Winter Study

“We’re food,” Robin said, as if reading A

A

Robin looked slightly cowed, but she said: “Maybe this isn’t a regular wolf.”

The animal, quiet since Bob had come to life, began frenzied digging, claws scraping loud against the fabric of the tent and the frozen earth.

Bob yelped. Robin, still pressed to A

“My God,” Katherine cried. She grabbed Bob’s wrist and steadied the light on a section of tent opposite the entrance flap. The fabric was pounding in and out as the animal’s claws raked against it. Big paws. Bigger than a man’s fist, and high up the tent wall. The urgent whine of a carnivore closing on its quarry cut through the rapid clawing, then a growl from deep in the chest; the growl of a dog who does not bark but bites.

“God damn,” A

The pawing stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Paws padded away.

Then nothing.

Silence was so complete, A

She laughed shakily. “Whoa! That was-”

“Shut up,” Bob cried and began swinging the headlamp, clutched in both hands, in crazy patterns, as if the circle of light was an eye through which he could see outside the tent. Shadows rushed and retreated till the space seemed full not only of human bodies and gear but a host of unquiet spirits.

“Stop it!” A

“It’s gone, Bob,” Katherine said softly.

“Shut up,” Bob snarled.

“It’s gone,” A

“Let’s all settle down,” she said reasonably.

“You fucking settle down,” Bob snarled. “You fucking settle down! Ridley sends us out to fucking freeze to death because he’s bred some freak wolf/dog hybrid that’s ripping the shit out of our goddam tent-”

“It’s okay, Bob. There’s nothing to be scared-” Katherine was begging, reaching out to touch the back of his hand.

He batted her away and yelled: “Keep your hands off me, you fucking cunt.”

“That’s enough,” A

Bob’s eyes cleared marginally. He was coming back to himself from a hunt where he was the trophy animal, but the bone-deep horror remained. A

As she lay down and turned off her lamp, she knew that was something a guy like Bob Menechi

The animal did not come back. And none of them slept.

9

Morning did not come until eight twenty-seven a.m. By then, A

Quick as A

The light would be lousy till it was gone, and lousy the day after that and the week after that, till she got back to the high-country winter in the Rockies or the sweet attempt at winter in Paul’s backyard in Mississippi.

“Think happy little thoughts,” she sang mockingly under her breath. Discipline would have to take the place of optimism till her body temperature was a few degrees above that of the average corpse.

“Oh, goodie!” A

Scat. The woman had found scat. There was only one sample, and it was not particularly impressive in size or texture that A

“Not much for tracks,” the biotech said as she casually stuck the baggie into her jacket pocket.

They tried the trick of shining their headlamps low and laterally to create a false sun, but Robin and Bob had done a terrific job of stomping around when they’d pitched the tent, and the four of them had continued the stomping with jumping jacks, cavorting to warm up before bed and trips later to answer the call of nature.

If there were wolf prints, they were lost in the crusted mishmash of snow and dead grasses. No prints led in or out of the clearing across the unmarked snow. The animal had probably come into the camp from the trail as they had. Given the choice, wild animals – bears, cougars, foxes, wolves, deer – preferred improved trails just as people did, and for the same reasons.

In the area where the digging had occurred, they found a partial print. Had they not already ruled out foxes in their minds, the print would have. Foxes had tiny catlike feet. The snow and earth had been scored, and the wall of the tent had stress lines ru

“Look at that,” Robin said. There was no fear in her this morning; she was all business and curiosity. In this competent woman, A

A

“The thing must have been a monster,” Robin said. There was a quality to the biotech’s voice A

“This could just as easily have been made by two passes of a real-sized wolf as one pass by a gigantic wolf,” she said repressively. Remembering the wild-eyed panic in Menechi

“If something’s dangerous, don’t the others have a right to know?” Robin asked.