No, her discomfort was from something else, something that clung to the island itself, like kelp to a rock. Nika had always been attuned to such things—her grandmother, who had raised her, had said she’d make a good shaman. Supposedly, her father had had such talents, but Nika hardly knew him, as he had gone missing when she was an infant, and her mother, working the late shift at the oil refinery, had been run off the road by a drunk driver and killed on the spot. For this part of Alaska, the story was not that unusual, and Nika had been determined to change her part in it before it was too late.
Instead of sticking around town and getting pregnant at seventeen by some fisherman, she’d hit the books, hard, and won a scholarship to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks; after that, she’d entered the doctoral program at Berkeley. Her old boyfriend Ben had been planning for the two of them to move to Florida, where he’d just received a job offer—tenure track yet—at the University of Miami. She’d even flown there with him for a week to look around at the campus and check out some apartments, but every palm tree was like a needle in her heart. And for someone who’d seen seals skinned and elk field-dressed, it was alarming how grossed out she’d been by the sight of palmetto bugs scurrying across a kitchen counter.
To Ben’s surprise, if not her own, Nika had returned to the place she’d been determined to escape. Now that she’d made her point and earned her degrees, she decided to come back to Port Orlov, where she could do more for her people than write ethnographic monographs published in scholarly journals that no one would ever read. She could so something concrete. Maybe it was what priests meant when they talked about their calling.
Down toward the nave of the church, she heard a faint rustling sound, and she held her breath. Rats. That would be all she needed. Her hand slipped out of her sleeping bag and made sure her flashlight was within easy reach.
Slater, she thought, showed that same missionary zeal. Although she’d never have admitted it, she’d done a thorough Internet search on him and what she’d read had been very impressive—impeccable academic credentials, an illustrious Army career in the Medical Corps, a number of published papers on epidemiological issues, all of them based on firsthand reports from war zones and trouble spots. But this man who had once been an Army major was now a civilian again, and reading between the lines on the Web, where she could almost see the fingertips of government censors, it looked to her like something had abruptly gone awry. Had he been drummed out of the service? What could he have possibly done? In her estimation, Slater seemed like efficiency incarnate, a model of rectitude, the oldest Boy Scout she’d ever known … but with a world-weary edge to him. And something else, too—a pallor to his skin, a glassy sheen in his eye now and then. It occurred to her that he might have been sick lately. Maybe he still was. But with what?
The sound came again, but this time it was more like little feet pattering across the wood, then something being shifted. Dragged. She wanted to reach down and unzip her bag, but she was afraid the noise would give her away. Damn, why hadn’t she inspected the place more thoroughly before bedding down? Or better yet, just slept in the mess tent?
She started to work her way out of the bag without unzipping it. She had just cleared her shoulders when the dragging sound came again—closer, louder. And this time she could tell there was a live creature of some kind, warm and breathing softly, inching nearer. She didn’t know whether to lie as still and silent as possible, or struggle to free herself from the bag. She craned her head backwards, so she could see into the aisle, and as she did, something slid into view. It was on the ground and only a foot or two from her face. In the moonlight, she could just make out that it was a head, turned toward her. The eyes were wide open, and so was the mouth.
She screamed and turned on the flashlight.
The old man—in an orange life jacket—was staring at her … but just beyond him a pair of fierce yellow eyes glittered like coals in the dark.
The wolf, dragging the corpse by its ravaged arm, stood its ground, not budging an inch.
Nika shrieked at it and waved the flashlight wildly.
The wolf lowered its head, growling. No wolf worth its salt ever released a hunk of meat without a greater threat than this.
She swatted at it with the flashlight, and the wolf ducked, still clenching its prize.
She shrieked again, and a few seconds later there was a clamor at the doors, the sound of running boots and men shouting.
The wolf jerked its head, ripping a hunk of frozen flesh from the old man’s arm, then lunged back into the darkest recesses of the church.
“Nika! Where are you?”
It was Slater.
Flashlight beams were crisscrossing the air above her.
“Here,” she managed to cry out, kicking her legs free of the sleeping bag.
“Where?”
The boots came closer as she scrambled out from between the pews.
“Watch out—there’s a wolf in here!”
“Where?” This was the sergeant’s voice now.
“It just ran into the back!”
Slater threw a protective arm, tight as a hoop of steel, around her shoulders, then he said, “Jesus Christ,” as he took in the corpse on the floor.