The Wolves of Winter

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 (#ulink_5cef33b5-a440-5500-9991-4d6882859d47)

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,