Tails of the Apocalypse (10 page)

Jack sat down with the trap between his legs and grabbed the two sides of its jaws and pulled. He was able to move the claws farther apart than the first time, but it still wasn’t enough for the cub to remove his foot. Jack felt his strength waning. The sharp edge of the iron cut into his hands and tears filled his eyes. He screamed his frustration, fueling his arms with one last ounce of strength. Jack’s muscles were cramping, and just when he was about to give up, the cub pulled its paw out of the trap. The blood had made the fur on its leg slippery enough to slide out.

Jack let go and the trap snapped shut. He expected the cub to run, but it cowered instead, licking its injured leg. The wound was raw and deep and caked with dirt and blood. Jack took the handkerchief off his neck and soaked it in the stream.

“Let me take a look,” he said, slowly stretching out his hand toward the cub. It didn’t resist, but its whining asked for tenderness. Jack gently took the paw and cleaned the wound as best he could, then ripped the handkerchief in half and wrapped one part around the cub’s leg to staunch the flow of blood.

“You need to leave,” he said, lightly petting the cub’s head. It responded by pushing its ears against his fingers. The young wolf was in no hurry to leave Jack’s loving touch. “You need to get out of here. Do you understand? You have to go!”

Jack stopped stroking the cub’s head and pushed at its side, away from the direction Manny had walked. But the animal refused to go. Its whole body shivered, and it pulled itself forward until its head rested against Jack’s palm again. But the boy knew what had to be done and pushed the cub a few more times and finally—afraid one of the villagers would walk around the boulder and see them—he picked it up and carried it downstream, scratching its ears as he went. The village was several miles upstream from where he was. He figured he’d go down another mile and leave the cub there. After that, it was on its own.

Ten minutes later, his back and shoulders ached so much, he had to stop and set the cub down. It hobbled a few feet away from him, still unable to put any weight on its injured leg. It looked miserable.

“Come on now,” Jack said as he picked it back up and continued their journey downstream. A series of rock formations stood a few hundred yards to the west, near the stream but relatively hidden behind a cluster of low-standing pine trees. Jack climbed across the rocks to a small gap between two of the boulders. The overhang there was large enough to give shelter from the rain and protection from prying eyes that might look up from the creek. Only by climbing the rocks as he had would anyone see the small dugout. Jack hoped that wouldn’t happen.

“This will make a nice den for you, at least for a while. You stay here. Okay? I’ll be back tomorrow to get you something to eat. It won’t be much. Don’t leave!”

The cub appeared even smaller now as it lay, back pushed against the flinty wall of the hollow, licking the handkerchief. Though Jack expected to be punished once Manny returned and the villagers learned what he’d done, he ran upstream just the same. Part of him regretted setting the cub free. It would most likely die anyway, either from hunger or from the infection in its leg. He should have killed it and brought it back to the settlement, he knew. Everything would have been better. Perhaps even for the cub, blessed with a merciful, quick death.

The pain was red.

It wasn’t only in his leg. It radiated upward into his chest. When he slept, his fever dreams were filled with images of crows pecking at the wound, piercing the slowly healing skin and ripping out large chunks of it.

The night before, he’d eaten a rat. It crept up from the stream, probably attracted by the blood seeping through the cloth around his leg. He couldn’t keep any of it in his stomach. It came back up in heaves, though he managed to walk a few feet before he threw up.

The boy returned after two nights and brought a bowl of thick liquid. He only stayed for a short time, during which he replaced the smelly cloth with a fresh one. The new cloth had some kind of salve on it. It smelled almost as bad as the previous one, so the cub shied away from it.

The next day—or maybe it was the day after that—the boy came back again. The other boy was with him, and they each brought him a fish. They sat with him for a while, cutting the small fish into pieces and feeding them to him. He felt better after that.

From then on, the boys came every day. They never stayed long but always brought something for him to eat. They petted him, and when he began to feel better, he played with them, pretending to gnaw them but never actually biting them. In his mind they were cubs like him, from the same pack and equals.

After a few more days, he was able to put both front paws on the ground with only a little pain. The boys came one last time. That day, he saw fear in their eyes, and when they left, he knew they wouldn’t return. He waited at the entrance to the cave for two nights and two days.

When they didn’t come back, he left his hiding place and followed their scent along the banks of the creek until he reached the settlement. His nose caught the sweet smell of death before he found its source.

Half the huts were burned to ashes. Slain bodies lay on the ground, limbs ripped from their torsos. There was no sign of the boys. No sign anywhere. He sniffed at each tent, each hut that still stood, and even the remnants of all the burned ones. He found the younger boy along the lakeshore, ten feet from the water’s edge. Half the boy’s arm was missing. His lifeless eyes stared into the sky. The cub’s howl echoed across the water.

He picked up the older boy’s scent at the edge of the green surrounding the lake. He followed it into the tundra, the pain in his heart as wide as the land that lay before him, as vast as his hope for the boy’s safety. The stars stood cold against the darkened sky that night, and he felt immeasurably small below them.

The next day brought rain. It washed away the scent, leaving no trace of it behind. For seven months, he searched the steppe. He traveled far to the east until he reached the mountains. From there he went west, through the swamps and the lowlands. Twice he came upon another settlement. Perhaps the boy had joined one of those packs. But he didn’t dare go near them to see, though he so desperately wanted to. He remembered the lesson of his pack. He remembered how much humans loved wolf meat.

Except for a slight limp in his right front leg, he became strong and fast and a fierce hunter. His scorched fur grew back in, and save for a streak of black skin, a ghost of his burning, it stood thick and warm against the winter. He learned how to fish in the narrow creek beds and hide from the packs of hyenas at night. He learned to be a shadow in the dark. The cub had become a wolf.

Jack and the others had fled across the plains and toward the mountains. There were twenty-eight of them left. First, they’d run from the fire. Now they ran from those who hunted them. They’d found a small plateau in the hills, protected by a steep, narrow incline in front and sheer cliffs in back. They stayed there for a few months. It reminded Jack of the small hollow he’d found for the cub. And as he had then, the survivors clung close to the rocks, protected by them, until the wounded were able to walk again.

But as the nights grew colder and food once again became scarce, they left their refuge and made their way along the green river at the edge of the desert. The rocky landscape made it difficult for anyone following to spot them. At the same time, the rough ground slowed their progress to a few miles per day.

One night, Jack overheard the men talking about a settlement, a stronghold where they would find safety and food and warmth. The mountains on the horizon came closer each day. Yet, they seemed unreachable in Jack’s mind, standing distant and mocking him with false hope, a promise of safety never to be fulfilled.

Seven moons ago, Manny had taken his hand and pulled him to safety when the dark figures charged into their makeshift camp. The boys had risen early and snuck into the kitchen hut to steal a bowl of wheat porridge for the cub. From there, they’d seen the shadows moving through the fog that stretched across the lake at dawn.

The intruders were cloaked in dark robes, hoods pulled over their heads, and armed with long, curved swords that gleamed in the early light. One minute the camp lay sleepy and quiet alongside the water’s edge; the next, chaos reigned. The attackers set fire to the huts to force out the ones sleeping inside, then cut down anyone who escaped the burning. They slaughtered his fellow villagers right in front of him, and Jack knew the cloaked invaders weren’t merely after their food—they were after
them
. Through the smoke that filled the air, Manny took his hand and pulled Jack away and toward the shore and safety.

“We’ll swim out,” he said. “We’ll be safe out there.”

Only a few feet before they reached the water, Jack felt his brother’s grip release as the sword cut across Manny’s back. With a cry cut short, his twin fell to the ground. Jack stumbled on, driven by terror, the screams of his fellow villagers echoing across the lake. When he looked back, he saw the cloaked man kneeling next to Manny, lifting his brother’s arm up and pulling it toward his own mouth, teeth bared.

Pain gripped Jack’s heart as he fled. He wished he could’ve found the courage to return to his brother’s side. But the way Manny had slumped to the ground made Jack certain he was dead.

Tears stung his eyes and blurred his vision as he ran as fast as he could along the edge of the water to where the lake became swampland. From there he went east, and following the high grass, Jack circled the settlement. He stayed low to the ground, running from one boulder to the next for cover.

Jack had found the other survivors a few hours later. The small group, mostly women and children, huddled against a large, rock outcropping, tending to the wounded. The few men remaining were too old to be warriors. None had brought more than they wore on their backs. A few had knives, and one carried a small bow. From that day until this one, they’d lived their lives on the run.

Jack grabbed the quiver he’d made from the furs of muskrats he caught by the river. He’d made it his mission to look for long, thin sticks he could cut into spears for fishing. During the last few months, he’d become one of the group’s main food providers. Jonu, one of the older women, taught him how to set traps for animals, and Carrie, a girl only two years older than him, showed him how to use the spears to catch fish. She’d stand completely still in the center of the stream, holding the spear above the water, then drive it through an unwary swimmer.

Now they fished and hunted together. Carrie let Jack use her knife to whittle the sticks into spears. It was important not to make the tip too long and thin, or it would break. Too short a tip would leave the spear dull and unusable. They figured out how to attach sharp pieces of narrow and pointy stone to the tips to make them more effective.

Carrie knew that Jack and Manny had been brothers. Every once in a while, she’d ask Jack if he still thought of his twin. He’d simply nod his head and continue with whatever task he was working on.

Jack wanted to talk to her about Manny, wanted to tell her all about him and how they’d found the cub and brought it food each day. But he was afraid he would start to cry. So he kept silent, even though he suspected she’d understand.

“When we reach the stronghold,” Jack said, “I would like to find a stream and build a dam in it and name it after Manny.”

“I like that idea,” Carrie replied.

She was shouldering a spear with four fish stacked on it. As long as he’d known her, she always wore her hair long and braided. About a month before, she’d come to him, handed him her knife, and told him to cut off the braid as close to her head as possible. He didn’t want to do it at first, but she told him it was getting knotted and filthy and she couldn’t take it anymore. So she sat down on a rock in front of him, and he cut her hair while tears ran down her cheeks.

To lay his palm on her head felt strange. He’d touched her hands before, but that was necessary touching, when his hands were tools that helped her up onto a boulder or pulled her out of a deeper part of a creek. But Jack had never touched her like this.

Despite the dirt, her hair was soft, and he felt the warmth of her head under his hand. When he saw Carrie crying over her lost braid, he wanted to hug her and hold her, but he could only bring himself to pick up the braid from the ground and hand it to her. After that, her hair always stood up in all directions.

Sometimes, when he watched her kindle a fire with two sticks and a few blades of grass or tell stories to the younger children in the evenings, he wished they’d lived in a time where she hadn’t had to cut her hair, where she could wear it long and beautiful and pretty.

You would like her, Manny,
he thought during those times.
She’s one of us.

One morning, Jack felt someone tugging at him in his sleep. When he opened his eyes, Carrie knelt beside him, pulling his shirt.

“You’re early,” he whispered. Except for the two women holding watch at the edge of their camp, nobody was up yet. The night was just beginning to lose its hold on the land, and Jack saw only Carrie’s silhouette against the sky.

“I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

Jack got up and grabbed his quiver. They left the camp silently, signaling the guards on their way out. They’d been in this spot for a few days now, mainly to stock up on food and water before they went farther into the mountains. The rocks all around them gave them cover from anyone approaching from the east and south. To the west stood a large cliff. It rose up steeply, protecting the group from possible attack from that direction. The land to the north sloped downward and into a valley. A cold, clear stream rushed over the rocks, providing pools of water for fishing and some of their more basic needs, like washing clothes and bathing.

They hadn’t seen other groups for the last six months. After the cloaked invaders killed two-thirds of their group, they avoided contact with anyone else. Though they’d taken to sleeping huddled together against possible attack during the first few weeks of their flight, they’d become more confident now, spreading out more—still holding watch each night but not under constant fear of death.