When Winter Bared Our Bones (2 page)

  “I was alpha. The pack was everything, and I was everything to the pack. Though my brothers and sisters hungered, I never did. The pack would not eat until I had eaten, for the pack was willing to give up everything for me, just as I would have given up everything for the pack.

  “But I couldn’t see what my eyes did not see, nor could I fight what I didn’t know and what I didn’t know was that from the moment the pack split Song of the Moon had set her sights on my end and the end of my brothers and sisters.

  “The game we could not find was gone not because it had ranged on, but because Song of the Moon and her pack had driven the game away. Our once fertile hunting grounds might as well have been a frozen wasteland. Not only were elk, deer, wild pig and wild horse gone, but gone also were winter hare and other small creatures that braved winter’s cold as wolves did.

  “It was a chance encounter with Old Blue, one of the great elders from Song of the Moon’s pack, that led to the discovery that her pack was to blame for our hunger. Rather than let Song of the Moon’s pack chase our game away and starve us, I decided to hunt and kill Song of the Moon.

  “As alpha, it was my duty to guide, nurture and protect the pack, but this was something more. This was something I felt I needed to do in the deepest parts of my bones.

  “And so a new type of hunt began. One of wolf hunting wolf. But our every attempt to take Song of the Moon was met by the great elders and the new members of Moon’s growing pack.

  “With winter’s bone-baring cold settled in and the long nights filling with hunger, I was left with fewer and fewer options. I knew I must make a move while my pack was strong. I knew I must not wait until hunger weakened us and we could fight no more.

  “In a desperate gambit, I called out challenges to Song of the Moon. Challenges I howled of through two long nights and days, calling for a one on one match. I couldn’t have known then that such a fight was what the great she-wolf had wanted all along.”

3

The girl’s face was tense, showing both her astonishment and her eagerness to hear more. “Song of the Moon goaded you into a fight? Did she want your pack for her own?”

  The zombie was silent for a time. “More than that. Much more than that. She was lost to her great sorrow. The heartbreak of such loss had consumed her. She wanted me gone, dead. She wanted all the wolves who sided with me gone, dead. Old Blue wouldn’t have betrayed her otherwise.”

  The girl leaned forward, touching a hand to the round table. “Old Blue betrayed Song of the Moon? But you said it was a chance encounter?”

  “A poor choice of words then, because it was not so much chance as providence. Old Blue wanted to be found and we happened to find him. But Old Blue didn’t betray Song of the Moon completely. Instead he spoke of a vision he’d had. A vision in which the packs were united after the downfall of a leader who intended murder.”

  “Murder?” the girl asked.

  “It’s as close a word as fits, for wolves do not kill wolves as men kill men, nor do wolves speak with words of such fixed meaning. A wolf’s howls can have many meanings, many ways of interpretation. Everything from the pitch of a yip to the sloping of an ear has meaning and changes the context and nature of what’s said.”

  The zombie was looking out the window again. A silence hung in the air while his eyes scanned the street below. The girl heard the sound of a car, a car door closing, a woman’s heels on concrete. Then the car drove on and was gone.

  “So what did you do?” asked the girl. “Did Song of the Moon accept your challenge?”

  “She did. It’s what she wanted more than life’s breath itself. She called for a meeting of the packs under the next full moon and I accepted. But I knew I couldn’t face Song of the Moon and live. The she-wolf was easily twice my size, with strength and cunning far surpassing my own.”

  “However did you survive then?” the girl asked.

  “I didn’t really. Or I should say that the wolf I was then didn’t because I knew I couldn’t face Song of the Moon as I was. I knew I needed to become more than a wolf. The next full moon was many nights away. I looked inward for days and the answer came to me in a dream, a whisper of a dream really. But it was enough and I knew that to face Song of the Moon I needed something forgotten in my past.

  “And so, I began searching. What I searched for, I didn’t really know and yet I knew I would know it when I found it. My search took me across leagues of frozen forest. A great arcing circle, carrying me back to a place I thought vaguely of as having once been my home—a home really. It wasn’t a wolf home certainly and so I could only see it at the edges of my mind, in places I hadn’t dared look as a wolf.

  “These were places from my former life you see. My life before I was a wolf. My life as a man.

  “I found what I was looking for on the fourth night. Not much remained, but I recognized it at once. It was the winter shelter I’d made as a man. The place I’d collected the former alpha’s pelt for my winter coat.

  “The sword, shield and armor were where I’d left them. Mostly in ruin, but these were the things I’d seen at the corners of my mind. The things that would help me live through the challenge ahead.

  “My pack stayed with me during the long nights and days of my search. They stayed with me as I salvaged what I could of the shield and armor. The sword, my steel teeth, stood ready, however. I needed only to clean and sharpen the blade, to hone my skills as I played with the blade in the field, and all the while time crept slowly forward toward a fateful encounter.

  “On the eve of the full moon, I donned the armor, took up the sword and shield and went with my pack to the meeting place. The packs met in a deep vale, with the light of the full moon bathing the place where Song of the Moon and I danced our dance of death and winner take all. Together we numbered more than a hundred.

  “The shield saved me more than once from the great she-wolf’s terrible jaws. The armor too. But it was my steel teeth that helped to even the odds.

  “I was terrified when it began. On four paws, Song of the Moon was able to look straight into my eyes. In truth, she wasn’t just two times my size, she was nearly three times my size. She outweighed me by far. Her jaws could lock around my waist from side to side. One of her paws was twice as big as both of my fists together.

  “But as I poured everything I had into blow and after blow, I came to realize the terror I felt was the man’s and not the wolf’s. In that instant, I knew too that to survive I must be both a wolf and a man.

  “I didn’t know how I would do this, but I puzzled at this as I fought to survive. This proved without doubt the most difficult part for me. While the wolf in me had no fear, the man in me was full of fear. Full too of things I didn’t want to know. Things long lost to the wolf. Memories of a father and brothers gone. Sisters and a mother I’d never see again.

  “Such pain proved to be as fearsome as the steel teeth in my hand. It drove my arm. It gave me strength. Such strength that for the first time I had the barest advantage.

  “Song of the Moon was powerful, cunning and strong, but I was full of pain and my desire for retribution was stronger than hers. I knew to my core what I must do. As if to remind me, the great she-wolf raked my chest. The armor caught most of the blow but my flesh caught some too.

  “Thinking me more wounded than I was, Song of the Moon closed in for the kill. So close I could feel the heat of her breath warming the frigid air between us. After she raked me again, she clamped her jaws onto my side, crunching through the armor and giving me the great scars I carry with me still.

  “Her terrible mistake was the same as the she-bear’s, for once she’d locked her jaws she committed herself to tearing the flesh from my bones and ending me. The armor, dented and rusted as it was, prevented her from finishing me. While she shook her head and fought to rip away armor and flesh, I threw down my shield. I took the sword in both hands and drove it into her neck and down toward her heart.

  “But even then she refused to release her grip. I watched her struggle, try to break free, fail, and finally go limp. And die. She did not die at once.

  “She collapsed onto me. I saw life drain from her eyes as her heart beat slower and slower. Finally, I delivered mercy. I took the hilt of the sword in both hands and drove the blade deeper still.

  “Then it was necessary to take her pelt and wear it as my own. I was almost sick from this. I was weak and had little reserve true enough, but this was something more. I wanted to honor Song of the Moon for her gift to me. Her gift of understanding, for I had needed to fully and utterly embrace both the wolf I was and the man I’d once been to truly come to know myself.

  “I then became something more. Something more than I ever dreamed possible.”

4

The girl’s eyes grew huge. She had drawn further and further into the French provincial arm chair as the zombie spoke, and now her face was painted with emotion. Her eyes, narrow and focused, hungered for something her lips dared not utter.

  The zombie’s lips shaped the word
no
, but no sound came out. He took a long drink of wine to clear his throat. “No,” he said. “This isn’t when it happened, but it was a necessary transformation for me to become what I would later become.”

  “And when did you become a zombie?” the girl asked, her voice rising as she spoke.

  The zombie touched a hand to the table. “We’re getting closer now, but that’s really only just the beginning. There so much more to tell beyond how it happened and how I became what I am. The whole story of my life really. Everything from the Crusades to the Grail to the forming of the Republic to the Red Coat war. But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”

  The girl said nothing. The hunger in her eyes said everything that needed to be said.

  “Let me take things in order. After besting Song of the Moon, I was the undisputed alpha of both packs. I settled old disagreements as wolves do with great hunts and unions between bachelors and she-wolves just coming into their own.

  “I repaired the divide and filled it with pack. Our strength was also our weakness, however. Feeding and keeping a pack of more than a hundred wolves was a great challenge, especially when we were so deep in winter’s throes.

  “But I knew there must be an answer to the hunger clawing at our bellies. The answer came just as the weakest of us started dying. It came in the form of a creature that walked upright on two legs and carried steel teeth and fire sticks in its hands.

  “The great elders were wary of this quarry. The young ones knew little of steel teeth and fire sticks. They’d seen the steel teeth I carried but they didn’t know enough to be afraid. I knew I should be wary but I wasn’t and so I led the pack after the two legs.”

  “The young ones were anxious for the hunt. They wanted to take down the two leg we followed, but I bade them wait. ‘Patience,’ I howled. Somehow I knew following was the right thing to do and we followed the two leg to its den where it met others of its kind.

  “My brothers, sisters and I took the herd as they sat around a circle of fire. They did not expect our attack and they drew their steel teeth too slowly.”

  The zombie stopped. The girl sat motionless regarding him, astonished. “People?” she whispered, her eyes wide. “You’re talking about people? You hunted people?”

  “Yes,” said the zombie, his eyes level and his face calm as he sipped his wine. “My how we feasted that night. As I ripped open necks and tore flesh from bone, I marveled at the rich taste in my mouth. I’d never had anything like it before. It was a flavor wholly its own and yet in it I could sense so much more. Bear, elk, deer, wild pig, game hen, and river fish. It was as if the skies had opened and brought nature’s bounty to my mouth.

  “I think perhaps I was addicted to the taste from the first. But I don’t remember in truth if it happened then or later. But I remember the feeling. Oh, how I remember the feeling.

  “It welled up from deep within me and somehow I knew this hunt was the most true thing I’d ever done—even truer than when I’d bested Song of the Moon. It was as if there was a battle raging within me, as if I was no longer just a wolf.”

  “But you weren’t just a wolf,” said the girl interrupting. “You were a man. You’d always been a man. A man and a wolf, like you said.”

  The zombie’s eyes filled with longing and hunger before they went to the open windows where a renewed breeze was playing in the curtains. He was silent for a pair of breaths, then he looked back. “Not at that moment. At that moment, there was only the wolf. The wolf and his profound hunger.

  “It wasn’t until the dawn that I scented and saw the bloody tracks leading from the two-leg den and knew one had escaped. While my brothers and sisters continued to gorge themselves after their long hunger, I followed the trail away.

  “I followed the two legs through the forest, across leagues of frozen earth. I ran in the shadows as the two leg made its way to a river. The two leg had limped or crawled most of the way, so by the time it reached the river I was sure it was done for. But it surprised me by jumping into the river and letting the fast-running water sweep it away.

  “I loped along at the river’s edge, following as best as I could. At times, I was so close I could almost touch it. At other times, it was so far away I could only scent it.

  “Each time it caught a glimpse of me the two leg howled and thrashed in the water. It wasn’t unlike any other wounded prey I’d pursued and yet even now I can’t fully explain the way my senses tingled, nor the way I longed to gnash its neck between my teeth and taste its flesh.

  “For a time, I forgot about my pack and the pursuit became the only thing that mattered. I ran along the river for several leagues, following its twists and turns. I ran on even after I scented the sea in the air. I ran on even after I scented other two legs.