Primal Scream (30 page)

Loot

Katt was wrenched back to consciousness by a sharp boom near her head as one of the logs in the cabin wall froze. Was it concussion or a drug that made her brain ache so? She vaguely remembered passing out in front of a totem pole crest of Weeping Woman clutching a grouse caught too late to save her brother from starving, with the One-Horned Goat Who Feasted Men glaring down at her from above.

Then lights out.

Lights back on, what she saw was her frigid prison cell, for Katt was gagged and hogtied in a cabin in the woods, lying on her side on a mattress of caribou hides on a hard floor, covered with the smelly furs of three grizzly bears.

The light was a guttering candle.

Her eyes darted about.

The sole door into the cabin was hand-hewn from a huge hollow tree trunk. A thick layer of frost covered the wood. The door opened into a dark and bestial hall lined with the remains of trapped animals: moose hides, and fox pelts, and bear and beaver skins. Feathers from eagles and other raptors stuck from its ceiling, around the hindquarter of a stag butchered, dressed, and hung to age.

The tallow of the candle was animal fat.

Lined like troops on parade, the walls of the room were vertical logs two feet thick and chinked with moss and mud against drafts. Leghold traps with steel teeth yawned on wall hooks. Carpeting the rough planks of the floor were more skins, wolf, lynx, wolverine, coyote, and mountain goat. The windows were glass jars cemented together with mortar, blinded outside by snowdrifts up past the frames, and inside by an opaque layer of rime. Through beams above she could see a roof of hand-split shakes, and slung back and forth over the rafters were strips of flesh from the carcass suspended in the hall, strung to dry into jerky.

The gamey stench gagged her.

Slaughterhouse.

An oil drum on a bed of stones served as a hearth, stone cold now. Against the wall a sled was piled with firewood. The single chair was a hollow log upholstered from elk hides. The kitchen was a shelf cluttered with cans: condensed milk with knife holes punched into its top, a tin-can sugar bowl, and a can filled with knife, fork, and spoon. A soot-black coffeepot was set on the oil drum. A mug nearby filled with its brew had been used again and again.

The floor heaved open.

A trapdoor.

Hung with rattling deer hooves like Nekt's
ta-awd-zep
fort.

Breath billowed up from the opening.

A shadow danced on the wall.

And Katt nearly died of heart arrest when the head of a wolf emerged.

A wolf with a hissing propane lamp.

The wolf head was worn as a hat by Winterman Snow. He was of the Wolf clan in Gunanoot. The
naxnox
hiding his face was White Man's Mask, a split down the middle for
halait
transformation. The mask was closed to offer a white man's face, eyes shut in skin as pale as winter snow, tongue sticking out in disrespect between twisted lips. The legs of the wolf skin hung down Snow's chest, over the headhunting blanket worn by Rector Noel in the photo behind Reverend Noel's desk.

The Winterman gripped a totem pole in his other

Six skulls harvested from white men stacked one on another up a steel rod.

The skulls were painted with weird designs.

Catholic crosses fashioned from erect phalluses in Gitxsan colors.

Totem crests.

Owned by Snow.

And only he could tell the stories behind how they had been obtained.

From the cellar under the cabin he pulled a wealth of loot.
Naxnox
hoarded by the rector and never sold to collectors. Loot the reverend inherited from him. Masks and whistles and rattles and drums and gambling sticks. Soul catchers and doctors' wigs . . . and all those wonders of
halait
.

Halait
here.

Halait
now.

He hung the
naxnox
on the logs between the leg-hold traps, but fumbled a rattle, which hit a trigger, which sprang rusted teeth with a
clangggg!
Beads sprayed from the rattle in a big-bang blast that hurled particles at Katt.

She flinched.

Which caught the Winterman's eye.

By the hissing glow of the lamp and the flicker of the candle, he retreated into the menacing murk of the hall, brushing the carcass to sway it as if coming back to life. When he came out, the dance he did was
Deyget
: capturing people. First she heard the shrill shriek of the whistle, blown to represent the voice of his
naxnox
spirit. This shriek, shriek, shriek shredded Katt's raw nerves. Then he danced in through the
laadmsmget
to her
halait
hell, hands gripping a compound bow and aluminum arrow he drew and aimed at her, whispers of the pulleys lost in the shriek, shriek, shriek. As he danced toward her to dramatize , suddenly he spun to loose the arrow, which ripped through the carcass of the stag and struck the door with so much force it seemed to shake the cabin

The
Deyget
Katt had read about was pantomime.

His wasn't.

He strung another arrow and turned to dance toward her again.

The fangs of the wolf head . . .

The razor-head of the arrow . . .

The whistle sticking from a hole through the outer mask . . .

The mask flipped open like shutters.

The Crack of Death.

Exposing a skull face within painted with the weir designs on the skull totem.

Closed, she noticed the red slit across the throat White Man's Mask.

Open, she noticed the lidless eyeballs staring out of' his skull.

Negative to positive through the Crack of Death.

Open, closed, open, closed, transformed insight.

Shriek, shriek, shriek blew the whistle.

The razor-head jabbed at her eye.

She had no mouth.

She had to scream.

A silent scream through the gag.

Pack of Wolves

Friday, January 12

Big and Little Dippers. The path of the Milky Way. And where it divided, Cygnus the Swan. A million stars pulsed in the black beyond. A shooting star seared from west to east. As if the hand of God swept the strings of a harp, ghostly streamers of Northern Lights wavered and twisted and shifted and mingled bands of green and yellow and red behind the stark black pinnacles either side of him, as
left
. . .
right
. . .
Katt
. . .
Katt
... he plodded on.

Tracks of wolves crumbled under the stumble of his snowshoes.

Winter was slowly killing him, as it had killed so many others who wandered too far from home. Would they find him frozen in his tracks, standing stiff like some weird statue? Wind chewed away at his face and bit into his bones. Needles of ice blown from the drifts cut his skin to bum like fire. He had to squint to protect his eyes, then wrench frozen lids apart to see. So fiercely cold was it he couldn't stop shivering, no matter how hard he exerted to trudge on. A tree beside him boomed as its sap froze, bursting fibers within its trunk, and causing him to wonder if his blood would do the same. A half inch of hoarfrost covered his hat. A layer of rime coated his collar. Icicles hung from his eyebrows and hair. Vapor from flared nostrils froze on contact, and when he breathed in, a mitt over his mouth and nose kept frost from his lungs.

All the grief of winter shrouded him.

The sob of the icy wind mourned his passing.

. . . left. . . right. . . Katt. . . Katt
. . . plodding on.

Following paw prints up the valley.

The dotted line of wolf tracks ran along the bank. Single file, the wolves stepped in each other's prints. Sometimes the lead wolf moved aside to switch positions with another wolf. Occasionally, a set of prints' would veer from the pack's tracks to investigate something of interest or sprinkle a boulder with scent to mark their territory. Separate from, but dogging the! pack, trailed a lone set of prints.

Robert was dead tired. His legs and back ached. He knew he was near the end of his endurance, having long since tapped adrenaline to drive him on.
Just one more step, one more step
, feeling dizzy. Would the next step crumple him?

No sign of man since entering the valley.

No snowshoe, sled, or snowmobile tracks.

Was this the wrong valley?

Was it a trick?

Was he lured here to die from—

Then he saw the wolves.

Raised on "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Three Little Pigs" and "Peter and the Wolf" and "The Wolf and the Seven Kids," later reading Jack London's
White Fang
in his teens, all those Yukon prospectors eaten alive, DeClercq hoped to God Kevin Costner got it right in his film.

These guys didn't look like they wanted to dance.

They looked like vicious killers.

The pack of seven wolves watched him from the bush along the bank ahead. They were larger and lankier than sled dogs, with longer legs, bigger paws, and narrower chests. At a hundred pounds each and built for distance travel through rugged woods, this gang of timber wolves might roam forty-five miles a day hunting for something to eat.

Something like him?

Robert eased the .38 from his pocket.

Six shots.

No more.

The Mountie ran through what he knew about wolves in his exhausted mind. Hunting, attacking, killing, and eating in a related group, wolves are a super-predator. One predator, with many legs. A pack is dominated by an alpha male and female. No doubt the alpha male ahead was that big black beast with his tail high in the air, to whom the others turned for leadership. That meant if they attacked, he'd be most aggressive and, when it was over, would get the choicest piece of meat torn off the Mountie. A wolf wolfs close to twelve pounds of flesh a day, which meant these seven would strip him to the bone.

He cocked the .38.

There is no more chilling sound in the wild than a howling session by wolves, unless it's a chorus howl in front of you. Big Black threw back his head and let one go, his two-inch canine fangs gleaming by the light of the moon. Like mourners' keening intertwined, the pack joined in; then one lamentation after another dropped away until what remained was a wail so piercing it went through DeClercq's heart.

The lead wolf turned his back on the man and loped away.

The alpha female moved up to join her mate.

Beta male next, and so on, the five subordinates followed in their tracks.

The Mountie exhaled a sigh of relief and uncocked his gun, but jerked tense again as he heard the
clangg!
of a leghold trap.

The alpha female shrieked.

And yelped.

And wailed.

And cried . . .

With the snarl of a hellhound, her mate turned on the man who'd set the trap—
Not me!
DeClercq shouted in his mind—but Big Black was already coming for him, no pre-hunt ceremony here, the pack circled nose to nose and butts out like a football team, tails wagging with the alpha male wagging last, just an all-out shred-his-throat and rip-his-balls-off rush.

Your timber wolf or gray wolf is a huge wild dog. Just think of the biggest German shepherd you have ever faced, with five buddies as fearful as him, barking and filled with hate, really vicious dogs . . . well, this pack was more vicious than that. As they charged, the wolves fanned out in a semicircle around DeClercq, one in the woods left, one on the river right, glancing back and forth to coordinate maneuvers and cut off any escape, while the alpha male came straight for his jugular, and the beta male lurked in a blind spot to get in and grab him off guard.

And off guard he was.

Big Black was the most hideous demon DeClercq had ever seen. Fire when you see the whites of their eyes didn't apply here, for the eyes coming full-tilt at him blazed red under the moon. Fire when you see the whites of their fangs, now that was a different matter, for he saw the whites of forty-two teeth come springing at his throat.

Big Black's canine fangs were spiked for clinging. They would sink deep and lock hold. The rows of jagged molars behind would tear and shear, some flesh teeth for cutting tendons, others bone teeth for cracking to his marrow. Covered with hundreds of horny projections called papillae, the tongue was long and supple to lick meat off his bones and slurp his blood. Saliva drooling around this array would lubricate wolfing chunks of him down whole.

DeClercq fired.

Three slugs from the .38 took Big Black midair in the chest. The wolf that slammed into and knocked down the Mountie was dead. DeClercq caught the beta male at the corner of his eye, snarling in from the river side, and pumped the last three slugs into him. Scrambling to his feet, a series of stumbles due to the snowshoes, he waved his arms and yelled at the remaining three, which turned tail and ran off.

When it comes to wolves, the number doesn't count. Social hierarchy is the threat. The alpha male controls the charge, so taking him out quells an attack by breaking up the pack.

His mate wailed on.

The pain and rage in her howl cut DeClercq to the quick. He wished he'd saved a bullet to deliver a
coup de grace
. Was it echo, or was he passing out, for he thought he heard the female snarl behind him as well as in front, then he remembered . .

The lone wolf!

Ears erect and aimed at him, forehead swollen and wrinkled over blazing eyes, lips peeled in a snarl that bared broken fangs, the grizzled, mangy monster attacked from behind. Pack splitting creates lone wolves. Once a part of Big Black's gang but now unaccepted, this loner had to keep at least a hundred yards distant. It fed on what remained of kills brought down by the others, with little more than gnawed bones and raw hide to stave off hunger.

The lone wolf was starving.

Here was crippled food.

DeClercq stumbling.

So it closed in to kill.

His empty gun in one hand, the Mountie fumbled for the radio phone in his pocket with the other, wrenching it out as the jagged fangs came at him. Then he slammed both objects together like cymbals to crush the beast's muzzle.

The radio shattered to pieces.

So did the wolf's jaws.

Mangled, the loner retreated.

Sickened by the carnage, DeClercq struggled on. He knew the leghold trap was set by Winterman Snow, and it spurred him to overcome exhaustion. Unable to get near the gnashing female to finish her off, he was followed by her howls.

* * *

Ahead of him, from a height, DeClercq was watched by another wolf.

Under the wolf head was Winterman Snow.

He didn't reload or shoot her. He's out of shells, thought the Mad Trapper.

Time for the hunt.

Time to kill the girl.