The Call of the Wild: Klondike Cannibals, Vol. 2 (11 page)

*  *  *  *  *

After they left the secret hold of exotic treasures, Merritt led Jack to the Captain’s quarters at the stern of the
Argo
.

It was a large and elegant c
hamber, with mahogany panelling, like Dr. Fiddler’s cabin, only twice the size. A massive polar bear rug, complete with skull and open-fanged mouth, lay upon the floor between two elegant Turkish divans. Merritt took Jack over to the bookshelf to inspect his library—which he insisted Jack was free to peruse whenever he wished—and to show off the brand-new 1897 Underwood typewriter that Jack would be using to record their journey to Dawson.

Jack
looked at the Underwood on the Captain’s desk with awe. He’d never seen such a beautiful machine before. It was so simple, so streamlined, so elegant. He found himself looking forward to beginning his work with an eagerness he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“A pact then
, between gentlemen of honour?” Merritt said, running one fingertip along the typewriter’s keys. “As Achilles had Homer, so I shall have you. Our deeds will live forever!”

Jack smiled. “They shall,” he said.

Merritt insisted that they both light a celebratory Cuban cigar, which they did. After a few minutes, Merritt said he had some letters to finish writing before the launch.

So
Jack excused himself and left, intending to go find Billy and head out on deck to watch the final preparations on board the ship.

He’d
just shut the door to the Captain’s quarters when she surprised him, grabbing and pushing him up against the wall in the darkened hallway.

*  *  *  *  *

She bit at his lower lip like an animal as she kissed him.

Instantly he
forgot his anger. Forgot the danger he was in. Forgot himself.

Then, too soon,
she was gone. Slipping past him into Merritt’s quarters, and closing the door shut behind her.

Jack
didn’t know how to feel. His mind was a perfect blend of confusion: all he wanted to do was linger on the taste of her lips, yet part of him still hated her utterly, with a passion. And now, to top it all off, he was very suddenly—insanely—jealous.

It
was not an emotion he knew well, and he did not like it.

It was a shame, too, because part of him really liked Merritt, despite himself.
Jack stared at the door and listened.

He
could hear Sadie talking with Merritt quietly inside the Captain’s quarters, but their voices were muffled.

W
hat was her game now? Jack wondered. He clenched his fists suddenly, unable to bear the thought of her kissing Merritt. But why should he care? Was he going to let her trick him again? Was he really that—

Then Jack noticed Billy watching him
from the darkness at the end of the hall. He wondered how much the boy had seen.

“Let’s go
up and watch the launch,” Jack said.

They walked up the s
teep staircase and went out on deck.

*  *  *  *  *

Jack had a theory: the more places a man had slept in, or travelled through, the more life he had.

Years ago
Jack had noticed that certain moments seemed much longer in his memory than others. For example, the night when he’d taken the wheel of the
Sophie Sutherland
for an hour and battled the wind and the waves off the coast of Japan: somehow that hour seemed longer to Jack than all the many months he’d spent working in Hickmott’s cannery.

How could an
hour be longer than a month or a year? It seemed mad.

And yet
, measured in life, that hour
was
longer. There was something eternal in it, something he could feel even now. In his mind’s eye he had only to recall it and he was still there, gripping the wooden wheel so tightly that his fingers bruised and blackened…

The road kids
he’d tramped with from Sacramento called any man holding down a steady job a “barnacle.” Like most jokes, Jack knew theirs contained a piece of hard-fought wisdom.

Like the tramps
, Jack hated working “one same shift.” His nimble mind habituated to repetition very quickly, making dead what at first was living to him in any task. And so, enslaved in the monotonous drudgery of a factory or office, he did not notice the days of his life, so precious and so few, passing him by.

He knew he was still young. But already he could hear
the ticking of the clock.

If he
wasn’t spending his life living, he was spending it dying.

*  *  *  *  *

Jack and Billy stood on the deck of the
Argo
looking down at the immense crowd gathered below. It seemed like every square inch of pier, warehouse, or loading area was covered with the faces of the many hundreds of men, women, and children from all classes who’d come to see their loved ones embark.

Banners a
nd handkerchiefs waved in the bright, clear air. The scene had an unreal quality to it, as if it had already happened, somehow, as if it was already a part of history.

Jack
looked for Eliza, but couldn’t find her face among the crowd. He waved anyways, hoping she would see him up here, and know he was well and truly on his way, at last.

Billy stared
down at the crowds impassively.

“Look…
” Jack began. “I think we should be partners.”

Sure, Billy was unconventional, but you play the hand
you’re dealt. Wisdom was in knowing how to play generously, with a smile on your lips.

If Billy understood what Jack was sayi
ng he gave no indication.

Still, Jack felt as if he might be
getting through to the boy somehow, so he went on: “We’ll split our money right down the middle.”

Jack
pulled out the ten-dollar bill Merritt had just given him that morning, and offered it to Billy.

As
he did so his left hand throbbed a little.

The bleeding had long since stopped, but the teeth-marks in his flesh still tingled and itched, and Jack couldn’t help but wonder if the wounds were somehow infect
ed. Earlier, in the ship’s sickbay, Dr. Fiddler had tended to the wounds, washing them out with warm water and spirits of camphor, and wrapping them tight with gauze. He’d known it was a bite wound, and a human one at that, Jack was sure of it. But he hadn’t said anything.

Billy
stared at the cash in Jack’s hand for a moment, then looked down at his feet.

“This isn’t a bribe, kid
,” Jack said. “I need someone I can trust.”

But Billy
wouldn’t take the cash, so Jack put it back in his pocket. “Fine,” he said. “You don’t need to take it just now. But believe me—”

At th
at moment, Jack was interrupted by the sound of the
Argo
’s engines roaring to life. The ship lurched forward with a tremendous rumble and groan, and he had to grab the railing to avoid falling over. All around he could hear stacks of supplies creaking and shifting as the boat began to churn forward through the waves, five minutes ahead of schedule, and before the
Umatilla
.

The crowds
below cheered madly.

When Jack
felt the sway of water under his feet again—a sensation he’d always associated with freedom—he couldn’t help but feel a flutter of excitement in his belly.

His journey
North had begun.

*  *  *  *  *

Excerpts from Dr. Fiddler’s
Journal of a Far Country
(November 1897)

*  *  *  *  *

17 November 1897, Dawson

The fever begins as a form of mania.

I have seen it run its course now a great many times. At first, the patient exhibits an uncommon excitement
. This quickly escalates to something akin to the throes of religious ecstasy described by the mystics & madmen in our holy books. Often—right up until the very end—they are lucid, dazzling in speech & prolific in thought.

Sometimes they will convince you of the wildest notions.

But inevitably there is a certain look they get in their eye—unmistakable once you have seen it—& you will know they have turned. Thereafter begins their inevitable slide into the most devilish of hungers: the cannibal’s mad thirst for human flesh.

Soon this blinding desire overtakes all their cons
cious functions & moral powers & reduces a man to a cunning fiend & bottomless pit.

*  *  *  *  *

18 November 1897, Dawson

Doctor Malthus was right.

It was p
rogress that did us in. We enslaved more & more of nature & expanded our numbers too greatly.

Is it then
such a surprise that Nature finally turned her Eye upon us? Life feeds upon life in a never-ending cycle. We enslaved the wild & so our bodies have become the wild—the scene of its thousand struggles for dominance.

T
hey
are the future of our species, the more successful mutation in the tree of life. A version of us more suited to this world of tooth-and-claw. Perhaps it is the cannibal, & not man, who is created in the image of God.

For pitiless hunger is
the Great Logic of life & the cannibal does nothing but exalt it.

*  *  *  *  *

21 November 1897, Dawson

Exactly one month until the longest night of the year.

Today we burned a hundred more in the churchyard. But we lost Jack at the saloon & Father Judge was bitten. I do not know how we will manage. We have only six & a half hours of light per day as it is & are nearly overwhelmed.

How will we survive the
winter solstice, when my almanac says there will be only three & a half hours of sunlight?

Feeling very low.

*  *  *  *  *

22
November 1897, Dawson

Hypothesis #1:
When the hot ones die & freeze they come back cold.

Hypothesis #2:
The fever is spread either through the “kiss” of the cold, or through the bites of the hot.

Hypothesis #3:
Not every bite causes the infection. There is a wide variation in the symptoms: I have seen with my own eyes a man bitten who did not turn & another merely scratched who was a full-blown cannibal an hour later. Thankfully, the disease does not appear to be airborne, although exactly how the cold ones infect us is still a subject for conjecture.

Hypothesis #4:
Both varieties seem to prefer the taste of the uninfected. However, in their absence, they will attack & feed upon each other. This in part explains the sporadic nature of the outbreaks we have seen so far. An outbreak in an isolated community can utterly consume itself before any of the infected may transmit it up or down the river.

Hypothesis #5: I have experimented with various methods & found that burning is the only
reliable method of disposal. Bury them & they’ll just dig their way free, eventually. I suppose you could just chop off their legs & arms & leave them although I don’t know why you would bother.

Hypothesis #6: Last week
while scouting on Dominion creek I came across the corpse of a prostitute frozen in a snow bank. I tied a long red scarf around her neck, so I could easily find her again. When I returned at first light the next morning, I found her half way up the Dome, on a direct line towards Dawson. Thankfully a quiet couple of days followed, with no attacks to speak of, and no new infections. I managed to return the following three mornings, to track her progress. Based on the observations I made, I estimate the cold ones’ pace as somewhere between one & three miles per night, dependent upon the terrain & number of hours of darkness.

Hypothesis #7: T
he cold ones seem to track us by our breath, as mosquitoes do. This is why we find them pressed & piled against the windows & doors of our shelters every morning. Thank God they cease moving in the sunlight or we would never get any sleep.

So many new questions for the S
cientist & Philosopher.

A New A
ge is upon us…