Tyrell Johnson - The Wolves of Winter

“Can’t make any promises.”

“Thank you for the food,” Jax said, then turned to me. “Nice to meet you, Gwen.”

“Lynn,” I said.

He stepped toward the door. Mom aimed.

“Wait,” I said. “Mom, Jeryl will want to meet him.”

“Ha. Jeryl will be annoyed we let a stranger in while he was out,” she replied.

“He’s the first person we’ve seen in years. Ever, unless you count Conrad. Jeryl will want to trade news, hear his story.” Long pause. Mom’s hands dipped, the barrel of the gun dropping ever so slightly. Her arm was getting tired. She eyed Jax with suspicion. Something else in her eyes too. I decided not to ask. “You know I’m right,” I said.

Mom lowered the gun, spun a chair around, and straddled it. She rested the barrel on the back of the chair, pointing it at Jax.

“Sit,” she said.

“The gun isn’t necessary, ma’am.”

“Sit.”

He sat.

“You’re limping. Why?”

Jax’s head bowed slightly. “I took a bad spill when I broke my bow.”

“Wounded?”

“A scratch.”

“You did this a few days ago?”

“About. Days kinda blend.”

Mom bit the inside of her cheek. “Let me see.”

“It’s fine. It’ll heal.”

“Let me see.” She adjusted the rifle on the chair.

“What’re you gonna do? Kill him if he doesn’t show you?” I asked.

“Just let me see,” she repeated.

Jax stood, limped around the table, and lifted his left pant leg. On the side of his calf was a gash, two inches long. It was angry red and raw.

“Trust me,” he said. “It’ll heal.”

“Hurt bad?” Mom asked.

“Not really.”

Mom gave him a look.

“Like a bitch,” he said.

I sat, holding the gun on Jax as he reclined in my cot. I felt like an idiot with the gun on him, but Mom wouldn’t be persuaded. She didn’t trust him for a second. Any minute now, he was going to get the jump on us, rape us, murder us, and chop us into little pieces. Stupid. I aimed the gun at his face while Mom went to gather supplies.

“Sorry about this,” I said.

He shook his head. “You have to look after yourself these days.”

Screw it. I lowered the gun, leaned it against the wall.

Mom glared at me as she came up the steps, but she didn’t say anything. She had her bottle of vodka, some bandages, and a steak knife. “I’ve never been the best at this,” she said.

“You don’t have to do this, ma’am.”

“Shut it.” Mom lifted a hand, hesitated, then put it on Jax’s calf. She poured out a good splash of vodka on the cut, then dabbed it with a wet cloth. Jax grunted and twitched.

“We need to cut the dead tissue off.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s small,” Jax said.

“So was David.”

“David?” He eyed her like she was a crazy person.

“David and Goliath. He was small, but he brought down a giant.”

“My leg isn’t David.”

“And you’re not a giant.”

Mom poured a dab of the liquor onto the steak knife she’d brought and started cutting into the bad flesh. Jax closed his eyes. He didn’t squirm or call out. Afterward, the wound looked more red and raw and bigger than it had when Mom first started at it. Maybe she’d made it worse. She’d cleaned up a few of our cuts and scrapes over the years. She even gave Ken a few stitches with fishing wire after he fell down a ravine. But still, she didn’t really know what the hell she was doing. None of us did.

Jeryl’s reaction to Jax was much different from Mom’s. It was already late afternoon when he, Ken, and Ramsey came into the cabin. Mom and I were downstairs, tearing up an old blanket to use as a bandage. Mom nodded upstairs to the loft, giving Jeryl a serious look.

Then they were all crammed on the stairway, staring like a bunch of idiots.

“Who the hell are you?” Ken asked.

Jeryl looked from Jax to Mom and back again. Jax sat up in bed, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Jeryl, calm, grabbed a chair and sat next to him.

Then he started asking questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Jax.”

“You got any weapons on you?”

“Just a knife.”

“Where you from?”

“Montana.”

“Was it bad there?”

“Same as everywhere else. Not much left.”

“You sick?”

“No.”

“Been around the sick?”

“Been on my own for months.”

“Months? You’ve seen others out here?”

“A group of maybe twenty.”

“They sick?”

“Nope.”

“Seen anybody else?”

“Not for a long while.”

“Why didn’t you stay with them?”

“I keep to myself.”

“Where you heading?”

“North.”

“And then?”

“No and then . Just north.”

“You running from something?”

“Aren’t we all?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Just trying to find a better life. Same as everyone.”

“You in the wars?”

“I was the wars.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means yes, I was in the wars.”

“You have any family left?”

“No.”

“Seen any of the cities?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody left?”

“Not that you’d want to meet.”

“You hurt?”

“My leg. Just a scratch.”

“Right … you can stay till your leg’s healed up. Then you’re gone.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m fine to leave now.”

“You’ll be fed, a roof over your head.”

“Don’t want to be a bother.”

“Can’t stay in here, though. You’ll bunk with me. Ramsey, you stay with Ken.”

“I’m not sure—”

“You leave the second you can walk straight.”

“All right.”

“You try anything … and I’ll kill you.”

“Fair enough.”

7

When Dad was dying, I used to read Walt Whitman to him. Mom made me wear a stupid mask over my mouth. He could probably barely hear me. “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” I remember feeling weird about that line. Seeing my dad’s sunken lids and thinning hair and the wrinkles around his eyes that used to be laugh lines but had somehow turned into sad creases. Nothing about him looked sacred.

The wars had all but stopped. No more reports of bombs or gunfire or drone strikes. Nothing. The world had turned its attention to the flu. Maybe half of Eagle had already left, heading north. My friend Amanda told me that her mom said that the colder the temperatures the less likely it was to get the flu. Didn’t make sense to me.

“Is the flu going to kill us all?” I asked Dad one day. Light filtered through the piss-yellow curtains. On the windowsill was a can of Coke surrounded by water rings that looked like Olympic symbols.

Dad shook his head. “It’s not going to kill you. You’re a survivor. Come here.” I stood from my chair and walked over to his bed. It was closer than I was supposed to get. A single bead of sweat trailed his forehead, disappearing down the side of his face. “First you survive here.” He pointed to my head. “Then here.” He pointed to my stomach. “Then here.” He pointed to my heart. “You have to have all three.”

My hands were shaking.

“You’re gonna do fine, Lynn.” He rested his hand on my arm. He wasn’t supposed to. “You’re a survivor.”

Turns out, he was right.

Jax had gone—or been escorted, rather—to Jeryl’s cabin after dinner. Dinner had been mostly quiet. Small talk here and there. A lot of stares. A lot of tension. Even the sound of a boot scuffling beneath the table seemed to set everyone on edge. Ramsey had looked especially agitated. Kept giving Jax the stink eye. Ken mouthed off once or twice, Jeryl asked a few less interview-like questions about game and hunting and Wolf, and Mom sat silently, chewing her meat like she was trying to kill the thing all over again.