Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale Read online

  The men and women looked at each other, not at her. The same look as before. Now they definitely thought she was crazy.

  “Look, I know it’s weird. But it would help me so much,” she pleaded.

  Finally the man with the recorder cleared his throat and put a hand on her upper arm. “Ms. Clark, I’m so sorry if we gave you the wrong idea. This was just a backgrounder session. For informational purposes only.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t understand.

  “Mr. Fenech will explain, I’m sure,” he said, and then they all left. An hour later the car took her and Bobby back to the motel. Chey sat down in a chair and smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt. Bobby tore all the sheets off the bed and threw them at the TV set.

  “Goddamned grits!” he shouted. “I shit on all the Green Party bilingual wine-sipping owl-hugging dolphinfuckers who run this country! I knew this would happen.”

  Chey exhaled deeply before she spoke. “What happened? You said the government wanted my help.”

  “Yeah, and I was right.” He threw the plastic ice bucket at the tempered glass windows. It bounced off without leaving a mark. “They wanted you to help them not make a decision. What you said in there should have gotten me the paperwork I needed to go up to the Arctic and give this animal a sterling silver enema. Instead they took what you gave them as a sign that they needed to do more fact finding. Maybe form a new committee on Lycanthrope Relations. Lycanthropes! I hate that fucking word. It’s Greek or something, right? It’s one of those science words. It’s the name of a medical condition. This isn’t some kind of cancer that only baby seals can get. It’s a godforsaken monster. Why can’t anybody ever say the word werewolf with a straight face?”

  “So they’re not going to do anything?” Chey asked.

  “They never do,” he told her. Then he tried to pull the curtains off the curtain rod. They wouldn’t come loose.

  29.

  “How about a Cuban cigar, Captain?” Bobby asked, waving one at Uncle Bannerman. Chey’s heart sank. She jumped up onto a wooden fence and sat down on the top rail. She didn’t have high hopes for this introduction to start with—she had known all along that the two men weren’t going to click—but it seemed almost like Bobby wanted this to fail. “You can’t get these down here in the States, right? There’s nothing like them.” He rubbed the cigar under his own nose and breathed out joyfully.

  “Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.” Her uncle was dressed in his ranch clothes. Flannel shirt, jeans, perfectly clean work boots. He didn’t wear his uniform anymore—he was retired now, retired with honor and a nice pension after he cleaned up some bad prison riot or something with no casualties. He had transitioned to private life pretty smoothly and had bought a ranch where he raised Appaloosas. He had a bag of carrots with him and he was methodically feeding them, one after another, to his favorite animal, Vulcan, who kept flicking his tail back and forth.

  It was 2006, the year the Canadian government went to the Conservatives, and it seemed like maybe, finally, they had a chance. If they were discreet about it. They needed Uncle Bannerman’s help, though, so the two of them had flown down to Colorado to ask him in person. It was January and there were patches of snow on the ground and Chey wished they could just go inside and get warm.

  Bobby bit off the end of his cigar and spit it into the grass. Bannerman followed the projectile with his eyes and stared at where it hit the ground, probably memorizing the location where it fell so he could pick it up later. Bobby put the cigar in his mouth unlit and started sucking on it.

  “Do you need a match?” Bannerman asked.

  “Fuck no. You think I want lung cancer? I just like the taste.”

  Bannerman looked away. “You can get mouth cancer just as easily.” He shook his head, clearly ready to give up. “Cheyenne told me that you wanted to ask me for a favor. I suppose I should let you ask, at least.”

  “Yeah. I need your help with killing a werewolf.”

  Bannerman didn’t react to that at all. He fed the last carrot to his horse and then wadded up the bag and put it in his pocket.

  “It’s a matter of public safety,” Bobby tried to explain. “Canadian citizens are at risk and you can help me put an end to that. Surely you can appreciate that. This asshole ate your own brother.”

  This time Bannerman winced visibly. Then he collected himself and reached up and patted Vulcan on his forelock. The horse snorted and kicked at the icy ground.

  Bobby tried a new tack. “This is kind of my life’s work. Can you understand that? You’re at the end of a pretty distinguished career. I’m at the start of mine.”

  “I served my country to the best of my abilities, that’s all.” Bannerman ran his hands down the horse’s mane a few times and then clucked at him with his tongue. The horse knew exactly what that meant and he ran off toward the far side of his enclosure, his hooves kicking up bright sprays of snow. “Tell me now, please, what exactly it is you want me to do for you.”

  “One phone call. That’s all,” Bobby said. “You were a pretty important guy over at the Colorado National Guard. I want you to call somebody high up over at the Guard base at Buckley. Somebody who can authorize registering a civilian for a crash course in basic training without asking a lot of questions.”

  “You want me to enroll one of your intelligence operatives in our boot camp. Well, that’s very interesting, and it suggests to me that you’re not telling me the whole story. The last time I checked the Canadian Forces have a perfectly good training camp at Saint-Jean in Quebec. But for some reason you can’t put your agent into that camp.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Bobby raised his hands in confession. “It’s a freelance job I’m running. Very much on the hush-hush side. I have somebody who’s perfect for what I want to do but they’ve never shot a gun before. See, we don’t just let anybody get firearms training up north. We’re funny that way.”

  Uncle Bannerman nodded. “I happen to know someone who can make that happen. Dare I ask who your operative happens to be? Or is that classified?”

  Bobby scratched his head for a while. “Now, that’s kind of the funny part. You see, I’ve been trying to run this show for years now. I’ve been begging my people for one good guy, one smart guy who could carry this out. I’ve been tied up in red tape for so long, though, that I had to go low budget on this one. I had to ask for volunteers. People whose lives have been damaged by this particular animal. People who would be willing to put themselves at some mild risk to get within silver bullet range of a werewolf.”

  His eyes slid sideways. Bannerman followed his glance. Soon they were both looking right at Chey.

  Then Bannerman started laughing. It was a sound Chey had never heard before, and she nearly fell off the fence.

  When he had finished laughing he rubbed at his eyes and then looked right at Bobby. “You, Mr. Fenech, are insane. Get off my property now.”

  “Wait—wait—just listen for a second,” Bobby pleaded.

  “And you, Cheyenne, have apparently never listened to anything I’ve tried to teach you. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll buy you a plane ticket so you can go home and see your mother. Or you can stay here if you like. I can always use some help around here—I’m getting old and the horses need plenty of attention.”

  “Fucking hold on, just give me a chance,” Bobby said.

  “No.” Bannerman folded his arms across his chest. “I believe I asked you to leave. I’m not too withered to make you go,” he said.

  “Chey, try to talk to this guy, will you?” Bobby asked. He ran his hands across the sides of his head, careful not to mess up his spikes. “It looks like I’m not getting through to him.”

  Chey jumped down from the fence and started walking away from the two of them. “Give up, Bobby,” she said. “He’s not the kind of guy you can talk around to your side. It’s one of the reasons I respect him so much.” Her face burned with shame and she just wanted to leave.

  “
Chey,” Bobby wheedled, but she kept walking.

  “There’s a firing range just up the road. For fifty bucks they’ll give me a basic firearms safety course,” she said. “I checked. I kind of figured I knew his answer already.”

  “Cheyenne,” her uncle said. There was ice in his voice. She stopped where she was, but she didn’t turn around. She thought he was going to forbid her from going up to the Arctic. She should have known better. He didn’t have a right to forbid her anything and he was not the kind of man to meddle where he didn’t have a right. “Is this really your idea?” he asked. “This jumped-up spy didn’t talk you into this?”

  “I don’t sleep, Uncle. I haven’t slept a full night since I was twelve years old,” she said. She figured that all the times she passed out drunk didn’t count. “Every time I see a Chihuahua I lose my shit. The wolf ate my father, but that wasn’t all—he fucked up my life, too. I need to make this right.”

  “If you go up there you’re just going to get yourself killed. You can’t fight a lycanthrope. They’re stronger than we are.”

  “I know something stronger,” Bobby suggested. “A silver bullet. I have a guy in Medicine Hat, a silversmith, who’s making them for me right now. Of course, if she can’t fire a gun then a silver anti-tank round isn’t going to do her much good.”

  “You’re a vile little squirt of a man, Mr. Fenech,” Bannerman said. Then he took his cell phone out of his pocket and started dialing.

  30.

  Almost—almost done. The ten-kilometer run ended in the obstacle course. Hand over hand, swinging on an overgrown jungle gym. Crawling under wire. Chey came through the tires puffing, but she had enough strength left to grab the top of the wall. She got one leg over and jumped down the other side just like she’d been trained. Sergeant Horrocks, her drill instructor, started screaming at her as soon as she was through the mud. “If you can’t get those legs up higher you’re going to do the whole fucking thing over again,” he said. He was a tough little man with curly white hair and during her six weeks of training she had never heard him say one word in a conversational tone. With the sergeant it was either screaming or contemptuous silence.

  She ran up to a table and tied a blindfold around her face. She had fifty-five seconds left. With sweaty hands she picked up the pieces of her weapon off the table. Receiver, barrel, clip. She slapped the handgun together, stripped it down, put it together again. Then she pulled off the blindfold and stood at attention until Sergeant Horrocks screamed at her to stop.

  Her heart was racing. Her body burned with pain. She was done. “Pretty shabby, but it’s a passing score,” the sergeant announced. “Alright, you’re done.”

  And that was it. She walked over to where Bobby and Uncle Bannerman were sitting in camp chairs and dropped to the grass in front of them. She didn’t have the strength to say anything and they didn’t offer any congratulations. They were deep in conversation and barely seemed to notice she was there. The same conversation they’d been having, over and over, since the two of them had met.

  “This is your brilliant plan. To send one woman against a monster.”

  “One determined survivor, intent on healing her broken psyche. A highly trained survivor now, thanks to you.”

  “She’s not even twenty-five years old and now you’re both going to throw away her life. Do you know that she’s afraid of dogs?” Bannerman asked. “How is she supposed to get close enough to a lycanthrope to shoot it when she’s terrified of dogs?”

  “It’s not in its wolf form all the time. Sometimes it’s just as human as you or me. At least it looks that way.”

  Bannerman harrumphed. “It will still be stronger and faster than her. It will still be a killer. She’s not even a soldier, with or without basic training.”

  “If I could send soldiers I would. I’d love to send in an infantry regiment,” Bobby said. “I’d love to send in an air strike. But this is one clever animal. He’d see that coming and just move on before we arrived.”

  “You’d also have to get official sanction to do that,” Bannerman added. “And that’s something you’ll never have.”

  “Yeah, there is that. Look. I’ve made this as easy as I can. We wait until high summer when she won’t freeze to death up there. She goes in looking like a lost eco-tourist, in case anyone asks. We think the werewolf might have human accomplices watching out for him. She’ll have the perfect cover story. All she has to do is get close enough for one shot and then she’s done.”

  “Except that she’ll have to exfiltrate from some bad country. Is she going to shoot the accomplices as well?”

  Bobby waved a hand in front of his face as if he were batting at flies. “I’ll have a helicopter ready to evacuate her at short notice. This is a survivable mission. You think I want to lose her like that? She’s my girlfriend.”

  “She’s a sacrifice. I don’t know what you’re getting out of this, but I know you’re willing to let her be killed.”

  Chey’s heart skipped a beat when she heard that. But she wasn’t going to stop now. She sat up and looked at them.

  “Why are you so gung-ho about this lycanthrope?” Bannerman asked.

  “Like I said, it’s a public safety issue. I don’t want any more Canadians to get eaten.” But he couldn’t even keep a straight face when he said it. Bobby had never really told her what his interest in this was. She realized she’d never really asked.

  “Tell me the truth, son.” Bannerman’s face had turned to stone. His eyes were like sharpened pieces of flint.

  Chey knew that look. Even Bobby couldn’t stand up to it and keep bullshitting.

  “Alright,” he said. “You want to know? It’s about oil.” “I beg your pardon?” her uncle asked.

  Bobby shrugged. “Not terribly original. I know that. But important all the same. I’ve got satellite intelligence saying there’s an untapped oil reserve right on the Arctic Circle. Maybe six hundred million barrels, they say. And it’s not tied up in oil sands or shale that cost more to get it out than it’s worth. This is the real thing, liquid crude. There’s only one problem. There’s a werewolf on top of it. If we start sending up guys to drill for this jackpot then some of them are going to get eaten. The big boys in Ottawa prefer their oil blood-free. So they’ll never okay drilling. Then there’s the terrorism angle, because in my business these days there’s always got to be a terrorism angle, right? You know all about that. If we can start producing all of our own oil, if we can be less dependent on the Middle East, Canada becomes more secure.”

  “Please,” Bannerman snorted.

  Bobby’s mouth was a firm line. “We’re dealing with intangibles here, sure. But in a reality-based way, once this asshole’s dead, every single person in my country gets a little bit safer.”

  “And no one in the world except my niece can make that happen,” Bannerman said. He was about to scoff his last scoff, to send Bobby away. He was about to give up on everything she’d worked so hard for. All the things she needed if she was ever going to have a real life. She sat up and looked at him, even as he was opening his mouth to tell Bobby to leave and never come back. She pleaded with him with her eyes. Not the way she might plead with some other man, not with begging eyes, but instead with the eyes of an adult. The eyes of someone capable of making her own decisions.

  Bannerman drew in a long and difficult breath. Then he met her gaze. “Cheyenne,” he said. “Is this what you really want? You really want to throw your life away just for a chance to kill this lycanthrope?”

  She didn’t let herself blink. “Yes,” she said.

  part three

  western prairie

  31.

  The breeze off the tiny lake shook the pine needles, made the limbs of the trees bounce and sway. Sunlight danced on the water.

  Chey adjusted her stance. Then she lifted her weapon and pointed it right at Powell’s forehead. He looked surprised but not very frightened. Her hand started to shake but she fought the tremor down. One sh
ot was all it would take. He would be dead. She would finally be stronger than the wolf.

  She wished she’d had time to talk with him more. She had so many questions she wanted him to answer.

  “Chey,” he said, slowly. He was going to try to talk her down.

  Her father hadn’t been given a chance to talk. “You never gave my father a chance!” she screamed. She was losing control; she could feel it. She needed to act quickly or she was going to fuck this up.

  “Your father?” Powell asked.

  “His name was Royal Clark. He was a good man. You wouldn’t know that, of course. You didn’t seem particularly interested in his character at the time. You seemed more interested in how his guts tasted. You attacked our car twelve years ago and you ate him.”

  “Oh, boy,” he said.

  “Tell me you remember him,” she said. “Tell me you know who I’m talking about. I know you were never introduced, but surely you remember his red jacket. That’s pretty much all I remember now. Tell me!”

  If he confessed, if he said he remembered, and that he was sorry, then it would all be over. Then she could just kill him and she could sleep again.

  “I’m sorry, Chey,” he said.

  Her body sagged a little. She thought she might swoon. He was confessing, he was apologizing for what he’d done, just like she’d wanted—

  Except he wasn’t finished.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember him at all.”

  Quite suddenly she became aware of the solidity, the square rigid reality of the gun in her hand. Now, she thought. Now now now! She tried to squeeze the trigger. It didn’t move. Nothing happened.

  She closed her eyes in shame and horror. The weapon’s safety was still on.

  For a lurching, drunken moment no one moved. Everyone tried to figure out what had just happened. Powell’s face darkened and his arms lifted from his sides. He lowered his head and put a foot forward.