Primal Scream (37 page)

Friday, January 12

Big and Little Dippers. The path of the Milky Way. And where it divided, Cygnus the Swan. A million stars pulsed in the black beyond. A shooting star seared from west to east. As if the hand of God swept the strings of a harp, ghostly streamers of Northern Lights wavered and twisted and shifted and mingled bands of green and yellow and red behind the stark black pinnacles either side of him, as
left
. . .
right
. . .
Katt
. . .
Katt
... he plodded on.

Tracks of wolves crumbled under the stumble of his snowshoes.

Winter was slowly killing him, as it had killed so many others who wandered too far from home. Would they find him frozen in his tracks, standing stiff like some weird statue? Wind chewed away at his face and bit into his bones. Needles of ice blown from the drifts cut his skin to bum like fire. He had to squint to protect his eyes, then wrench frozen lids apart to see. So fiercely cold was it he couldn't stop shivering, no matter how hard he exerted to trudge on. A tree beside him boomed as its sap froze, bursting fibers within its trunk, and causing him to wonder if his blood would do the same. A half inch of hoarfrost covered his hat. A layer of rime coated his collar. Icicles hung from his eyebrows and hair. Vapor from flared nostrils froze on contact, and when he breathed in, a mitt over his mouth and nose kept frost from his lungs.

All the grief of winter shrouded him.

The sob of the icy wind mourned his passing.

. . . left. . . right. . . Katt. . . Katt
. . . plodding on.

Following paw prints up the valley.

The dotted line of wolf tracks ran along the bank. Single file, the wolves stepped in each other's prints. Sometimes the lead wolf moved aside to switch positions with another wolf. Occasionally, a set of prints' would veer from the pack's tracks to investigate something of interest or sprinkle a boulder with scent to mark their territory. Separate from, but dogging the! pack, trailed a lone set of prints.

Robert was dead tired. His legs and back ached. He knew he was near the end of his endurance, having long since tapped adrenaline to drive him on.
Just one more step, one more step
, feeling dizzy. Would the next step crumple him?

No sign of man since entering the valley.

No snowshoe, sled, or snowmobile tracks.

Was this the wrong valley?

Was it a trick?

Was he lured here to die from—

Then he saw the wolves.

Raised on "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs" and "Peter and the Wolf" and "The Wolf and the Seven Kids," later reading Jack London's
White Fang
in his teens, all those Yukon prospectors eaten alive, DeClercq hoped to God Kevin Costner got it right in his film.

These guys didn't look like they wanted to dance.

They looked like vicious killers.

The pack of seven wolves watched him from the bush along the bank ahead. They were larger and lankier than sled dogs, with longer legs, bigger paws, and narrower chests. At a hundred pounds each and built for distance travel through rugged woods, this gang of timber wolves might roam forty-five miles a day hunting for something to eat.

Something like him?

Robert eased the .38 from his pocket.

Six shots.

No more.

The Mountie ran through what he knew about wolves in his exhausted mind. Hunting, attacking, killing, and eating in a related group, wolves are a super-predator. One predator, with many legs. A pack is dominated by an alpha male and female. No doubt the alpha male ahead was that big black beast with his tail high in the air, to whom the others turned for leadership. That meant if they attacked, he'd be most aggressive and, when it was over, would get the choicest piece of meat torn off the Mountie. A wolf wolfs close to twelve pounds of flesh a day, which meant these seven would strip him to the bone.

He cocked the .38.

There is no more chilling sound in the wild than a howling session by wolves, unless it's a chorus howl in front of you. Big Black threw back his head and let one go, his two-inch canine fangs gleaming by the light of the moon. Like mourners' keening intertwined, the pack joined in; then one lamentation after another dropped away until what remained was a wail so piercing it went through DeClercq's heart.

The lead wolf turned his back on the man and loped away.

The alpha female moved up to join her mate.

Beta male next, and so on, the five subordinates followed in their tracks.

The Mountie exhaled a sigh of relief and uncocked his gun, but jerked tense again as he heard the
clangg!
of a leghold trap.

The alpha female shrieked.

And yelped.

And wailed.

And cried . . .

With the snarl of a hellhound, her mate turned on the man who'd set the trap—
Not me!
DeClercq shouted in his mind—but Big Black was already coming for him, no pre-hunt ceremony here, the pack circled nose to nose and butts out like a football team, tails wagging with the alpha male wagging last, just an all-out shred-his-throat and rip-his-balls-off rush.

Your timber wolf or gray wolf is a huge wild dog. Just think of the biggest German shepherd you have ever faced, with five buddies as fearful as him, barking and filled with hate, really vicious dogs . . . well, this pack was more vicious than that. As they charged, the wolves fanned out in a semicircle around DeClercq, one in the woods left, one on the river right, glancing back and forth to coordinate maneuvers and cut off any escape, while the alpha male came straight for his jugular, and the beta male lurked in a blind spot to get in and grab him off guard.

And off guard he was.

Big Black was the most hideous demon DeClercq had ever seen. Fire when you see the whites of their eyes didn't apply here, for the eyes coming full-tilt at him blazed red under the moon. Fire when you see the whites of their fangs, now that was a different matter, for he saw the whites of forty-two teeth come springing at his throat.

Big Black's canine fangs were spiked for clinging. They would sink deep and lock hold. The rows of jagged molars behind would tear and shear, some flesh teeth for cutting tendons, others bone teeth for cracking to his marrow. Covered with hundreds of horny projections called papillae, the tongue was long and supple to lick meat off his bones and slurp his blood. Saliva drooling around this array would lubricate wolfing chunks of him down whole.

DeClercq fired.

Three slugs from the .38 took Big Black midair in the chest. The wolf that slammed into and knocked down the Mountie was dead. DeClercq caught the beta male at the corner of his eye, snarling in from the river side, and pumped the last three slugs into him. Scrambling to his feet, a series of stumbles due to the snowshoes, he waved his arms and yelled at the remaining three, which turned tail and ran off.

When it comes to wolves, the number doesn't count. Social hierarchy is the threat. The alpha male controls the charge, so taking him out quells an attack by breaking up the pack.

His mate wailed on.

The pain and rage in her howl cut DeClercq to the quick. He wished he'd saved a bullet to deliver a
coup de grace
. Was it echo, or was he passing out, for he thought he heard the female snarl behind him as well as in front, then he remembered . .

The lone wolf!

Ears erect and aimed at him, forehead swollen and wrinkled over blazing eyes, lips peeled in a snarl that bared broken fangs, the grizzled, mangy monster attacked from behind. Pack splitting creates lone wolves. Once a part of Big Black's gang but now unaccepted, this loner had to keep at least a hundred yards distant. It fed on what remained of kills brought down by the others, with little more than gnawed bones and raw hide to stave off hunger.

The lone wolf was starving.

Here was crippled food.

DeClercq stumbling.

So it closed in to kill.

His empty gun in one hand, the Mountie fumbled for the radio phone in his pocket with the other, wrenching it out as the jagged fangs came at him. Then he slammed both objects together like cymbals to crush the beast's muzzle.

The radio shattered to pieces.

So did the wolf's jaws.

Mangled, the loner retreated.

Sickened by the carnage, DeClercq struggled on. He knew the leghold trap was set by Winterman Snow, and it spurred him to overcome exhaustion. Unable to get near the gnashing female to finish her off, he was followed by her howls.

* * *

Ahead of him, from a height, DeClercq was watched by another wolf.

Under the wolf head was Winterman Snow.

He didn't reload or shoot her. He's out of shells, thought the Mad Trapper.

Time for the hunt.

Time to kill the girl.

Another cabin in the woods.

Another dead daughter?

Last time he had been too late.

Was he too late again?

The Northern Lights streamed like a ribbon ruffled by a fan, but as dawn broke beyond the eastern wall of peaks, the colors caused by solar particles bombarding the Earth's magnetic lines of force dissolved into this awakening day.

The cabin was like the cabins in books he had once read to Jane, fairy tales before bed to see her off to sleep. It stood on a flat just above the solid river, a snowed-in abode for winter witches and ogres and trolls to haunt. The forest around was a fairy land of gargoyle shapes carved by the wind. Mounds of snow weighed down trees hunched like old women draped with shawls. Stumps were toadstools. Snow off the roof of the cabin joined drifts up the buried walls.

Toward the open door shambled a living snowman. Like the Houses along the river at Gunanoot, stuck in the snow out front to greet him was a totem pole, an evil deed to the land with six stacked skulls.

Footprints ran around the cabin to flee farther up the valley.

Snowshoe marks followed.

Stalking Katt.

* * *

As in a nightmare, which surely this was, the land around conspired to slow her down, while every time she glanced over her shoulder, the archer had gained ground on her.

On seeing the knife in his hand when he came back from wherever he had gone, Katt was sure he was going to cut her throat. But instead he'd cut her bonds. The open door an invitation to run, and legs wobbling under her from being hogtied, she had made a break for it and wasn't stopped. Once outside in the bleak cold, she had run around the cabin to put it between her and the bow he'd used in
halait
.

Now Katt trudged for her life.

No doubt the snow was firmer and less deep on the frozen river, unobstructed winds having crusted it and blown some away, but that would be like floundering up an archery range. Here in the woods along the bank Katt had some protection, weaving through the maze to keep a tree or two at her back, but there were other pitfalls. Frost cracked under her to swallow a leg to the thigh, and when she planted her other foot to try to heave it out that leg sank, too.

Katt was literally wading through pools of snow as the archer snowshoed in.

As if to make the point, an arrow whistled through the branches beside her. Icicles fell like lances. Snow sifted down like flour. Ice splinters sprayed back from gaps ahead, for the arrow had struck a frozen waterfall blocking the bank, which filled a frozen pool before it angled right to continue flowing as the frozen valley V stream.

The only way out was up.

Katt climbed.

The tips of the peaks way up there glowed with the pale orange light of dawn, slowly edging down into the dark recesses of Headless Valley. The forty-five-degree uphill gave her a foothold and underbrush to grab onto. As Katt clawed her way up to the flats above, she found breathing an ordeal, the air so frigid big gulps burned her lungs, yet gulps of oxygen were crucial to fuel the machine.

Katt suffered.

And reached the flats.

Here was another snow field to wade across, open to the archer before the uphill rose again, but to her right was an ice cave sunk in an outcrop near the crest of the waterfall. Glancing left, she saw the archer as he closed in through the woods, obviously on a path cut for snowshoeing. Beside her loomed a pine with stripped lower branches, the Canada jays perched on it puffed up like feather balls to keep warm. The chickadees were so cold they refused to sing.

Katt snapped off a branch to use like a gondolier to help pole her through the snow.

She waded toward the cave.

Standing at the edge of the woods under snow-laden trees, Winterman Snow nocked a razor-head on the string, extended his bow arm toward the spine of the girl, drew back the nock to anchor the string at the corner of his mouth, and let loose the shot.

Shhhhewwww
. . .

The snow around him was unmarked by recent marten, mouse, and squirrel tracks, for the furred had settled into hollows and dens.

Dens like the cave beyond the fleeing girl.

A snowshoe hare had ventured out. As it hopped in front of Katt, she brought down the pole, jerking away at the last moment to keep from spearing it, and that's when the arrow ripped through her parka between her arm and her body.

The razor-head shot into the cave beyond.

The roar that came out was loud enough to shake snow from the trees.