The Raven's Gift (27 page)

“Okay, I give in,” he said. “Just promise me we don’t have to host
dinner for the whole community. We don’t have enough food to pull something like that off. I don’t know how anyone does.”

She grabbed on to his arm. He flicked some of the snow he was carrying in her direction. He scooped up another handful and pressed it into her face and rubbed it playfully. She laughed and when he pulled his glove away, the snow remained on her cheeks and lips. He pulled her toward him and licked it off her salty cool skin.

“Mmm.”

“Thanks a lot! Now my cheeks are going to freeze,” she said. “Let’s go home and you can make me dinner.” They turned back and headed toward the village. Then Anna stopped. “It’s so beautiful. I love how the moonlight makes it look like a desert of white diamonds that just lead to the edge of the earth. We’re lucky to be here. Together, under this azure sky … I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. We don’t need to go anywhere else for the holiday, John.”

“Is that what colour it is?”

She took a deep breath and turned to him. “You think anyone can see us this far out?” she asked, pressing her hips against his.

“Why?”

Anna kissed him and pulled him down, on top of her, to the snow-covered surface of the lake. She rolled over on him, her legs straddling his waist, and stuffed a handful of snow into his face. She pulled off her mitten and unzipped the front of his snow pants. Her icy hand slid beneath the waistband of his fleece pants.

“What’s the occasion?” John asked as she kissed him again and he tugged at the zipper at the front of her parka with his gloves.

She unzipped the snow pants’ sides and pulled off the Velcro enclosures and slipped the back of her pants down. She eased herself onto him and giggled and kissed him again. She sat up and he pressed his back into the frozen lake and he rested his head on the ice and snow and stared up into the night sky. She floated above him, warming him, loving him as only she could. As she rocked her hips on top of
his the world seemed to split into three, Anna, her white diamonds surrounding them, and the blue-black sky above—and together the three felt endless, limitless.

WHEN THE GIRL STARTED SCREAMING, four men burst from the smokehouse carrying axes and knives. John stood behind the open door, his back pressed against the plywood wall, his pistol ready.

Her scream at first sounded too real, and he had to fight the urge to dive back down the riverbank. The shriek filled the still air, and for a moment the men stopped to locate the awful sound.

Through the crack between the door and the jamb he could see no one was left inside. Just a small flickering fire and the green light coming in through the tarp-covered roof.

He stepped from behind the door and fired two shots into the first man who turned at the motion behind him. The screams stopped and the other three men wheeled and he unloaded his clip into them.

Silence followed the ringing in his ears. He took his final clip from his parka pocket and jammed it home with the flat of his palm. As he turned to make sure the first man he shot was dead, something inside the smokehouse caught his attention. He kept an eye on the soot-coated bodies of the men, strewn on the riverbank in front of the smokehouse, as he walked forward, pushing closer, the shaking pistol out in front of his body, his finger clenching the trigger.

The room was bare, except for a pile of dishes and bedding. He half expected a pair of cross-country skis to be leaning outside, but there were no skis or poles. Smoke drifted out the door; the barrel stove had no chimney and instead emptied the smoke into the shack. His eyes rose with the smoke to the two slender logs that spanned the roof. Thin red strips of drying meat dangled from one of the logs. Hanging from the other log, tied with yellow anchor rope, two long, thin limbs. When he leaned in and squinted in the smoke, his eyes followed the limbs to their end. Two small brown hands swayed in the green smoke.

He spun away from the door and vomited what little was in his stomach. His morning meal—two bites of hare meat—the rest acid and blood from his stomach slowly devouring itself.

When he was finished, he rolled the men onto their backs. He wanted to remember their faces. He wanted to know what sort of men would become worse than animals.

Soot and grime covered their foreheads and cheeks. The first two men were Yup’ik, the third a white man, his mouth opened and in a half snarl, his teeth rotted to sharp points. When he rolled the fourth man over, the man closest to the riverbank, John cried out.

The dead man staring into the grey-clouded sky above them wore what had once been a white cotton T-shirt with red lettering. The lettering had faded, the words STOP PEBBLE barely legible among the blood and stains.

He knelt down and put his cold hand to the dead man’s warm forehead. With all the soot and dirt, the starved, tight skin of his face, he couldn’t tell if the man was Carl, but it didn’t matter. In his heart it was his old friend, stretched out dead in the snow, and he understood a little more about what a man would do to survive.

PART III

The

Raven’s

Gift

“You will be very lonely by yourself,” said Raven. “I will make you a companion.” He then went to a spot some distance from where he had made many animals, and looking now and then at Man, made an image very much like him. Then he fastened a lot of fine water grass on the back of the head for hair … waved his wings over it as before and a beautiful young woman arose and stood beside Man
.

—YUP’IK CREATION STORY, RECORDED BY EDWARD NELSON, 1899

   28   

R
ed, as he insisted on being called, talked them into cooking up one of the canned chickens. He seemed hesitant to share the news John wanted. “I got all the spices. It’ll be delicious,” he said.

John didn’t argue.

The bone-thin man opened up the top of the can, thawed the chicken, can and all, in a pot of water, and began preparing the meal. The girl and the old woman rested on the bed, and John sat quietly, just watching. It felt good to be somewhere safe and warm.

John pointed to the computer. “That work?”

“You mean is it connected to the world wide weird? No. If you need it to type a letter or something like that, it will work like a charm. With my batteries and the mills, and the solar panels I have on the roof of the old house, I’ve got plenty of juice. Everything but a hot shower. Totally off the grid.”

He pulled out the chicken and dropped it on a cutting board. Then he dumped the juice from the can into a pot. John was glad to see this. He didn’t want any part of the canned chicken going to waste.

Red glanced toward the bed. He leaned over to John and whispered, “You look like you could use a pick-me-up?” He opened a cupboard and pulled a nearly empty bottle of gin out from behind some pots. He poured a finger’s worth into two small glasses and handed John one.

“To the last of the real people,” he said, gesturing to the women on the bed.

They brought the glasses together with a soft clink and John took a small mouthful and just let it burn. The bitter taste of pine needles and juniper berries reminded him of the mountains and the old woman’s tundra tea. Not his usual choice for a drink, but under the circumstances, he’d drink cooking wine.

He swallowed and held the glass to his nose and inhaled deeply.

“Thanks. I needed this,” John said.

“I wish I could tell you there’s more where that came from, but what you see here is the last of it. I should have learned how to make blueberry wine or something. Too late for that now, I guess.”

He cut the chicken and then poured some rice and water into one pot, and in another dropped the meat in and dumped curry powder, dried lemongrass, and some other spices. “I won’t make it too spicy,” he said. “Yup’iks tend not to like stuff that’s too hot. Lukewarm and bland is the standard fare. That or fermented. Which I suppose is spice all its own.”

He covered the pot and turned a chair backward and straddled it. Then he stood up and turned the chair around and sat down in it. Then he stood up again, took the bottle back out, and poured the last of the gin.

“Your first question is where is the cavalry, right? Why didn’t anyone come for us?”

John nodded. “Something like that,” he said.

“First-year or second-year teacher in the Bush?”

“First. Going on a second, I guess.”

Red nodded and took a sip. He stopped and watched the surveillance monitor.

“Let me warn you that I am a certified conspiracy nut, so take what you will from what I’m about to tell you. Won’t say I saw this shitstorm coming, but as you can see with your own two eyes, I was as prepared as anyone could ever hope to be. Didn’t expect the government to do anything to help me. Didn’t want the government to help
me. So naturally, I’m suspicious. I’m paranoid. I’m your standard survival nut. With that said, I got a sneaking suspicion the feds are responsible. And if they didn’t create the sickness themselves, they sure didn’t do anything to stop the slaughter.” He took another sip and sat for a moment.

“Why would anyone want
this
to happen?” John asked, incredulous.

Red shook his head. “You’re a teacher. Figure it out. Tuskegee syphilis experiments? Government-sponsored sterilization? The smallpox- and measles-infected blankets given to the Sioux? Sarin gas bomb testing in interior Alaska? Nuke detonations in the Aleutian chain? I could go on and on. This here? This could just be another big government romp in the Arctic sandbox.”

John swirled his gin and took another sip. “I know enough history. And the proof is where, behind the grassy knoll?”

“Proof? My wife worked for the hospital. Heard from her, read some of her work materials, and did my own research. The Alaska bird flu plan was available to anyone with a mind to read it. There was one key line that I remember. Haven’t been able to forget it, in fact. The plan had these assumptions about who would survive the flu. It said, ‘Most people who have access to clean water, food, sanitation, fuel, and nursing and medical care while they are sick will survive.’”

“That wasn’t even the case for most of the people out here
before
this all happened,” John said. “There was a plan? They knew the flu would strike here? No. No way. Not possible. Why didn’t anyone know about it? I was a teacher. I would have been told something. What to do. How to prepare. The school district would have informed us.”

“Sure as shit there was a plan! Read it myself. Wish I had it for you to see now. You’d see the hole in it, plain as day. This isn’t Monday-morning quarterbacking, either, John. The scientists only factored in the sickness. Apparently there was little to no consideration taken for the culture, the close living quarters, or the remote location. If they had ever hoped to actually stop the flu and help people here, they would
have allotted a few more doses of Tamiflu. They would have initiated practice drills. The estimated infection rate was fifty percent, with only a three or four percent mortality rate, but that wasn’t factoring lack of sanitation, heat, food sources, or adequate medical attention.”

John felt light-headed. He stood up, sat down, quickly stood back up again. He steadied himself against the counter. He lifted the lid, set it aside, and watched the curry boil. He took a deep breath and returned to his chair.

Red stirred the pot, put the lid back on, and continued. “Or, you know, maybe that
was
all factored in, thus your answer to why no one came to save the day.”

“So what
exactly
are you saying?” John asked.

“In case you didn’t figure it out, if this disease is natural, southwestern Alaska is the perfect area for one hundred percent quarantine. That’s
if
this was natural. If it wasn’t, well that’s another beast.”

John set his glass down on the table and stood back up. He paced the small tank. He tried to not let thoughts of Anna’s death mingle with his anger.

“First off,” Red continued, “this is the biggest goddamn waterfowl refuge in the world, and the people rely on the birds for food. This wasn’t a case of
if
the flu hit, it was
when
. And would H5N1 make the jump to people and mutate? Would it go pandemic on the tundra, spread across Alaska and northern Canada and then down to the States? But then that raises the question, What if they knew this would happen? Worse yet, what if some small group of rogue pharmaceutical scientists manufactured the sickness and brought the bug here themselves?”