Chris Pourteau - Tails of the Apocalypse

Jack could almost feel the animal’s pain himself. He held his knife inside his pocket, readying himself to cut the cub’s throat. The boys had watched other members of their group of survivors slaughter animals before, and Jack was fairly sure of what to do.

He’d planned to move around the cub and get behind it. From there it would be relatively easy to hold it and slit its throat. But when he saw the cub up close, all he could think of was to open the trap and set it free.

“Help me open the trap,” Jack said after a moment’s hesitation.

“What?”

“The trap. We need to open it and I can’t do it by myself.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“We have to go back and tell them that there’s a wolf cub in one of the traps.”

“But they’ll kill it,” Jack replied, louder than he’d intended. He was sure now. He wouldn’t kill the cub or go back to the village and tell them of a new food source. He could only hope it wouldn’t die out here, injured and without the ability to hunt for itself.

“It’ll die anyway,” Manny replied. “It’ll die without food.”

“You don’t know that—”

“And if it doesn’t die, if it survives and gets stronger and becomes a full-grown wolf, it will come back and try to kill us .”

Jack didn’t want to admit that Manny was right.

“Besides,” Manny continued, “we can’t set the trap back. It’ll be closed with nothing in it, and they’ll know someone must have freed whatever was in there.”

Damn you, Manny! Jack thought. He couldn’t argue with his brother’s logic. He was right.

“I’m going back to tell them,” Manny said as he turned and began to climb up the boulder.

“Manny!”

“I’m going back to tell them,” his brother repeated without turning. “You can come or not. It’s up to you.”

Manny was gone. It would take him thirty minutes to get to the village and another thirty to bring someone back. Jack didn’t think. He didn’t consider the possible consequences for himself or the village. He only saw the pain the cub was in, the terror in its eyes. Its silent plea for help.

He knelt before the trap. A grown man could probably open the trap alone, but Jack knew he wasn’t strong enough. Nevertheless, he had to try. He put his hands on either side of the iron jaws and pulled. The cub was still, as if it knew that moving might result in further injury. It watched him carefully.

Jack was able to pull the claws apart a quarter inch, but it wasn’t enough. The cub whimpered when Jack eased them back together around its leg. He needed to prevent the claws from closing once he pulled them apart. He needed to pull harder and farther than he did before.

Jack sat down with the trap between his legs and grabbed the two sides of its jaws and pulled. He was able to move the claws farther apart than the first time, but it still wasn’t enough for the cub to remove his foot. Jack felt his strength waning. The sharp edge of the iron cut into his hands and tears filled his eyes. He screamed his frustration, fueling his arms with one last ounce of strength. Jack’s muscles were cramping, and just when he was about to give up, the cub pulled its paw out of the trap. The blood had made the fur on its leg slippery enough to slide out.

Jack let go and the trap snapped shut. He expected the cub to run, but it cowered instead, licking its injured leg. The wound was raw and deep and caked with dirt and blood. Jack took the handkerchief off his neck and soaked it in the stream.

“Let me take a look,” he said, slowly stretching out his hand toward the cub. It didn’t resist, but its whining asked for tenderness. Jack gently took the paw and cleaned the wound as best he could, then ripped the handkerchief in half and wrapped one part around the cub’s leg to staunch the flow of blood.

“You need to leave,” he said, lightly petting the cub’s head. It responded by pushing its ears against his fingers. The young wolf was in no hurry to leave Jack’s loving touch. “You need to get out of here. Do you understand? You have to go!”

Jack stopped stroking the cub’s head and pushed at its side, away from the direction Manny had walked. But the animal refused to go. Its whole body shivered, and it pulled itself forward until its head rested against Jack’s palm again. But the boy knew what had to be done and pushed the cub a few more times and finally—afraid one of the villagers would walk around the boulder and see them—he picked it up and carried it downstream, scratching its ears as he went. The village was several miles upstream from where he was. He figured he’d go down another mile and leave the cub there. After that, it was on its own.

Ten minutes later, his back and shoulders ached so much, he had to stop and set the cub down. It hobbled a few feet away from him, still unable to put any weight on its injured leg. It looked miserable.

“Come on now,” Jack said as he picked it back up and continued their journey downstream. A series of rock formations stood a few hundred yards to the west, near the stream but relatively hidden behind a cluster of low-standing pine trees. Jack climbed across the rocks to a small gap between two of the boulders. The overhang there was large enough to give shelter from the rain and protection from prying eyes that might look up from the creek. Only by climbing the rocks as he had would anyone see the small dugout. Jack hoped that wouldn’t happen.

“This will make a nice den for you, at least for a while. You stay here. Okay? I’ll be back tomorrow to get you something to eat. It won’t be much. Don’t leave!”

The cub appeared even smaller now as it lay, back pushed against the flinty wall of the hollow, licking the handkerchief. Though Jack expected to be punished once Manny returned and the villagers learned what he’d done, he ran upstream just the same. Part of him regretted setting the cub free. It would most likely die anyway, either from hunger or from the infection in its leg. He should have killed it and brought it back to the settlement, he knew. Everything would have been better. Perhaps even for the cub, blessed with a merciful, quick death.

The pain was red.

It wasn’t only in his leg. It radiated upward into his chest. When he slept, his fever dreams were filled with images of crows pecking at the wound, piercing the slowly healing skin and ripping out large chunks of it.

The night before, he’d eaten a rat. It crept up from the stream, probably attracted by the blood seeping through the cloth around his leg. He couldn’t keep any of it in his stomach. It came back up in heaves, though he managed to walk a few feet before he threw up.

The boy returned after two nights and brought a bowl of thick liquid. He only stayed for a short time, during which he replaced the smelly cloth with a fresh one. The new cloth had some kind of salve on it. It smelled almost as bad as the previous one, so the cub shied away from it.

The next day—or maybe it was the day after that—the boy came back again. The other boy was with him, and they each brought him a fish. They sat with him for a while, cutting the small fish into pieces and feeding them to him. He felt better after that.

From then on, the boys came every day. They never stayed long but always brought something for him to eat. They petted him, and when he began to feel better, he played with them, pretending to gnaw them but never actually biting them. In his mind they were cubs like him, from the same pack and equals.

After a few more days, he was able to put both front paws on the ground with only a little pain. The boys came one last time. That day, he saw fear in their eyes, and when they left, he knew they wouldn’t return. He waited at the entrance to the cave for two nights and two days.