The Grey

out and fade into the dark one by one, till the last one stops howling and then we can’t see them or hear them any more.

We don’t know where they are, after a few seconds.  They might have looped around and come next to us, in the dark, by now.  I look around, at Henrick and the others strung out, everybody standing still, and I listen for paws in the snow, their breath, a yelp, but there’s nothing.

The wind shifts, suddenly, hard, like a door slamming on you, and as cold as it is, I think I smell them, the smell they left behind.  I think I can smell Feeny, too, his blood and all the other mess they ripped out of him, on the snow.  I look back to the trees where we were heading before the wolves came after Feeny, where we imagine west is, but don’t know.  At least the wolves went something like the other way, back behind us, which is something, I suppose, not for Feeny though.  Bearings are hard to hold.  I don’t know if the trees we were trying to head for are the ones I’m looking at now.  I know very little but cold.

I start back to Feeny to see if he’s alive, which seems insane to me, because that’s the directions the wolves went into the dark, but I start back for him anyway, and besides Ojeira is sitting there, I can just see him, looking stranded.  The others don’t move at first, then they follow me, either for Feeny or Ojeira or because we want to stick together.  We’re watching and listening, all the time, and it’s hard going back, but we get to Ojeira, who’s getting himself up, staring, shaking, because he was closer to see what they were doing to Feeny.

“Are you OK?” I ask him.  He nods, looking terrified and disgusted at the same time.

We keep on a little further, snow blowing at us, and get to Feeny.  I see ribs and meat, he looks like a deer you’re dressing to lay in a deep-freeze, and my skin and my muscles creep, seeing him like that, it’s worse than Luttinger looked, somehow.  I look around in the dark, and I still can’t see the wolves though I know they might be standing there, waiting.  But they seem to be gone, for the minute, watching us, maybe, I don’t know.  I bend down over him, reach under the mess.  The snow blowing stings my hands and I feel the warmth coming off Feeny’s carcass but I still reach around under him.

“What the hell are you doing?”  Henrick says.

I’m after Feeny's wallet, why I think he’d still have it I don’t know, but blood’s everywhere and his guts and hacks of flesh and it isn’t something I’m enjoying.  But I find it, to my surprise, half in his pocket, half in the snow.  Henrick starts scooping up snow with his bare hands, covering him, and Tlingit and Bengt and Knox help, me too.  It seems the least we can do, what we didn’t do for the others, and maybe it’s for us more than for him.  We do a little, and I know the snow will cover him soon anyway, for winter, and after won’t matter.

Tlingit picks up Feeny’s pack, which is lying loose a few feet away.  He reaches in and takes out Feeny’s knife, and a couple of bags of peanuts, and the lighters Feeny found.  He stuffs the peanuts in his pack and keeps the knife in his hand.  I pull my pack off and kneel down and get my knife out, too, put it in my pocket, and the piece of wood I have.  I feel two kinds of idiot for not having them ready before.  Everybody else does the same.  It was probably stupid to come and stand over him like this.  More than probably.

We head for the trees again.  All of us are looking around constantly now, every step, heading for the trees.  I’m thinking that if they hit Feeny because he was straggling, walking drunk like he was, then they’re still watching us, waiting to choose another.  As sure as I am they’re watching us, I’m hoping that, somewhere in my head, they’re seeing us going, they’ve shown us enough, and they’re satisfied.  But I don’t know.  The clearing seems to go on forever, we walk and walk, fast as we can manage, staring at the strip of forest, making up the ground we lost going back for Feeny, and slogging on, waiting every step for something else to come out of the dark, take another one of us.  I’m waiting for them to take Ojeira, because I’m pretty sure they will next, if they come at us again.  Sometimes they want the weakest, if they’re hunting, and sometimes the strongest, if they’re fighting.  I try to act like neither, which is as good as saying: ‘Take that other fucker, don’t take me,’ but it’s an old habit, keeping my head down, making myself invisible.  I tell myself if they don’t jump me, better for me to save whoever they do jump.  That’s what I tell myself.

I watch the line of trees bobbing up and down in the distance, in the dark, between the snow and the sky.  We all seem to think we’ll be safer in the trees.  I know we won’t be, but you get driven by these feelings whether they make any sense or not.  I look ahead, tying to measure how far we have to go.  The trees look like a black shore with more dark behind it, like the edge of the world, and somehow after hours of not seeming any closer we seem to be getting to the point where it’s enlarging, and the darkness of the trees we’ve been praying to reach starts to open up, bit by bit.  It seems close, finally, not so much that we start to ease but it seems closer.

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.