s nothing but wind, and us stumbling in the snow, huffing like cattle.

But in among the wind I’m almost sure I hear it again.  I stop, try to listen, everybody else stops too.  Scared as we are, we’re ready to stop anytime.  We forget the wolves, occupied with the business of putting one boot in front of the last.  We’ve made a division in our
heads,
after all, we’ve left them behind us.  It’s tired and cold we care about now, if no wolf’s right in front of us, teeth out.  Lazy, stupid beasts, we are. 

I listen, tying not to breath too loud.  But the sound’s gone, again, so I stand there, waiting, listening for the wind to bring it back or my brain to catch it again, trying to listen through my breathing, everybody else’s.  I can’t see them, except Henrick, and Tlingit, barely, but I hear them.  I hope it’s all of us, I don’t know.  As I listen for the water the wind shifts, but all I hear is that, the shift of wind, but I sniff the air now because I think I smell them again, the wolves, and my skin pricks, thinking I’m right.  Then I realize I couldn’t be smelling them,
it's
dead wood, or wet bark, or frozen mud, or my wounds rotting, or somebody else’s. Or the general stink of us, fear,
the
dirt we brought with us, freezing sweat.  For the last five minutes of going, everyone’s been falling and tripping in the snow and pulling themselves up again.  I don’t know if it’s smart or not, but I want to rest, a little. 

“We should stop,” I whisper out to Henrick and the others.  I don’t know why I bother to whisper, or don’t mean to, it just comes out a whisper.

Henrick and Tlingit and Knox drop packs, their pieces of wood, collapse in the snow.  I think I hear the others do the same.

“Who sees the others?”  I say to Henrick.

“We’re here,” Bengt says.  I hear them clamber through the snow, come in closer, wheezing,
then
I see everybody, Knox and Ojeira.  We’ve slowed down so much in here he’s kept up with us.  They drop their packs again, collapse again, everybody still wheezing and puffing.  It makes me feel better to see us all. 
Mother hen.
  I don’t want to lose anyone else.

We sit there, catching breath, or trying to, looking around in the dark. 

“You think they’re in here?”  Tlingit says.  I look around us.

“I don’t know,” I say.

We’re freezing, but we’re afraid to build a fire, in case it tells them where we are.  We’d rather stay in the dark and freeze.  We’re all more exhausted than before, and more scared than before, after Reznikoff and Feeny.