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Cold, as palpable and suffocating as the crowding night, negated the odors attendant on such a pile of humanity, but nothing could negate the ectoplasm – or whatever the stuff was called when people were not yet dead. The lives of the others fluttered and battered in the enclosure as if they were captive birds flying against the bars of a too-small cage.
On the best of nights, tents were not necessarily A
Who knew boots could freeze? A
Time passed. The parts of A
A nightmare wind gusted in her ear: “A
“Listen!”
Robin; it was Robin. Panic subsided. The biotech had hold of her shoulder. She was pressed so close A
“Shh. Listen,” came into her ear on a balmy breeze.
A
Beyond the tent walls, the preternatural stillness of a night, frozen into a timeless instant, creaked in her ears. With a mittened paw, she shoved her hat up the better to hear. Silence, thick as an ice floe, pressed against her eardrums.
“There it is again.”
Now A
A thin skritching sound scratched through the black air, clogging A
“No.” Robin’s hands clutched and her voice shook. The woman was terrified.
In her short life, Robin had probably hiked nearly as many miles as A
Robin caught her hand and held it. The pawing stopped. There was no pad-pad-pad of the animal, curiosity satisfied, going away. A
They waited.
It waited.
From the huge paw prints Robin had seen and the great curled beast A
“Shh. Shh. There!” Robin hissed.
Slightly above them came short, sharp whuffing breaths of a creature tasting the air the way a bear might, lips pulled back, nostrils flared, scenting danger or prey. A
A
Bob and Katherine were as the dead; so worn out, neither the external noises nor the light woke them. A
Sudden and loud, clawing erupted near the tent flap and A
“What is it?” came a frightened voice. Katherine had woken.
“Nothing,” A
“Too big to be a squirrel,” Robin murmured, and her grip on A
“Would you stop?” she snapped. “We’re not doing Night of the Grizzly here. And I’m not getting out of my sleeping bag and braving the arctic to chase away a fancy dress rat.” She wasn’t hoping to fool herself or the biotech; she was hoping to soothe Katherine and snap Robin out of whatever horrors she was entertaining before they all succumbed.
As if to deny the unflattering characterization, the snuffling came into the black of the tent followed by a low growl that brought up A
“Oh my God,” Katherine whispered. “Wolf.”
A light beam, sudden and harsh, smacked A
Bob had regained consciousness.
“Shh,” Robin hissed.
“Kill the light,” A
“What-”
“Be quiet,” Katherine said, the first show of rebellion against her professor A
Robin made a soft sound in her throat, a groan or muted cry. A
Bob was easy to read. His head probably wasn’t any bigger than a normal human being’s – unless one was speaking metaphorically – but his face appeared immense, meaty, slabs of cheek and jowl dwarfing eyes, nose and mouth. On this wide canvas, fear was clearly writ. The big game hunter didn’t like being hunted.
“What’s it after?” he asked. He’d meant to whisper, but the words came out in a squeak.
“Food,” Robin replied succinctly.
A
In recent years, that had begun to change. A wolf had been seen hanging around a campground in Rock Harbor on several occasions. A dead wolf washed up on shore in Robinson Bay, apparently drowned. People reported seeing wolves near the lean-tos in Washington Harbor. The wonder of this was that it hadn’t happened long ago. Wild animals quickly became habituated to humans when food was involved.