The Pack (20 page)

“He was going to kill me,” said Martha.

“Oh, never was I, never was I—”

“To kill me, if I wouldn't go back to The Mount.”

“Oh, nonsense. A story.”

“Shut up, Red Dog. It's over with you.”

“Oh, over, it's over, yes, it's been over a long time. Seven times seven equals what? Eight times five equals what? Oh, two times two equals what? You see how I'm broken. Give a man who's weakened with an attack of nerves another chance.
Satisfaction guaranteed
—”

“Never,” they said together.

“Oh, don't leave me here alone. What's to become of me?”

“Follow us and Hunger will rip your throat out. I swear it,” said Bradley.

“Oh, I am undone. I am undone. How I am undone.”

*   *   *

They could still hear his cries—“I am undone”—echoing through the still spring air when they lost sight of him—a gaunt figure in ill-fitting clothes, pleading to the heavens.

In Compound 23, a patrolman sniffed and climbed into an old jeep.

“Vagrants, thieves, mad dogs … Time we made an end of them all,” he muttered to himself.

17

THE FOREST

Hunger stayed close to them for the rest of their journey. The farmland was beginning to run into tundra and the firs thickened around the track. They skirted where the water had gathered in the hollows and not yet drained away. In the shadows there was still the occasional edge of ice.

The last night, before they left the Compounds behind them, they spent at the Gilbert farm, knocking three times on the door, repeating,
‘What has been lost shall be found. Those who give will have their gifts passed on.'
It had not seemed to calm Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert.

“The dog?”

“Hunger is with us. If you shelter us, you shelter him.”

They ushered them in, as the Faith demanded. Caught between the Compounds and the threat of the forest, anxiety seemed to have bled all life from them. Once Mrs. Gilbert looked at Floris and said, “Pretty girl, pretty girl,” chanting the words emptily, her head nodding heavily on the pale stem of her body.

Mr. Gilbert brought them blankets and boiled some meal and carrots for them, but he too spoke in the most hushed tones and glanced round nervously at every sound. Bradley was left in no doubt what a weight the Gilberts felt their guests to be.

Yet it was not anxiety that had kept Bradley awake, staring through the skylight at the clusters of stars. Rather it was excitement that the next day they would clear the worlds of the city and the Compounds at last and begin the last stage of their journey.

Just before they left, Mrs. Gilbert grasped Bradley's hands in hers. “
What has been lost shall be found. Those who give will have their gifts passed on.
It's true, isn't it?” Her eyes searched Bradley's face, till Martha interrupted.

“We shall pass on your gifts, Mrs. Gilbert. So you see it's true.”

“It's true,” Mrs. Gilbert said, turning to her husband, tears in her eyes. “Didn't I tell you, it's true? That everything is still possible.”

And it seemed to Bradley too, as the day developed, after their solemn goodbyes to the Gilberts, that everything was possible. The inside-him world and the outside-him world shared their signs.

A deer leaped before them—in perfect arcs it took to the forest. Hunger saw it as a goad and rushed after it in brief enthusiasm.

An owl passed overhead as they were setting up their shelter for the night with branches and moss. As the owl hooted, Victor sat on his haunches and hooted back. Floris looked at him and laughed. Here, at last, it seemed they had come to a place where they were unafraid to declare themselves.
Hoot-hoot,
Floris went too.
Hoot-hoot.

In another part of the forest, Claw turned his blind wolf-eyes towards the source of this alien merriment.
Hoot-hoot,
he went and turned back to the wolf folk. He bared his teeth in a grim smile.
Hoot-hoot.

*   *   *

The track ran out early the following morning. It trickled into a path, trodden by rabbits and deer. The forest turned it into a dark-green corridor, which held them most of the day; so that it came as a shock when darkness ended and light flooded into the wide lake and the sky.

“Look,” said Martha, “strawberries!”

And there they were, the early spring strawberries, like small coals burning in the greenery.

“Here,” said Bradley, picking a handful quickly, “taste these.” He held his hand out to Floris and Victor.

They savoured the sweetness of the strawberries and crouched down to pick more for themselves. For Bradley, there was more than a handful of strawberries to savor: there was the growing excitement that their journey was almost at an end. He stood frozen in that moment, and was the first to hear the crack of a twig on the forest floor, as Claw and the two wolf men stepped from behind the curtain of trees.

“Hoot-hoot,” said Claw. “Hoot-hoot.”

*   *   *

Claw's face was glowing with effort, but also with a certain satisfaction. Though his knee had been on fire and the movement had reawakened an old toothache, he had managed to keep up with the young ones they had shadowed through the forest most of that day. Now he felt his old presence briefly returning to him—the threat of a wolf, the arrogance of a man.

He looked even older than Bradley had thought, when he had seen him from a distance at the lake. His skin was leathery, his chest gray as his thin beard, but his eyes, today at least, were still dark and bright.

Bradley raised his head and coolly sniffed the air, as if there were some foulness in it, some lower form of life. He had left the Old Woman and the life he had known in the Zone. He had faced the treacherous weasel and cruel Red Dog—twice! He had risked all to save Floris from The Mount. And he had almost been broken by his feverish dreams after the storm. Now only the wolf men stood between them and their journey's end. He would not be beaten now.

“If you have come to fight, you have made a mistake. Fight us and my dog will take you first, old man.”

Hunger snarled, his lips lifting, his teeth flashing in the sunlight.

“Not yet, Hunger,” said Martha.

Behind Claw, the two younger men paced as their wolves turned and turned within them. They swung their clubs into their fists. The old man narrowed his eyes and irritably waved the wolf men back.

“Yes,” said Bradley, becoming bolder, “take your shame back to the forest with you.”

Claw's face hardened. “You,” he said, “what do you know? You judge us. You sniff the air like betters. But you're the same. I know the rip-it-up of you, the nose-to-the-bum of you, the fleas-in-the-ears of you.”

“And we,” said Bradley, unflinching, “we know the fish-breath of you, the scratch-out-the-eyes of you, the bitch-in-heat of you.”

Claw spat on the ground and wiped his hand across his mouth.

Bradley raised his head farther and straightened his shoulders.

“Pah,” said Claw, “we know the kill-the-runt of you, the brother-fight of you, the shit-in-the-dirt of you. We
smell
the dog in you.”

Claw nodded with finality, as if in agreement with his own challenge. But before Bradley could summon his response, Victor had brushed past him, from where he had been holding Floris, the strawberries now a bloody pulp in her fists, and from where Martha held Hunger and whispered to calm him. Now her other arm reached out around Floris.

Victor uncurled his shoulders and, as Bradley had done, tipped his head back.

“Was a dog, me,” he said. “Was a dog bit by dogs; the mouths of them on me still.” And he raised his layers of shirt, jersey and top to show his scars.

“But no nose-in-the-dirt dog am I.

“No piss-in-the-bed dog.

“No roll-in-the-muck dog.

“No tear-the-living-flesh dog.

“Now a straight-up am I.

“Now a finger-eater am I.

“Now not only of night am I.

“Victor-with-friends am I.

“Not the same am I.

“Not the same.”

It was the longest Bradley had ever heard him speak. His small cracked voice had the rhythm of a bird stretching forward to defend itself again and again; between times briefly hunching in the silence. But Victor had only met one part of the challenge. For Claw had turned slowly from Bradley during Victor's speech. His eyes seemed fiercer as they bore down into Victor now.

Bradley could see the small blue nerves in Victor's neck tick and his slight sinews strain as he fought to hold his head steady when all his instincts told him to look away. When it appeared he could take no more, Bradley broke into the silence.

“We know your story.”

“Story? What story?” Claw said.

“How you came here from the city, desperate and hungry. You killed wolf and ate wolf and now there is a curse on you. You can be neither man, woman, nor wolf; but nor can you go back to the lives you lived before. Yes, once we were dogs. You sense that in us. But I sense too the straight-up in you, the shame in you, the father in you.”

The old man dipped his head and felt for the wolf-skin draped over his shoulders. He touched it sadly. When he looked up, his black eyes were clouded. He spread his arms wide; in the same gesture he had offered Red Dog at the lake.

“Oh, no need for the wolf talk now,” he said. “We have worn all that long enough. The father in you never dies, boy. Whether you are dog or man—or my old familiar, the wolf—the father in you will not die. You will learn that sometime for yourself.

“I left my family in the city at the Dead Time. I came here and I found food, plentiful food. I told myself, my wife and my son were better off without me; there were others who could take care of them better. But all of us who ate wolf had a price to pay.

“I never understood where my pain lay—the wolf inside me or the loss of my child gnawing at me. I have fathered again and again, but it seems each child I father is replaced by the dying child I left in that city all these years ago and I find myself again howling at the moon.”

He turned and waved and out of the forest came the two women, the baby and one of the boys. They dragged forward a rough wooden stretcher on which lay the other boy, pale and fevered, whom Red Dog had struck.

“Another one,” the old man said, “see how the curse goes on.”

He stepped forward and put his clawed, arthritic hand on Bradley's shoulder.

“No, my boy, you do not know our story. For you cannot wear our story, you cannot know what it feels like to have your story live within you. To know that the one feeling that tells you you're alive is your pain. Look at me, boy. Look—at your story wolf.”

Bradley did as he was asked. He looked for what felt a long time at the bow-legged old man with the mangy headdress; at his scars, at his swollen knuckles and at his still, stony face.

“I heard a call. I had hoped … for I don't know what. Come,” Claw said, turning to the wolf folk, “we have no enemy here, nor anyone who can help us.”

With enormous slowness, as if their feet were weighed down with rocks, led by Claw, they lifted the branches of the stretcher, turned, and melted back into the forest's depths.

*   *   *

Victor dropped to his haunches and took a few heaving breaths. Floris quickly picked more strawberries, thinking their sweetness might revive him. Bradley left them to it. He hurried further round the bay towards the thick overhanging bush whose poisonous berries shone invitingly in the late afternoon light.

He bent over and, grasping a branch, pulled it up. In its empty shadow the black waters glistened. Bradley let it fall.

Disappointment was like a stone on his chest. He heaved in air and breathed it out as if all his hopes went with it. From where he crouched, ripping handfuls of grass, he turned to find Martha behind him.

“Maybe…” she began.

“… I've been stupid,” Bradley finished.

Floris and Victor had come over now, sensing the despairing mood; their stained hands hung by their sides around a mess of strawberries.

“I'm sorry,” said Bradley.

They looked, one to the other, in acknowledgement of how far they had come, how hard they had tried, how pointless and lonely it all seemed now.

But one of the company was not so despondent. Hunger was poised and alert. He was leaning towards the heart of the lake, his eyes flaming yellow in the slanted sunlight, his ears pricked.

His senses were focused with such intensity on something “out there” that the others were soon drawn towards his field of concern.

But all they could see were the wind-ruffled waters of the lake and the small, dark island. As they watched, two blue herons returned across the waters to roost. Then again, nothing but the wind, stronger than before.

Hunger never moved.

Till Bradley whispered, “There. See. Left of the island.”

“Yes, something,” said Martha. “A boat, it must be a boat.”

Hunger began to pace, to look as if he might simply launch himself into the lake. Victor too went one way, then the other, as if a better angle might clarify what it was they were watching.

It was a boat, a small boat, but it had a mast and a full black sail. Was this the ship of death come for them? If so, Hunger was very eager to be first to board it. For now, he began to bark towards the boat, his eyes aflame with excitement.

And it came back. Softly certainly, but clearly and unmistakably, an answering bark.

“Shelter.” It was Floris's first word after the months of silence. “Shelter.”

They could see Shelter now at the prow of the boat, her paws on the edge of it, barking her greeting to each of them. And they could see that, instead of a mast and a full sail, the Old Woman stood there—seven feet tall, arms outstretched—with the wind filling out her black cloak.