Ian Mackenzie Jeffers The Grey (12 page)

I look up at these babies, making their spears, and I suppose in my haze I have been trying to get them home alive, even if I don't need to.  Doesn’t matter, though, like I said, but I'll do it for some fucking reason. 
Because I’ll do it.

We have been sitting a while making these silly little spears and having our fireside all-going-to-die-soon time, and I wonder if it’s enough that we could get up and move again.  Stopping the night when it’s nothing but night has lost its meaning, as good as.  Everybody sits, quiet, watching the dark and the fire by turns.  I look at Ojeira, see him nodding, falling asleep, and Bengt looks the same.  I feel myself slipping too.

I look up from the fire, suddenly, wondering if I’ve fallen asleep, and how long, if I have.  The fire’s down, cold’s crept into me,
  from
sitting too long.  I see everyone’s asleep.  How we can fall asleep when a thousand yards back, or two, wolves were on us, I don’t know.  It’s an escape, maybe.  What do you do after watching people die?  Eventually you’ll sleep again, it’ll come.

Suddenly I feel we’ve stayed too long.  I knock my boots together in the snow to clean the treads, like that's going to matter after two steps.  I haul myself to my feet, and reach to Henrick, shake him.

Henrick snaps awake, startled, looks around. 

“I think we keep moving, if we can,”
  I
say. 
Henrick nods
, shakes Tlingit, who does the same, hauls up.   The others wake up, too, see we’re still here, and look unhappy.  I pick up the sticks I sharpened, nod to the sticks we haven’t sharpened yet. 

“Let’s bring those too,” I say. 

I pull my pack on, as the others get to their feet, except Ojeira, who’s struggling.  Henrick and I bend down to help Ojeira up, and I stop.

The wolves have come in by the fire, standing there, staring at us.  Maybe they were here all the time we slept, staring at us, I didn’t hear them come,
they’re
just there.  Three, I see right away, and my heart’s pounding wondering where the others are. 

Henrick sees me staring, looks, the others too.  They’re very close, at the edge of what’s left of the firelight, looking at us.  Nobody wants to move.  I see more, then, now I’m looking, like I should have been looking, four more, dotted between the trees, could be others.  They’re there somewhere.

“Shit.  Shit,” Ojeira says, whispering, still on the ground, fumbling for his knife, which he’s dropped or something, he can’t find it.  He has his sticks but we all seem to want as many sharp things as we can have our hands on, not that we know what we’re going to do.  He’s the only one moving, he keeps patting around in the snow trying to find his knife and finally he finds it behind him, he was almost sitting on it, and he half gets up and falls back down with it, point up, holding all his sticks up too.

“If they come at us, we fight them,” I say, staring at the wolves in front.  “If any of them gets on one of us, we gang on that one, OK?  Try to get a stick into him, or a knife, if you can.”  They’re all staring, paralyzed, like that’s the last thing they’ll ever be able to do. 

I keep looking for the big one, I don’t see him.  Finally he comes out of the dark, stands there, staring with the rest of them.  I don't know what they’re doing, sniffing us out, again, choosing one of us to kill or deciding to kill all of us at once, or just waiting to see what the big one does.  I breathe, watch them breathing.

The big one straightens his body out, suddenly, leans forward, makes a line, nose to back, pointing at me, low.  I think he’s getting ready to come at me.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Ojeira says.

“I don’t know,” I say. 
“Choosing.”

The big wolf looks from me to Ojeira, sniffing.  Then he shifts, barely.  He’s pointing at Ojeira, now.

“Is he fucking looking at me?  He’s what— choosing me?”

I don’t know what they’re doing.

“If they hit you, we’ll get them off you.  You’ll be OK.”  I know I’m lying, but we can try. 

“You beat them away from me before, you can do it again,” I say to Henrick and the others.  Henrick and Tlingit just stare at them.

Behind the big wolf, I see the other wolves lean in too, setting low, like the big one.  They’re all looking at Ojeira, it looks like, which is turning Ojeira into jelly, he’s panting, shaking, starting to scrabble backwards.

“Stay put,” I tell him.

“Oh Jesus.
  God, Jesus,” he says.

Ojeira jumps, suddenly, flicks his eyes to a skinny wolf on his flank, gasping.  I didn’t see him before, but there he is, and Ojeira yelps and half-shoves backwards,
looks
the wolf in the eye.  The wolf looks at Ojeira, takes a step closer, low, straight, like an arrow.  I half-turn to be ready, but I can’t turn too far or I’m showing my back to the others.

It doesn’t matter.  The wolf shoots in, rushes toward Ojeira.  Ojeira screams, holds his knife and his spears up all at once, fumbling.  He’s too scared to have any strength, but he’s actually half-keeping the wolf at bay, it stops.

We wait another quarter-second and then the wolf shoots in the rest of the way to Ojeira, jumps him, and all the other wolves, all but the big one, run around us and past us, shoot in at Ojeira too.  Ojeira’s eyes go wide and his sticks scatter and fly and I grab up my stick and lay my knife along the shaft and I charge after them, hoping the big one doesn’t charge up from behind again.  Henrick and Tlingit and Bengt and Knox do the same.  The wolves have all jumped on to Ojeira by now, they’ve put their backs to us, and none of them is turning on us or getting between us and Ojeira this time, either they’ve counted us out, or counted we were going to let them take Ojeira. 

I’ve run a few steps closer.  There’s one the one at Ojeira’s middle but I have to get past the one closest to me who’s got Ojeira’s knee in his maw, I’ve started roaring, at some point, we’re all roaring, sticks high, and I don’t know how to go about this but I try to jump up over the one at Ojeira’s knee and fall down at the flank of the one at Ojeira’s middle with the point of the stick, as Ojeira’s scrabbling back trying to push him off. 

The point catches, and I’m amazed to see it sink under his fur but then it slides right through, I’ve just poked in under his fur and now I’ve fallen in the snow and lost my knife.  I look back, still down, scared, to see where the big one is and he’s gone.

But the wolf I went at has noticed the stick, and me, and as I bang around in the snow for my knife and as Tlingit and Henrick and the others are roaring and swinging sticks and logs the wolf next to me twists and snarls and half-flips away from Ojeira to see what just bit him, and I forget the knife and hold tighter on the stick that’s still snagged in him as I try to get up.  He doesn’t like it, but it isn’t doing anything, either, and he sees me getting up off my knees and I yank the stick back out of him but I stumble back in the snow and I drop it, and he notices that too.  He barks and hop-jumps half in the air and comes down on his forepaws and stares at me.  He’s off Ojeira, at least, and on me.  I grab for the stick and scramble back to my feet as I see Henrick ram his stick at the next one and hits its side, I think, but it twists away and flips away under Henrick and backs up, looking at him like mine is looking at me, then it hops to the side and into the dark and we don’t know where it is at all, running around to come at us another way, I think, and all this at the same time as Knox looks to be wrestling with one and keeping it off him well enough for the instant, I hear the others yelling and yelping barking yips but I can’t see everybody, Tlingit’s out of sight, Bengt too. 

But more wolves have jumped in at Ojeira and Henrick tries to get them off him, and I face mine, wondering if I’ll live if I charge it or he’ll swipe me in half, and as I’m deciding if I can charge I hear them running, somewhere around us.  I think I see blurs in the dark, dark in dark again.  But I have mine to think about.  He’s blocking the way between me and the wolves on Ojeira.  Suddenly I see Tlingit fall backwards out of the dark and scrabble back to his feet looking back into darkness, at whatever he was facing, but he’s got a log in his hands and he sees Ojeira and he turns to help Henrick, swinging and swinging his piece of wood at the heads of the wolves at Ojeira’s middle with all his might and barely getting their attention, and then I see Bengt has been there all along but he’s down, for some reason, beating and poking at the wolves on Ojeira without bothering to stand.  They’ve been on Ojeira too long.

I finally go in at mine he dodges me and scurries back, like the big one did to me before.  Then he stands off, watching me, and I give up on him, I pray he won’t run me down and I run to help Bengt and Tlingit and Henrick get the others off Ojeira while Ojeira’s screaming, trying to shove the ones closest to his neck off him, but my wolf does run me down, I turn just as it’s on me and about to get his teeth on my legs and I roar at it and try to tower up big and drive at it with the stick and all I do is poke him again and he twists away like he’s nothing but night air and jumps back, watching, and I chance leaving him again and turn to Ojeira and I see a wolf pushing close to his neck no matter how much the others are pounding and poking and pulling at it, and not knowing what else to do I shove in at him and grab him under his belly like I’m picking up a puppy and pull him backwards off him, falling backwards with his weight.  He weighs a frightening weight, moving, and alive, and he turns to snap at me and still falling backwards I spin and throw him off me into the snow, but I as good as run into the one I left to run in at this one, he lands on him instead, and falls into the snow, and they both hop back up barking, staring at us. 

I look for the big one again and in
all the
blur I think there were others who came in at Ojeira that I can’t see now, I think, and I finally see some running around us up a rise, maybe the big one is with them, but I lose them in the dark right away. Then I hear Bengt and Tlingit and Henrick yelling and grunting behind me and I look back and they’re jabbing and pounding at the last wolf on Ojeira, or trying to, but he’s rolling away under the knives and the sticks and he wriggles out and runs away up the slope into the dark as if nothing happened to him at all, and he stops with the big one and the others and they all look down at us.  I think they do, but I don’t know, because I can’t more than half see them.

One rushes back in right away, out of the dark, down the slope, straight toward Ojeira, it looks like.  He looks very big coming down at us.  He isn’t the biggest one, but I know he’ll go through Ojeira like he’s nothing and I’m so afraid my skin tightens and I step in his way and try to get my stick up but I get it snagged in his paws and it knocks away or I don’t know how, but I drop it, and I try to grab it but he hits me and the weight of him coming at me that hard slams me back in the snow and he is on me, at my face.  I try to grab his fur but he is right up at me and I can’t get my stick, I have nothing, he’s going to get me.  Then I see Tlingit and his arm swinging like a windmill and I see Feeny’s knife in his hand, and he punches it sideways and almost knocks him off me but the wolf pushes back in at me and Tlingit punches him again and the wolf finally flinches and jumps off me to the side and falls into the snow.  He hunches and twists, but he doesn’t get up, then he’s still.  I stare at
him,
and my belly creeps, I should be glad he's dead, and I am, but my belly creeps all the same, looking at him in the snow.  I feel sick.  It’s from fear, probably, because the half-minute he was on me I thought this time I’d die.  His fur’s wet, with blood I guess, and there’s red in the snow now, and I look at him and
  feel
sick still, more, churning.  Probably fear, I suppose.  I don’t know.

I look up.  The big wolf’s looking down at us, from the rise, and the others with him look at us too, staring.  They don’t rush in at us, they just stare.  I stumble to my feet and look at him, breathing, and I look at Ojeira, who again, somehow, is alive, still.  He keeps gasping and breathing and looking at his middle where they were tearing at him and once again it is hard to believe he isn’t dead yet, again, and he starts almost laughing a sort of gut-hollow laugh and everybody is whooping.

“Yeah, you fuckers, fucking yeah!”
Ojeira yells, which is surprising, from the sight of him, because they did get him pretty well, but he’s whooping now, lying there. Bleeding, facing it out to the wolves watching us, and I’m wondering what it takes to kill Ojeira.  He tries to get up, but flops back again, still laughing.

“Fuck you!” he yells, lying there.

I look up.  The wolves are watching.  The big one looks at me, it feels like, staring and staring, and then sudden as that he turns and strolls into the dark, and I can’t see him at all, and the others flow after him like smoke, again, and they’re gone.  I stare into the dark, we all do, waiting, looking all around, but we can’t see anything, or hear anything else of them.  Bengt and Knox whoop and jump around like idiots again.