PRAISE FOR THE WOLVES OF WINTER

‘With elements of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and TV’s The Walking Dead, the book gets off to a gripping start, blending visceral thrills with existential reflections … A stylishly written debut by a novelist to keep an eye on….Johnson’s outdoor adventure novel is lifted by his command of natural settings and his understanding of family bonding under extreme duress.’

Kirkus Reviews

‘I read The Wolves of Winter in one sitting because I couldn’t stand to put it down. Gripping, fierce, and a sobering ‘what if’ for our unsure times, this fast-moving debut allies a Katniss Everdeen with a Jason Bourne, lands them in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter, sets some serious bad guys on their tails, and never lets up.’

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore,New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June

‘If Jack London had written a post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age thriller, it might read something like this. Curl up with The Wolves of Winter by a warm fire, and set aside a day, because this is great, absorbing fiction, with one of the most appealing protagonists I’ve ever encountered. It deserves the widest possible audience.’

Blake Crouch, author of the New York Timesbestselling Dark Matter and the internationallybestselling Wayward Pines Trilogy

‘This is fiction at its best: a gripping plot, imagery that arrests and illuminates, and characters that will haunt you well beyond the closing of the book. But what sets The Wolves of Winter apart is Tyrell Johnson’s masterfully deliberate lyricism. Every word has been vetted against all other possibilities. The result is a story that pulses from beginning to end. Here is prose that demands to be read. Read it.’

Jill Alexander Essbaum,New York Times bestselling author of Hausfrau

‘With The Wolves of Winter, Johnson has created a stark, brutal and all too believable new world. The landscape and conditions are beautifully realized, the writing is deft, sure of itself and from the first page, you know you’re in the hands of a gifted storyteller. This is a stunningly written account of a young woman’s struggle and what a woman she is. Lynn is everything I want in a character; resilient, resourceful, charming and tough, she’ll stay with me for long time. A brilliant book, I loved it.’

Beth Lewis, authorof The Wolf Road

‘A brilliant, post-apocalyptic thriller that’s part coming-of-age story, part survival epic. Fans of The Hunger Games will love Wolves’ hard-bitten heroine Lynn and her thrilling journey into a frozen, predator-filled landscape. Clever, compelling, cinematic, this story chilled me in all the right ways. I absolutely loved it.’

Peter Clines, author of The Fold, Ex-Heroes and 14

‘Visceral and consuming, The Wolves of Winter depicts a frigid dystopian future where compassion has become the ultimate luxury. Johnson’s novel boldly enters that dangerous gray space between survival and empathy, revealing the ways in which those opposing urges can break open our hearts.’

Claire Vaye Watkins,author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn

‘Beautifully imagined, dark and chilling, yet ever hopeful too. The reader is given a remarkable heroine in Lynn McBride, a steadfast and resourceful young woman surviving with her family in the wilds of the Yukon and parsing through memories of life before everything collapsed. As I turned the pages, I could sense the coming dangers right alongside her. Tyrell Johnson has imagined a future that feels both faraway and too real, too possible. I simply could not put this book down. What a masterful, haunting debut.’

Amy Stuart, author of Still Mine

‘A masterpiece of suspense. Written with the narrative tension of some of the finest of post-apocalyptic works, the exquisite terror of Lynn McBride’s predicament in a snow-covered wilderness is so utterly compelling and relevant that readers may find their view of the world changed.’

Anthony De Sa, author of Barnacle Love and Kicking the Sky

‘Lynn McBride is a kick-ass heroine, negotiating both the apocalypse and her angst with grit and a great sense of humor. There’s heartbreak, loss, triumph, redemption and some fine bloody action, lyrically written. To be savoured!’

C. C. Humphreys, author of Plague

‘Full of spirit and hard to put down. Fast-paced, absorbing, haunting; The Wolves of Winter is a pleasure to read.’

Iain Reid, author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Tyrell Johnson 2018

Tyrell Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008210151

To Finnley: I gotchya.

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I: Strangers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part II: The Great White North

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part III: Immunity

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Part IV: The Gone, Gone World

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

Part I

Strangers

I have heard what the talkers were talking,

the talk of the beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

—WALT WHITMAN

1

The trap was empty and the snow was bloody, which meant one of three things.

One: The animal had gotten itself loose, making a mess in the process. Unlikely. Too much blood.

Two: Wolves had gotten to it and somehow managed to drag the carcass out of the trap. Even more unlikely. Not enough blood. Or hair. Besides, their tracks would have been obvious.

Three: Conrad had poached my kill.

Thieving, asshole Conrad. Not only likely but, based on the boot prints and snakelike trails that his sled made through the bloody Rorschach marks in the snow, it was the only option. It had snowed early that morning, maybe an hour before the sun crested the hills. A thin dusting had already settled over his prints. He got up early, you had to give Conrad that much. Stealing didn’t seem like him, though. He was an ass, no doubt about it, but a thief?

The animal’s prints were teardrops, scattered about the bloody mush of snow. Teardrops meant deer. And by the size of the prints, it was a buck. My wire had been snipped too. I’d placed it between two pine trees in a small ravine. The logjams on either side were a bitch to set up, but they herded the animals into the trap. I took the broken wire between my gloved fingers. You know how rare wire was nowadays? I could repair it, but it wouldn’t hold as strong. I was always careful to remove the wire by unthreading it from the tree and the animal so that I could use it again. I was pissed.

I adjusted my compound bow under my arm and the rope over my left shoulder. The rope was attached to my sled. My uncle Jeryl—Dad’s brother—had made the sled for me four years earlier. About three feet wide, six feet long. It carried small game no problem, a deer was tough for me but manageable, and an elk, caribou, or moose I had to butcher first and carry just the meat. The sled was made of spruce and had bloodstains from past kills splattered about the wood, but it was sturdy. I always dragged it along with me to check the traps.

A slight easterly wind stung my nose and cracked lips. The sun was gray and bored in the hazy sky, but the fresh fallen snow was still blinding. Sunglasses. I missed sunglasses. I headed southeast, into the wind. It was less than a mile to Conrad’s place. Dragging the sled made it tough going, but I didn’t care. No way in hell I was going to let him keep my kill. He was a big man, though, and he was stronger than me.

Somewhere, a gray jay woke and started chattering. The wind blew a dusting of snow from the ground that billowed like smoke in the chill morning air, and the sun, not giving a shit about my deer, was probably already contemplating its early descent.

I was sixteen when we left Eagle, Alaska. When things got bad, when everyone seemed to be leaving, we up and left too. We headed into the Yukon Territory. To the trees, hills, mountains, valleys, rivers, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow. The vast wilderness of nothing. But for the next seven years, that nothing became home. I got used to it. The whiteness a comfort, the pine trees a refuge, the silence of it a friend I never knew I needed or wanted.

Being twenty-three now, looking back on my sixteen-year-old self, Alaska feels like a different world. Or a dream. Where people had jobs, hobbies, possessions, friends, and things like ovens, TV, cereal, toasters, pizza. But what made that life real for me was Dad. His death didn’t feel like a lifetime ago. I carried him with me everywhere I went.

Conrad lived in a small log cabin next to the Blackstone River. He built the place himself, and it always looked to me like it was about to fall over. It leaned slightly to the south. Reminded me of the pine, fir, and spruce trees—the tired-looking ones that were hunched over from the weight of the snow. They looked exhausted, depressed, like they’d given up, given in to the arctic bully. Snow can be a burden sometimes. All the time, really. There didn’t used to be so much of it. Before the wars and the bombs.

When the cabin came into sight, I spotted the deer right away, lying in the snow next to Conrad’s door. It was a buck, just like I thought, a big buck, a horse with antlers. A good kill. My kill.

I made my way down the hill to his cabin and walked right up to the carcass. When I got close enough, I let go of the sled and surveyed the animal. The thing was stiff. A clean cut across the jugular. I knelt down and put my hands in the brown fur, then palmed the antlers, the soft velvet on the horns folding beneath my gloves. I’d probably be able to get it on the sled and up and over the first hill or two. But from there I’d have to run and get help to bring it all the way home. First, though, I had to get it off the damn porch. Conrad’s porch. I wiped my frozen nose with the sleeve of my jacket.

The door creaked open, and Conrad filled the doorway, his dark green winter coat and boots still on, and his .308 rifle held loose at his hip like he was compensating for something. “Admiring my kill?” He had a dense black beard and brown eyes like a wolverine’s, sitting too close to his nose. He was a thick man. Thick around the waist, neck, face, and limbs. How he’d managed to stay so round through the lean months I didn’t know. He had a smell about him too—wet wood, near to rot.

“This is my kill,” I said.

He just smiled. Probably had been rehearsing the conversation. “So you slit its throat?” His voice was low, buttery with the pleasure of the situation. He was eating this up.

I glared, hoping some of the heat I felt in my stomach would transfer through my eyes, laser to his forehead, and burn him to charcoal. “I’m taking it back.”

“I don’t think so.” He set the rifle down just outside the door.

“It was my trap.”

“It was my knife, my find. How was I supposed to know it was your trap?”

“You knew damn well it was my trap.”

“A poorly assembled bit of wire?”

“Set in a ravine, with logjams on either side to herd the animals through. Don’t be stupid.”

He shrugged, the thin smile never leaving his pinched face. I wanted to punch my fist right through it. Shatter his teeth, jaw, skull.

“It’s a lovely day,” he said, inhaling the stinging morning air, exhaling tendrils of white steam. “A good day for butchering.”

“I’m taking the deer,” I said, lifting my rope and pulling in my sled. I set down my bow, wrapped a hand around the buck’s antlers, and started to jerk the massive bulk. Conrad grabbed my arm. His grip was firm, trying to prove something to us both.

I yanked my arm back, but his fingers just tightened. “Let me go!”

“I’ll butcher him up, make a nice warm coat for you. We’ll call it even. How’d you like that?”

My dad always told me that when I’m angry, I make rash decisions. I get it from Mom. Once, back in Alaska, I broke two of my brother’s fingers in the doorway. “Take a breath,” my dad would say, “and think. Think about what you’re going to do, what you want to happen, and if there’s a better way to get things done.”

But I was too pissed at Conrad. I swung at him. Fist clenched, arm flailing. It was a stupid move. My fist connected with the edge of his jaw. His head barely tipped back. My knuckles vibrated with pain.

“Bitch.” The word rumbled from his round belly. His eyes grew intense, like those of an animal charging. Hungry. He came at me. I might have had time to raise my arms or duck if I’d thought the bastard would hit a girl. But I didn’t. Didn’t think he had it in him. So I was caught completely unaware when his fist collided with my cheek and knocked me flat to the ground. He wasn’t wearing gloves either.

The snow wrapped around me like a frozen blanket. My head reeled. The gray of the sky waterfalled to the earth, then the earth to the sky—the pine trees dipped and jumped. I blinked and felt water fill my left eye where he’d struck. Then his weight was on me, firm and heavy, full of heat and iron.

“You’re dead, you asshole,” I said, gasping. “You’re a dead man.” My voice was weak and didn’t carry the anger I felt.

His hands pinned me down, his face inches from mine. I couldn’t move. I felt a panicked helplessness.

“You’re a stupid little girl.” He shifted his weight, his stomach pressing against my side. “You think you have a little community with rules? You don’t. Welcome to the new world. Your brother and uncle can’t do shit to me. They can try if they want, but I’ll fucking kill them.”

He turned his body again, his left elbow and forearm pushing against my chest, pinning me to the ground. Then his other hand slithered down to my thigh. “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.”

“I don’t need my uncle; I’ll kill you myself!” I spat in his face and saw a small bead of spit land in his eyelashes, but he just blinked it away. His hand went higher up my thigh. I thrashed and tried to claw his eyeballs, but I couldn’t reach. He was too big, the fat fuck. Then his palm was between my legs. I clenched them, but I could feel his fingers on me. They pressed, dipping and rubbing as I squirmed, helpless as a caught fox. I felt my knife dig into my hip. My Hän knife. I kept it sharp. But my hand was pinned. I couldn’t reach it.

He leaned in even closer, trembling, his beard tickling my chin. I was going to be sick, was going to throw up in his face. Might have been a good thing if I had.

“Whatever I want,” he repeated.

Then it was over. The touching, the weight, the stink of his breath. He released me and stood. I took in quick, shallow gasps of air. My cheek throbbed. I got to my feet as quick as I could and thought about going for my knife or my bow, discarded in the snow beside me. Conrad watched with a pleased look on his face. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was making a statement. Claiming territory. Drawing lines. Letting us know that he wasn’t afraid of us.

Either way, he was a dead man. I decided to tell him again.

“You’re a dead man.”

“Run off to your uncle.”

I picked up my bow, then snagged the rope attached to my sled. The buck stared at me with his dead, marble eyes. Such an impressive creature, rotting on the front step of Conrad’s shit shack, waiting to be butchered by his careless knife. I gave Conrad one last glare before turning. But the fire didn’t burst out of my watering eyes. It didn’t burn him to charcoal.

“Bye bye, Gwendolynn,” he said as I walked away.

“Fuck you, Conrad.”

2

I’ve always hated my name. Gwendolynn. It’s too long and sounds stupid. It means something about the moon. Or maybe it just means moon. I can’t remember. And I hate Gwen too. Sounds like it’s from the Stone Age. So I go by Lynn. Only my mom calls me Gwendolynn, or my brother, Ken, when he’s being an ass, which is fairly often. Dad always called me Lynn because he knew I liked it. Whenever I complained about my name, he’d quote Walt Whitman. “I exist as I am, that is enough.” He loved Walt Whitman. Used to go to the river and read Leaves of Grass. He gave me a book of Walt Whitman’s collected poems, and I still have it. I read it often. I can’t say I really appreciate or understand it. Sounds like the rantings of a guy who may or may not think he’s a tree. But something about his poems is comforting. Probably because they remind me of Dad.

Our settlement was four buildings strung together in a narrow valley surrounded by hills. To the west rose a giant limestone ridge, mostly covered in snow now, but in the warm season, it was quite a thing to see. Beyond that were the white-capped Ogilvie Mountains, jutting up like the backs of giant beasts. To the east, over a spruce-dotted hill, was the Blackstone River—shallow and mostly frozen over this time of year. Mom and I lived in the biggest building, a log cabin. It was the first place we built, where we all stayed in the beginning. Me; Uncle Jeryl; Mom; my brother, Ken; and Ramsey—the son of Jeryl’s best friend, who was taken by the flu back in Alaska.

Thank God Jeryl was good with his hands. He and Dad built a cabin down the river a few miles out from our old home in Eagle. We went there in the summers until the powers that be came and tore it down because we didn’t own the land or have a license to build. I still have fond memories of that cabin. Our Yukon cabin was nothing like that one. It was merely functional, and then just barely. In the spring, the wind sluiced through it, but in the winter, when the daylight shriveled to nothing, when it got too cold, we packed the crevices with snow for insulation. When a good fire was burning, it didn’t take long to heat the small space.

Eventually, Jeryl and Ramsey built a log cabin next to ours. Smaller than ours, but when you stepped inside, it looked more or less the same. Same wooden walls, a fireplace, a single bedroom, and a loft overhead with another cot. Then, after the first two years, Ken decided to move out. He built an even smaller place. Yup. You guessed it. A log cabin. Four walls, fireplace, cot, and, of course, the poster. The stupid poster of two girls in bikinis next to a race car. They had huge, fake boobs and flat stomachs. Ken, at eighteen, had decided that the poster was worth dragging across the border into the Yukon. Mom said no of course, but he snuck it in his jacket. The corners of it were curved, and the whole thing was wrinkled and worn. I hated that poster. It was a reminder of the worst parts of the old world.

The fourth building was the animal shed, which doubled as an equipment shed and storage for firewood. We had two goats named Hector and Helen, and one musk ox named Stankbutt—everyone else called him Jebediah, but Stankbutt fit for obvious reasons. Hector and Helen were good for milk, cheese, and warning us with their incessant wails when wolves were about. They were also good for making kids that would one day replace them. Stankbutt, on the other hand, was good for nothing. He was old too. While the goats were only two when we left Alaska, he was five. And after seven years of freezing temperatures and crap food, he couldn’t have much more left in him. Both Jeryl and Ramsey had musk ox fur coats that they swore by, but other than that, the fat, hairy ox was more or less useless. Jeryl offered to make us coats of our own, but Mom had brought to the Yukon so many leggings, wool sweaters, and thick down jackets that we never took him up on his offer. One extra-lean winter was all it was going to take and good-bye, Stankbutt. You’ll taste delicious.

We grew crops behind the storage shed. There wasn’t much to our little family farm. Just a flat bit of land where we dug up the earth and planted carrots and potatoes. Like everything else, it was covered in snow now, but come spring, we’d tend to the softening ground. But that was spring. That was a long ways away. Not to mention the fact that last year’s spring was the shortest we’d had yet. Maybe, eventually, there wouldn’t be a spring left for potatoes to grow. But that wasn’t worth thinking about quite yet.

As I approached our little town-camp-settlement, I tried to get my story straight. I’d considered not telling my uncle Jeryl about what happened with Conrad. But what was I going to say about my puffy cheek, my swollen eye? Admitting that Conrad had gotten the best of me, that he’d held me down in the snow and done what he’d done, made me look weak. But saying that I tripped and fell made me look like an idiot. No, I had to come clean. I honestly didn’t know what Jeryl would do, though. Kill him? Talk to him? Nothing? No, not nothing. Ken would do nothing. Suck it up, he’d say, being the compassionate, caring older brother that he was.

The snow on the tops of our cabins had piled up. Maybe a foot. Jeryl would have to get the ladder soon and give them a good dusting. Piled snow can break wooden roofs over time. Funny thing about snow. You pick it up in your gloved hand and it feels like a handful of flour, easily blown away in the wind, but pile it on, let it sit for a while, and it’ll bend the strongest wood. Snow can save you and sustain you, crush you and kill you. Snow is a fickle bastard.

Like always, Jeryl saw me coming. Don’t know if he looked for me, heard me, or had some sort of sixth sense, but whenever I returned from hunting or checking the traps, if he wasn’t with me or out hunting himself, he’d step out of his cabin and watch me come in, help me bring in the kill, or just ask me about the hunt.

When I slushed my way through the snow toward him, he had a scowl on his face. Even his mustache seemed to frown. Jeryl—unlike the rest of the males in our little settlement, who may, for all we knew, have been the last men on earth—shaved his chin baby smooth. But he left his mustache long and well groomed. Of the limited supplies we were allowed to bring with us from Alaska, Jeryl had deemed his razor a nonnegotiable necessity. He used the fats from our kills—deer, elk, moose, rabbit, fox—to shave with. The habit gave him a ganky smell, but you got used to it. It became part of who he was.

Jeryl’s black coat stood out against the shining silver snow. He studied my swollen face. “Let’s put some meat on that.”

I didn’t say anything, just followed him out back. As we passed my mom’s place—which was as much my place, but I still considered it hers—I kept glancing at the door, waiting for it to burst open. I could imagine her look of horror when she saw my face. I was twenty-three, but Mom was still Mom and, in a lot of ways, still treated me like a child. There’s a reason kids are supposed to leave their parents. Maybe it was time I built my own cabin. Or, better yet, ventured out on my own into the frozen white world.

“Best stay away from her for now,” Jeryl said as if he’d read my thoughts.

We knocked our boots on his front door to get the snow off. I left the sled outside and set my bow down next to the door. We stepped into his cabin. Jeryl went to his strongbox of frozen meat and returned with a big slab of elk—at least, I think it was the elk he’d gotten a week back—and slapped it against my face.

“Ow,” I said, more annoyed than hurt.

“Keep it pressed tight.”

“Where’s Ramsey?”

“Fishing.”

Jeryl reached for his rifle—a Marlin lever action that he was never too far away from—and set it on his table. Then he grabbed his cleaning kit. Whenever he was troubled or needed to have a serious conversation, Jeryl cleaned his gun.

“So?” he said. Which meant Tell me what happened.

“Conrad stole my kill. Trapped a buck down in the ravine and he snipped my wire.”

Jeryl took the small bristled brush and stabbed it into his rifle. The smell of the cleaning fluid—I had no idea how he still had some left; maybe he made his own—blended with the scent of old spruce beams, filling the cabin with a heady, heavy aroma.

“And?”

“And? What do you mean and? Isn’t that enough? He’s a thieving bastard.”

He eyed me. Both he and his mustache disapproving. “And what happened next?”

“I told him the animal was mine, tried to make him give it back.”

“And he didn’t.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway.

“And he didn’t.”

The meat was freezing my entire face and melding into my cheek. I pulled it off. It was heavy in my hands. Solid protein and fat. If it thawed, we’d have to eat it that night.

Jeryl looked up. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Talk to him? We gotta kill him! He’s been nothing but trouble since he moved in. First he steals my kill, next he’ll steal our meat right out from under us. Who knows, maybe he’ll kill us in our sleep. He’s gotta go.” I didn’t like raising my voice to Jeryl. Maybe because he always seemed so calm, or maybe because, for better or worse, he tried his best to fill in for my dad. He failed, but at least he tried.

Jeryl turned his gun over, examining his work. “You know how many people are left in this world?”

The chamber clicked shut. A sad wind rattled through the cabin.

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “Me neither,” he said, as if that proved his point.

Uncle Jeryl was the least superstitious man in the world. Sure, he believed in God, but in the most normal way possible. Went to church on Sunday—back when there was a church to go to—prayed before each meal, and did his best to do things right.

He never went in for luck, energy, speaking in tongues, or spiritual warfare. He called that “hippie stuff.” He had his gun, his Bible, and his razor, and he was happy. His best friend in the whole world was Ramsey’s dad, John-Henry. They’d both worked construction, had been friends since they were kids, and had done nearly everything together. Hunting, fishing, chess, school.

When John-Henry died in the flu epidemic, Jeryl took Ramsey in, no questions asked. He was John-Henry’s son, nothing more to say. Jeryl never showed any signs of grief. He just moved on with life. Things needed to be done.

Somewhere around the fourth spring out in the Yukon, he, Ken, and I spotted a grizzly just west of Conrad’s place. It had this strange silver marking on its back and was the biggest bear I’d ever seen. Were grizzlies supposed to be that freaking huge? Anyway, Jeryl caught us completely off guard when he lowered his gun, a strange look coming over his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s John-Henry.”

Ken and I looked at Jeryl, wondering if he was making a joke. He didn’t tend to make jokes.

“What do you mean?” Ken asked.

“I mean exactly what I said. That’s John-Henry right there.” He smiled, which was incredibly rare, and shook his head. “Old rascal.”

We looked from the bear, who was digging something up in the snow, to Jeryl, who was now eyeing the bear through the scope on his rifle.

“Jeryl,” Ken said. “You don’t mean that the bear there is John-Henry, do you? John-Henry, your friend? The one who’s been dead for years?”

“I know he’s dead, son. You think I don’t? I also know John-Henry when I see him, and I tell you what: that bear is John-Henry.”

Jeryl took aim.

“Wait,” I said. “If that’s John-Henry, why’re you going to kill him?” I wasn’t really concerned for the bear or John-Henry. I was mostly confused and a little bit scared that our uncle had lost it.

Jeryl lowered the rifle. “Got to let him go. You think he wants to be a grizzly?” He asked the question like it was the most natural thing in the world. No, of course he didn’t want to be a grizzly, who would?

Jeryl aimed again, but either we spooked the bear or he found something interesting on the other side of the hill because he bounded out of sight. Jeryl lowered his rifle and stepped in the direction of the bear. “Gotta go after him.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Ken said. “We—”

“Didn’t say we,” Jeryl said. “I gotta go after him. Head on back. I’ll be home for dinner.”

Then he started down the hill after that giant John-Henry grizzly. Ken yelled after him, saying that he was being stupid and was going to get himself killed. It’s not like we didn’t think Jeryl could hunt and kill the bear, but the whole thing felt weird. And wrong. Either way, Jeryl continued like he was in a trance, not turning or acknowledging Ken in the least.

We did see Jeryl that evening for dinner. He came back with a distant look on his face. A mixture of joy and grief—I can’t really explain it. But the John-Henry bear had eluded him.

“He’ll be back,” Jeryl said. “Or I’ll find him. I owe him that much.”

Since then, Jeryl’s been on the lookout for that bear. And we all pretty much ignore it.

“No, you won’t talk to him; we’re going to run him off our property and that’s that.” Mom threw another log on the fire. Ashes scattered like dust and a coal jumped out, landing on our very burnable floor. Jeryl stomped it out with his boot, his gun relaxed in the crook of his arm. Mom had turned into a cornered animal the moment she saw my face. She was all black stares and narrow eyes. Green eyes, like mine. Red hair, like mine. She was taller than me, but everyone said I looked like her. And although we didn’t always agree, we agreed on this. About Conrad. Talking wasn’t good enough.

“Nobody’s running anybody anywhere,” Jeryl said, calm as ever.

“Oh, so you’re fine with this?” She pointed to my face. “We just let him get away with it?”

“Didn’t say that. Said I’ll talk to him.”

“The only talking he’ll listen to is at the end of your gun.”

“Maybe, but I’m gonna try my way first,” Jeryl said.

She glared. She had a good glare too. It had sharpened over the years. When Dad was around, before the flu, it was a dull pencil. Now, through hardship and a shitload of cold air, it was a fine needle. Not that it did anything to old Jeryl. He stared right back at her. Me in the middle. I felt anger pooling in the pit of my stomach. This was exactly what I didn’t want, them fighting over me like I was a child.

“Well, when are you going?” Mom asked.

Jeryl nodded as if that was permission to leave and headed toward the door.

“I’m coming too,” I said, stepping toward Jeryl.

“No,” both Jeryl and Mom said at the same time.

“It’s my problem, I’m going to fix it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Mom said.

“I agree,” said Jeryl, lowering his thick gray eyebrows at me. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“Maybe it needs to be made worse.”

“Lynn,” he said in his most serious tone. “You trust me?” I hated it when he said that. He’d said it often enough in the past. You trust me? Then we leave Alaska. You trust me? Then we settle here. You trust me? Then we grow potatoes and carrots. He hadn’t steered us wrong yet. We were alive, after all.

I took a long breath, sucking in smoke and wood and cold, then sat down in a chair next to the dining room table. The chair wobbled with my weight. I looked at Mom. She was chewing the inside of her lip like her teeth were trying to gnaw their way out.

Jeryl swung the heavy wooden door open, but it caught on the floorboards on the backswing as he left. It never closed right.

“You shouldn’t have gone to his house. You should have come straight back here and you know it,” Mom said.

“I should have stabbed Conrad in the face.”

Mom walked toward the door. Metallic light spilled in through the slit and onto Mom’s skin, making her look like the Tin Man. She watched outside for a second. “If it was me going, I’d come back with his head,” she said.

“If it was me, I’d come back with his balls.”

“Gwendolynn.”

I shrugged.

She grabbed the door’s handle and pulled as hard as she could. It slammed shut.

3

If life in Alaska was a dream, life in Chicago was a dream within a dream. Were there ever really buildings that tall? That many people crammed onto a street? That many cars driving late into the night? Sounds like an ugly fairy tale. We lived there till I was twelve, before we moved to Alaska, before the bomb hit New York, before the fires started, before the TVs went out, the planes stopped flying, and before everything south of the border felt like a war zone. Dad worked as a biologist for the University of Chicago. I think he did some teaching, mostly research. Chicago was where I watched the attack, the beginning of it all.

Ken and I were getting ready for school. I was eating a bowl of Golden Grahams when Dad, calling from the living room, said, “Mary, get in here.” We could tell from the sound of his voice that something was wrong, so we followed Mom in, my mouth still full of half-chewed cereal. The first thing I remember seeing was fire on the TV. Giant flames pumping black smoke. It was the Pentagon, Dad said. At first everyone thought that a bomb had gone off in the building. Later they learned that somehow a group of hackers had managed to take control of one of our drones. That’s when everything really started.

We moved shortly after that. But not because of the wars. Mom and Dad would never admit to it, but something bad had gone down at his work. I don’t know what, or whether it was related to the war. But from the way he and Mom avoided talking about it, and the looks they gave each other when I asked, I knew there was more to the story. So we had to move. I didn’t care much about the truth, or maybe I didn’t really want to know. Didn’t want my dad to have done something wrong. So I left it.

I remember the drive from Chicago. We left in a hurry. Like Dad was anxious to be out of there. I was crying because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my friends. “Don’t be a little cry-baby,” Ken said. The trip was a blur of hotels, passing mountains, small towns, and loud semitrucks. It felt like we were on the road for months. And along the way, news of the war followed us. On the radio, on TVs in run-down diners. The US was tightening the noose on terror. Bombs were being dropped. Lots of them. But it was still the early stages, before things got really bad. Before the flu.

When we crossed the border, the guard asked where we were going.

“Vancouver,” Dad said.

“What for?”

“Visiting family.”

“How long will you be in Vancouver?”

“A couple of weeks.”

It was the first time I’d heard Dad lie.

I sat on the stump in front of our cabin and repaired my wire trap, winding the broken ends together over and over again. It wouldn’t hold as well—a deer could probably pull it apart—but still, it was better than throwing the wire away. I’d have to set it lower to the ground, go for smaller game like a fox or a hare or a marten. All because Anthony Conrad was a selfish ass. My face throbbed, the wind stung my cheek, and I could still feel his weight pressing against my body. His hands on me. His fingers. I felt sick. If I’d told Jeryl about it, maybe he would have agreed to kill Conrad. But that would have required actually telling Jeryl—saying the words out loud. I didn’t think I could. My hands started to shake. I stuffed the wire into my coat pocket and looked south. Coming down the path I’d made in the snow was my brother, Ken, carrying what looked like a hare. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and his hood was zipped tight over his neck. When we first moved out here, the sight of him with that rifle made me angry and jealous at once. Jeryl wouldn’t let me shoot one. Our ammo was too precious, and I was too young and too lacking in the penis department. But I had my bow and I was a good shot. Ken would never admit it, but I was the best, better than him, better than Ramsey—though that’s not a surprise—and better than Jeryl. A woman’s weapon, Ken told me once. I didn’t care. I brought in just as much game as he did.

When he approached, he gave me a hard look. “The hell happened to you?”

Ken was never one for subtlety.

“Conrad.” No point in lying; he’d hear the truth soon enough.

“What’d you say to him?”

Oh, there was so much wrong with that question, I didn’t know where to begin. I tried to let the anger blow over me like snow on a car windshield—distant memories: Dad driving, Mom sitting up straight in the passenger seat, looking worried, Ken playing his DS, me watching the snow flash in the headlights and shoot over our windshield in a silver blur, like magic—but it didn’t work, shrugging my anger off, that is. Ken had a talent for making me pissed as hell.

“What did I say? He stole my kill. I told him to give it back. It was a buck too, probably a hundred times the size of that little bunny you got there.”

“A kill is a kill. Least I got mine. A bird in the hand and all that.”

“I’d have got mine if Conrad hadn’t stolen it.”

“Guess you should have asked nicely.”

“I did.”

“I bet you did.”

I looked down at my stupid hands. They were still shaking.

Ken just stood there, assessing me. “Well, Conrad’s an asshole anyway.”

I nodded.

“Jeryl know?”

I nodded again.

“He going to talk to him?”

Nodded.

“He’ll kick his ass. Buck up,” he said, then nudged me on the shoulder and turned around toward his cabin. It was as close to Sorry, Lynn, that sucks. Conrad deserves to be strangled by his own guts as I was ever going to get from Ken. It wasn’t very consoling, but, weirdly enough, I did stop shaking.

Some of the things we brought from Alaska to the Yukon:

Guns. The two rifles, the shotgun, and two handguns. One of the rifles was Dad’s, the rest of the guns were Jeryl’s.

Ammo. We brought a shit ton of ammo. Boxes and boxes stacked on the back of the horse. Most of it Jeryl and Dad bought honestly. But I know a good portion Jeryl took from an abandoned store after the looters started breaking windows and taking what they wanted. We were going to run out eventually, but we were careful with our shots.

Fishing equipment. Two poles, hooks, leads, lines, an extra reel, and power bait, which ran out the first year. We used worms after.

Gardening equipment. Rake, shovel, hoe. Seeds for potatoes and carrots and beans. The beans didn’t last long.

Tools. Hammer, nails, hinges, saw, rope, twine, wire, and some steel wool.

First aid kit. A small crappy one, next to useless.

Clothes, clothes, clothes. Winter jackets, boots, pants, wool everything—socks, leggings, sweaters, shirts—and plenty of gloves.

A few plates, two pots, and silverware.

Books. Mom brought some textbooks and magazines to help keep me educated. I outgrew those fast enough.

We brought some food, spices, and salt.

Mom brought a picture of her, Dad, Ken, and me that she kept over the fireplace in our cabin. A trip to Disneyland. We all looked happy.

I brought my bow, arrows, the knife Dad gave me, the book of Walt Whitman poems, and nothing else. I had to leave my goldfish in the tank. I called him Bear Cub. I dumped the rest of the food in there with him before we left. Maybe he rationed it.

Jeryl hadn’t been gone for an hour when a gunshot rang in the distance. Conrad’s place was about three miles off, but in the deadened, empty terrain, a gunshot from three miles is easy to hear. I dropped the wire and stood. Ken burst out of his cabin, rifle slung over his shoulder.

“I catch you following me, I’ll shoot you myself,” Ken said, running toward the noise.

I almost grabbed my bow anyway because to hell with him. But I didn’t. I backed down like an obedient little girl, picked up my wire, and held it as I watched Ken bound toward the sound of the shot.

I won’t say I was scared to go. Because I wasn’t.

The sun had already rolled down behind the mountains, outlining them in a dull silver-yellow, when Jeryl and Ken finally came home. The hearth fire cast wavering shadows across their pink faces. Ken was hefting a brown sack over his shoulder—the one Conrad had used to carry some of his belongings into the Yukon. I immediately recognized the smell of raw meat. They’d brought back my kill. But the sack wasn’t big enough. A deer that size would have produced twice as much meat.

“What happened?” I asked. Mom and I both rose from our chairs by the fire. We’d been staring into the flames, playing that game of who can say nothing the longest. We played it often.

Ken looked to Jeryl, leaned his rifle against the wall, and started for the back door. “Got half the deer, gonna go put it in the freeze.”

“Jeryl?” Mom said.

Jeryl kept his gun cradled in his arms like a baby. He turned to me. “He won’t be bothering you again.”

“And we’re just supposed to take Conrad’s word for it?” Mom asked.

Jeryl ignored her, kept talking to me. “Best stay away from his house for a while.”

“That’s it?” I said. “Half the deer, and I best stay away from him?”

Silence. Heavy like a fresh blanket of snow. The fire snapped.

Jeryl turned to the door. “I better make sure Ramsey came back from the river all right.”

“Dammit, Jeryl,” Mom said. “We heard the shot. What happened?”

“He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turned to her then, meeting her eyes. “But he won’t be bothering us anymore.”

4

Things I miss about summer:

The sun.

Warmth.

Wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

Freezies from the corner store.

Sandals.

Swimsuits.

Hot dogs.

Hamburgers.

Any food that isn’t moose, elk, deer, rabbit, goat cheese, goat milk, potatoes, and carrots.

Flights to California.

Watching movies.

Dad teaching me how to fish.

Dad reading Walt Whitman.

Dad telling me to go to bed and that he knows that it’s still light out but it doesn’t matter. It’s nighttime.

Dad singing in the shower.

Dad laughing.

Dad.

Dinner was venison that night. I mean, why not? And potatoes and carrots. They tasted a lot like the potatoes and carrots we ate last night, the night before, the night before that, the night before that, and the night before that. Good old easy-growing, durable, freezable, nutritious potatoes and carrots. Thank God for them. Sometimes, I’d close my eyes and pretend that the potatoes were french fries and the carrots were deep-fried and covered in soy sauce. It didn’t make them taste any better. Ken ate with us, and Ramsey and Jeryl stayed at their place, maybe cooked up a few grayling if Ramsey had any luck at the river.

Outside, large, flat UFO flakes had begun to fall. The fire popped, Mom’s fork clinked against her plate, Ken’s mouth made a sucking sound as his teeth gnawed at the rough meat, and I stared at the wall.

Regular old dinner with our regular old family in a regular old world.

I remember sitting by the fire drinking tea that Mom made from the rhododendron leaves she collected in the spring—didn’t taste very good, but it was a nice change from water and goat milk—when Ramsey asked Jeryl how the wars began. When everything started, Ramsey had been too young to have really known what was going on.

Jeryl took a deep breath and launched into it. “Well, it wasn’t sudden, I’ll say that much. It wasn’t one event. No meteorite, earthquake, or tsunami. Those things you always hear about. The seeds of it started early in the century—you read about nine-eleven in school?—and the anger just sort of snowballed. I don’t think one person ever said to the other: ‘Is this it? Is this the apocalypse?’ You’d hear about the occasional bombing, shooting, but otherwise things were mostly calm, relatively speaking. You could watch the news and hear about the War on Terror mixed in with a feel-good bit about pandas being born in the zoo.”

“So how did it start?”

“The last attack. I remember sitting down with my coffee and flipping on the news. Every channel was the same. Explosion had gone off in the Pentagon. Bunch of nut jobs managed to hijack a drone and blow up half the building. Hundreds were killed. And that was the last straw. The US went kamikaze. We bombed the hell out of Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan. But it didn’t stop there. It spread. Countries got labeled as either enemies or allies. You were either pro- or anti-America. There were no other options. When North Korea and Mongolia were named terrorist countries, China started getting nervous. Started flexing its muscles. Started chumming with the wrong people. And we didn’t like it. We wanted China to break all trade, all ties with them. China refused.

“It seemed nuclear war was inevitable. So we dropped the first one. Meant to take out China’s atomic bombs. Didn’t work. Either they had backups or their nukes weren’t in Beijing. Millions were killed, so they retaliated. They nearly took out New York with their own nuke. Luckily, we got it in time, and the bomb hit the water. Devastated the city either way—from the tidal waves and radiation sickness. Then everyone seemed to go nuke happy. North Korea nuked Japan. Russia sent nukes to Turkey. The world was on the verge of collapse, everyone trying to blow each other out of the water. But then, next thing you know, the Asian flu hits, or the yellow flu.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s racist,” Ramsey said.

“Nah. People are too sensitive. Anyway, the flu started wiping out Asia. Guaranteed, we sent it to them somehow. I don’t know what we did, maybe poisoned their water with it, but I promise you this: the flu in Asia was a weapon sent by America. With the Asian travel ban, I guess they didn’t count on it coming back across the Pacific so quickly. When the first case was reported in Florida, organizations started popping up. The IMA, Refugees for Peace. And especially the DCIA: Disease Containment and Immunity Advancement. Everyone called them Immunity. Or the Immunizers. They were funded by some corner of the government no one had ever heard of. Apparently, they’d been around for years, only no one knew anything about them until the flu.”

“I remember seeing them on the news,” Ramsey said. “They were the ones with the white stars pinned to their shoulders. Supposed to protect us from the spread.”

“That’s them. They started showing up in schools, businesses. They set the containment rules and made us wear masks. They were doing research, supposedly. All I saw was them with soldiers, trucks, and guns, blocking off safe zones from people trying to get in. And telling cameras they were ‘working on it.’ They sent that vaccination, but a lot of good it did. Was probably just sugar water.”

“Sugar water?”

“Yeah. By this point, Asia was decimated. Millions of people were dying, and the survivors were migrating out any way they could, even though international travel was forbidden. Once it started to spread in the States, it was lights-out fast enough. People dropped like flies. Then planes stopped flying, mail stopped coming, hospitals and schools closed, then the news stopped reporting. Total information blackout. People panicked—those who weren’t dead already. Then the exodus. Like Moses. Most people didn’t know where they were going, just somewhere without a lot of infected people. The cities got pretty ugly. With the riots, looting, gangs, and all the fires. No fire department to stop them. Remember the huge one outside Fairbanks? Wind blew the smoke right through Eagle. It was hazy for days. So many damn fires. Who knows how they all got started.”

“So you really think we caused the flu?”

“I do. Unless it was one last terrorist attack. A jihad. Suppose if it was, then they really did win in the end.”

“Jihad?”

“Kill the infidel. That was their goal. And look around you. Job well done.”

Snow is the quietest kind of weather. After dinner, I sat outside on the stump and watched it fall. It was only the beginning of the winter season, something like September, and it had been snowing off and on for a while already. I’d experienced enough snow to last a lifetime, but I still liked to watch it. There’s something peaceful about those flakes drifting down from the sky, like they aren’t in a hurry. Rain is so panicked and forceful. Walt Whitman—good ol’ Walt—in one of his poems said, “Behavior lawless as snowflakes.” I think I get that. The falling, forming, unforming, drifting, and swirling—there’s a lawlessness about them. I looked up and felt the icy pinpricks on my cheek and in my eyelashes.

There was a crunching in the snow in front of me. I looked down. It was Ramsey, buried in his musk ox jacket, his blond hair tucked beneath a skullcap. He was growing a beard like Ken’s, though his was a young man’s beard with pale stubble patches.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sitting.”

“Oh,” he said as if he hadn’t noticed.

He wanted me to say more. I didn’t have more to say.

“Sorry about Conrad.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Yeah.”

Ramsey was a nice kid. Eighteen years old. A good-looking guy, but in all honesty, without Jeryl taking care of him, he would never have survived this long. Sure, he could fish, but how hard was it to hold a stick over the water? He had crappy aim, had next to no muscle, and was timid. Timid got you dead. But he was nice, and I liked him well enough.

“Don’t get too wet out here,” he said.

“Thanks.” He turned toward his cabin.

Only after did it occur to me to ask what he was doing out in the snow himself.

I’d given Ramsey the old college try, as my dad would’ve said.

It was a stupid move, but I showed up at his and Jeryl’s cabin late in the warm season. The snows hadn’t come yet, so the smell of pine and spruce wood was still heavy in the air. The winter would take care of that, numb the senses, make everything smell like ice. But the wind already had a good sting to it, and I could see the air congregate in front of my face. Congregate. That’s a good word. Like my breath was a church gathering, and I was God, breathing life and then watching it drift away in the wind.

The thing about Ramsey was, other than Conrad, he was the only man in our settlement who I wasn’t related to. Which means exactly what you might think it means. And with Conrad being a thieving asshole who was too old for me anyway, there was only one real option. Thanks, apocalypse.

I’d had sex with only one boy before everything changed. His name was Alexander—not Alex, as he liked to tell people. I met him in Eagle. He was tall with dark hair. We’d hang out after school, and he’d smoke in his dad’s basement. There wasn’t much else for us to do in Eagle. I never tried smoking, though. Grossed me out. I didn’t care how cool it was supposed to be.

I liked Alexander because he was funny, because he was nice, because he used words like preposterous, and because he was the only boy who ever looked twice at me.

The first time he kissed me, I pulled away and said, “My dad’s gonna kick your ass.”

The second time he kissed me, I kissed him back.

We started making out a lot. I didn’t let him smoke beforehand because the taste was nasty. I’d take off my shirt and let him touch me, but I kept my bra on. He wanted to have sex. I didn’t.

“You gotta have sex sometime.”

“We’re not old enough.”

“When’s old enough?”

“I dunno, eighteen.”

“Eighteen! I can’t wait that long.” He said it with a laugh. But we were only sixteen, and I guess two years is a long time for a sixteen-year-old boy.

So we didn’t do it. Not then, at least. For a while after that, we stayed friends, but we stopped making out. He moved on to other girls. Then the world ended. Literally. Between the wars and the flu and the TVs going out, it seemed like the end of time. People were already starting to evacuate. But it wasn’t till after Dad died that I really felt the weight of it all. The world crashed down hard around my feet. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t read, food had no taste.

I met Alexander in his dad’s basement, just to see someone other than my family, someone who didn’t remind me that Dad was gone. I don’t remember if he kissed me or I kissed him, but next thing I knew, we were taking off our clothes, and for the briefest of moments, I felt something. A closeness.

Afterward, I walked out the door while he lit a cigarette.

“Lynn?” he said. But I kept walking, tears filling my eyes.

My dad’s gonna kick your ass. I don’t know why, but it was the only thought in my head.

We continued sleeping together, all the way until Alexander and his dad left Eagle. I never told my mom. I tried alcohol too. But it was the same as the sex. A moment of relaxation, of comfort, followed by emptiness.

And now there was Ramsey. He hadn’t outright said that he wanted me, but I could tell in the way he looked at me and, sometimes, in the way he refused to look at me.

“You realize that we’re the only ones not related?” he said once, back when I’d fish with him every so often. Back before I realized how boring fishing was.

“You and Ken aren’t related,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean.” I knew what he meant.

He tried to kiss me once too. Well, he did kiss me once. But it was on the cheek, and he apologized and walked away immediately after. It was such a childish kiss. And I wasn’t a child. I was a woman. A peck on the cheek didn’t cut it. It wasn’t really about sex. I just didn’t want to feel alone. I wanted that comfort I’d gotten from Alexander. If only for a moment.

So I dug into my mom’s precious stash of vodka, which was brought only for “medicinal purposes,” and took three long swigs from a bottle that had already been opened. It melted my insides. I made my way over to Ramsey and Jeryl’s.

Jeryl answered the door. I swore that guy slept in his clothes.

“Lynn. You all right?”

“Is Ramsey asleep?”

Jeryl looked me up and down and frowned.

“I think so,” he said.

“Can I see him?”

Jeryl bit his lip. I’d never seen him do that before. He knew exactly why I was there. It was embarrassing, it was unnatural, but everything about the world was unnatural now.

“Come on in. I was … I think I’ll take a walk.”

He stepped out.

Ramsey was just as surprised to see me, and instead of embarrassed, he seemed flat-out scared. I jumped on his bed without a word and kissed him. He didn’t shove me away or ask me what the hell I was doing. His lips were tight, and his breath was stale. But I pushed on. I’m a trouper.

I got so far as taking my jacket off, then my shirt, and I wasn’t wearing a bra. I hadn’t worn a bra since Eagle. I rolled on top of him and felt him shaking. I looked into his eyes and saw they were wet. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Crying? Was he crying?

“The hell?” I said. I know, not very compassionate of me. He was, after all, only seventeen at the time, and I was twenty-two. Not to mention the fact that he was eleven when we left Eagle. He’d probably never kissed a girl before. Still, I was surprised by his reaction, confused, and, to be honest, offended.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Keep going. It’s okay.”

I rolled off him and covered up, suddenly self-conscious of how naked I was. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

There was a lot of apologizing, a lot of awkward silences before I decided, to hell with this, I’m out of here. I dressed and left, and we never spoke of it. But when I think about it, I still get this ball in the pit of my stomach.

I don’t know if Ramsey was gay or if he was just a scared little boy. Either way, I never tried that again. So much for procreation. Oh well. Screw you, human race.

5

Things I don’t miss about summer:

Bugs.

Sunburns.

Sunscreen.

Freckles, freckles, freckles.

The morning after the shit storm with Conrad, I got up early, dressed, and trudged out into the snow. Couldn’t stand to be around everyone. I was in one of my moods, the ones that can be changed only by long bouts of solitude. Strange, the things that survive the apocalypse. My need to be by myself apparently outlives any flu. Back in the old world, I used to run off to the river and climb this one willow tree that hung over the moving water. I’d read, listen to music, or just sit there and watch the leaves spinning in the wind. Needed to be away from everyone, everything. That’s what hunting became for me. I liked being on my own. The quiet of it, the stillness of the snow, the familiar spruce, fir, and pine trees, the challenge of the hills, finding footprints of large and small game. All of it a world I understood and one that didn’t need to understand me.

It had stopped snowing sometime in the night, but not before another inch of fresh powder was added to the ground. There was about a foot and a half in all. We had to stock up on what meat we could before the deep snow and deep freeze set in. Grow our winter coats. Ramsey used to beg Jeryl to move us all south to warmer weather, friendlier environments. But Jeryl always said no in his most I’m-in-charge voice. He didn’t want to go south where the big cities were, where whatever was left of the world sat like a crumbling, rusting parasite, where even if everyone was dead, the air was probably still thick with the flu. We were people of the Yukon now.

When I crested the first hill, just southeast of our homestead, I stopped and sat in the snow, pulled out a bit of deer jerky, and munched on it for breakfast. Remember fluffy scrambled eggs? Crisp bacon? Blueberry pancakes? I don’t.

The sun blinked over the horizon, rubbing its sleep-crusted eyes. Trees, snow, mountains, as far as I could see. I inhaled the frozen air, trying to remember what warmth felt like. Being truly, comfortably warm. Then I realized that I didn’t care. I’d gotten used to the cold, the uncomfortable. Maybe a part of me—hell, maybe a large part of me—liked it.

The jerky was too salty, but it was filling. I stuffed a handful of snow in my mouth and started down the other side of the hill. I’d hunt east today, head for the river. I wasn’t going to check my traps, so I’d left my sled at our cabin, and despite the snow, walking felt light without it. If I made a big kill, I’d have to butcher the thing and hang the meat in a tree with the rope I’d brought in my backpack. Dad had shown me how. Then I’d head back and get my sled and maybe Jeryl to help retrieve it. All I had on me was the rope, my Hän knife, a bottle of water, more deer jerky, arrows, and my compound bow.

A healthy part of me wanted to head to Conrad’s place, stake it out, hide in a tree or the hill just behind his cabin, and wait for him to step out the door. And then, thwang, arrow through the neck. It’d be easy. That’s the thing the fat bastard didn’t understand. He was bigger, stronger than me, but if I wasn’t such a nice person, I could kill him as easy as bringing down a moose. Easier. I knew exactly where this particular moose lived.

Conrad was the opposite of my dad. Loud, selfish, fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, while Dad was boisterous without being loud, kind, smart, and strong. Dad used to let me ride on his shoulders, let me put makeup on him when no one else was home, let me stay up late watching movies, let me pick out my own clothes, let me throw temper tantrums without interrupting me or telling me to go to my room. He’d fix my lunch for school and give me money when he knew that he’d made a crappy lunch. He taught me to hunt and fish and trap and how to drive a stick shift in the church parking lot even before I got my license. And when I was really little, in Chicago, he’d sing to me before bedtime or when I woke from a nightmare. I can still remember the feel of his beard against my cheek, his strong arms holding me up. I even remember lines from some of the songs.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

merry merry king of the bush is he …

It didn’t make sense that the world could spin on when people like Dad died and people like Conrad lived.

The fat oaf joined us the first year. He found our settlement after we’d put up the first few walls of Mom’s and my cabin. Jeryl had known Conrad back in Eagle, but they hadn’t exactly been friends. He told us he was thinking of settling nearby, and Jeryl said that we’d be happy to have the company, that sticking together, hunting together, would make survival all the more possible. But I could tell even then from the way Jeryl eyed him that he was suspicious.

Everything started out fine. Jeryl, Ken, and Ramsey helped Conrad build his cabin, and they all hunted together for a while. Then we got a few winters under our belt. The first few tastes of hunger. Conrad didn’t show up as much anymore. I heard grumblings about game and territory. Ken said that Conrad even took a swing at Jeryl once. Since then we’d become silent neighbors who tried to stay out of each other’s way. Mom hated him from the beginning. Not sure why. Maybe she was just an excellent judge of character.

The hill was rough going. I’d gotten lazy in the short spring, before the snows came. My thighs were too skinny now, my back not used to the strain. Nothing about me said winter warrior. I was the opposite. Both of my parents had Scottish in their heritage. Hence our name, McBride, hence my tangle of half-dreadlocked red hair, hence my freckled face, hence my green eyes. Everything about me stood out against the snow. A red bull’s-eye. That’s why I wore the dark gray skullcap Mom knitted for me—to blend in. It was big enough to stuff my mess of hair inside. But it wasn’t just my redness that made me unsuited for the Yukon. I’d always been too skinny. And the lean winters had done nothing for my weight. Sure, I’d gained some muscle from the hard life, the long walks, drawing the bow, but it wasn’t anything substantial. Ken said that small girls are always angrier. Maybe that’s why I had a healthy amount of rage in me. Or maybe it was the Scottish blood.

The snow deepened as I climbed higher, and the spruce trees angled out from the ground, pointing at the blinding sky. With the freezing air, the summer-blue sky seemed fake. My thighs were burning and my shoulders hurt from the weight of my backpack and my compound bow, which I held at my side. I was breathing hard, the air stinging the back of my throat, but it felt good. When I crested the hill, I looked down at the river. A leviathan like the ones they talk about in the Bible, splitting the snow in lazy turns, ice creeping in along its edges. One day, the whole thing would freeze over. The river always made me a little uneasy. It seemed so calm, so peaceful. But put one foot in and you’d have frostbite before you made it back to the cabins—that is, if the river didn’t snatch you and pull you under.

The trees grew dense along the bank, making for a tough shot. My plan was to get close enough—but not too close—find a good tree to hide behind, and see if I could spot some deer coming in for a drink. Why is it that animals prefer to drink icy river water rather than eat snow? Something about it must taste better.

I watched the water’s current and for the millionth time imagined myself following the river east. Traveling on and on, exploring, discovering, living. Not this day-in-and-day-out motionless, monotonous surviving in rough cabins. I’d never tell Mom, but deep down, I wanted to escape, to get out and see what was left of the world. Who knew, maybe there were more settlements like ours, with better equipment, more people … more men. I was wasted on this frozen slice of the Yukon, a case of arrested development. Nothing new to learn here.

I was really, really good at school. Before.

Math, literature, science, easy. Social studies bored the hell out of me, so mostly I sucked at that. But everything else was a breeze. They even moved me ahead a grade, so I got to play the role of little ginger girl who thinks she’s too smart for her own good. God, the kids loved that. It didn’t help that my name was freaking Gwendolynn.

Suddenly, I was the youngest in class, and I was still smarter than most of the other kids. Okay, I was smarter than all the other kids. I don’t mean to brag about it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a genius or anything. Mostly, it probably means that the other kids were a bunch of stupids.

Mom brought some books into the Yukon and used to give me lessons in our cabin. A grade twelve calculus book (boring!), a book of short stories by Flannery O’Connor, a few biology magazines, and The Taming of the Shrew. That was my education. Oh, and of course Dad’s copy of Walt Whitman’s poems.

The books were no good to me anymore, except the Whitman, and Mom didn’t have much else to teach me. So I moved on to hunting. I was good at it. Dad used to take Ken and me out. He was a biologist, so on top of the hunting, he’d tell us about all kinds of plants. Which ones are good to eat, which ones will kill you, how and where to dig up edible roots. The plant part was boring so I mostly tuned it out.

“Lynn, are you listening? This is important.”

“Yes,” I’d say, even though I wasn’t.

“Then what’s this plant called?”

“It’s … a snowleaf.”

“A snowleaf?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s chickweed. Can you eat it?”

“Yeah,” I said even though I had no idea.

“Okay. Here.” He handed me one of the small green leaves.

I plopped it in my mouth without hesitating, staring him down as I chewed. I knew that if I was wrong, if it was poisonous, Dad would stop me. It tasted stale, dirty, green.

“So if you were in the wild, you’d recognize that plant, right?”

I nodded halfheartedly as I swallowed.

Dad couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

He also showed me how to use the bow. He’d adjust my stance, my elbow, my fingers on the string, and we’d shoot at a cloth target strung over a bale of hay behind our house in Eagle.

“How far away is it?”

“Thirty yards,” I’d guess.

“More like twenty. Use the twenty-yard sight pin.”

I’d adjust my aim to the top pin in the little, circular sight.

“Take a breath,” he’d say.

I was a natural. By the time I was thirteen, I’d killed marten, squirrels, crows, and a raccoon. Whenever I’d bring something in, Dad would throw his arm around my shoulders and kiss my head. “That’s my girl!” He’d always cook up the kill too. No matter how small the animal, how stringy and rough the meat, Dad would make a point of eating it with me. As weird as that was, Dad would say, “Can’t kill just for the fun of it. The animal died to provide for us.” Sometimes it tasted terrible, but I didn’t mind. It’s like I really was providing for the family.

Mom didn’t share Dad’s enthusiasm. I’d come in with a dead marten or fox and she’d give me this look. What a waste, her face would say. All my smarts and I was out in the woods killing critters.

I’d agree with her, but what’s the point?

The point? The point is, I could make it out on my own. I didn’t need the cabins, the stupid animals. All I needed was my bow and my knife. Dad would have understood.

But like all the other times before, I didn’t follow the river east. I just sat and imagined.

I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, a flapping white wing, a beady blue eye. On a branch about twenty feet up was a bird. Looked like a crow. But it was all white. Never seen an all-white crow before. I stared at the thing, and it stared back at me. Jeryl once told me that the world was changing. Maybe this was part of what he was talking about. The bird let out an annoying “Yaw,” then launched from the branch toward the river, its white wings folding like a tissue caught in the wind. Such a weird creature. I followed it because, well, because it was a white crow.

I started downhill, my feet packing the snow beneath me, the Blackstone River flowing in a silent rush. I scanned the trees, searching for the bird. That’s when I heard the rustling and saw another animal, this one walking on my side of the river. I stopped moving. A wolf. No, not a wolf. A dog. A freaking dog! Thick white fur with a streak of silver on top. Pale blue eyes and pointed ears. Siberian husky. Probably a sled dog. It was about twenty yards away, sniffing at the air. It was right where the bird had gone. I thought about all those Native American stories about shape-shifting spirit animals. Had the crow shifted into a dog? I took a cautious step, and its head snapped toward me, its ears white triangles pointing at the sky. We surveyed each other without moving. I thought, just for a second, about shooting the thing. Dog meat was meat, wasn’t it? And I didn’t know this dog. I’d never had a dog. I felt no sentimentality. But when it looked at me, I could see the curiosity in its eyes. The trust that it had learned in a world I’d forgotten about. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, shoot the stupid thing.

Then a high-pitched whistle sounded from the south, and I heard more footsteps in the snow. I ducked behind a thick pine tree and peeked out at the bank, breathing fast. That’s when I saw him. Heavy, gray winter coat, brown pack strapped to his shoulders with what looked like a blanket or a bedroll tied to the top of it. He had a skullcap covering his head, a blue handkerchief covering his face, and dark hair plastered to his forehead. Eyes that had been focused on the ground were suddenly alert and pointed in my direction. My heart banged in my ears. I flattened my back against the tree. Then the dog barked, a piercing sound. Shit. I nearly jumped out of my sexy wool underwear. He barked again. Not an angry bark. Excited, if anything. A look-what-I-found bark.

I peered around the tree. The dog was staring at me, the man staring at me. We all stared, assessing if what we were seeing was real.

“Hello?” He said it like a question. Hello? Is that right? Is that what people used to say?

I didn’t answer.

“Don’t want any trouble,” he said, pulling his handkerchief down around his neck.

“Okay,” I said. Probably should have said Me neither. The dog barked again.

“Shut it,” the man said to the dog. He looked back at me. “I’m going to keep on moving. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.”

It wasn’t till later that I thought about how weird that was. What lone, wandering human in a world devoid of company didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to learn about the surviving human race, didn’t want a moment—at least a moment—of human companionship?

“Where you from?” I blurted as he started back up the river. He paused, turned back to me. The dog barked again as if answering for him.

“South. The States.” He didn’t return the question. Maybe he assumed I was from the Yukon.

“Any news?” I asked.

He looked at me like he was trying to understand the question.

“No” was all he said.

Then he turned his back to me and started walking.

He scared the hell out of me. A lone man, surviving on his own. How rough would he have to be to survive out here by himself? How desperate? I pictured Conrad, his face too close to mine, his body flattened against me. But I couldn’t let this man go. Couldn’t let him get away. He was a link to the world beyond our little settlement, the only link I’d seen in years and years. I had to trap him, ensnare him. I reached out with the only thing I had to offer.

“You hungry?” He stopped. The dog had given up on me and was sniffing at a tree. “You should come with me.”

The man appraised me. He was used to being alone, to surviving on his own. But he had to be hungry. Everyone was hungry.

“Okay,” he said.

6

In the life before, in Alaska, Mom was a librarian. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her now. The hardened eyes, the dirt under her nails, the pinch of her lips. Crevices of survival, of suffering, of endless winter, not of a librarian in an elementary school, handing out Dr. Seuss to kids.

But she did that, once, and she loved it.

She loved my dad too. We all did. But his death had more of an impact on her than it did on me or Ken. Before, she was something like shy. She didn’t have friends or any real social life, and she’d let Dad make almost all the decisions. Sure, she had her temper, but for the most part, she was a kind, quiet, unassuming woman. After his death, I think she felt the burden of the world on her shoulders. The burden of me and Ken. She became a strong-willed, outspoken, zealous woman full of fire and a will to survive. It’s probably what’s kept her alive so long. That and the fact that Jeryl showed up and nearly shoved us out the door. He saved us. Saved us from the town, which was rotting at the seams from flu, being torn apart by looters, and freezing in the plummeting temperatures. Our heater was broken, and the fires we had each night barely warmed our living room, let alone the whole house. I remember falling asleep, watching my breath gathering in front of my face and disappearing toward the ceiling. But Mom had refused to leave. Even after half the town was dead or on the move, she held tight to the walls of our house like they were the living, breathing reincarnation of Dad. Maybe if Walt Whitman had anything to say about it, they were.

Jeryl came over one morning with his animals all packed up and ready to go. “Mary, time to leave.”

She fought him, screamed at him, told him to get the hell out of her house. He wouldn’t budge. He started packing things up for her, and she got violent. Pushing and punching, but he just shoved her away. That’s when she ran to the basement, came up with a pistol in her hands.

“Get out.” Her voice was shaking.

Jeryl stopped what he was doing, and Ken and I watched from the living room. Deep down, I knew she’d never do it. But that’s when everything changed with Mom. My vision of her altered. She was the same, but she was different. More feral. Protective. We were still in Alaska, but that was the moment Yukon Mom was born.

Uncle Jeryl walked up to her, calm as ever, as she held that gun out to him, telling him she’d do it, she didn’t care. He reached out, took the gun right out of her hands, and she crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut loose. Jeryl knelt down, helped her back to her feet.

“Pack your things,” he said again.

We left with Jeryl’s animals in tow, with what we could bring of our lives packed on their backs. The goats, the musk ox, the donkey, and the horse. Wouldn’t you know it? The damn donkey and horse were the ones to bite the dust. The donkey on the way through the Yukon, the horse two years after. But Hector, Helen, and Stankbutt, don’t you worry, they’ll probably outlive us all.

Anyway, it’s hard to picture my mom like she used to be. From before. My before-mom. Handing out books to kids. Stamping the due date onto the little insert inside the cover of each book. That mom’s gone. Gone like chocolate, cartoons, balloons, bananas, cars, planes, buses, bus stamps, food stamps, government, gum—the sour apple kind I loved so much—commercials, sports, school, sunglasses, and summer.

Good-bye, summer.

Hello, chilly spring. Hello, long, frozen winter.

The man came closer. He had a dark brown beard and bright blue eyes that looked almost white, even against the snow. He might have been attractive once, but it was hard to tell beneath all that beard. A funny thing to wonder about someone—whether they were attractive. I couldn’t remember the last time I wondered that.

He followed me up the hill at a steady and healthy distance while the dog jumped around me, excited as a kid on Halloween. I kept glancing back at him—waiting for him to pull a knife and attack—and noticed that he was limping on his left leg. I slowed my pace just a little.

“What’s his name?” I asked, calling over my shoulder.

“Uh, just Wolf. Found him a few years back. Gave him some food. Been following me ever since.”

I looked down at the husky trotting by my side. “You know he’s not, right?”

“Not what?”

“A wolf.”

The man’s eyes dropped to the dog.

“He’s a Siberian husky. Probably a sled dog,” I said.

For a moment, there was only the sound of our breathing and the dog’s feet puncturing the snow. The man mumbled something, I wasn’t sure what, but it sounded like: “Looked like a wolf to me.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

Long pause like he was thinking about it. “Jax,” he said. Seemed like a lie, but why would he lie about his name? Something was off about this man. I knew the potential danger I was in. Alone with a strange man, in the middle of nowhere, too far away to call for help. What a stupid idea it was to invite him back to the cabins. Why had I done that? God, it was so exciting.

“Lynn,” I said, not that he’d bothered to ask my name. He still didn’t say anything. “Short for Gwendolynn. Gwendolynn McBride. It’s Scottish.” Why was I still talking? Maybe because he wasn’t.

“It’s a nice name,” he said.

We continued the rest of the way in silence, the sun a ball of flame beneath cotton clouds.

Ken, Jeryl, and Ramsey were all out when we made it to the cabins. Probably hunting, or fishing, in Ramsey’s case. Mom was coming from the animal pens, with a feed bucket for Hector, Helen, and Stankbutt in her arms. She took one look at the man and his dog and her body went stiff, her face as blank as I’d ever seen. She was wearing her brown Carhartts, black gloves, and heavy blue jacket with the fake fur lining. Her hood was pulled up, and her freckled cheeks were red.

“Lynn,” she said. The word froze in the air. I once saw a video of a woman tossing scalding-hot coffee out of her window in winter in northern Alaska. Minus-whatever temperatures. As the liquid hit the air, it puffed into white mist. The sound of my name on Mom’s lips was something like that. Lynn—puff.

“Mom, this is Jax. Found him by the river. Told him that we could spare a bite to eat.”

There was panic in her eyes as she turned to our cabin and rushed through the door, not bothering to close it behind her.

“Mom?”

I looked back at Jax. He didn’t look surprised.

“Maybe I should go,” he said. “Don’t want to upset anyone.”

Then Mom came bursting through the wooden door, shotgun in hand, pointing at Jax. Jax raised his hands.

“Mom!”

“You sick? Any fever, sniffles, cough?” Mom asked.

“Mom, he’s fine,” I said at the same time that Jax said, “No, ma’am.”

“Any weapons on you?”

He shook his head. “Had a bow. It broke when I took a spill in the snow a few days ago.”

“What do you do for food?”

“My knife.” He pointed to his belt, where a knife—nearly a foot long from blade to hilt—hung in a leather sheath. A good, healthy knife, for skinning and for killing.

“Mom, put the gun down.” She didn’t move an inch. Her gaze was trained on him. I saw her finger hovering over the trigger. She was ready to kill the man, the quiet librarian in her long gone, fire in her eyes.

“You hunt with just a knife?” Mom asked.

Jax shook his head. “Not well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken your offer for food.”

“Not my offer.” She adjusted the gun against her shoulder.

“Mom, what the hell?” I said.

She glanced at me for half a heartbeat. “This was a stupid, stupid move, Gwendolynn.”

Mom’s boots ground the snow beneath her feet as she backed up a few paces. Wolf was taking a piss on the corner of our cabin.

“Go inside,” Mom said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun toward the door. “Dog stays out here.”

“Dog does what he wants,” Jax said, lowering his hands. I don’t think he meant to sound challenging. I think he was just telling it like it was. But it didn’t do him any favors with Mom.

“As long as what he wants isn’t to come inside.” She looked to the animal shed. “He gonna bug my animals?”

Jax shrugged. “Don’t think so.”

It was then that I realized that Jax wasn’t afraid. Not in the least. You learn how to spot fear when you hunt. You can see it in an animal’s posture, in their ears, the tensing of their muscles. You know when they’re about to bolt. Jax seemed completely relaxed, tired even.

“Get in,” Mom said. It was a command.

Jax obeyed. Slowly.

If I wasn’t so embarrassed by Mom’s paranoia, I probably would have thought the sight of her cooking food with a shotgun in her hand was hilarious. I helped build the fire, set the pots, even retrieved the deer meat and vegetables from the freeze out back. She spilled hot water, nearly dropped the meat, but the whole time, she kept an eye on Jax.

“Where you from, Jax?” she asked.

“The States.”

“Where?”

Pause. “Montana.” Was he lying again? Damn. You’re not helping your case, Jax.

“You walked all this way?” Mom asked, stirring the pot and sticking the meat on a grill that Jeryl had mounted over the fireplace when we first built the cabin.

“Had a horse for a while.”

“What happened to it?”

He frowned, like he was taken aback by the question. “Went lame.”

“You eat it?”

“Jesus, Mom.”

“Language, Gwendolynn.”

Jax watched. Mom stirred the pot.

“Yes, I did. Ate what I could, packed what I could carry.”

When the food was served, Jax dove in without saying grace. Mom took up her shotgun again and aimed it at him while he ate. He didn’t seem to mind. There was something gratifying about watching him eat. Something about seeing him enjoy the food, the fact that I knew he desperately needed it and that I’d helped provide it. When there was just a little meat left, he stopped, lifted his head, and eyed the last bit.

“Full?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Eh, stupid dog,” he said, rising. The wooden chair grated against the floor.

Mom lifted the shotgun to her cheek. “What’re you doing?”

Jax picked up the meat. He didn’t say anything else. He walked to the door, opened it, and tossed the hunk of meat outside. Before he closed the door, I saw Wolf dive onto the scrap.

“You feed them once,” Jax said, “and suddenly they’re your responsibility.”

“Not how it works in my house,” Mom said.

Jax laughed, a warm sound but with a hint of sadness in it. “Don’t worry about me, ma’am. I’ll be on my way. As long as you aren’t going to shoot me in the back.”

“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.

That night was clear and full of stars. In Chicago, I remembered nights where you could make out only a single star, high in the sky, escaping the purple hum of electric light. But that’s hard for me to picture now. After moving to Eagle, Alaska, a tiny town, and then to McBridesville, Yukon, a much smaller town, I was used to the stars. There were so many of them that they smeared together into a silver bulb that reflected off the snow. A black canvas of stars, a white canvas of stars. Me, caught in the middle.

I decided to go for a walk. Mom and Jeryl hated when I walked at night, but they couldn’t do shit about it. I was a grown woman. Ken used to joke, “Bet she’s sneaking off to Conrad’s place. Atta girl.” He didn’t make that joke tonight.

I headed east up one of the hills that framed our little homestead. From there you got a nice view of the valleys, the river, and the hills beyond. I walked slowly, my feet punching holes in the untouched snow. The point wasn’t to get somewhere—the point was to be out. Sometimes the cabin felt too close. In winter, we’d get hit with long, heavy storms, and during those times we’d all be cooped up between those walls for way too long. So I tried to get out as much as I could while I could.

I reached the top of the hill. The pine, fir, and spruce trees were bent like old men, carrying their burden of snow. A few dead birch, poplar, and cottonwood trees stood closer to the river, their spindly branches sleeping out the cold. Everything was so clear, so sharp under the light of the stars, you could cut your finger on it. It really was a beautiful place. You just had to get over the freezing weather, the darkness, the loneliness, the cabin fever, the boredom—oh God, the boredom—the shitty food, and the repetitive routine.

I heard rustling behind me and turned. Bounding up the hill was a white figure. An animal. Wolf. Not a wolf. But Wolf. He charged at me, and for half a second, I thought he’d gone feral. My hand dropped to my Hän knife at my belt. He nearly barreled into me, but kept on going a few feet before turning around. He paused, staring at me. His tongue was out, flopped to one side like it was too heavy for his mouth. I didn’t know what to do. Did he want me to throw a stick or something? He circled the snow once or twice, then sat, leaning up against my leg, panting. He was surprisingly heavy.

Dogs are weird.

With every breath, his shoulders push, push, pushed against my leg. I put a hand on his head. He thrust his nose into my forearm as I scratched his ear. His thick fur was slightly wet from the snow. Even through my gloves, it felt like three wool sweaters in one. He was made for this place. Made for winter.

Eventually, he lay down in the snow like it was a warm bed. A paw on my foot. I didn’t mind. I sat next to him, feeling his breath move in and out. It was odd, having company like this. It got me thinking. I wondered how long Jax and Wolf would stay, wondered how far north they’d go, wondered what life would be like running off into the wilderness with a dog and a stranger.

8

At school in Alaska, before the flu, Mrs. Burk kept us up-to-date on what was happening in the wars. Mrs. Burk was a large lady—fat, actually—but she was nice. I always felt a little bad when the other kids made fun of her.

The wars had been going on since we left Chicago, since I was twelve. With new technology, cities being bombed, different factions and groups taking power, peace treaties attempting and failing, it was hard to keep track of everything. And really, it didn’t matter anymore—the lines we drew for ourselves, the differences we created, the fear and hatred we felt simply because there were oceans and deserts and forests between us. The fear of the unknown. The fear that the other guy had a bigger stick. Once the flu hit, none of it mattered.

“Can anyone tell me who wrote the Treaty of Twelve Countries?” Mrs. Burk asked. I was in the ninth grade. A year after we left Chicago, a year after the wars started.

Chassie Emerson raised her hand. My friend Amanda and I hated her. She was a bitch who already had perfect boobs. “Australia.”

“Correct, and was it passed?”

“No,” she said.

“Chassie, let someone else answer. Why wasn’t it passed?”

Browning, a small kid named after a shotgun, raised his hand. “Because the US and China didn’t vote.”

“Good, and why not?”

“Because they were too busy trying to kill each other.”

“Chassie, please.”

When the flu reached the States, we were issued gloves. Every day after class, we’d remove the gloves, wash our hands in the sink just beneath the poster of an elephant with a caption, “Knowledge Is Power.” Then we’d head home. When things got really bad, we were given masks. When the stores closed down, Mrs. Burk handed out government-issued nutrition bars—brown, thick, tasted like grainy chalk. When fewer and fewer kids showed up for class, she started to teach us how to make animal traps. I already knew from Dad. When there were only three students left, she gave us books and told us to read them. Then, one day, Mrs. Burk wasn’t there, the principal wasn’t there, only a few teachers, a few students. Soon after, the school was just an empty building.

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