He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. His feet weren’t moving, but he knew it was no time to stand still. Should he retreat to the hut, he wondered, where he could grab one of those old rusty spades and at least have some kind of weapon if he needed it? The stave he was holding wasn’t going to be much help.
But when he turned around, he realized that he had no more idea how to get back to the hut than he did to find the cave. The trees were so tightly spaced, the ground so covered with moss and leaves and damp muddy snow, he’d have to be one of the native Inuit to thread his way back. And the prospect of getting marooned in that freezing, spooky shack overnight was way too scary to think about.
He turned back in the direction he’d been going and, as stealthily as possible, hobbled on. Even if he could just keep to a straight line, he figured, he’d eventually hit the cliffs on the other side—the whole friggin’ island wasn’t that big—and from there he could just hug the cliffs until he spotted the boat down in the cove. It couldn’t be that hard, or take that long. He told himself that all he had to do was keep his wits about him, ignore the pain in his ankle, and keep making progress.
And then something skittered across the path ahead of him.
Jesus Christ. He stopped dead, wondering what it had been. It had moved like a shadow, black and fast. He’d heard all the native legends about the otter-men, but who ever believed in shit like that? That old totem pole in town, the one that had fallen halfway over, supposedly told the story. His third-grade teacher had tried to tell the class about it one day, but Russell hadn’t paid any attention.
Now, he sort of wished he had.
He debated about whether it was better to keep quiet and get the hell out of there, or make some noise and try to bluster his way through. But that would all depend on what he was up against, and so far he hadn’t actually seen anything well enough to know.
A twig snapped behind him, on the other side, and he whipped around. A gust of wind blew the snow off a bough and into his face, but even as he blinked to clear his vision he saw a pair of eyes—yellow and intent—peering out from the brush.
Instinctively, he jabbed the stave at the bushes, but hit nothing. The eyes were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.
But Russell wasn’t about to wait around. Clawing his way through the woods as fast as he could, the anguish in his ankle overwhelmed by the adrenaline surging through his veins, he plowed ahead, knocking branches out of his way, clambering over the trunks of dead trees, slipping on wet moss, and once, on a brackish coil of goose droppings. His boots were slick with the shit when his toe caught on something hard, jutting up from the ground, and he was thrown flat, his head colliding with a rotten log. The flashlight went flying from his hand.
He lay there, stunned for an instant, but he could sense that he was still being tracked, that something was still watching him, waiting him out. First, he heard a sound on his right—snow crunching under a foot or paw—then he heard a sound on his left, like panting. There was more than one of them. He felt like he was being studied, like his infirmity had been noted, and now the stalkers were just awaiting the right opportunity to bring him down … like a wounded animal separated from the herd.
The way that wolves would do it.
He took a hurried breath and struggled to his feet again, leaning on the stave. The more he gave the impression of weakness and fear, the more he would embolden the attackers. If a bear threatened you, it was best to stand your ground, pump yourself up to look as big as you could manage, and make a lot of racket. But if it was wolves, that was something else. They never tired of the game … and to them it was a game. They would shift responsibilities, one running the animal down, then resting, while another picked up the chase. They would harry and harass their prey, nipping at its heels, barking in its face, racing in circles so that the creature got dizzy just trying to keep the many wolves in its sights. Russell had once gone hunting with his uncle and watched as a pack of them surrounded a starving coyote that had had the nerve to scavenge one of their kills. They had neatly spaced themselves out to cover any possible escape route, then crept closer, until the coyote, suddenly looking up from its feast, found itself with nowhere to run.
And then the wolves had descended all at once, in a bristling fury of fangs and claws.