I reached into my tool bag and pulled free a knife in a faux leather sheath. While it looked like a simple hunting knife with a nine-inch blade, I'd really made it as a tool. The blade had a sharp edge, but I'd also embedded Voidcutter components. When I activated it, the knife would cut through most things like they were thin air. I stuck that to my belt on the left side.
"Alright, I'm ready to go. Onward!" I said.
Marty waved me in front of him. "You've got the GPS."
"So I do," I said and pulled the phone out. The GPS app's compass pointed me in the right direction and we tromped away from the truck and into the wild.
The snow made odd squeaking and crunching noises under our boots. In the pre-dawn light our breath was easily visible, a thick fog. Ice crystals began to crust on my eyelashes and nostrils almost immediately. I'd seen weather this cold farther south before, but I'd always had the sense to stay indoors when it was happening.
"Goddamn it's cold," Marty said.
"Yeah, let's keep moving. Our body heat will help," I said.
Just past the campground's cleared area, the brush was thick, a leafless maze of relatively young trees. We pushed through in the general direction of Grandpa's outpost, trying to keep out of the thickest underbrush.
We made slow but steady progress for several hours, the sun rising above us but failing to add any warmth. The phone was tracking our march toward the GPS coordinates, but the distance was closing slowly.
Marty was lagging behind. I had to stop more than a few times to let him catch up. He was limping and favoring his left side, his cracked ribs paining him.
"You sure you're up for this, Marty?" I asked.
"I'm not waiting in the fucking truck," he said through gritted teeth.
"Alright, let's go then."
At around noon we stopped and had a break in a clearing. Marty sat on a fallen tree and ate something out of a foil packet. It was steaming hot and what I could smell was vaguely similar to the chili and beans that the label promised.
"Thank God for self-heating MREs," Marty said, swallowing another spoonful of brown slop.
The heat had come from a chemical reaction in a bag. It was called a flameless ration heater. Just add water and you get enough heat to make even an MRE packet of chili and beans edible. Marty had tucked the bag into his parka after it had finished heating his meal, and he looked a lot happier for it.
The trees around us were getting bigger and older the farther we went from the highway. Birds chirped in the treetops and occasionally we'd hear something larger moving through the brush, but there were no signs of human existence. No vehicle noise, no airplanes overhead, no people talking on their phones. I found it quite relaxing.
Marty finished his meal and squeezed the last bits of juice out of the foil packet before folding it up and sticking the trash into a pocket of his pack. He hesitated and then with a wince shouldered the pack and clicked the sternum strap closed.
"Okay, I'm ready," he said.
After I glanced at the compass to be sure of our heading, we left the clearing.
We started to cross more and more frozen stream beds. On the map, Grandpa's outpost was near a small lake, one of the nameless thousands up here in Northern Saskatchewan. It made sense that there would be a lot of streams and small rivers. The whole area would be a swampy, mosquito-filled hell in the summertime.
We saw our first lake not long afterward. On the map it was a tiny, abstract bit of blue in amongst the green. In front of us in the real world, it was a flat plain the size of a football field. A perfect sheet of unblemished snow covered it. Our path would take us right over it.
I walked out a few meters. I could feel the difference in footing. The flat ice beneath the compressed snow felt relaxing after hours of walking over snow-covered roots, rocks, and holes. I smiled and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that Marty had stopped near the edge of the lake.
"What's wrong, Marty?"
"You sure it's safe?" he asked.
"It's so cold out here, this lake is probably frozen solid, man."
To demonstrate, I jumped up and down, hopping around like a mad rabbit in a wide circle. The ice beneath my boots felt like solid concrete.
"See?"
He came out to meet me, seeming to relax marginally when the surface of the lake didn't break open to swallow him. We crossed the lake in ten minutes and were back in the thick, leafless brush.
A few hours later the sun was getting low in the sky, and we had crossed what seemed like dozens more frozen streams and another, smaller lake.
"I think we're only a few hours away now. We'll get there an hour or two after dark," I said after studying the Maps app. Our pace was a lot slower than I had hoped it would be, but we'd get there.
"Great," Marty said, wheezing a bit.
That was when we heard the first howl.
Chapter Nineteen: Howling and Ice
IT WAS A SAD, GHOSTLY noise I'd only ever heard in movies. The howl was coming from our west and sounded far off. The hair on the back of my neck rose as ancient instincts kicked in.
Another howl answered, to our north. It sounded closer.
"Wolves? There are wolves here?" Marty asked.
"Seems like it. Let's get a move on. They're afraid of humans, I think."
"Are they though?"
Marty picked up his pace a little bit, although I could see that it cost him something. He kept his right hand near the pocket I knew he had the Glock in.
I
