Buried Alive! (2 page)

“I can't stand it,” Ashley cried.

“It's OK,” Nicky told her. “Just don't look.”

It was over as quickly as it began. The rest of the wolves surrounded the kill, ripping pieces of its hide as if it were tissue paper. Ashley dropped her face into her hands.

“Sweetheart, you know that the wolves have to eat to stay alive,” Steven told her gently. “It's the circle of life. There's an old saying: Nothing in nature offends nature. This is elimination of the weak, survival of the fittest.”

Olivia rubbed Ashley's back between her shoulder blades, her glove making a slipping sound against the parka. “The mother wolves will be having babies in the first part of May. The females need to eat for their pups. You wouldn't want the wolves to starve, would you?

Just think of the little wolf pups.”

“I know, I know, but…the caribou is still dead.”

No one knew how to answer that. Finally, Nicky spoke, his voice both deep and quiet. “I know what it's like to be left behind. I know what it's like to be ripped to pieces. No one should ever get used to it.”

With that, he turned and walked toward the Jeep.

“J
ack, wake up,” Ashley hissed in his ear. Her hands clamped onto his shoulder, and she rocked him so hard his teeth chattered. “There's a moose outside in the back woods. She's huge! I've never seen such long, spindly legs. It's amazing. Come on!”

“What—what time is it?” Jack asked groggily. It was way too early for this much chatter.

“Six fifty-seven in the morning, which means it's really 8:57 Jackson Hole time. Get up, lazy bum.”

Jack tried to open his eyes, but his lids refused to cooperate. He'd had a hard time sleeping in the ranger family's house, probably because he kept hearing sounds all night. Since most hotels that served the park were closed until mid-May, the Landons had relied on the generosity of the park for a place to stay during this first week of April. It had been a real stroke of luck that one of the ranger families was spending some time in Utah, so they'd offered the Landons their home while they were away. Their house was furnished with three bedrooms on the main floor and one in the basement, plus a living room, two bathrooms, and a small, sunny kitchen. Nicky had asked for the room in the basement, which gave Jack and Ashley, in addition to their parents, rooms of their own. Perfect, except that the mysterious night noises had kept Jack restless. The digital clock had registered 3:42 before he finally figured out that the thuds were nothing but clumps of snow sliding off the pitched roof.

“Must…sleep,” Jack groaned now, hugging his pillow over his ears.

He saw a streak of yellow light as his sister yanked the pillow away from his face, but he jerked it back harder, practically smashing his nose into his face.

“Don't be such a weenie.” Ashley's words were muffled by the pillow. One by one, she tried to pry away his fingers.

Jack clamped his pillow in a death grip. “Show the moose to Nicky,” he croaked.

“I knocked, but he didn't answer. I can't just go into his room. What if he doesn't wear pajamas?”

Pulling the pillow off his face, Jack tried to focus. His sister's cheeks and nose had pinked up from the cold, and her hair billowed out from the bottom of her hat in an inverted mushroom cloud. She had on a pair of jeans and an unzipped parka with a single glove shoved in each pocket. Underneath she wore a blue nightshirt spangled with moons and stars, which hung loosely over her jeans to her knees. The tongues of her boots stuck out, and the laces dragged against the floor like whiskers. In her odd getup, she looked like a cartoon.

He could hear his sister stomp her foot. “Hurry up!”

“Go away!” Jack moaned.

“OK, fine. Miss the moose.”

Her footsteps clomped on the wooden floor as she flounced off, and then Jack heard the creak of an outside door. He lay there for a minute, then flipped the covers off and rolled out the rest of the way. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, but it was no use fighting it. He was awake. Well, he sighed, he might as well see the animal that cost him an extra hour of sleep. Grabbing his parka and camera, he stepped into his sneakers, not bothering to search for his socks. Then he entered the dim hallway.

It had surprised Jack, the way all the Denali ranger homes looked exactly like regular run-of-the-mill houses. He'd been expecting a split-log cabin heated by a wood-burning stove and maybe an old-fashioned hand pump for water. In his mind he'd pictured an outhouse behind every porch. Instead, this house and all the others in the cluster looked just like the tract homes in Jackson Hole. Indoor plumbing and everything.

Once outside, he followed his sister's footprints to the back of the house. It had snowed hard in the middle of the night, a deep, fluffy layer of white that mounded on the branches like dollops of whipped cream. Light snow kicked into his shoes and onto bare skin, so he tried to walk in Ashley's boot prints. When that didn't work, he switched to threading a path inches from the side of the house, where the snow was still packed. He found Ashley hunched behind a spruce tree. When she turned and saw him, she smiled, then placed her finger to her lips and pointed to a cluster of trees.

A huge moose munched lazily on bare twigs, its large, bulbous nose and neck bell bobbing with every bite. Jack held his breath as the moose moved forward, crunching through the trees until it was less than ten feet away. Although he knew the powerful animal could be dangerous, he couldn't pass on what could be the best shot of his life. Carefully, he unzipped his camera case and was just raising his camera to his face when he heard a door squeak noisily from the screened-in porch on the south end of the house. The moose snapped its head up and looked in the direction of the noise. Jack froze, until the moose dropped its head to begin eating again.

“…thought I'd come out here for a cup of coffee, even though it's a bit nippy. I wanted to talk to you about the wolverines.” Two chairs scraped noisily across the wooden planks. His parents wouldn't be able to see the moose from the porch.

“This is the strangest case I've ever been called on. I'm hoping this cold air will clear my head so I can think it through. There's something about these deaths that just doesn't add up.”

“Like what?” Steven asked.

Jack could hear his mother sigh. “First of all, I've read through stacks of papers, and the truth is no one really knows much about this animal. They're still very mysterious. And it doesn't help that they are surrounded by myths and legends. There's one story where a wolverine supposedly broke into a cabin and ate a trapper alive.”

“Ouch!”

“Steven, you know that's utter nonsense.”

His parents' voices distracted Jack. He didn't want to hear about wolverines when he had a huge moose in his camera's viewfinder. He wished they'd keep quiet so they wouldn't scare away this animal before Jack got some pictures. Compared with all the pictures of moose he'd seen in books, this one looked twice as big, maybe because he was so close to it.

The moose took another mouthful of twigs and munched idly, although Jack thought it might be watching him.

He'd heard that more people got hurt by moose than by grizzlies, so he didn't want to tick this big guy off. Just keep it nice and easy, he told himself. Zooming in so close he could count its eyelashes, he began to snap photos.

Ashley huddled beneath the tree branches like a turtle in a shell, watching the animal with rapt attention. “We should get Mom and Dad so they can see this,” she whispered.

“No, don't move. I don't want to scare him. If he decides to charge us, we're toast.”

The moose backed up, his enormous head whipping past branches as he turned to go. Even though he knew it wouldn't make a great picture, Jack snapped a few of the animal's rump.

“Maybe we should go tell Mom and Dad now,” she suggested. “They can still get a look at it, even if it's moving away.”

“Nah, don't bother. They're all hung up on the wolverine stuff.” Jack didn't feel like sharing the moose experience with his parents—or more truthfully, with his father. He wanted to develop these pictures, and if they turned out as great as he thought they might, he'd present them to his dad as proof that he could take some spectacular shots too—even if he didn't have his dad's experience or his expensive camera equipment.

Once again his parents' voices penetrated his consciousness. Olivia was saying, “A wolverine would rather run away than fight anything its size or larger. If they hunt anything, it's usually ground squirrels. But lack of information is just one problem. The whole case has got me all turned around. For one thing, I don't like the way those bodies were found.”

“You mean because the last two were next to snowmobile tracks?”

“Exactly. It doesn't make sense, Steven. They're such secretive animals, so why would they even come close to the trail? And two of them this last time…two males together? The fact is wolverine males are solitary. They keep to their own territories. I just don't get it.”

“Were they hit by the snowmobiles?”

“The report says there are absolutely no signs of impact. The last two bodies are at Kantishna. I'll know more when I examine them, but it appears they weren't hit. It's just baffling.”

Jack knew about the report. After they'd arrived in Anchorage, they'd driven directly to Denali, found the house they were to stay in, then quickly unpacked before heading to the ranger station, where his mother had been given a packet with pictures of the dead animals. Now he heard a rustling as his mother handed some papers to his father.

“…deaths are compounded by another sad statistic,” she was saying. “This report says wolverine young have a very high mortality rate—up to 30 percent.”

“From humans hunting them?” Steven asked.

“No. Unrelated adults appear to be killing the kits of other wolverines. But 30 percent! That's a huge amount to lose. Which underscores how the wolverine population can't afford the loss of apparently healthy adults. They'll be in serious trouble if we don't get a handle on this.”

“Nature can be cruel,” he told her. “Although I must admit I've thought about eating my own young once or twice.”

“Steven!”

He just laughed. A beat later he said, “I still think nature can't hold a candle to the viciousness of the human race. Look at Nicky's situation.”

Olivia dropped her voice low. “Seriously, what could be more savage than that? The whole thing makes me sick.”

Jack and Ashley exchanged glances. Both of them knew they weren't supposed to be hearing this. Every time they asked about Nicky, they were told his life was “confidential.” Yet here was a chance for them to find out something—maybe just a little. After all, they were the ones who had to put up with Nicky Milano, man of mystery.

“It's true—those people have ice in their veins,” Steven was saying. “They have no conscience. All things considered, I think taking Nicky was for the best.”

Ashley had begun to creep forward so she could hear better, but Jack grabbed her by the arm. Any motion might alert their parents, who would be really angry if they caught the two of them eavesdropping.

“I agree, but I have to admit I'm still worried,” Olivia continued. “What about Ashley and Jack? When it's all said and done, they are our first priority. Are you sure they'll be safe?”

“Olivia, we're in Denali, thousands of miles from any kind of danger,” Steven insisted. “No one could possibly find us here. Who would even think to look at a wildlife veterinarian and her photographer husband up here in the frozen north? You're worrying over nothing.”

“But what if?…” Olivia pressed.

“We can't live our lives for the ‘what ifs.'”

“You're right, you're right. I'm also worried about Nicky. He's pleasant enough, but how much of all this does he actually understand?”

Jack felt his nerves tingle. The cold bit through the flimsy pajama flannel, numbing his legs. He was holding his breath, straining to catch every word when he heard it—the barely-there sound of footsteps in the snow, as soft as the wind rustling through trees. He turned, nearly jumping out of his skin until he realized it was Nicky wearing a knit ski hat pulled down over his face, with holes for the eyes and mouth. It made him look creepy, like he was going to rob a 7-Eleven or something.

“Naughty, naughty,” Nicky whispered, pointing to the two of them and then to Steven and Olivia.

Jack's body froze, but his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Caught in the act by Nicky!

Nicky put his finger to his lips and motioned for them to follow him. Ashley crept forward, pulling Jack's gloved hand; he fell in behind the two retreating figures, moving through the snow this time, not caring how cold his feet got. Had Nicky heard what his parents had been saying? How long had he been standing there spying on them?

The sun was brighter now, making latticework shadows against the glittering whiteness. Nicky kept walking, past a stand of conifers and a boulder with a surface scored like elephant skin, along a tampeddown pathway that led to the corner of the yard, over to a small wooden picnic table where he swept the snow off the wooden bench and pointed for them to sit down.

He had on all his gear—parka, boots and gloves, and that weird knit ski mask, blood-red in color, that covered his face all the way down to his neck.

“You think we can talk, you know, in private out here?” he asked softly. “We could go inside, but I've been taught to say what I have to say in open spaces. You OK with that?”

When Ashley nodded, Nicky said, good, because it was important that no one else hear what he had to tell them. Since he seemed to be waiting for Jack to comment, Jack asked, “How long were you standing there behind me and Ashley?”

“Long enough. I went outside early—I saw a moose. Did you catch that bull moose, Ashley? It was standing over there by the back fence, where the rail is split.”

“Yes.” Ashley nodded. “Yes, I did. But I thought it was a girl.”

“Nope. It had that bell thingy hanging down from its neck, which makes it a guy. I read it in a book.”

Jack felt his impatience rising as Nicky smiled a little, his lips visible through the lower hole of the ski mask. Was he just playing games, Jack wondered?

You'd think you'd be able to read a person's expression as long as the eyes and mouth showed, but it didn't work that way, Jack realized. All parts of a face had to come together to project gloom or joy, fear or scorn, interest or mockery.

“Then I saw you two, and I said to myself, ‘Nicky, something's going on. Someone is talking.'” Before Jack had a chance to answer, Nicky waved his hand and said, “Your parents should be more careful.”

“Wait a minute. What do you mean they should be more careful?” Jack demanded. “We still didn't learn anything about this ‘danger' we might be in. I want to know who you are and why exactly you're here with us.”